TRADE-PACIFIC AGREEMENT

WASHINGTON — The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries reach a contentious trade pact that cuts trade barriers, sets labor and environmental standards and protects multinational corporations' intellectual property. Now each country must sell the deal to skeptical lawmakers. 

TRADE-PACIFIC AGREEMENT-POLITICS

WASHINGTON — An ambitious trade pact involving the United States and 11 other nations is a major victory for President Barack Obama but has the potential to create a rift among Democrats and cause friction with a key base of their political support, the nation's labor unions. 

UNITED STATES-AFGHANISTAN

WASHINGTON —The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan faces questions on Capitol Hill about how many troops should stay in the still-volatile nation where the Taliban recently overran a northern city and a U.S. airstrike hit a medical clinic. 

SYRIA-CROWDED SKIES

WASHINGTON — The skies over Syria are increasingly crowded — and increasingly dangerous. The air forces of multiple countries are on the attack, often at cross purposes in Syria's civil war, sometimes without coordination. And now, it seems, they are at risk of unintended conflict. 

EAST COAST RAINSTORM

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — After a week of steady rain, thousands of South Carolina residents faced the prospect of going days without running water, and with waterlogged dams overflowing, bridges collapsing, hundreds of roads inundated and floodwaters rolling down to the coast, the southern state was anything but done with the disaster. 

GUATEMALA-MUDSLIDE

SANTA CATARINA PINULA, Guatemala — Emergency workers spent a fourth day digging bodies out of a massive mudslide, watching the death toll rise to 152 as questions mounted about why people were allowed to build homes at the base of a dangerous hillside next to a small river.

GUATEMALA-CORRUPTION

GUATEMALA CITY — The alleged leader of a customs corruption scandal that has rocked the Guatemalan government tells a judge that former President Otto Perez Molina and former Vice-President Roxana Baldetti actually drove the scheme. 

OREGON SCHOOL SHOOTING

ROSEBURG, Oregon— The gunman who executed nine people at an Oregon community college before killing himself ranted in a manifesto he left behind about not having a girlfriend and thinking everyone else was "crazy," a law enforcement official says. 

PRESIDENTIAL RACE-TRUMP AND THE WORLD

BALMEDIE, Scotland — Donald Trump's name is known around the world, from Scotland to the Himalayas to South Africa — but that's not to say he's loved everywhere.

PRESIDENTIAL RACE-CLINTON

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton offers an emotional plea for tougher gun control laws in the wake of a deadly university shooting, decrying the "extremism" that she said has come to characterize the debate over U.S. gun laws. 

CLINTON-BENGHAZI

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton lashes out at the U.S. special House committee investigating the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, calling it a partisan political exercise designed to "exploit" the deaths of four Americans. 

PRESIDENTIAL RACE-POLITICS OF TWITTER

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush follows rival Donald Trump on Twitter but that's a one-way street: Trump mainly follows people with a connection to himself. Ted Cruz's follow list is a big tea party, though he keeps an eye on President Barack Obama, too.