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rump also took criticism from conservatives for skipping a scheduled appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of right-wing activists.

Cruz has defeated Trump in more state contests than any other competitor, and in regions as diverse as the South, Midwest and New England.

Despite his strong showing on Saturday, Cruz still faces major hurdles in overcoming Trump in the delegate race.

After Saturday, Clinton still won't be able to shut Sanders out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though she pulled in another win Saturday and leads the delegate count.

Sanders's campaign tends to do better in states with large populations of white voters, while the former secretary of state has had more success in states where greater numbers of African-Americans participate.

"We got decimated," Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" of South Carolina, where Clinton beat him 74% to 26% last month.

While Trump and Cruz both claimed victories Saturday, Rubio and Kasich, the governor of Ohio, played only a minor role in the four states that participated.

Rubio's campaign pointed to upcoming states on the electoral calendar, particularly the fact that there are only two states left that hold caucuses. His team believes he will do better in primaries, though so far he has only won one content -- in Minnesota -- which was a caucus.

“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.

The release of the “unjustly detained” Americans, as Mr. Kerry put it, came at some cost: Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists.

They particularly object to the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets — mostly from past oil sales — that Iran will now control, and the end of American and European restrictions on trade that had been imposed as part of the American-led effort to stop the program.

In Tehran and Washington, political battles are still being fought over the merits and dangers of moving toward normal interchanges between two countries that have been avowed adversaries for more than three decades.

But Mr. Kerry suggested that the nuclear deal had broken the cycle of hostility, enabling the secret negotiations that led up to the hostage swap.

“Critics will continue to attack the deal for giving away too much to Tehran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who started the sanctions against Iran that were lifted Saturday as the No. 3 official in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.

A copy of the proposed sanction leaked three weeks ago, and the Obama administration pulled it back — perhaps to avoid torpedoing the prisoner swap and the completion of the nuclear deal. Negotiations to win the release of Mr. Rezaian, who had covered the nuclear talks before he was imprisoned on vague charges, were an open secret: Mr. Kerry often alluded to the fact that he was working on the issue behind the scenes.

Then, several weeks ago the Iranians leaked news that they were interested in a swap of their own citizens, which American officials said was an outrageous demand, because they had been indicted or convicted in a truly independent court system.

The result was two parallel races underway — one involving implementing the nuclear deal, the other to get the prisoner swap done while the moment was ripe.

For example, the United States and Iran were struggling late Saturday to define details of what kind of “advanced centrifuges” Iran will be able to develop nearly a decade from now — the kind of definitional difference that can undermine an accord.

The result was that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Zarif veered from the monumental significance of what they were accomplishing — an end to a decade of open hostility — to the minutiae of uranium enrichment.

But Iran has something it desperately needs: Billions in cash, at a time oil shipments have been cut by more than half because of the sanctions, and below $30-a-barrel prices mean huge cuts in national revenue.

senior American official said Saturday that Iran will be able to access about $50 billion of a reported $100 billion in holdings abroad, though others have used higher estimates. The official said Iran will likely need to keep much of those assets abroad to facilitate international trade.

The Obama administration on Saturday also removed 400 Iranians and others from its sanctions list and took other steps to lift selected restrictions on interactions with Iran

Under the new rules put in place, the United States will no longer sanction foreign individuals or firms for buying oil and gas from Iran. The American trade embargo remains in place, but the government will permit certain limited business activities with Iran, such as selling or purchasing Iranian food and carpets and American commercial aircraft and parts.

It is unclear what will happen after the passing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has protected and often fueled the hardliners — but permitted these talks to go ahead.

The storm moved across Jonesboro around 5 p.m., according to a video posted by the National Weather Service in Little Rock.

Severe weather had been forecast across the Midwest and Upper Mississippi River Valley on Saturday.

The police chief urged residents to stay home while debris is cleared out of roadways and other common areas.

In a tweet, the weather service reported a funnel cloud with a brief tornado touchdown 6 miles southeast of Fontanelle moving northeast. No other details were available

Tornado sightings were reported in Iowa in Black Hawk, Buchanan, Marshall Adams and Adair counties. The weather service map said power lines were knocked down and roofs blown off in Jackson County, Arkansas.

The weather service issued a rare "Particularly Dangerous Situation" tornado watch for parts of the Midwest through Saturday night. These storms, which could produce hail the size of baseballs or larger along with damaging 70-plus mph winds, threaten about 5 million people, CNN meteorologists said.

Overall, 70 million Americans faced the threat of severe weather, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said.

A tweet on Saturday from the weather service said some cities at risk of severe storms are Little Rock, Arkansas; Des Moines, Iowa; Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville and Columbus, Tennessee; and Madison Wisconsin.

The faceoffs on Saturday come amid an increasingly tense environment between the police and demonstrators across Europe. Over the past year, protesters have clashed with the police during Black Lives Matter protests, anti-lockdown rallies and, in countries like France, against similar security laws.

“No E.U. country is immune to threats to democracy, and more concrete efforts are badly needed to revert worrying trends,” the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe said in a report published last month.

Protesters also marched in Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and many other cities on Saturday, the latest events in what have become known as “Kill the Bill” demonstrations. Critics of the bill say it would hinder the right to protest and constitute an attack on democracy.

The clashes on Saturday may add to the ongoing debate about excessive force used by the country’s police, which in London have been shaken by several recent controversies.

Unlike the vigil organized last month for Ms. Everard, protests are now legal in England and Wales as long as event organizers make a risk assessment and take measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Commander Ade Adelekan said in a statement Saturday night that a majority of demonstrators had adhered to social distancing rules and left when asked to by the police. But officers arrested protesters, he added, after a minority refused to comply with orders.

“We remain in the middle of a global pandemic and we have made great progress in controlling the spread of the virus,” Mr. Adelekan said. “We will not allow the selfish actions of a small number of people to put Londoners progress in jeopardy.”

On Saturday, Trump wrongly accused Bowser in a tweet of not allowing the DC Metropolitan Police Department to help the Secret Service keep control of the situation with protesters in Lafayette Square on Friday night. That claim was later refuted by the US Secret Service who confirmed in a statement that the DC police department and US Park police were on the scene.

In a press conference Saturday, Bowser noted how Trump's reference to the "ominous dogs" was "no subtle reminder" of segregationists who would attack African Americans with dogs.

Some protesters continued to gather in downtown Washington, DC, at Lafayette Square, which is across from the White House, into Saturday evening, but additional protesters were not being allowed in by police.

White House executive office staff received an email urging them to stay away from the White House complex, if possible, due to "ongoing demonstrations."

One of the hostages was released shortly after 5 p.m. and FBI crisis negotiators continued to communicate with the man in the synagogue Saturday night.

John Floyd, board chair of CAIR Houston and longtime legal counsel for Siddiqui’s brother, said in a statement that his client is not responsible for the situation, is not near Dallas-Fort Worth and that hostage taker has nothing to do with Siddiqui.

The hostages, all of whom were adults, were not physically harmed and did not require medical attention, officials said. “Prayers answered. All hostages are out alive and safe,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a tweet.

Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the situation said the man told authorities he wanted the release of Aafia Siddiqui from federal prison. They also said the hostage taker had the rabbi in Colleyville call a rabbi in New York City to say he was being held hostage and that the man wanted his “sister” Siddiqui freed.

New York City Police Department counter-terrorism teams were seen Saturday at the synagogue connected to the New York rabbi who received the call.

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement Sunday: “We are aware of the death of a British man in Texas and are in contact with the local authorities.” He did not say whether he was referring to suspect.

“We want the assailant to know that his actions are wicked and directly undermine those of us who are seeking justice for Dr. Aafia,” Floyd said in a statement.

It was unclear how many people were in the synagogue when police received the first disturbance call Saturday morning. On a Facebook livestream of the congregation’s Shabbat morning service, a man could be heard speaking, at times cursing and sounding angry.

Miller, the Colleyville police chief, said officials began receiving reports that a “gunman” had entered the synagogue and had taken four hostages. Local authorities responded and evacuated nearby homes.

DeSarno, the FBI special agent in charge, said hostage negotiators had contact for long periods of time with the man, and credited their work, as well as that of the nearly 200 state, federal and local law enforcement officers, with the resolution.

Virginia, descended on Colleyville as the situation unfolded. Miller said Saturday night that the rabbi of the congregation is a close friend and that the situation was very personal. He added that he saw hope in how the community came together during the crisis.

Late Saturday night, Biden thanked those who worked to bring the four hostages home to their families.

Congregation Beth Israel, affiliated with Judaism's Reform movement, began in 1998 as a chavurah or a small group of Jewish people who gather for prayer services, according to its website. The group officially established a synagogue in Colleyville in July 1999, and began services at its current location in 2005.

Biden opened his address saying that Ukraine is now a front line battle in the fight between autocracy and democracy, casting Russia's invasion of its neighbor as part of the decades-long battle that has played out between the West and the Kremlin."My message to the people of Ukraine is ... we stand with you. Period," said Biden.

"America's ability to meet its role in other parts of the world rests upon a united Europe and a secure Europe," Biden said Saturday as he met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw. "We have learned from sad experiences in two world wars, when we've stayed out of and not been involved in stability in Europe, it always comes back to haunt the United States."Biden's comments came during the final day of a last-minute trip to Europe aimed at synchronizing how Western allies address Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Biden and Duda spent a lengthy stretch in a one-on-one meeting before beginning an expanded session with aides. Biden said he raised the world war comparisons during the private meeting.

The President's comments are a sharp contrast from the "America First" foreign policy of former President Donald Trump, who called NATO "obsolete" before he came into office and often questioned the value of American alliances with European nations. Trump's time in office was marked by his spats with foreign leaders and the often-contentious nature of his dealings with traditional American allies in Europe and across the globe.

As it got underway, Kuleba described an arduous journey from Kyiv to Warsaw that included a train and three hours in a car."It's like flying from Kyiv to Washington with a connecting flight in Istanbul," Kuleba said. "The good thing is that since the beginning of the war I've learned how to sleep under any conditions. So I slept on the train, I slept in the car."

Ukraine has been pressuring the US and NATO to increase the military assistance they are providing to Ukraine, including calls from President Volodymyr Zelensky to establish a no-fly zone.After talks in Brussels this week, during which Zelensky appeared virtually, it did not appear NATO members had warmed to the idea. Biden has said becoming more directly involved in the conflict could usher in World War III.That left Ukraine's leaders dismayed. "We are very disappointed, in all honesty. We expect more bravery. Expected some bold decisions. The alliance has taken decisions as if there's no war," said Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, in a live interview with the Atlantic

Biden met with chef José Andrés and other volunteers in Warsaw Saturday at a food distribution site for Andrés' World Center Kitchen, the nonprofit devoted to providing meals in the wake of disasters. Biden met with some of the volunteers, some from Europe and some from the United States."God love ya," the President could be heard saying to them and asking if he could help them.

The Polish President added that Biden's visit "demonstrates a huge support and also a big significance attached by the United States to the stability and world peace, to reinstating the peace where difficult situations are happening in places where somebody resorts to acts of aggression against other democratic and free nations -- as it is happening today against Ukraine where the Russian aggression, unfortunately, happening for a month now is effect."This story has been updated with additional developments on Saturday.

Melissa DeRosa, the secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, announced that an executive order would be issued that required all hospitals in New York, both public and private, to allow women to have a partner in the labor and delivery room

The Department of Health, the regulatory authority over hospitals, had notified hospitals on Friday that they were required to allow one person to accompany a woman throughout labor and delivery.

A spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian said in a statement on Saturday that it would comply with the executive order “effective immediately.”

“Our highest priority continues to be the safety and well-being of our patients, their families, and our staff,” the statement said.

And Renatt Brodsky, a spokeswoman for Mount Sinai, said on Saturday that the hospital system would follow the executive order “effective today.”

Details about the cases at Columbia were presented in a paper published online on Thursday in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM.

Flannery Amdahl, 36, a New Yorker who is in her second trimester of pregnancy, has been following the controversy closely.

“It has been so difficult to come to terms with. I have definitely cried over this policy,” she said.

“I am torn because on the one hand, it is really scary to think about the possibility of giving birth alone, and not having an advocate in the delivery room,” she said. “However, I don’t think the hospitals made this decision lightly, at all. They recognize that medical personnel are risking their own lives to just be there.”

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, echoed that sentiment in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly this month. Collins said Americans need to be patient and continue with masks and social distancing for a bit longer.

Gelber said he was imposing the 8 p.m. curfew and entry restrictions into Miami Beach preemptively before things get worse. Videos of the area show dense crowds of revelers, many of them maskless, drinking, dancing and ambling along Ocean Drive on Saturday night before police moved in to disperse them.Police say they arrested "at least a dozen" people for violating the state of emergency on Saturday night. This is actually fewer arrests than last week, when Miami Beach police detained nearly 100 people as cops tried to break up spring break crowds.

VCU coach Mike Rhoades said on a videoconference Saturday night announcing his team's withdrawal from the tournament.

Rhoades said there were "no dry eyes" when he told his players the news. "This is what you dream of as a college player and a coach, and to get it taken away like this is just a heartbreaking moment in their young lives."

But Rhoades added that all his squad did was lose a basketball game, while "500,000 people have lost their lives."

Vice President Mike Pence -- who has sought to keep a safe distance from the more inflammatory claims and behavior of fellow Republicans while subtly egging them on when it suits him -- has also welcomed congressional Republicans' challenge

"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."

"There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated," Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

The announcement Saturday from Republican senators and senators-elect cut deeper and, framed in a maddening circular logic, argued that Congress should commission an "emergency 10-day audit" of results from "disputed states" because of the volume of "allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities."

The group's citation of a poll that underscores voters' distrust in the election process ignores Trump's role in ginning up an increasingly paranoiac strain of conservatism

The process in his state, which the President won, had met a "high bar," he insisted, before suggesting that other states had a responsibility to "restore" the confidence that the leaders of his own party had spent so much time trying to break.

Notably, none of the officials who signed the Saturday statement, nor any of what could be as many as 140 allies in the House, have suggested that the election fraud that so concerns them might have also affected their own races.

Trump again attacked Raffensperger Sunday morning, before their phone call became public, complaining in a tweet that the Georgia Republican had not turned up evidence of nonexistent voter fraud.

Trump has called on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, to resign after repeated recounts of the presidential vote there confirmed Biden's narrow win.

Kemp is one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump's behavior. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring in 2022, has also been critical of his GOP colleagues' rhetoric and, on Saturday, responded to the new announcement with a sharp rebuke of the senators involved.

Biden's success in Pennsylvania, Toomey concluded, said little about the election process and could be "easily explained by the decline in suburban support for President Trump and the President's slightly smaller victory margins in most rural counties."

The vice president, through Justice Department lawyers, pushed back against a lawsuit filed by Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and Arizona Republicans that sought to give Pence the power to effectively dump the electoral college results and hand reelection to Trump. The suit was dismissed, for a lack of standing, by a federal judge on Friday night.

"Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election," Pence chief of staff Marc Short said in a statement. "The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th."

"They could not and would not give credence to what they know is not true," Biden said. "They knew this election was overseen, it was honest, it was free and it was fair. They saw it with their own eyes, and they wouldn't be bullied into saying anything different."

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats and was Biden's toughest competition in the 2020 party primary, called the effort "pathetic" and its aims "unconstitutional."

"What all of this comes down to is that Donald Trump and right wing extremists are refusing to accept the will of the people and the fact that Trump lost the election," Sanders said in a statement. "In their contempt for democracy, they are using lies and conspiracy theories about 'voter fraud' in an attempt to overturn the election results."

Beaumont Health, which operates several hospitals in the Metro Detroit area, had recently announced plans to offer residents 65 and older vaccinations, and about 25,000 people tried to gain access to the online portal simultaneously

Both of the vaccines being used across the country require patients to receive two doses spaced weeks apart, so the process of administering second shots to Americans has only just begun.

Even in states where online registration seemed to go well, some people were stuck with long waits.

At least 151,000 people in the United States have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a New York Times survey of all 50 states.

County officials had said they would have a limited number of slots for people 65 and older. The available slots were filled in 20 minutes,

Some states, including Florida, Louisiana and Texas, have already expanded who is eligible for the vaccine, even though many in the first priority group recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — health care workers and residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities — have not yet received a shot.

about 6.7 million people had received a first dose of a vaccine. That falls far short of the goal federal officials set to give at least 20 million people their first shots before the end of 2020.

On Friday, the transition team for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced a plan to accelerate vaccinations that includes reversing course and releasing nearly all available doses. That would provide more people with first doses but raise the risk that second doses would not be administered on time; however, ramped up vaccine production is expected to keep enough in the pipeline for timely second doses

The tally of fully vaccinated people is an undercount because some states did not provide that information.

Some states’ expansions have led to frantic and often futile efforts by older people to get vaccinated. After Florida opened up vaccinations to anyone 65 and older last month, the demand was so great that new online registration portals quickly overloaded and crashed, people spent hours on the phone trying to secure appointments and others waited overnight at scattered pop-up sites offering shots on a first-come first-served basis.

Vaccines alone will not be enough to get ahead of the virus: It will take years to inoculate enough people to limit its evolution. In the meantime, social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing — combined with aggressive testing, tracking and tracing — might buy some time and avert devastating spikes in hospitalizations and deaths along the way.

The rapid spread of the new variants is a reminder of the failings and missteps of major countries to contain the virus earlier.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told performing arts professionals at a virtual conference on Saturday that he believed that theaters and other venues could reopen “some time in the fall of 2021,” depending on the vaccination rollout, and suggested that audiences might still be required to wear masks for some time.

A week after the first case of a highly contagious coronavirus variant first identified in Britain was found in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that the state had found three additional cases.

The other case appears to be unrelated to those to Saratoga Springs and was traced back to a man in his 60s living in Massapequa, in Nassau County, Mr. Cuomo added. The man first tested positive for the coronavirus on Dec. 27.The travel history of those who tested positive for the variant in New York was unclear.

Pope Francis said in a soon-to-be-televised interview that he would be vaccinated against the coronavirus as early as next week, calling it a lifesaving, ethical obligation and the refusal to do so suicidal.

On Saturday, 1,035 people died of the coronavirus in Britain, a day after health officials reported the highest daily death toll since the pandemic started, with 1,325 deaths. Britain has been the worst-hit country in Europe, with nearly 80,000 deaths.

In a separate decision put in effect Thursday, face masks, long deemed ineffective by Swedish health officials, are now being recommended for use during rush hour on public transport, although they will not be mandatory.

On Friday, Britain suffered its deadliest daily toll since the beginning of the pandemic, with 1,325 deaths. On Saturday, the toll was 1,035 lives.— Elian Peltier

"I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent. I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us."

"New interview. Lockdowns, facts, frauds ... if you can't handle truth, use a mask to cover your eyes and ears," Atlas, who has misrepresented the effectiveness of masks and discouraged testing of asymptomatic people, tweeted along with the interview.

"Dr. Fauci knows that the risks today are dramatically lower than they were only a few months ago with mortality rates falling over 80%.

Atlas did not have clearance from the White House for the interview

We're in for a whole lot of hurt. It's not a good situation," Fauci said. "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly."

auci's comments came the same day that the US reported 99,321 new Covid-19 cases -- the highest single day number of cases recorded for any country. As of Saturday evening, the country's death toll from the pandemic has topped 230,000.

Fauci's assessment of the country's handling of the pandemic also comes as Trump has continued to insist on holding huge rallies — including four in Pennsylvania on Saturday alone — which only draws attention to the fact that he is dangerously flouting the safety guidelines of his own expert

Earlier this month, the President trashed Fauci as a "disaster" and made baseless coronavirus claims in a campaign call.

"People are tired of Covid. I have the biggest rallies I've ever had, and we have Covid," Trump said, phoning into a call with campaign staff from his namesake hotel in Las Vegas, where he spent two nights amid a western campaign swing.

During the Post interview, Fauci noted he needed to be careful with his answers or he might be blocked from doing further appearances.

"It's much more about some of the states like Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, North Dakota, where ... they never had a pretty good reserve of intensive care beds and things like that. I hope they'll be okay, but it's still a risk that, as you get more surging, they're going to run out of capacity," Fauci said.

Mr. Trump was holding rallies in five states on Sunday after spending a full day in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Mr. Biden has also faulted Mr. Trump for endangering his own supporters.“I’m being responsible and I’m not becoming a great spreader of Covid,” Mr. Biden said last week, making explicit the distinction that he has been trying to draw for months. Mr. Trump, he said, is “putting thousands of people at risk.”

“A great red wave is forming,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday in Newtown, Pa. “As sure as we’re here together, that wave is forming. And they see it, they see it on all sides, and there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

But Mr. Trump is less enthusiastic when the input comes from smaller crowds. On Saturday morning, as he spoke to only about 300 people at his first Pennsylvania rally of the day, Mr. Trump was lethargic and subdued, as if he were privately thinking to himself: Yawn.

Mr. Trump bragged about attracting bigger crowds than Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama, who campaigned together on Saturday. “I hate to say it, Obama doesn’t draw any better,” he said. “They went as a twosome and they had less people.”

“It’s a great way to show the enthusiasm and get the feeling of a campaign while being Covid safe,” said Jenn Ridder, the national states director for the Biden campaign. “People love them. They love the honking and the noise. I think people want to feel part of something, and especially in Covid.”

But the format allows for something that has been missing when Mr. Biden gives speeches during the pandemic in front of small groups of reporters: audible feedback from the crowd, even if it is different from the applause at Mr. Trump’s rallies.

“It kind of personifies this campaign,” Mr. Gilchrist added. “Joe Biden is a person who values human connection.”

“The horns can be really cool as far as call and response,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II of Michigan, who spoke at the rallies in Flint and Detroit. “You have people kind of sitting on top of their cars, or hanging out the window.”

While President Trump still thrills to the roar of a crowd, even during a pandemic, Joe Biden has found a new way to get audience feedback: through honking horns at his drive-in rallies.

Both men put those competing identities on display as they dashed across battleground states over the weekend.

Mr. Trump enters his rallies to pounding music and crowds roaring their approval — with few people wearing masks — as he throws Make America Great Again hats into the stands like T-shirts at a basketball game.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump also had rallies scheduled in Dubuque, Iowa; Hickory, N.C.; Rome, Ga.; and Opa-locka, Fla. — the last one at 11 p.m.

t the event in Flint, Mr. Obama mocked his successor for his “obsession” with crowd size, asking: “Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized?”

For attendees, it is a new experience, and they have different approaches to taking in the proceedings. Some people stay inside their cars, allowing easy access to honking. Others stand near their cars, a position that allows for sign hoisting or flag waving.

"The President's thinking was, there are a couple of countries that have handled the Covid crisis incredibly well, and it would be useful to have them participate in the G7 so we can learn some lessons there," he said. "Logistically to pull something like that off, I think it will take a little bit more time, so we're probably looking at the September time frame."

The countries had not been informed ahead of time that Trump would be announcing the possibility of holding a summit that would involve traveling even as restrictions and quarantine orders remained in place.

But questions about the size of the delegations, the logistics of travel, accommodations and security -- which is typically extremely tight at G7 summits -- were all still being weighed, according to the people familiar with the planning, along with pandemic precautions when the decision, announced Saturday, was made to delay until at least September.

Also unclear is how other G7 leaders will respond to the idea of inviting Russia, which Trump suggested Saturday, back into the group. Merkel in particular has been adamantly opposed when Trump raised the idea previously, including during a heated dinner meeting underneath the Biarritz lighthouse at last year's G7, CNN has previously reported.

Conley acknowledged that his evasive answers "came off that we were trying to hide something" but said that "wasn't necessarily true,"

Conley acknowledged that the President has experienced "two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation"

When asked if they had dropped below 90, he replied, "We don't have any recordings here of that." Pressed again on whether they had dropped below 90, Conley said the President's blood oxygen levels didn't get down into "the low 80s."

"There's some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern," Conley said, not explaining whether they were expected findings in a normal patient or a Covid-19 patient.

Some seven months into a pandemic that has killed more than 209,000 Americans, the nation is now facing a grave governing crisis with its commander in chief hospitalized

Conley failed to answer basic questions about the President's condition and admitted that he had omitted those alarming drops in the President's oxygen levels during a news conference Saturday because he wanted to "reflect the upbeat attitude"

"made substantial progress" since his diagnosis but "is not yet out of the woods."

Speaking from a White House that already has a huge credibility problem with the public, Meadows' statement capped a 24-hour period that served as a master class in opacity and contradiction that raised major questions about the President's health

Trump has been watching and critiquing coverage of his hospitalization from the presidential suite at Walter Reed

It "seems highly likely this originated at the SCOTUS announcement last week," a senior administration official told CNN's Jake Tapper of the outbreak among GOP officials. "It may have come from the Hill. The next major concern will be securing Capitol Hill and protecting lawmakers," the official added.

The President's construct crumbled Friday when he was airlifted to Walter Reed after contracting the virus,

The White House seemed to be continuing to downplay concerns about the severity of the virus Saturday morning when the President's physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, gave a news conference at Walter Reed where he described the President as upbeat and feeling good, without revealing any of the alarming developments with his oxygen levels the day before.

Many of the Trump aides or contacts who have recently tested positive for Covid-19 attended the White House festivities honoring Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on September 26, in the Rose Garden.

Those people told CNN that Trump seemed particularly upset when he saw a quote saying he was displaying "concerning" symptoms on Friday

The President said he was "starting to feel good" and that he was receiving therapeutics he said are like "miracles coming down from God."

"I had to be out front and this is America, this is the United States, this is the greatest country in the world, this is the most powerful country in the world," Trump continued in the video. "I can't be locked up in a room upstairs and totally safe, and just say, hey whatever happens, happens. I can't do that."

The President tweeted that he had tested positive for coronavirus around 1 a.m. ET Friday, hours after attending a Thursday night fundraiser in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he met with a small group of donors indoors with no masks, before addressing a larger crowd outdoors. Trump got his first positive coronavirus test result Thursday after returning from that trip, a White House official said Saturday evening.

He declined to say whether medical tests had revealed any damage to the President's lungs.

Conley said Trump had been fever-free for 24 hours and had experienced an "extremely mild cough," nasal congestion and fatigue.

"The President's vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We are still not on a clear path to a full recovery," the source later identified as Meadows told pool reporters.

Once Trump was at Walter Reed, doctors initiated the antiviral drug remdesivir. He is receiving a five-day course of the drug, which has been shown to shorten recovery time for some coronavirus patients.

Police also said four churches were vandalized, two more than previously disclosed, and they released photos of White men marching with and burning a Black Lives Matter banner ripped down from one of the churches.

“These Proud Boys are avowed white nationalists and have been called to stand up against a fair and legal election,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said. “This is a symptom of the hateful rhetoric, anti-science noise and people who refuse to accept the result of a fair American election.”

In D.C. Superior Court on Saturday and Monday, 17 of the people arrested were arraigned, all of whom were released after entering not guilty pleas.

The stabbing, one of the most violent incidents during the weekend, occurred outside Harry’s Bar, a popular gathering spot for the Proud Boys on 11th Street NW. Police said Johnson was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and Corey Nielsen, 39, of Robbinsdale, Minn., was charged with simple assault.

Nielsen did not appear in court Monday, and the status of his case was not clear.

It was not clear how many of the arrestees were affiliated with either the Proud Boys or various anti-Trump groups, all of which roamed the downtown area Saturday night and skirmished periodically.

Newsham said that he thought the Proud Boys outnumbered anti-Trump protesters by about 6 or 7 to 1 but that when fights broke out, “there seemed to be mutual combatants.”

On Monday afternoon, some of those arrested began appearing in D.C. Superior Court from both sides of the protests. They included a Pennsylvania man charged with attacking someone with a flagpole, an Ohio man who authorities said was part of a mob beating a man, and a D.C. woman who police said carried a backpack full of fireworks and lighter fluid, and pepper-sprayed a person on K Street NW.

Police initially identified two downtown churches, Asbury United Methodist Church and Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, as having Black Lives Matter signs torn down. On Monday, Newsham said Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church and Luther Place Memorial Church were also damaged, but he did not provide details.

The attacks on all four churches are being investigated as hate crimes, Newsham said.

On Saturday, Luther Place Memorial Church replaced a Black Lives Matter sign that had been stolen Friday. By Saturday evening, the second sign had been torn down twice before being taken.

officials urged residents of coastal areas in much of the West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii to stay away from the coastline and move to higher ground. The National Weather Service in Portland, Ore., reported possible one- to three-foot waves in some areas of Oregon and Washington.

In California, water surged into Santa Cruz Harbor on Saturday morning, damaging boats, submerging the parking lot and causing people to evacuate the docks, sidewalks and nearby stores

In the Bay Area, the National Weather Service said tsunami surges of up to a few feet could arrive in “pulses” throughout the day, and warned residents not to try to identify their arrival.

Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the agency did not expect damages from the tsunami, and stressed the importance of disaster preparedness.

She added that the agency had coordinated with its partners in American Samoa and Hawaii, which had “no impacts from this event.”

Across the Pacific warnings were sounded. New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency advised people in coastal areas to expect “strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges at the shore.” And on their Facebook pages, the meteorological services for Fiji and Samoa also issued alerts, advising people to stay away from low-lying coastal areas.

The volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, which is about 40 miles north of Tongatapu, had been relatively inactive for several years. It began erupting intermittently in December but by Jan. 3 the activity had decreased significantly, according to a report by the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program.

Satellite imagery of the eruption on Saturday, shared on Twitter by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, showed a “brief spike in air pressure as the atmospheric shock wave pulsed across New Zealand.”

The V.E.I. of the eruption Saturday has not been estimated yet, but before the eruption, the volcano was estimated to be able to produce an eruption with a maximum V.E.I. of 2.

does not allow "anyone" to travel to the US — travellers from the seven majority-Muslim countries

must still hold valid visas or green cards

. The State Department also announced on Saturday that it would allow people with valid visas into the country, and would reinstate visas that had been revoked

"In our country, no one is above the law and that includes the president,"

"When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot, come in & out, especially for reasons of safety &. security - big trouble!" Trump tweeted. The president also leveled attacks at the "FAKE NEWS @nytimes" and tweeted out his campaign slogan, "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" as part of his Saturday morning barrage.

President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted the federal judge who issued a nationwide hold on the executive order

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!" Trump tweeted.

Trump continued his tirade into the afternoon,

In its emergency session on Sunday, the Parliament granted expanded powers to its new speaker, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who now has the authority to carry out the duties of the president of Ukraine as well.

Former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who was jailed by Mr. Yanukovych after losing the 2010 presidential election and was freed on Saturday, issued a statement saying she did not want to be considered for the premier’s post. Still, it left open the possibility that she will run for president.

The center of Kiev is scorched and scarred. The streets are blackened from fires set during clashes with the police. On Sunday, people placed flowers and candles at makeshift shrines memorializing the dead. Outside the Cabinet of Ministers building, parents had their small children pose for photographs with victorious antigovernment fighters who are still armed with clubs and wearing helmets, but now stand guard over the government headquarters. Many had flowers attached to their metal shields.

It was the deadliest attack on the Shabab in the more than decade-long American campaign against the group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, and a sharp deviation from previous American strikes, which have concentrated on the group’s leaders, not on its foot soldiers. Continue reading the main story #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap { max-width:180px; } .g-artboard { margin:0 auto; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180{ position:relative; overflow:hidden; width:180px; } .g-aiAbs{ position:absolute; } .g-aiImg{ display:block; width:100% !important; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 p{ font-family:nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:13px; line-height:18px; margin:0; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle0 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle1 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle2 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; text-align:right; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle3 { font-size:12px; line-height:13px; font-weight:700; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle4 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle5 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; text-align:center; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle6 { font-size:9px; line-height:8px; font-weight:500; text-transform:uppercase; text-align:center; color:#000000; } Gulf of Aden ETHIOPIA SOMALIA Camp Raso Mogadishu KENYA Indian Ocean 300 miles MARCH 7, 2016 By The New York Times

It comes in response to new concerns that the group, which was responsible for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on African soil when it struck a popular mall in Nairobi in 2013, is in the midst of a resurgence after losing much of the territory it once held and many of its fighters in the last several years.

The planned attack on American and African Union troops in Somalia, American officials say, may have been an attempt by the Shabab to carry out the same kind of high-impact act of terrorism as the one in Nairobi.

Pentagon officials would not say how they knew that the Shabab fighters killed on Saturday were training for an attack on United States and African Union forces, but the militant group is believed to be under heavy American surveillance.

The Shabab fighters were standing in formation at a facility the Pentagon called Camp Raso, 120 miles north of Mogadishu, when the American warplanes struck on Saturday, officials said, acting on information gleaned from intelligence sources in the area and from American spy planes

One intelligence agency assessed that the toll might have been higher had the strike happened earlier in the ceremony. Apparently, some fighters were filtering away from the event when the bombing began.

The strike was another escalation in what has become the latest battleground in the Obama administration’s war against terror: Africa.

The United States and its allies are focused on combating the spread of the Islamic State in Libya, and American officials estimate that with an influx of men from Iraq, Syria and Tunisia, the Islamic State’s forces in Libya have swelled to as many as 6,500 fighters, allowing the group to capture a 150-mile stretch of coastline over the past year.

The arrival of the Islamic State in Libya has sparked fears that the group’s reach could spread to other North African countries, and the United States is increasingly trying to prevent that

American forces are now helping to combat Al Qaeda in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso; Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad; and the Shabab in Somalia and Kenya, in what has become a multifront war against militant Islam in Africa.

The United States has a small number of trainers and advisers with African Union — primarily Kenyan — troops in Somalia. Defense officials said that the African Union’s military mission to Somalia was believed to have been the target of the planned attack.

Saturday’s strike was the most significant American attack on the Shabab since September 2014, when an American drone strike killed the leader of the group, Ahmed Abdi Godane, at the time one of the most wanted men in Africa. That strike was followed by one last March, when Adan Garar, a senior member of the group, was killed in a drone strike on his vehicle.

If the killings of Mr. Godane and Mr. Garar initially crippled the group, that no longer appears to be the case. In the past two months, Shabab militants have claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed more than 150 people, including Kenyan soldiers stationed at a remote desert outpost and beachcombers in Mogadishu.

In addition, the group has said it was responsible for a bomb on a Somali jetliner that tore a hole through the fuselage and for an attack last month on a popular hotel and a public garden in Mogadishu that killed 10 people and injured more than 25. On Monday, the Shabab claimed responsibility for a bomb planted in a laptop computer that went off at an airport security checkpoint in the town of Beletwein in central Somalia, wounding at least six people, including two police officers. The police said that one other bomb was defused.

At the same time, Shabab assassination teams have fanned out across Mogadishu and other major towns, stealthily eliminating government officials and others they consider apostates.

The Shabab have also retaken several towns after African Union forces pulled out. The African Union peacekeeping force, paid for mostly by Western governments, features troops from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Djibouti and other African nations.

The Shabab were once strong, then greatly weakened and now seem to be somewhere in between, while analysts say the group competes with the Islamic State for recruits and tries to show — in the deadliest way — that it is still relevant. Its dream is to turn Somalia into a pure Islamic state.