PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A heavily armed gang burst into a hospital in Haiti on Wednesday and took hostage women, children and newborns, according to the director of the medical center who pleaded for help via social media.

Jose Ulysse, founder and director of the Fontaine Hospital Center in the sprawling Cite Soleil slum in the capital of Port-au-Prince, confirmed the incident in a brief message exchange with The Associated Press. “We are in great difficulty,” he said.

Ulysse said on social media that “hundreds” of patients at the hospital were taken hostage, but the number could not immediately be confirmed. No further details were available, and it was not clear why the assailants may have taken patients hostage. Ulysse did not respond to further questions for comment.

A spokesman for Haiti’s National Police did not immediately return a message for comment.

The hospital is considered an oasis and a lifeline in a community overrun by gangs that have unleashed increasingly violent attacks against each other, with civilians who live in Cite Soleil routinely raped, beaten or killed.

Ulysse identified those responsible as members of the Brooklyn gang, led by Gabriel Jean-Pierre, best known as “Ti Gabriel.” Jean-Pierre also is the leader of a powerful gang alliance known as G-Pep, one of two rival coalitions in Haiti.

The Brooklyn gang has some 200 members and controls certain communities within Cite Soleil including Brooklyn. They are involved in extortion, hijacking of goods and general violence against civilians, according to a recent U.N. report.

“The G-Pep coalition and its allies strongly reinforced cooperation and diversified their revenues, in particular by committing kidnapping for ransom, which has enabled them to strengthen their fighting capacity,” the report stated.

When The Associated Press visited the Fontaine Hospital Center earlier this year, Ulysse said in an interview that gangs had targeted him personally twice before.

Gangs across Haiti have continued to grow more powerful since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the number of kidnappings and killings keep rising.

Earlier this year, at least 20 armed gang members burst into a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders and snatched a patient from an operating room. The criminals gained access after faking a life-threatening emergency, the organization said.

___

Associated Press reporter Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump asked for a mistrial Wednesday in the New York civil fraud case that threatens the former president’s real estate empire. His team accuses the judge of tainting the proceedings with “tangible and overwhelming” bias.

In urging Judge Arthur Engoron to stop the case immediately, they argued he had irreparably harmed Trump’s right to a fair trial through “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality.” They cited his rulings against their client as well as the prominent role played by the judge’s chief law clerk.

Engoron gave lawyers who are presenting New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit until Thursday to decide whether they will file a response before he rules.

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has long complained about Engoron, a Democrat. Trump was incensed by a gag order that judge imposed last month at the start of the trial and by a pretrial ruling that could force Trump to surrender control of some marquee properties.

Testifying last week, Trump assailed Engoron as an “extremely hostile” judge and the trial as “very unfair.”

Trump’s lawyers compiled weeks of complaints into their 30-page court filing seeking a mistrial. “The only way to maintain public confidence in a truly independent and impartial judiciary and the rule of law is to bring these proceedings to an immediate halt,” they wrote.

Engoron mentioned the mistrial request only briefly in court Wednesday as defense lawyers continued calling witnesses.

James’ office said in a statement that Trump was “trying to dismiss the truth and the facts, but the numbers and evidence don’t lie.” It said Trump “is now being held accountable for the years of fraud he committed and the incredible ways he lied to enrich himself and his family. He can keep trying to distract from his fraud, but the truth always comes out.”

James, a Democrat, alleges Trump, his company and top executives exaggerated his wealth by billions of dollars on his financial statements by inflating property values. The documents were given to banks, insurers and others to secure loans and make deals. James is seeking more than $300 million in what she says were ill-gotten gains. She wants the defendants, who include Trump sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, banned from doing business in New York.

Before the trial, Engoron ruled that Trump and other defendants committed fraud by exaggerating his net worth and the value of assets on his financial statements. The judge ordered that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s assets. An appeals court is keeping them in his control for now.

Trump’s lawyers had suggested for weeks that they would ask for a mistrial, first raising the issue after the conservative news site Breitbart News published a citizen complaint in early November that accused Engoron’s chief law clerk, Allison Greenfield, of violating court rules by making monetary donations to Democratic causes. Many of those contributions were made when Greenfield, a Democrat, was running for a judicial position in 2022.

Greenfield, who sits alongside Engoron in the courtroom, has been a flashpoint since the trial started Oct. 2. Trump made a disparaging social media post about her on the trial’s second day, leading Engoron to impose a limited gag order barring participants in the case from smearing court staff.

Engoron fined Trump $15,000 for twice violating the order and expanded it on Nov. 3 to include Trump’s lawyers after they complained in court about Greenfield passing notes to Engoron. Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said he felt like he was “fighting two adversaries.” The judge said he had “an absolutely unfettered right” to her advice.

In their mistrial motion, Trump’s lawyers accused Engoron of letting Greenfield act as “a de facto co-judge,” and they questioned whether her political leanings were influencing what they perceived as a “demonstrable pro-Attorney General and antiTrump/big real estate bias.”

Trump’s lawyers complained that Engoron’s expanded gag order barring comments about Greenfield “interferes with counsel’s ability to zealously advocate for their clients.”

A spokesperson for the state’s court system declined comment on behalf of Engoron and Greenfield, citing “active, ongoing litigation.”

State ethics rules bar members of a judge’s staff from making more than $500 in political donations in a single year. There are exceptions when a staff member is running for a seat on the bench.

In that case, they are allowed to exceed the cap to purchase tickets to political events, as long as they do not buy more than more than two per event and the cost per ticket is not more than $250.

Greenfield ran for a civil court judgeship in Manhattan in 2022. Her contributions, which totaled more than $4,000 during that time, appear to have gone primarily to buy tickets to events hosted by local Democratic clubs.

Judicial candidates in New York are widely expected to attend those events, which are seen as helpful to getting the party’s endorsement. Legal experts say candidates have an ethical duty to pay to attend the events, rather than accept free tickets.

“If she hadn’t paid, that would be a problem,” said Jerry Goldfeder, a veteran New York election lawyer and director of Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights and Democracy Project.

Goldfeder said the defense’s allegations were “totally misplaced,” suggesting Trump’s legal team “either doesn’t understand the law or doesn’t care about it.”

__

Associated Press reporter Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.

__

Follow Michael Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops on Wednesday stormed into Gaza’s largest hospital, searching for traces of Hamas inside and beneath the facility, where newborns and hundreds of other patients have suffered for days without electricity and other basic necessities as fighting raged outside.

Details from the day-long raid remained sketchy, but officials from Israel and Gaza presented different accounts of what was happening at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City: The Israeli army released video showing soldiers carrying boxes labeled as “baby food” and “medical supplies,” while health officials talked of terrified staff and patients as troops moved through the buildings.

After encircling Shifa for days, Israel faced pressure to prove its claim that Hamas had turned the hospital into a command center, using the patients, staff and civilians sheltering there to provide cover — part of Israel’s broader accusation that Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, uses Palestinians as human shields. Wednesday evening, Israel released video of weapons it said it found in one building, but so far its search showed no signs of tunnels or a sophisticated command center.

Hamas and Gaza health officials deny terrorists operate in Shifa — a hospital that employs some 1,500 people and has more than 500 beds, according to the Palestinian news agency. Palestinians and rights groups say Israel has recklessly endangered civilians as it seeks to eradicate Hamas.

As Israel tightens its hold on northern Gaza, leaders have talked of expanding the ground operation into the south to root out Hamas. Already, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have crowded into the territory’s south, where a worsening fuel shortage threatened to paralyze the delivery of humanitarian services and shut down mobile phone and internet service.

The war between Israel and Hamas erupted after the terrorist group killed some 1,200 people and seized around 240 captives in an Oct. 7 attack that shattered Israelis’ sense of security.

Israeli airstrikes have since killed more than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which coordinates with the ministry branch in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, with most believed to be buried under the rubble. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.

ISRAELI RAID INTO SHIFA

Israeli forces launched their raid into the large Shifa compound around 2 a.m. and remained on the grounds after nightfall Wednesday, with tanks stationed outside and snipers on nearby buildings, Munir al-Boursh, a senior official with Gaza’s Health Ministry inside the hospital, told The Associated Press. It was not possible to independently assess the situation inside.

Al-Boursh said that for hours, the troops ransacked the basement and other buildings, including those housing the emergency and surgery departments, and searched the grounds for tunnels. Troops questioned and face-screened patients, staff and people sheltering in the facility, he said, adding that he did not know if any were detained.

“Patients, women and children are terrified,” he said by phone to The Associated Press.

Neither the Palestinians nor the military reported any clashes inside the hospital. The military said its troops killed four militants outside the hospital at the start of the operation. Throughout days of fighting in the surrounding streets, there has been no report of militants firing from inside Shifa.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the hospital,” and that its soldiers were accompanied by medical teams bringing in incubators and other supplies.

It added that forces were also searching for hostages. The plight of the captives, who include men, women and children, has galvanized Israeli support for the war. Families and supporters of the hostages are holding a protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The video released by the military from inside Shifa showed three duffel bags it said it found hidden around an MRI lab, each containing an assault rifle, grenades and Hamas uniforms, as well as a closet that contained a number of assault rifles without ammunition clips. A laptop was also discovered and taken for study. The Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims that the weapons were found inside the hospital.

“These weapons have absolutely no business being inside a hospital,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said in the video, adding that he believed the material was “just the top of the iceberg.” The military said the search was continuing, but it did not immediately show any sign of tunnels or an extensive military center.

The raid drew condemnation from U.N., Jordan and the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority, which called it a violation of international law.

At one point, tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment were sheltering at the hospital, but most left in recent days as the fighting drew closer. The fate of premature babies at the hospital has drawn particular concern.

The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday.

There was no immediate word on the condition of another 36 babies the ministry said earlier were at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators.

Hours before Israel’s raid, the United States said its own intelligence indicated militants have used Shifa and other hospitals — and tunnels beneath them — to support military operations and hold hostages.

Under international humanitarian law, hospitals can lose their protected status if combatants use them for military purposes. But civilians must be given ample time to flee, and any attack must be proportional to the military objective — putting the burden on Israel to show it was a big enough military target to justify the siege against it.

A TRICKLE OF FUEL FOR AID WORKERS

About two thirds of the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes — and most are now squeezed into the southern part of the narrow coastal strip.

Conditions there have been deteriorating, as bombardment continues to level buildings. Residents say bread is scarce and supermarket shelves are bare. Families cook on wood fires for lack of fuel. Central electricity and running water have been out for weeks across Gaza.

After refusing to allow fuel into Gaza since the war’s start, saying it would be diverted to Hamas, Israeli defense officials early Wednesday let in some 24,000 liters (6,340 gallons).

The fuel will only be used for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, to continue bringing limited supplies of food and medicine from Egypt for the more than 600,000 people sheltering in U.N.-run schools and other facilities in the south.

The fuel cannot be used for hospitals or to desalinate water, said Thomas White, UNRWA’s director in Gaza. The amount is equivalent of “only 9% of what we need daily to sustain lifesaving activities,” he said.

The Palestinian telecom company Paltel, meanwhile, said it was relying on batteries to keep Gaza’ mobile and internet network running, and that it expected services to halt later Wednesday. Gaza has experienced three previous mass communication outages since the ground invasion.

LOOKING SOUTH

Israeli troops have extended their control across northern Gaza. The military says Israeli forces took control of the Shati refugee camp, a densely built district, and are moving about freely in the city as a whole.

The military says its forces have found weapons and Hamas fighters in government buildings, schools and residential buildings. Israel says it has killed several thousand fighters while 46 of its own soldiers have been killed in Gaza.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday the ground operation will eventually “include both the north and south. We will strike Hamas wherever it is.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the plans, saying Israel’s goal is “a complete victory over Hamas in the south and the return of our hostages.”

Israel told residents of northern Gaza to evacuate south, saying it wanted to get civilians out of the path of its ground assault, and hundreds of thousands fled. If Israeli troops move south, it is not clear where Gaza’s population can flee, with Egypt refusing a mass transfer onto its soil.

Magdy and Jeffery reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Dair al-Balah, Gaza, and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

DETROIT (AP) — Voting on a tentative contract agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers union that ended a six-week strike against the company appears too close to call after the latest tallies at several GM factories were announced Wednesday.

The union hasn’t posted final vote totals yet, but workers at several large factories who finished voting in the past few days have turned down the four year and eight month deal by fairly large margins. However a factory in Arlington, Texas, with about 5,000 workers voted more than 60% to approve the deal in tallies announced Wednesday.

The vote tracker on the UAW’s website Wednesday shows the deal by 958 ahead by votes. But those totals do not include votes from GM assembly plants in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Lansing Delta Township, Michigan, and a powertrain plant in Toledo, Ohio, which all voted against the agreement, according to local union officials.

In most cases the vote tallies ranged from 55% to around 60% against the contract.

But in Arlington the vote was 63% in favor with 60.4% of production workers approving the deal and nearly 65% of skilled trades workers voting in favor, making the tally tight.

Spokesmen for both the union and General Motors declined comment while the voting continues.

It wasn’t clear what would happen next, but local union officials don’t expect an immediate walkout if the contract is voted down.

Voting continues at Ford, where the deal is passing with 66.1% voting in favor so far with only a few large factories still counting.

The contract was passing overwhelmingly in early voting at Jeep maker Stellantis. The union’s vote tracker shows that 79.7% voted in favor with many large factories yet to finish.

Workers at some smaller facilities have yet to vote, and final tallies are expected to be announced late Thursday.

Keith Crowell, the local union president in Arlington, said the plant has a diverse group of workers from full- and part-time temporary hires to longtime assembly line employees. Full-time temporary workers liked the large raises they received and the chance to get top union pay, he said. But many longtime workers didn’t think the immediate 11% pay raises were enough to make up for concessions granted to the company in 2008, he said.

“There was something in there for everybody, but everybody couldn’t get everything they wanted,” Crowell said. “At least we’re making a step in the right direction to recover from 2008.”

The union agreed to accept lower pay for new hires and gave up cost of living adjustments and general annual pay raises in 2008 to help the automakers out of dire financial problems during the Great Recession. GM and Stellantis, then Chrysler, went into government-funded bankruptcies.

In the contracts with all three automakers, long time workers will get 25% general raises over the life of the deals with 11% up front. Including cost of living adjustments, they’ll get about 33%, the union said.

The contract took steps toward ending lower tiers of wages for newer hires, reducing the number of years it takes to reach top pay. Many newer hires wanted defined benefit pension plans instead of 401(k) retirement plans. But the company agreed to contribute 10% per year into the 401(k) instead.

At other factories, local union officials said that longtime workers at GM were unhappy that they didn’t get larger pay raises like newer workers, and they wanted a larger pension increase.

Tony Totty, president of the union local at the Toledo powertrain plant, said the environment is right to seek more from the company. “We need to take advantage of the moment,” he said. “Who knows what the next environment will be for national agreements. The company never has a problem telling us we need to take concessions in bad economic times. Why should we not get the best economic agreement in good economic times?”

Thousands of UAW members joined picket lines in targeted strikes against Detroit automakers over a six-week stretch before tentative deals were reached late last month. Rather than striking at one company, the union targeted individual plants at all three automakers. At its peak last month about 46,000 of the union’s 146,000 workers at the Detroit companies were walking picket lines.

_______

This story has been updated to clarify that the vote is too close to call.

WOODSIDE, Calif. (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping plunged into their first-face-to-face meeting in more than a year Wednesday pledging to work to stabilize fraught relations in talks with far-reaching implications for a world grappling with economic cross currents and wars in the Middle East and Europe.

“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden.

The U.S. president told Xi: “I think it’s paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader-to-leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunications. We have to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

The two warmly shook hands as they met and made a red carpet entrance to a bucolic Northern California estate for what was expected to be hours of work on detangling a multitude of tensions.

Xi, speaking through a translator, said the relationship between China and the U.S. has never been smooth but has kept moving forward. “For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said.

More pointedly, he also suggested it was not up to the U.S. to dictate how the Chinese manage their affairs, saying, “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”

Since the two leaders last met, already difficult relations have been further strained by the U.S. downing of a Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the continental U.S. and by differences on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, China’s hacking of a Biden official’s emails and other incidents.

Biden was expected to let Xi know that he would like China to use its sway over Iran to make clear that Tehran or its proxies should not take action that could lead to expansion of the Israel-Hamas war. The Biden administration sees the Chinese, a big buyer of Iranian oil, as having considerable leverage with Iran, which is a major backer of Hamas.

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, senior White House officials said Biden would walk away with more concrete results than from the leaders’ last talks, in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. There will be agreements from China to help stop the flow of chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl, and to revive communications between the militaries — increasingly important as incidents between the two nations’ ships and aircraft have spiked.

Biden on Tuesday billed the meeting as a chance to get Washington and Beijing back “on a normal course corresponding” once again.

But White House National Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden was “not going to be afraid to confront where confrontation is needed on issues where we don’t see eye to eye.”

“We’re also not going to be afraid, nor should we be afraid, as a confident nation, to engage in diplomacy on ways which we can cooperate with China — on climate change, for instance, and clean energy technology,” Kirby said.

Biden is focused on managing the two powers’ increasingly fierce economic competition and keeping open lines of communication to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to direct conflict.

While he was expected to defend U.S. expansion of export controls on semiconductor chips, he also was to assure Xi that the U.S. is not trying to wage economic war with Beijing amid continuing signs that China’s economy is struggling to recover from the disruptions of the pandemic.

Xi, meanwhile, was looking for assurances from Biden that the U.S. will not support Taiwan independence, start a new Cold War or suppress China’s economic growth. He was also keen to show the U.S. that China is still a good place to invest.

Even before their meeting, there were some signs of a thaw: The State Department on Tuesday announced that the U.S. and China — two of the world’s biggest polluters — had agreed to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, through wind, solar and other renewables.

Biden and Xi are in California for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, but they met one-on-one at Filoli Estate, a country house and museum about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco.

The APEC summit events already have attracted considerable demonstrations and more were expected, including protests against Xi and against multinational corporations focused on profits.

In the hours before the meeting, White House officials said Biden was coming into the talks bolstered by signs the U.S. economy is in a stronger position than China’s, and that the U.S. is building stronger alliances throughout the Pacific.

The U.S. president, speaking at a campaign fundraiser on Tuesday evening, pointed to his upcoming meeting as an example of how “reestablished American leadership in the world is taking hold.” As for China, the president told donors, it has ”real problems.”

The International Monetary Fund recently cut forecasts for China, predicting economic growth of 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024, down slightly from previous forecasts. Last month, Beijing released economic data that showed prices falling due to slack demand from consumers and businesses.

Biden, meanwhile, has taken pride in proving wrong economists who predicted that millions of layoffs and a recession might be needed to bring down inflation in the U.S. The Labor Department said Tuesday that consumer prices rose at an annual pace of 3.2% annually, down from a June 2022 peak of 9.1%. Meanwhile, employers keep hiring and the unemployment rate has held below 4% for nearly two years.

Xi, after his meeting with Biden on Wednesday, was addressing American business executives at a $2,000-per-plate dinner — a rare opportunity for U.S. business leaders to hear directly from the Chinese president as they seek clarification on Beijing’s expanding security rules that may choke foreign investment.

Foreign companies operating in China say U.S.-Chinese tensions over technology, trade and other issues and uncertainty over Chinese policies are damaging the business environment and causing some to reassess their plans for investing in the giant market.

A senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters ahead of the meeting said one big reason why Xi decided to make the trip to the U.S. was to send a message to American CEOs that China was still a good place to invest. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Robert Moritz, global chairman for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said business leaders are looking for signs of more cooperation and a firmer commitment to free trade between the world’s two largest economies following Wednesday’s meeting between Biden and Xi.

“What we are looking for is a de-escalation and a bringing of the temperature down,” Mortiz said during a CEO summit in conjunction with APEC.

“Discussion isn’t good enough, it’s the execution on getting things done” that will matter, he said.

___

Long and Tang reported from San Francisco. Associated Press journalist Sagar Meghani in Washington and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

LONDON (AP) — The British government said Wednesday it will still try to send some migrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda, despite the U.K. Supreme Court ruling that the contentious plan is unlawful because asylum-seekers would not be safe in the African country.

In a major blow to one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ‘s key policies, the country’s top court ruled that asylum-seekers sent to Rwanda would be “at real risk of ill-treatment” because they could be returned to the conflict-wracked home countries they’d fled.

Sunak, who has pledged to stop migrants reaching Britain in small boats across the English Channel, said the ruling “was not the outcome we wanted” but vowed to press on with the plan and send the first deportation flights to Rwanda by next spring.

He said the court had “confirmed that the principle of removing asylum-seekers to a safe third country is lawful,” even as it ruled Rwanda unsafe.

Sunak said the government would seal a legally binding treaty with Rwanda that would address the court’s concerns, and would then pass a law declaring Rwanda a safe country.

Sunak suggested that if legal challenges to the plan continued, he was prepared to consider leaving international human rights treaties — a move that would draw strong opposition and international criticism.

Britain and Rwanda signed a deal in April 2022 to send migrants who arrive in the U.K. as stowaways or in boats to the East African country, where their asylum claims would be processed and, if successful, they would stay.

Britain’s government argues that the policy will deter people from risking their lives crossing one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and would break the business model of people-smuggling gangs. No one has yet been sent to the country as the plan was challenged in the courts.

Opposition politicians, refugee groups and human rights organizations say the plan is unethical and unworkable. Charity ActionAid U.K. called the Supreme Court ruling a vindication of “British values of compassion and dignity.” Amnesty International said the government should “draw a line under a disgraceful chapter in the U.K.’s political history.”

Announcing the unanimous decision, President of the Supreme Court Robert Reed said Rwanda had a history of misunderstanding its obligations toward refugees and of “refoulement” — sending claimants back to the country they had sought protection from.

The judges concluded “there is a real risk that asylum claims will not be determined properly, and that asylum-seekers will in consequence be at risk of being returned directly or indirectly to their country of origin.”

“In that event, genuine refugees will face a real risk of ill-treatment,” they said.

The U.K. government has argued that while Rwanda was the site of a genocide that killed more than 800,000 people in 1994, the country has since built a reputation for stability and economic progress.

Critics say that stability comes at the cost of political repression. The court’s judgment noted human rights breaches including political killings that had led U.K. police “to warn Rwandan nationals living in Britain of credible plans to kill them on the part of that state.” They said Rwanda has a 100% rejection record for asylum-seekers from war-torn countries including Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The Rwandan government insisted the country is a safe place for refugees.

“Given Rwanda’s welcoming policy and our record of caring for refugees, the political judgments made today were unjustified,” it said in a statement.

Rwandan opposition leader Frank Habineza, however, said Britain shouldn’t try to offshore its migration obligations to the small African country.

“The U.K. should keep the migrants or send them to another European country, not to a poor country like Rwanda. I really think it’s not right (for) a country like the U.K. to run away from their obligations,” Habineza told the AP in Kigali.

Much of Europe and the U.S. is struggling with how best to cope with migrants seeking refuge from war, violence, oppression and a warming planet that has brought devastating drought and floods.

Though Britain receives fewer asylum applications than countries such as Italy, France or Germany, thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of crossing the English Channel.

More than 27,300 have done that this year, a decline on the 46,000 who made the journey in all of 2022. The government says that shows its tough approach is working, though others cite factors including the weather.

The Rwanda plan has cost the British government at least 140 million pounds ($175 million) in payments to Rwanda before a single plane has taken off. The first deportation flight was stopped at the last minute in June 2022, when the European Court of Human Rights intervened.

The case went to the High Court and the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the plan was unlawful because Rwanda is not a “safe third country.” The government unsuccessfully challenged that decision at the Supreme Court.

Sunak took comfort from the court’s ruling that “the structural changes and capacity-building needed” to make Rwanda safe “may be delivered in the future.” The U.K. government says its legally binding treaty will compel Rwanda not to send any migrants deported from the U.K back to their home countries.

The prime minister is under pressure from the right wing of the governing Conservative Party to take even more dramatic action to “stop the boats.” Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was fired by Sunak on Monday, has said the U.K. should leave the European Convention on Human Rights if the Rwanda plan was blocked.

Sunak said at a news conference he was prepared to “revisit those international relationships to remove the obstacles in our way.”

“I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights,” he said.

Legal experts said leaving or ignoring international treaties would be an extreme move. Joelle Grogan, a senior researcher at the U.K. in a Changing Europe think tank, said leaving the European Convention would make Britain “an outlier in terms of its standards and its reputation for human rights protection.”

“The only reason in which you would leave the ECHR is if you wanted to start sending asylum-seekers to unsafe countries where they face threats to their life,” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Ignatius Ssuuna in Kigali, Rwanda contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With less than two months until the end of the year, the Biden administration is running out of time to win the reauthorization of a spy program it says is vital to preventing terrorism, catching spies and disrupting cyberattacks.

The tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will expire at the end of December unless the White House and Congress can cut a deal and resolve an unusually vexing debate that has yielded unlikely alliances at the intersection of privacy and national security.

Without the program, administration officials warn, the government won’t be able to collect crucial intelligence overseas. But civil liberties advocates from across the political spectrum say the law as it stands now infringes on the privacy of ordinary Americans, and insist that changes are needed before the program is reauthorized.

“Just imagine if some foreign terrorist organization overseas shifts its intentions and directs an operative here who’d been contingency planning to carry out an attack in our own backyard — and imagine if we’re not able to disrupt the threat because the FBI’s 702 authorities have been so watered down,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Wednesday on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The law, enacted in 2008, permits the U.S. intelligence community to collect without a warrant the communications of foreigners overseas suspected of posing a national security threat. Importantly, the government also captures the communications of American citizens and others in the U.S. when they’re in contact with those targeted foreigners.

In making the case for the law’s renewal, the Biden administration over the last year has cited numerous instances in which intelligence derived from Section 702 has helped thwart an attack, including an assassination plot on U.S. soil, or contributed to a successful operation, such as the strike last year that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

National security officials have also said 59% of articles in the president’s daily brief contain Section 702 information, and point to the need for the program at a time when Israel’s war with Hamas has led to elevated concerns about attacks inside the U.S.

But while both sides of the debate are in broad agreement that the program is valuable, they differ in key ways on how it should be structured, creating a stalemate as the deadline approaches and as Congress is consumed by a busy year-end agenda, including working to prevent a government shutdown and disputes over border security and war spending.

The White House has already dismissed as unworkable the one known legislative proposal that’s been advanced, though additional bills are expected to be introduced.

Another complicating factor for the administration to navigate: the coalition of lawmakers skeptical of government surveillance includes both privacy-minded liberal Democrats and Republicans deeply supportive of former President Donald Trump who still regard the intelligence community with suspicion over the investigation of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Despite the clear challenges in reaching a compromise, the last-minute scramble between the White House and Congress has come to be expected each time the government’s surveillance powers are up for renewal. This particular program was last renewed in January 2018 following a splintered vote in Congress and signed into law by Trump, who in a statement praised the tool’s value for having “saved lives” but also cheered a new requirement that was meant to protect privacy.

“A lot of these in the past have gone up to the brink. There is a history here of this brinksmanship when you have these statutory sunsets,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s law school and a senior Justice Department official at the time the law was created.

This year, a key point of contention is the insistence by some in Congress, over the strong objection of the White House, that federal agencies be required to get a warrant before they can access the communications of people in the U.S.

That’s been a priority for civil liberties advocates in light of revelations over the past year about improper searches of the intelligence database by FBI analysts for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and the racial justice protests of 2020, as well as about state and federal political figures.

The Biden administration has said compliance errors by the FBI are exceedingly rare given the massive number of overall database queries and that the bureau has made important reforms to minimize the prospect for civil liberties intrusions.

A senior administration official has said that a warrant requirement included in a legislative proposal announced last week would cross a “red line” for the White House given that it would limit officials’ ability to detect, and act on, potentially vital intelligence in real time.

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said such a mandate would not only be operationally unworkable but also legally unnecessary because it would force officials to get a warrant to examine intelligence that was already lawfully collected.

Wray, in prepared remarks to the House homeland panel, said a warrant requirement would amount to a “de facto ban” in part because of the length of time and amount of resources needed to prepare an application for a court order.

The idea of requiring a warrant or probable cause to access information about people in the U.S. has been advocated by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the most pro-Trump members of Congress, and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, a reliable champion of civil liberties and liberal standard bearer for decades.

Wyden last week released a bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers — including Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, a vocal Trump supporter — that would mandate a warrant except for limited exemptions, such as when officials need to stop an imminent threat or if the subject of the query has consented to the search.

In an interview, Wyden said that though he felt strongly about the need for warrants — they’re “important because the Founding Fathers thought they were important” — he also believed that his team had adopted a measured approach by including significant exceptions to the warrant requirement.

“We’re not negotiating with ourselves,” Wyden said. “We’ve got an open-door policy. If there are concerns from the administration, they ought to come up, make the case and talk them through.”

___

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

Colton Parayko and Kasperi Kapanen also scored for the Blues (8-5-1), who have won three straight.

“There wasn’t a lot going on in the game in the first period,” Blues coach Craig Berube said. “From a defensive standpoint, checking standpoint we were pretty solid, disciplined, staying out of the box. We did a good job of finishing on some plays and scoring and then staying with it.”

Binnington earned his first shutout of the season and the 13th of his career.

“It’s a team that you’re proud to be a part of,” Binnington said. “It’s a month or two of working hard and buying in. It’s nice to see some results come our way. We’re just staying patient and playing together and trusting the system and we’re getting rewarded.”

Jonas Johansson stopped 24 shots for Tampa Bay (6-6-4), which dropped its third straight.

“We had a good start and then we started giving up chances,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. “The second period was an even period and then we gave up two in less than a minute so, just breakdowns. It wasn’t like we were dominated. It was an even match. We just gave up way too much.”

The Lightning were shutout for the second game in a row.

“People are going to look and say we’ve been shutout the last couple of games,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “The problem is, it’s not our offense. We’re giving up gifts, and we’re having good stretches in the game. That’s been the story this year. It’s just giving up those easy ones. Guys are getting discouraged and then they’re fighting it a bit, so that kind of hurts the mojo of your team.”

Kapanen scored his third goal of the season into an empty net with 3:58 remaining and Kyrou scored his second goal of the game and fourth of the season with 42 seconds remaining to seal the win for St. Louis.

Kyrou took an outlet pass from Torey Krug and skated in to score on a backhand shot, and Vrana scored his second of the season on a feed from Krug 19 seconds later to give St. Louis a 3-0 lead with 3:24 remaining in the second period.

“It’s just a chemistry play with [Kyrou],” Krug said. “We’ve talked over the years. If he sees that I get the puck in transition, he can take off and I’ll try to get it to him. Obviously he saw open ice and he made a great move on the breakaway. The other goal, you’ve got to give Vrana a lot of credit because I don’t think there’s many guys in the league that score off that pass with his release.”

Thomas, the Blues’ leading scorer, has registered at least one point in seven straight games with five goals and six assists.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will meet at a historic country house and museum with lavish gardens for one-on-one talks aimed at improving relations between the two superpowers.

The two leaders will meet Wednesday at Filoli, a secluded estate along Northern California’s coastal range. It was built in 1917 as a private residence and later became a National Trust for Historic Preservation site. The estate is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, where leaders are gathering for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ conference this week.

The location for the meeting was disclosed by three senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter with security implications.

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, said the location likely has met Xi’s expectations for a private meeting with Biden away from the main summit venue.

“It appears to be a quiet, secluded estate, where Biden and Xi can have an intimate conversation in a relaxed environment,” Glaser said. “Importantly, the venue is not connected to the APEC summit, so it provides the appearance that the two leaders are having a bilateral summit that is distinct from the multilateral APEC summit.”

Observers of China’s elite politics have said Xi wants to project himself to his domestic audience as equal with Biden and as commanding the respect of a U.S. president.

The estate has more than 650 acres (2.6 square kilometers), including a Georgian revival-style mansion and a formal, English Renaissance-style garden. The mansion and grounds are open daily, but the site is currently closed for three days for holiday decorating, its website says.

“A place like this allows them to get away, not just from the media, but from a lot of the other things that encourage conflict,” said Jeremi Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin. “If they like each other, they are likely to start trusting each other and to communicate better.”

Suri says this is what happened with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union before it was dissolved. The two met at a secluded chateau in Reykjavik in 1986, sat by a fireplace and walked outdoors wearing heavy coats, forging a relationship, Suri said.

“We need leaders who can break through the fear,” he said.

San Francisco socialite William Bowers Bourn II named Filoli by taking the first two letters of key words of his personal credo, according to the estate’s website: “Fight for a just cause. Love your Fellow Man. Live a Good Life.”

The venue is available for private events, weddings and commercial filming and photography. The gardens feature in Jennifer Lopez’s film “The Wedding Planner.”

——

AP writers Didi Tang and Colleen Long in San Francisco, and Zeke Miller and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Johnson’s proposal to temporarily fund the government into the new year passed on a bipartisan 336-95 tally, but 93 Republicans voted against it. It was the first time the new speaker had to force vital legislation through the House, and he showed a willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

This time, Johnson of Louisiana appeared on track for a temporarily better outcome. His approach, which the Senate is expected to approve by week’s end, effectively pushes a final showdown over government funding to the new year.

“Making sure that government stays in operation is a matter of conscience for all of us. We owe that to the American people,” Johnson said earlier Tuesday at a news conference at the Capitol.

The new Republican leader faced the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster — angry, frustrated, hard-right GOP lawmakers rejected his approach, demanded budget cuts and voted against the plan. Rather than the applause and handshakes that usually follow passage of a bill, several hardline conservatives animatedly confronted the speaker as they exited the chamber.

Without enough support from his Republican majority, Johnson had little choice but to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running.

Holiday forecast: Shoppers to pull back from pandemic’s torrid pace

Johnson’s proposal puts forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives have demanded all year. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“We’re not surrendering,” Johnson assured after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning, vowing he would not support another stopgap. “But you have to choose fights you can win.”

Johnson, who announced his endorsement Tuesday of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, hit the airwaves to sell his approach and met privately Monday night with the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Johnson says the innovative approach would position House Republicans to “go into the fight” for deeper spending cuts in the new year, but many Republicans are skeptical there will be any better outcome in January.

Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is part of the House Freedom Caucus, threatened to take the House floor hostage if the chamber doesn’t pass all of the appropriations bills by the deadlines.

He said he would give “a little bit of room” to Johnson, who is three weeks into the job of speaker. But Roy did not hold back on his opinion of the funding bill: “It’s crap.”

The opposition from hardline conservatives left Johnson with few other options than to skip what’s typically a party-only procedural vote, and rely on another process that requires a two-thirds tally with Democrats for passage.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries noted in a letter to colleagues that the GOP package met Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

At Disney district, another no-bid contract pays political pal $495 an hour | Commentary

In a statement alongside other Democratic leaders, Jeffries said they would try to find common ground with Republicans whenever possible and pointed out that a federal shutdown “would hurt the economy, our national security and everyday Americans.”

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a McCarthy ally who opposed his ouster, said Johnson should be held to the same standard. “What’s the point in throwing out one speaker if nothing changes? The only way to make sure that real changes happen is make the red line stay the same for every speaker.”

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House package “a solution” and said he expected it to pass Congress with bipartisan support.

“It’s nice to see us working together to avoid a government shutdown,” he said.

But McConnell, R-Ky., has noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine and Israel and for other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and to bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of the continuing resolution would be a less-than-triumphant capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but the two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress failed to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

The legislation also extends farm bill programs through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That addition was an important win for some farm-state lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., for example, warned that without the extension, milk prices would have soared and hurt producers back in his home state.

“The farm bill extension was the biggest sweetener for me,” said Pocan.