First Run News

WASHINGTON — President Trump delights in making spectacles out of personnel decisions. He conducted cabinet interviews at his New Jersey golf club, inviting members to gather and gawk. He summoned both finalists for a Supreme Court seat to the White House on the day of the announcement. And now he is conducting the most dramatic and drawn-out search for a Federal Reserve chairman in the long history of that stolid institution. Mr.

The United States economy is showing increased signs of resilience. The nation’s gross domestic product, a key indicator of economic strength, expanded at an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported on Friday.

The United States economy is showing increased signs of resilience. The nation’s gross domestic product, a key indicator of economic strength, expanded at an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported on Friday.

In dueling declarations, Spain’s Senate voted Friday to approve emergency measures to impose direct rule on Catalonia and to oust its separatist leaders, shortly after the restive region’s Parliament passed a resolution claiming independence.

BARCELONA, Spain — On the first afternoon of what separatists have called the new Catalan republic, Daniel Castillo, 65, went for a walk with his daughter’s Chihuahua. Arnau Roca, 18, met with friends at a mall. Jordi Costa, 57, picked up some photographs he took on a recent vacation to Russia. All three voted to secede from Spain in a referendum on Oct. 1.

BARCELONA, Spain — Spain’s leader fired the government of the rebellious Catalonia region Friday, dissolved the regional parliament and ordered new elections after Catalan lawmakers illegally declared an independent nation. The showdown escalated the biggest political crisis in decades to hit Spain, which is just emerging from a prolonged economic malaise.

BARCELONA, Spain — Spain’s leader fired the government of the rebellious Catalonia region Friday, dissolved the regional parliament and ordered new elections after Catalan lawmakers illegally declared an independent nation. The showdown escalated the biggest political crisis in decades to hit Spain, which is just emerging from a prolonged economic malaise.

PORTLAND, Me. — Night after night, in the sharp autumn air, canvassers are knocking on doors across Maine in hopes of getting tens of thousands of poor adults insured through Medicaid. Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, has five times vetoed expanding access to the program under the Affordable Care Act.

The White House acknowledged Friday that President Trump pushed for a gag order on an informant to be lifted in a federal investigation into Russia’s attempts to gain a foothold in the United States’ uranium industry during the Obama administration. The admission raised questions about whether Mr. Trump, eager to turn the tables on multiple investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 presidential election, violated an unwritten Justice Department rule against White House involvement in criminal investigations.

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton.