AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST

Focus on early release of terror convict in London stabbings

LONDON (AP) — Usman Khan was convicted on terrorism charges but let out of prison early. He attended a “Learning Together” conference for ex-offenders, and used the event to launch a bloody attack, stabbing two people to death and wounding three others.

Police shot him dead after he flashed what seemed to be a suicide vest. Khan is gone, but the questions remain: Why was he let out early? Did authorities believe he no longer believed in radical Islam? Why didn’t the conditions imposed on his release prevent the carnage?

Britons looked for answers Saturday as national politicians sought to pin the blame elsewhere for what was obviously a breakdown in the security system, which had kept London largely free of extremist violence for more than two years.

Police said Khan was convicted in 2012 of terrorism offences and released in December 2018 “on license,” which means he had to meet certain conditions or face recall to prison. Several British media outlets reported that he was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that allowed police to track his movements at the time of the attack.

Authorities seemed quick to blame “the system” rather than any one component.

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Powerful storm pushes into Midwest with heavy snow and winds

Wintry weather bedeviled Thanksgiving weekend travellers across the United States Saturday as a powerful and dangerous storm moved eastward, dumping heavy snow from parts of California to the northern Midwest and inundating other areas with rain.

Authorities found the bodies of two young children, including a 5-year-old boy, and a third child was missing in central Arizona after a vehicle was swept away while attempting to cross a runoff-swollen creek. A storm-related death also was reported in South Dakota.

Also in South Dakota, a small-engine plane carrying 12 people crashed, killing nine aboard and leaving three others injured. Peter Knudson of the National Transportation Safety Board said the Pilatus PC-12 crashed about 12:30 p.m. Saturday, shortly after taking off from Chamberlain, about 140 miles (225.3 kilometres) west of Sioux Falls. Knudson said weather would be among several factors reviewed by NTSB investigators, but no cause had yet been determined. He said inclement weather was making travel to the crash site difficult.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service said the storm was expected to drop 6 to 12 inches (15-30 centimetres) of snow from the northern Plains states into Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

Blizzard conditions early Saturday were already buffeting the High Plains. The city of Duluth, Minnesota, issued a “no travel advisory” beginning at noon Saturday because of a major snow storm it termed “historic.”

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Biden launches Iowa trip with focus on Trump, rural America

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Joe Biden launched an eight-day bus tour of Iowa on Saturday projecting confidence, ignoring his many Democratic presidential competitors and pledging that he will unseat President Donald Trump in 2020.

The former vice-president pledged first to win the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, despite recent polls suggesting his standing there has slipped in recent months.

“I promise you, I promise you,” Biden told a few hundred supporters outside his Council Bluff campaign office, “we’re going to win this race, and we’re going to beat Donald Trump, and we’re going to change America.”

Behind the optimism, Biden aides acknowledge he must sharpen his message and bolster his voter outreach operation ahead of the caucuses that start Democrats’ 2020 voting. But his advisers also insist he has wide support and remains well-positioned to recover any lost ground.

His chief argument — his perceived strength against Trump — was on clear display Saturday. Sidestepping his philosophical tussle with progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders over the party’s direction, Biden struck a general-election posture. He added an emphasis on small town and rural America, an electoral swath where Democrats have struggled in recent elections but that could prove critical in both the nominating fight and November battlegrounds.

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July 25 forecast: Sunny, with cloud of impeachment for Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — The forecast for July 25 was typical for Washington: sunny, mid-80s. President Donald Trump had good reason to be feeling bright and sunny himself.

It was the morning after Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony at the conclusion of the Russia investigation, and Trump and his allies were expressing relief, thinking the rumblings about impeachment would at last fade, even if the special counsel hadn’t offered the president the total exoneration Trump claimed.

By 7:06 a.m., Trump was tweeting positive reviews from his favourite TV show, “Fox & Friends,” where co-host Ainsley Earhardt declared, “Yesterday changed everything, it really did clear the president.”

An hour later, Trump moved on to a tweet talking up his approval ratings, the stock market, unemployment and more. “Country doing great!” he wrote.

But a reconstruction of what started as an unremarkable summer Thursday reveals that even before daybreak, anxiety was coursing through the White House about a coming phone call that didn’t appear on the president’s public schedule.

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China accuses UN rights chief of inflaming Hong Kong unrest

HONG KONG (AP) — China accused the U.N. high commissioner for human rights of emboldening “radical violence” in Hong Kong by suggesting the city’s leader conduct an investigation into reports of excessive use of force by police.

The back and forth came ahead of three marches on Sunday in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

The U.N. commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, wrote in an opinion piece Saturday in the South China Morning Post that Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam’s government must prioritize “meaningful, inclusive” dialogue to resolve the crisis.

She urged Lam to hold an “independent and impartial judge-led investigation” into police conduct of protests. It has been one of key demands of pro-democracy demonstrations that have roiled the territory since June.

China’s U.N. mission in Geneva said that Bachelet’s article interferes in the internal affairs of China and exerts pressure on the city’s government and police, which “will only embolden the rioters to conduct more severe radical violence.”

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Authorities: 2 kids dead, 1 missing after truck swept away

The bodies of two children were found Saturday, but searchers were still looking for a third child who went missing after a truck they were in was swept away while attempting to cross a runoff-swollen Arizona creek in what a sheriff’s official called a “horrible and tragic incident.”

Gila County sheriff’s Lt. Virgil Dodd said the first body found was of a 5-year-old boy. The second child’s age and gender weren’t provided in a statement released by the Sheriff’s Office.

Dodd said the 5-year-old boy’s body was found about 3 miles (4.8 kilometres) downstream of the crossing which had been closed hours before the truck tried to cross Friday despite barricades and warning signs.

Drivers “really need to not ignore that. It’s very dangerous. It’s very hazardous,” Dodd said in announcing the first death. “In this case, this horrible and tragic incident … that’s what happens when you ignore these types of signs.”

The Sheriff’s Office said emergency personnel and law enforcement helicopters on Friday rescued two adults and two children who also were in the military-style truck swept downstream in Tonto Creek near the small community of Tonto Basin, which is about 52 miles (83 kilometres) northeast of Phoenix.

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Authorities: 9 killed, 3 injured in South Dakota plane crash

CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. (AP) — Authorities say nine people have been killed after a plane crashed in South Dakota.

Peter Knudson with the National Transportation Safety Board tells The Associated Press 12 people were aboard the Pilatus PC-12 when it crashed about 12:30 p.m. Saturday, shortly after taking off from Chamberlain, about 140 miles (225.3 kilometres) west of Sioux Falls.

Knudson says nine people were killed and three were injured. The single-engine plane was bound for Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Media reports say Chamberlain and central south-central South Dakota were under a winter storm warning at the time of the crash.

Knudson says weather will be among several factors NTSB investigators will review, but no cause has yet been determined. He says inclement weather is making travel to the site difficult.

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s Ukraine defence collides with facts

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s defence of his actions with Ukraine collides with the known facts and the testimony of witnesses on multiple fronts as the impeachment inquiry moves into a new phase this coming week.

In recent days, Trump has cried foul in ways angry and profane as Democrats set the stage for House Judiciary Committee hearings likely to produce articles of impeachment.

A review of rhetoric on this and other matters over the past week:

IMPEACHMENT

TRUMP: “We had a great two weeks watching these crooked politicians not giving us due process, not giving us lawyers, not giving us the right to speak and destroying their witnesses. It fell apart. Those were their witnesses. We weren’t allowed any rights.” — Florida rally Tuesday.

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Century ago and today, Baghdad street a front line in revolt

BAGHDAD (AP) — When discontented Iraqis sought independence from British occupation in 1920, Baghdad’s most prestigious new boulevard, Rasheed Street, was the theatre of their revolt. Nearly 100 years later, the historic colonnade-lined avenue is a flashpoint in Iraq’s grassroots movement waving the banner of revolution against the country’s political system.

Once a bustling cultural hub in the heart of Baghdad, Rasheed Street has been a battle zone in recent days as security forces try to repel protesters. At least seventeen protesters have died, as Iraqi authorities used live fire, tear gas and rubber bullet to repel them from advancing beyond a concrete barrier which has effectively cut the street in half.

Protesters see Rasheed Street as key to protecting the nearby squares that are the epicenter of their movement, including Tahrir Square, where hundreds of demonstrators are camped.

But experts are concerned that damage from the fighting will reverse painstaking efforts to keep the street from falling into ruin.

Zainab Mustafa, head of a local NGO Lugal which works to develop Rasheed Street, went to Tahrir recently trying to persuade protesters to move their fight elsewhere.

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Londoners a reminder of how ordinary people can fight back

The people who used a fire extinguisher and even a 5-foot (1.5 metre) narwhal tusk Friday to fight back against an attacker who stabbed two people to death and wounded three others by the London Bridge are a reminder of how ordinary people can take extraordinary actions to save themselves and others.

Similar examples in the United States include:

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United Airlines Flight 93 was headed from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was diverted by hijackers in an apparent effort to direct it to Washington. The hijackers crashed it over Pennsylvania as people aboard the plane tried to wrest control of the cockpit. All 33 passengers and seven crew members died.

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The Associated Press