Nation & World briefs: 1-8-18

End of protection for Salvadorans fills families with dread

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s decision to end special protections for nearly 200,0000 Salvadoran immigrants filled many Salvadoran families with anxiety dread Monday, raising the possibility that they will be forced to abandon their roots in the U.S. and return to a violent homeland they have not known for years, even decades.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen gave Salvadorans with temporary protected status until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or face deportation. El Salvador becomes the fourth country since President Donald Trump took office to lose protection under the program, which provides humanitarian relief for people whose countries are hit with natural disasters or other strife.

The decision, while not surprising, was a severe blow to Salvadorans in New York, Houston, San Francisco and other major cities that have welcomed them since at least the 1980s.

Guillermo Mendoza, who came to the United States in 2000 when he was 19 years old, was anguished about what to do with his wife and two children who are U.S. citizens.

“What do I do? Do I leave the country and leave them here? That is a tough decision,” said Mendoza, a safety manager at Shapiro & Duncan, a mechanical contractor company in Rockville, Maryland, near Washington.

South Korean officials head to border for talks with North

SEOUL, South Korea — Senior South Korean officials are heading to the Demilitarized Zone for rare talks with their North Korean counterparts.

The officials departed Seoul early Tuesday morning for the border.

The agenda includes cooperation at next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea and improving long-strained ties.

The rival Koreas’ first formal meeting in about two years comes after months of tension over North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile programs.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year’s Day address that he was willing to send a delegation to the Olympics. South Korean President Moon Jae-in welcomed Kim’s overture and proposed holding talks.

AP source: Romney treated for prostate cancer

NEW YORK — Former 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney was treated for prostate cancer last year.

That’s according to a Romney aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to discuss a sensitive health issue publicly. The aide said Monday that Romney was diagnosed with “slow-growing prostate cancer” last year. The cancer was removed surgically and found not to have spread beyond the prostate, the aide said.

The news comes as Romney, 70, weighs whether to run for a Utah Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Hatch announced last week that he would not seek another term this fall.

AP source: Mueller conveys interest in questioning Trump

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators has expressed interest in speaking with President Donald Trump as part of a probe into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

The issue of an interview with the president has come up in recent discussions between Mueller’s team and Trump lawyers, but no details have been worked out, including the scope of questions that the president would agree to answer if an interview were to actually take place, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The person said it was not surprising that investigators would be interested in eventually seeking to speak with the president. It was not immediately clear when or even if an interview will occur, what the terms will be, or whether Trump’s lawyers will attempt to narrow the range of questions or topics that prosecutors would cover.

Mueller for months has led a team of prosecutors and agents investigating whether Russia and Trump’s Republican campaign coordinated to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, and whether Trump worked to obstruct an FBI investigation into his aides. Mueller’s team recently concluded a series of interviews with many current and former White House aides, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment Monday, as did Trump lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow.

AP Exclusive: Some law agencies push back on selling guns

SEATTLE — Kyle Juhl made one last attempt to patch things up with his fiancée, then took back his ring, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger as she and her mother ran from the apartment. The bullet went through a wall and narrowly missed a neighbor’s head as she bent to pick up her little boy.

The Smith & Wesson 9 mm that Juhl used to kill himself in Yakima in 2014 was familiar to law enforcement: The Washington State Patrol had seized it years earlier while investigating a crime and then arranged its sale back to the public. It eventually fell into Juhl’s hands, illegally.

It’s fears of tragedies like that, or worse, that have created a split among law enforcement officials over the reselling of confiscated guns by police departments, a longtime practice allowed in most states.

Juhl’s gun was among nearly 6,000 firearms that were used in crimes and then sold by Washington law enforcement agencies since 2010, an Associated Press review found . More than a dozen of those weapons later turned up in new crime investigations inside the state, according to a yearlong AP analysis that used hundreds of public records to match up serial numbers.

The guns were used to threaten people, seized at gang hangouts, discovered in drug houses, possessed illegally by convicted felons, hidden in a stolen car, and taken from a man who was committed because of erratic behavior.

SCOTUS to hear case disputing warrantless motorcycle search

RICHMOND, Va. — Do police have the right to go on private property — uninvited and without a warrant — to search a vehicle?

That’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to answer when the court takes up the case of a Virginia man who was arrested after a police officer walked onto his driveway and pulled back a tarp covering a stolen motorcycle.

Arguments are scheduled Tuesday in a case that could test the boundaries of an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that police obtain a warrant before searching a person, their home, papers or personal effects.

The exception dates back nearly a century, when federal agents did a warrantless search of a suspected bootlegger’s car looking for illegal alcohol. In that case, the Supreme Court found that a vehicle could be searched without a warrant as long as police have probable cause to believe it contains contraband or evidence of a crime. The court reasoned that because cars are readily mobile, they can be moved before police are able to obtain a warrant to search them.

The Virginia case started with two high-speed police chases of a distinctive orange and black Suzuki motorcycle.

Why not President Oprah? Awards speech has Democrats buzzing

DES MOINES, Iowa — Oprah Winfrey’s impassioned call for “a brighter morning even in our darkest nights” at the Golden Globes has Democratic Party activists buzzing about the media superstar and the 2020 presidential race — even if it’s only a fantasy.

Even so, for Democrats in early voting states, and perhaps for a public that largely disapproves of President Donald Trump’s job performance, the notion of a popular media figure as a presidential candidate is not as strange as it once seemed, given the New York real estate mogul and reality TV star now in the White House.

“Look, it’s ridiculous — and I get that,” said Brad Anderson, Barack Obama’s 2012 Iowa campaign director. While he supports the idea of Winfrey running, it would also punctuate how Trump’s candidacy has altered political norms. “At the same time, politics is ridiculous right now.”

Winfrey’s speech as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award on Sunday touched on her humble upbringing and childhood wonder in civil rights heroes.

But it was her exhortation of the legions of women who have called out sexual harassers — and her dream of a day “when nobody has to say ‘me too’ again” — that got some political operatives, in early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, thinking Winfrey might be just what the Democrats need.

Retail workers feel disruption from shifting shopper habits

NEW YORK — With new options and conveniences, there’s never been a better time for shoppers. As for workers … well, not always.

The retail industry is being radically reshaped by technology, and nobody feels that disruption more starkly than 16 million American shelf stockers, salespeople, cashiers and others. The shifts are driven, like much in retail, by the Amazon effect — the explosion of online shopping and the related changes in consumer behavior and preferences.

As mundane tasks like checkout and inventory are automated, employees are trying to deliver the kind of customer service the internet can’t match.

So a Best Buy employee who used to sell electronics in the store is dispatched to customers’ homes to help them choose just the right products. A Walmart worker dashes in and out of the grocery aisles, hand-picks products for online shoppers and brings them to people’s cars.

Houston police: Medication caused confusion for journalist

HOUSTON — A sports journalist who was found after she went missing over the weekend told police officers that she had a severe reaction to medication that led her to become confused and disoriented, police said Monday.

The disappearance of Courtney Roland, 29, caused alarm after she sent nonsensical texts to her mother and her roommate called police Sunday saying Roland had expressed concern that a suspicious man was following her.

Roland suffered memory loss as a result of her reaction to the medication and she was continuing to be evaluated at a hospital, police said at a news conference.

“When our people were talking with her she seemed pretty confused about everything,” police Lt. Manuel Cruz Jr. said.

She had bumps and bruises but was otherwise unharmed when she was spotted Monday morning walking under an Interstate 610 overpass in west Houston by a passer-by who had seen media reports that she was missing. She was found near the Galleria shopping mall where she was last seen Sunday. Her Jeep was found later that evening and her purse was found at a nearby business.

Autos overshadow the small gadgets at CES tech show in Vegas

LAS VEGAS — The smartphones and other small machines that used to dominate the annual CES gadget show have been overshadowed in recent years by bigger mobile devices: namely, automobiles.

Auto companies typically save more practical announcements about new cars, trucks and SUVs for the upcoming Detroit auto show. But major automakers like Toyota, Kia, Hyundai and Ford have a noticeable presence at this week’s tech showcase in Las Vegas. CES is a chance for carmakers and suppliers of automotive parts and software to display their wilder and far-out ideas.

Among the highlights Monday:

— Toyota says it’s developing self-driving mini-buses that can serve as bite-sized stores. These vehicles will drive themselves to places where potential buyers can try on clothes or shoes or pick through flea market items. The project is still in the conceptual stage, with testing expected in the 2020s.

— Automotive supplier Bosch wants to help guide drivers to vacant parking spots in as many as 20 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Miami and Boston. The company says it will be working with automakers on the initiative but didn’t say which ones. As cars drive by, they will automatically recognize and measure gaps between parked cars and transmit that data to a digital map.