The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Donald Trump's decision to hold up military aid to Ukraine was linked to his demand that Kyiv investigate the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The admission from acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney raised questions at the Justice Department and brought swift rebuke from Democrats, who cast his words as an admission of wrongdoing. Get More

Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday that Turkey has agreed to a cease-fire to allow the Kurdish forces it was battling to safely withdraw from an area in northern Syria. Pence spoke after he and other U.S. officials met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. He said that President Donald Trump made it clear that had Turkey not agreed, the U.S. would impose more economic sanctions. However, the agreement essentially gives the Turks what they had sought to achieve with their military operation in the first place: removal of the Kurdish forces from the border "safe zone." Get More

Two businessmen pleaded not guilty Thursday to conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani to make illegal campaign contributions, as a prosecutor said evidence includes data from over 50 bank accounts and information gathered through 10 search warrants. David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin are among four men charged with using straw donors to make illegal contributions to politicians they thought could help their political and business interests, including committees supporting President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Get More

Thirty years ago Thursday, the Loma Prieta earthquake rocked the Bay Area and beyond, shaking buildings from their foundations, flattening a stretch of freeway in Oakland and dislodging a section of the Bay Bridge. The 6.9 magnitude earthquake, which struck at 5:04 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1989, left 63 people dead, injured more than 3,700 others and caused billions of dollars' worth in damage. Get More

A man has pleaded guilty to the broad-daylight abduction and rape of a lifeguard at a pool in Alexandria, Virginia, after a high-tech DNA tool was used to link him to the crime. Jesse Bjerke, 37, of Arlington, raped an Alexandria lifeguard at gunpoint in 2016 and almost got away with the crime. Get More

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas who joined the Trump administration in 2017, has notified President Donald Trump that he will be leaving his post soon, Bloomberg reported Thursday. A White House official did not dispute the report, NBC News reported. Get More

The White House said Thursday it has chosen President Donald Trump's golf resort near Miami as the site for next year's Group of Seven summit. The announcement to hold the event at Trump National Doral comes at the same time the president has accused Joe Biden's family of profiting from public office because of Hunter Biden's business activities in Ukraine when his father was vice president. The G-7 summit will be held June 10 to 12. The idea of holding the event at Trump's resort has been criticized by government ethics watchdogs. Trump has touted his resort, saying it's close to the airport, has plenty of hotel rooms and offers separate buildings for every delegation. Get More

The portion of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising significantly, in tandem with a sharp drop in the percentage that identifies as Christians, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Based on telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, Pew said Thursday that 65% of American adults now describe themselves as Christian, down from 77% in 2009. Meanwhile, the portion that describes their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular," now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic ranks are losing population share, according to Pew. It said 43% of U.S. adults identify as Protestants, down from 51% in 2009, while 20% are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Get More

Champion boxer Errol Spence Jr. has been released from the hospital and is now facing a DWI charge, Dallas police say. Spence, 29, was driving a Ferrari at a "high rate of speed" along South Riverfront Boulevard when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed shortly before 3 a.m. on Oct. 10, police said. The Ferrari veered left over the median and onto the southbound lanes, which sent the vehicle flipping multiple times, police said. Spence, the IBF and WBC welterweight champion, was not wearing a seat belt, according to police. Get More

Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a sharecropper's son who rose to become a civil rights champion and the chairman of one of the U.S. House committees leading an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, died Thursday of complications from longstanding health problems. He was 68. Cummings was a formidable orator who advocated for the poor in his black-majority district , which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore and more well-to-do suburbs. As chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cummings led investigations of the president's governmental dealings, including probes in 2019 relating to Trump's family members serving in the White House. Get More

The U.S. ambassador to the European Union distanced himself on Thursday from President Donald Trump, telling House impeachment investigators that he was disappointed Trump directed him to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine policy and that he believes it's wrong to invite a foreign government to conduct investigations for the purpose of influencing American elections. Gordon Sondland is the latest in a series of witnesses to be interviewed behind closed doors by lawmakers. His appearance is especially anticipated since text messages and other witness testimony place him at the center of a foreign policy dialogue with Ukraine that officials feared circumvented normal channels and that is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump. Get More

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday launched a defense of how tech companies promote and regulate free speech, arguing that Facebook and its peers make up a new “fifth estate” in society alongside the traditional news media. Zuckerberg, in a speech at Georgetown University, echoed language from the 18th Century, when people first began referring to journalists in the press as a “fourth estate” co-existing with three existing tiers in the British Parliament. Get More at NBC News

President Donald Trump is surfacing cultural stereotypes as he depicts the Middle East as a blood-soaked sandbox where people "play" violently because that's "what they do" in that part of the world. "It's unnatural for us, but it's sort of natural for them - to fight," he said. This from the president of a nation born in revolution, ruptured by civil war, tested by world wars, bogged in Vietnam and now trying to extricate itself from the longest war in its history, in Afghanistan. "It's a lot of sand," he said Wednesday of the Syrian areas of Turkish-Kurdish conflict from which he is pulling back U.S. troops. "They've got a lot of sand over there. So there's a lot of sand that they can play with." The area, for the record, is certainly not known for being sandy. It's the fertile breadbasket of Syria. Get More

As a labor and delivery nurse, Caty Nixon cares for families in joy and sorrow. "The good times are so good, and the bad times are heartbreaking," Nixon, from Forney, Texas, told TODAY. "I'm here for all of it." Last summer, Nixon ended a 53-hour, four-day workweek by delivering a stillborn baby. The 29-year-old kept it together until she got to her twin sister's house. Then, the tears started flowing. Get More