This is the first since a US drone strike on Iraqi soil killed a top Iranian general, straining Washington-Baghdad ties.

Iraq’s President Barham Saleh met with Trump on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland amid threats from Iran-backed militia groups promising to exact revenge should he sit down with the American president.

It was the first high-level meeting since the January 3 US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad’s airport. The attack provoked the ire of Iraqi officials across the political spectrum and lead to the passing of a non-binding resolution to oust US troops from Iraq.

In response, Trump threatened sanctions in Iraq, which would have profound and devastating effects on the country’s economy if realized.

Trump said Washington and Baghdad have had “a very good relationship” and that the two countries had a “host of very difficult things to discuss,” in remarks to reporters.

Asked whether the administration was still considering slapping sanctions on Iraq, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens because we have to do things on our terms.”

Saleh interjected here, saying the two countries shared common interests including the fight against extremism, regional stability and an independent Iraq.

“And we’re also involved with them in their oil business, and that’s always been very important from their standpoint and from our standpoint. So we have a lot of very positive things to talk about,” said Trump.

Asked whether there was a plan for US troops to remain in Iraq, Trump said: “We’re down to 5,000. So we’re down to a very low number – historically low. And we’ll see what happens.”

There are approximately 5,200 US troops in Iraq advising and assisting Iraqi security forces in the fight against the Islamic State group.

But as Biden seeks to leverage his freedom with a final campaign blitz in the critical early voting state, he and his advisers know that the proceedings in Washington could overshadow any closing case they try to present.

Although he will be far from Capitol Hill, Biden is intertwined with the root cause of Trump’s impeachment case: The president pressured the Ukraine president to declare a public investigation of Biden and his son Hunter Biden based on discredited theories about the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings.

Biden himself sought to sidestep the issue during public appearances on Monday. But aides to the former vice president worked furiously to get ahead of any effort by Senate Republicans to use the trial to malign him.

Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken, top campaign aides to Biden, distributed a memo to the media saying Trump “is the only American president to have weaponized foreign and national security policy in an attempt to coerce a foreign country into lying about a rival presidential candidate.”

The document reflects that Trump’s claims have no basis and underscores the Biden campaign’s long-established strategy of aggressively countering Trump’s broadsides, a lesson his aides say they learned from Hillary Clinton’s handling of Trump in 2016. But it is also an acknowledgment that Biden cannot necessarily control this story line, especially as some Republicans and conservative media push the idea, however unlikely, that the Bidens should testify before the Senate.

With that in mind, the memo urged media not to repeat a “malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory” from the White House and GOP claiming that the Bidens engaged in wrongdoing when Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm while his father handled U.S. foreign affairs in the same country.

Indeed, Trump’s unsupported assertions have always depended on the discredited accusation that the elder Biden pressed for the firing of top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to spare his son’s company, Burisma, from scrutiny. Ousting Shokin was, in fact, the official position of the U.S. government and its Western allies, including European Union nations and the International Monetary Fund leadership, because Shokin was believed to be incompetent or corrupt himself.

“After ongoing domestic violence, abuse and being released on bail, my brother-in-law decided to take my sister’s life into his own hands,” Tabitha Ojeda said on GoFundMe Wednesday, a day after the shooting at an elementary school in Hazel Dell, Wash. “With my mother, sister and three kids in the car he shot through the front windshield and driver’s side.”

Ojeda was the sister of Tiffany Hill and the sister-in-law of Keland Hill, 38.

Ojeda said her mother had been shot three times and was expected to survive.

The children weren’t hurt.

After the shooting, Hill led deputies on a short pursuit and then killed himself with a bullet to the head, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said.

Court documents show a history of domestic violence acts by Hill against his wife, the Columbian newspaper reported.

In the latest incident, on Nov. 7, police arrested Hill on a stalking charge after being accused of affixing a GPS tracker to her car, according to the paper.

A judge increased Hill’s bail in the case to $250,000 on Nov. 15 but rejected a prosecutor’s request for electronic monitoring.

A week later, Hill posted bail and secured his release, the paper reported. On the day of the murder, he was granted permission to use a vehicle to go back and forth to work.

“She was a mother, a sister, a daughter, a veteran and did not deserve to go this way,” Ojeda said.

Washington State Patrol said the incident began around 12:30 a.m. Friday when an SUV sped off after a trooper tried to stop it in Puyallup, about 35 miles south of Seattle.

“The vehicle failed to yield to the trooper and a pursuit happened,” Trooper Johnna Batiste told KOMO-TV.

Batiste added that the vehicle reached speels of between 90 and 100 miles per hour during the chase, the station reported.

Troopers deployed spike strips to deflate the speeding suspect’s tires, according to the station.

Batiste told the station the SUV then crashed near a mall and the driver and a passenger got out and tried to run. They were caught a short time later. There were no other occupants in the vehicle.

The passenger was also a 14-year-old who was being sought by authorities as a runaway, the station reported. She was released to her parents.

Batiste said the 14-year-old girl who was driving sustained a minor injury during her getaway.

She was booked into juvenile detention, Q13 Fox reported.

Patricia Currie, of Mandeville, was 75 years old in October 2016 when she pulled a loaded shotgun on Keith Couture at his office.

Couture testified in court that when he came out to see Currie and asked her why she was there, she said she was going to kill him, NOLA.com reported. Currie, who was sitting in a chair and had latex gloves in her hands, then showed him a .410 shotgun hidden underneath a towel on her lap.

Currie raised it at Couture, but he said he wrestled it away and called 911.

The woman was arrested and taken into custody. Investigators said her shotgun was loaded and four additional shotgun shells were found inside her underwear. Currie also had a box of ammunition in her vehicle, investigators said.

Currie testified that she was only trying to scare Couture, but Blair Alford, the assistant district attorney of Washington and St. Tammany Parishes, argued during the trial the incident “was a coldblooded, calculated attempted murder.”

“If it was not for the victim’s quick thinking to wrestle the gun away from her, he would be dead,” she said.

In August, Currie was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder — which carried a minimum sentence of 10 years — after a jury deliberated for 15 minutes. On Thursday, she was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese national, has served as personal chef to the Kim family for more than a decade, even when the current leader was still a child. He came back into the repressive country in 2017 and reportedly opened a sushi restaurant called Takahashi.

But media reports last month speculated that Fujimoto may have been arrested by North Korean authorities, with Japan’s Daily Shincho magazine reporting that the chef had been detained over a “past betrayal,” the Telegraph reported.

Following the news, Japan’s foreign ministry failed to confirm the chef’s location. But on Tuesday, Colin Crooks, the British ambassador to North Korea, put the mystery to rest after tweeting pictures of Fujimoto working at his sushi restaurant in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

“Lunch today prepared by Master Chef #KenjiFujimoto at his #Pyongyang Japanese restaurant. Sashimi set was excellent,” Crooks said in a tweet.

Fujimoto revealed his knowledge of the inner workings of the ruling family previously, not excluding some very intimate details and their lavish lifestyle.

He also feared that his outspokenness after he left the hermit kingdom in 2001 could cause him trouble and accusations of “disloyalty,” though he later met Kim in 2013 and was reassured of his safety, the newspaper reported.

Fujimoto was interviewed by the Washington Post’s Anna Fifield for the book on the North Korean leader, claiming that Kim once was rude to him, refused to shake his hand, and “glared at him with ‘sharp eyes’ that seemed to say, ‘You abhorrent Japanese.’”

In its filing, it declared, “Over the last three years, the company’s profitability has been significantly impacted by progressive wage laws along the Pacific coast…the result was to increase the company’s annual wage expenses by an aggregate of $10.6 million.”

It went on to state three examples where minimum wages have risen dramatically over the last three years. Portland now requires $12.50 an hour, an increase of 35 percent. San Francisco’s minimum wage has climbed 41 percent to $15.59 per hour. And Seattle, the first city with a $15 minimum wage, now forces large employers to pay at least $16 an hour.

Restaurants Unlimited, which is currently settled in Seattle, did raise menu prices and even added a living wage surcharge to bills. But it still lost money.

“I think what Restaurants Unlimited found out is that they can’t pass along the full impact of that labor cost increase to customers through their prices, said Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute. “People can stay home, people can eat out less often.”

Ethan Stowell is a successful restaurateur, having 14 high-end restaurants in Seattle. He supports the city’s minimum wage law, but admits that it has forced him trim staff to be more efficient.

“I think it’s just the cost of doing business has gone up, and it’s really hard to adjust your prices at a restaurant at the speed the market changes,” Stowell said.

Despite the high minimum wage in Seattle, 111 new restaurants have opened in the city since May. The unemployment rate is at 3.4 percent, slightly less than the 3.7 percent U.S. jobless rate. Proponents of a higher minimum wage say Restaurants Unlimited is making worker’s pay a convenient scapegoat.

“They made some bad business decisions,” said former Washington State Rep. Jessyn Farrell of Civic Ventures. “There were a couple openings that didn’t go well, and I think what’s really telling is they aren’t closing restaurants in Seattle.”

Just before filing for bankruptcy, Restaurants Unlimited did close six of its unprofitable locations. None are among the seven restaurants it runs in Seattle and one is in Indiana, where the minimum wage is set at the federal rate of $7.25.

Eric Black Jr, aged 20, was set free on June 25, a day after his bond was lowered from $500,000 to $150,000.

Black was arrested in January after a tip was received by civil rights activist Shaun King, who notified Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of the Harris County Police Department that he believed Black and 24-year-old Larry Woodruffe were involved in the fatal drive-by shooting.

Black later confirmed to taking part in the murder of Jazmine and authorities believe that Woodruffe is the shooter, according to KPRC.

Eric Black Jr, aged 20, charged in the capital murder of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes, has been released on bond. (Harris County Sheriff Office)

“I am grateful to our dedicated investigators, the partner law enforcement agencies that provided vital assistance, and tipsters from across the nation who pulled together to support our work to get justice for Jazmine,” Gonzalez said after the suspects were arrested.

“Our work is not finished, but I believe the people of Harris County can take comfort in knowing we have made great progress.”

On December 30, 2018, Jazmine’s mother was transporting her four daughters on a Houston Feeder road at roughly 6:50 a.m., when their vehicle was fired upon by another driver. Jazmine was killed and her mother, LaPorsha Washington was injured, according to abc13.

Police say Black and Woodruffe thought they were firing at someone they had argued with at a club the previous night.

After the shooting, Washington says one of her daughters noticed Jazmine wasn’t saying anything.

“She said, ‘Momma, Jazmine’s not moving. She’s not talking.’ I turned around and my 7-year-old was shot in the head,” Washington said.