But the future has become clouded as President Trump continues to flirt with a trade war. The White House has offered little clarity about whether its newly imposed steel and aluminum tariffs will extend to allies like Mexico, Canada and the European Union, and it seems no closer to smoothing over economic tensions with China.

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Economists say it is too soon to tell how employers may change their staffing or expansion plans in response to the tariffs on Chinese goods, or to Beijing’s retaliation. But there are signs that companies that buy metals are feeling the effects already. The Institute for Supply Management said this week that manufacturing activity grew in April at its slowest pace since last July.

Uncertainty over the price of raw materials could prompt factories to cut back from their recent hiring spree. Manufacturers added 73,000 jobs in the first quarter, much more than in the same period last year.

Wages and the Fed

Economists expect that low unemployment will lead to increasingly big pay bumps for workers as employers fight over a dwindling number of candidates. But this recovery has so far bucked that conventional wisdom. The change in hourly earnings varied from month to month last year, but hovered around 2.5 percent, barely keeping up with inflation.

A year-over-year increase of 3 percent in hourly earnings is considered the trip wire that could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate more aggressively than it has signaled.

“Wage growth picking up would suggest the labor market is tightening and that the Fed could have to move more aggressively,” said Matthew Luzzetti, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank. Projections released at a Fed meeting this week suggested that officials were leaning toward a total of three rate increases this year. But strong wage growth could fan fears of an uptick in inflation, pushing them toward a fourth increase, Mr. Luzzetti said. “It means borrowing costs will be moving higher for typical consumers.”

Who’s Been Left Out

The good times have been better for some than for others. Some Americans are still hesitating to enter the job market, perhaps because they remain bruised from the particularly harsh recession a decade ago.

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“We have realized that there were even more workers on the sidelines than we previously thought,” said Martha Gimbel, an economist at Indeed.com, a job-search site. She pointed to data showing that more people are working part time, or have been unemployed for a long stretch, than in the last expansion. Ms. Gimbel said that her site had seen an increase in people searching for things like “background check” and “full time,” which could indicate that the economy’s strength is coaxing more people into the working world.

But for some groups, the market has been tougher. The unemployment rate for black workers, for example, has consistently hovered well above the rate for white workers, even as employers complain loudly about a labor shortage in sectors like construction and trucking. The job market has improved for black workers in recent years. But they still faced a jobless rate of 6.6 percent in April, compared with 3.6 percent for whites.

If the numbers were reversed, “the country would be up in arms,” said Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution, whose research focuses on race and structural inequality. Differences in education or degrees don’t explain that gaping disparity, according to federal data.

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After authorities had warned for several days of an impending eruption, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano delivered Thursday: White clouds of steam and volcanic gases rose high in the sky above the southeastern part of the Big Island.

A river of destructive lava flowing underground was released around 4:30 p.m. local time into a residential subdivision, prompting people in the area to pack their belongings and abandon their homes, witnesses told The Washington Post. Shortly after 5 p.m., “spatter began erupting,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

On some streets the bright red-orange lava could be seen spurting out of cracks in the ground. The deafening sound of grinding rocks filled the air and “white, hot vapor and blue fume emanated” from the cracking, USGS reported.

“It sounded like there were rocks in a dryer that were being tumbled around,” said Jeremiah Osuna, who lives near Leilani Estates, one of two subdivisions evacuated. “You could hear the power it of it pushing out of the ground.”

As the lava began to spread, the mandatory evacuation zone widened to all residents, several hundred to a thousand, living in Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens, according to an alert from the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency. The subdivisions are located in the district of Puna, about 25 miles from Kilauea itself.

Early Friday morning, the Civil Defense Agency warned that “active volcanic fountaining is occurring in Leilani Estates Subdivision” and reiterated the mandatory evacuation order.

Less than an hour after the eruption began, wailing warning sirens joined the cacophony, Maija Stenback, a resident of Leilani Estates, told The Washington Post. A state of emergency was also issued by the County of Hawaii’s acting mayor, and Gov. David Ige activated Hawaii’s National Guard to help with evacuations, Hawaii News Now reported.

As dramatic as the sights and sounds were, the eruption and lava flow pose little threat to peoples’ lives, thanks to a monitoring and alert system in place for years.

“It’s been handled very well,” Stenback said. “Civil Defense has been saying they can’t predict it, but there’s a good possibility, so they made everybody very aware that this could happen. You know, pack a bag and be ready to leave.”

“Please be safe,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said on Twitter.

The eruption came hours after a 5.0-magnitude earthquake jolted the Big Island on Thursday morning. Since Monday, the area has been rattled by at least 600 smaller quakes generated by magma flow from Kilauea, Janet Babb, a geologist with the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, told The Washington Post. Kilauea is the youngest and most active volcano on the island, according to USGS.

“Earthquakes were happening every 10 minutes, it seems like. That was kind of unsettling,” Osuna told The Washington Post, adding that it was “nerve-racking” not knowing exactly where the eruption would occur.

The event has been building for several days, Babb said, and the tremors were a sign that magma could break through the surface at any time.

Thursday’s strong earthquake, which struck at about 10:30 a.m. local time, caused “rockfalls and possibly additional collapse into the Pu’u Oo crater on Kilauea,” and sent a large plume of ash into the air, the USGS reported.

The collapse began Monday as magma, which supported the crater, moved out and down the rift zone, triggering the quakes, Babb said.

“Eruption was possible, and that’s now what has happened,” she said. “Magma has made its way to the surface, and eruption has commenced.”

When Stenback got a call from her son that the volcano had started erupting, it felt “unreal,” she said.

It wasn’t until she and her daughter saw lava coming up through the ground that she believed it.

“Once you see it, then you know it’s really happening,” said Stenback. She added that she even hesitated to pack because she didn’t think the eruption would occur.

But after seeing and filming the lava, Stenback said she and her daughter high-tailed it home to prepare to evacuate.

“We were trying to figure out what’s the most important thing to grab,” she said. 

In addition to collecting legal documents and medication, Stenback said she quickly grabbed sentimental pieces from her jewelry box and stuffed the items into the pockets of her shorts because she didn’t have time to properly pack her suitcase. She said her family will stay with friends in Hilo, about 25 miles away, until it is safe for them to return.

Many residents took to social media to share photos and videos of the eruption.

On Twitter, one person wrote, “OMG my island is on fire” and included a video of lava gushing from the middle of a road.

Others also expressed worry, with a user tweeting, “Friends on the mainland asked me if I am OK. I am, not my island.”

Since 1983, Kilauea has erupted almost continuously, many times forcing nearby communities to evacuate.

Geologists said the current seismic activities around Puna most closely resemble the events that precipitated a 1955 eruption, according to Hawaii News Now. That eruption lasted about three months and left almost 4,000 acres of land covered in lava, the news site reported.

More recently in 2014, lava again threatened the Puna district, specifically the town of Pahoa and its surrounding area, The Post reported. During that event, lava flowed as quickly as 20 yards per hour and up to 60 structures were at risk.

In comparison, Thursday’s eruption seems much more tame, as the USGS reported that lava spatter and gas bursts only erupted for about two hours and the lava spread less than 33 feet from the fissure.

“At this time, the fissure is not erupting lava and no other fissures have erupted,” according to a statement from the service released shortly after 10 p.m. local time.

However, Babb said the inactivity doesn’t mean the event is over and there is no way to forecast how long the eruption could last. Early Friday morning, Civil Defense also said that the fire department had detected “extremely high levels of dangerous Sulfur Dioxide gas in evac area.”

Besides, the USGS noted, “the opening phases of fissure eruptions are dynamic and uncertain. Additional erupting fissures and new lava outbreaks may occur. It is not possible at this time to say when and where new vents may occur.”

Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim tweeted that the civil defense agency “is on high alert on a 24-hour basis for possibility of eruption in lower Puna.” The areas bordering the eastern part of the rift zone, Kim said, are “at high risk for eruption.”

For now, residents are left without any idea of when it might be safe for them to return to home.

“This stuff could go on for a couple days, weeks or months,” Stenback said. “Just the thought of everything now being gone — it’s just not real yet. Maybe the next time we go there the house might be under 30 feet of lava.”

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PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — An Air National Guard C-130 cargo plane crashed Wednesday onto a busy highway moments after taking off from a Georgia airport, killing nine National Guard members from Puerto Rico, authorities said. The top official of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard, Adjutant Gen. Isabelo Rivero confirmed there were no survivors. The plane narrowly missed people on the ground.

Black smoke rose into the sky after the plane crashed into a median on the road outside Savannah, Georgia, around 11:30 a.m. local time. Firefighters later put out the blaze.

A driver on a nearby road saw the plane plummet to the ground, CBS News correspondent Laura Podesta reports.

“Right when it came over a set of trees there, I saw it do a roll upside down,” Jimmy Livingston said. “When it rolled upside down, it did a complete straight turn into the ground.”

CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports that this particular C-130 was one of the oldest still flying. The pilot was heading to Tucson, Arizona, to retire the aircraft. After take off earlier Wednesday, it was in the air for about two miles before it crashed.

The one involved in Wednesday’s crash was more than 60 years old.

“The planes that we have in Puerto Rico — it’s not news today that they are the oldest planes on inventory” of all National Guard planes nationwide, Rivera said. Puerto Rico’s National Guard has five other similar planes, two of which need maintenance and aren’t being used, he said.

It’s too early to say what might have caused the accident, he said. The plane last received maintenance at the base in Savannah in April.

All nine crew members had helped with hurricane recovery efforts as part of the 198th Fighter Squadron, nicknamed the Bucaneros, which flies out of Base Muniz in the northern coastal city of Carolina, Rivera said.

“This pains us,” Rivera said of the deaths. They aren’t releasing names until all the families have been contacted, but “most of them already know and have come to the base.”

Rivero said in a Wednesday evening press conference that the C-130 has been used in the past to rescue U.S. citizens stranded in the British Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma and to ferry supplies to the territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year.

The huge plane’s fuselage appeared to have struck the median, and pieces of its 132-foot wingspan were scattered across lanes in both directions. The only part still intact was the tail section, said Chris Hanks, a spokesman for the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association.

“It miraculously did not hit any cars, any homes,” Effingham County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Gena Bilbo said. “This is a very busy roadway.”

Eight hours after the crash, she added: “To our knowledge there are no survivors.”

Senior Master Sgt. Roger Parsons of the Georgia Air National Guard told reporters the cause of the crash was unknown and authorities were still working to make the crash site safe for investigators.

“Any information about what caused this or any facts about the aircraft will come out in the investigation,” he said.

The plane had just taken off from the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport when it crashed, Parsons said.

The Air Force said the plane belonged to the 156th Air Wing out of Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen told The Associated Press that all those aboard were Puerto Ricans who had recently left the U.S. territory for a training mission on the U.S. mainland.

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News from Meadowbrook Leasing LLC shows the plane falling from the sky.

Dahlen said initial information indicated there were five to nine people aboard the plane, which was heading to Arizona. He did not have details on the mission.

“We are saddened by the plane accident that occurred today in Georgia,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a tweet. “Our prayers are with the families of the Puerto Rican crew.”

President Trump tweeted that he had been briefed on the crash, sending “thoughts and prayers for the victims, their families and the great men and women of the National Guard.”

I have been briefed on the U.S. C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane from the Puerto Rico National Guard that crashed near Savannah Hilton Head International Airport. Please join me in thoughts and prayers for the victims, their families and the great men and women of the National Guard.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2018

The plane crashed onto state highway Georgia 21, about a mile from the airport, said Gena Bilbo, a spokeswoman for the Effingham County Sherriff’s Office.

“It miraculously did not hit any cars, any homes,” Bilbo said. “This is a very busy roadway.”

The crash caused a big orange and black fireball and scattered debris over a large area, Bilbo said.

Motorist Mark Jones told the Savannah Morning News that he saw the plane hit the ground right in front of him.

“It didn’t look like it nosedived, but it almost looked like it stalled and just went almost flat right there in the middle of the highway,” Jones said, describing how people stopped and got out of their cars following the explosion.

“I’m still shook up and shaking. My stomach is in knots because I know they’re people just like me. I wasn’t that far from it and I could have just kept going and it would have been me and we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Jones said.

A photo tweeted by the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association shows the tail end of a plane and a field of flames and black smoke as an ambulance stood nearby.

Savannah’s Air National Guard base has been heavily involved in hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. In September 2017, it was designated by the Air National Guard as the hub of operations to the island in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, the base announced at the time.

By early afternoon, Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport said on social media that flights were arriving and departing with minimal delays. It advised motorists that they may need to seek an alternate route to the airport.

Flights are arriving and departing at this time with minimal delays. If you’re traveling to the airport via Highway 21 and Gulfstream Road from Savannah you will need to seek an alternate route.

— SAV Airport (@fly_SAV) May 2, 2018

A standoff between law enforcement and a barricaded man led to a series of explosions that set a property ablaze Wednesday night in a quiet, residential suburb near New Haven, Conn.

For several days, the barricaded man had been holding his wife hostage in their home in North Haven, about five miles from the Yale University campus, according to a town official, North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda. When authorities learned of a domestic disturbance at the home, police officers and a SWAT team spent hours trying to “coax very gently and compassionately” the man out of the house, Freda said.

Police did not release the names of the couple.

While the SWAT team negotiated with the suspect, police officers searched the surrounding areas of the property, including a barn behind the house. Their entry into the barn set off a loud explosion that shook the neighborhood and could be felt from several blocks away. Other explosions followed, leading authorities to conclude the barn could have been outfitted with booby traps.

As many as eight officers were injured, Jonathan R. Mulhern, deputy chief of the North Haven Police Department, told reporters. The injuries included cuts, abrasions and concussions, but none were life-threatening, Freda said. Several officers were transported to Yale New Haven Hospital, which confirmed on Twitter it received seven patients involved in the explosions.

The explosions caused the barn to erupt into flames. The blaze soon enveloped the house itself and sent smoke billowing into the night sky.

“North Haven shook. I mean everyone heard it,” Nancy Sundwall, who could see the flames from a nearby road, told the New Haven Register. “The whole sky turned pitch black with smoke.”

Freda said he believed the wife managed to escape from the house before the fire, but he could not confirm her condition. It was unclear whether the man was inside the barn or house when the fire spread, but Connecticut State Police Trooper Kelly Grant told reporters the man was not in police custody as of about 2 a.m. Thursday. She urged residents to stay in their homes while authorities attempted to locate the suspect.

Law enforcement sources told the Hartford Courant the man’s wife had been severely beaten, and was being treated at a hospital. She filed for divorce last month, the Courant reported. Authorities could not say if there were children in the house.

A neighbor told WTNH police officers could be heard negotiating with the man over a loudspeaker, saying “John, please come to the window, please show yourself, we are here to help.”

At about 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, hours before the standoff, a woman arrived at the North Haven Police Department complaining about a domestic disturbance at the home on Quinnipiac Ave. The complaint spurred authorities to descend on the home and attempt to negotiate with the man, who was barricading himself and his wife inside the house.

“I don’t really know much about the suspect,” Freda said. “We’ve never really had any issues from what I understand.” He added that “something triggered the event today,” which he called a “chaotic tragedy.”

The massive fire, along with the dozens of firefighters and police officers on the street, disrupted an otherwise quiet neighborhood. Footage from local news stations shows officers lying in stretchers being loaded into ambulances. The fire continued to burn early Thursday, and fire officials told the Associated Press that power was out in the area. A local firehouse had been set up as a “refuge” for residents without power.

“We don’t usually see these situations here in town,” Freda told reporters, saying the most chaotic scenes he’s witnessed in his nearly nine years in office occur during hurricanes and storms.

But, he said, “wherever there are people there seems to be a high level of tension out there in today’s society, maybe a degree of mental illness, and sometimes the manifestation of that turns into what we saw here today.”

“I’m tremendously grateful that there were no fatalities,” Freda also said.

Concerned residents in the surrounding area took to the North Haven Police Department’s Facebook page, asking one another what the loud boom might have been.

“Did anyone just hear a loud explosion?” Kristina Canning wrote. “My whole house just shook.”

One local said “our house shook all the way across town.” Another said she thought her house “was going to fall apart … windows shook … pups scared to death and now 2 more explosions!”

Neighbor John Marotto told the Hartford Courant that after the blast, he saw a group of people get “blown away” from the barn, “and then the roof was gone.”

“I heard them screaming,” Marotto said. “The side facing our house was totally gone. It was unbelievable — the noise, unbelievable. I thought I was in a war zone.”

Another neighbor told WTNH his family had just finished eating dinner when they heard the explosion.

“It knocked my wife to the floor,” the neighbor told the news station. “I huddled my family into the bedroom, locked the door, and came out to see what was going on. You could see the house was fully engulfed.”

From her home a mile away, North Haven resident Joan Mazurek thought she heard a train. It was the blast.

“Then we heard all the, oh my God, all the ambulances and fire engines. The noise from all the emergency vehicles was unbelievable,” she told the AP. “It’s a shock. Nothing ever happens like this in North Haven.”

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Beijing has suspected that Washington might agree to put aside its nuclear disagreements with North Korea and accept the North’s nuclear capabilities if it served to contain China, he said.

Mr. Wang could have delivered a careful message, reminding the North that China was its true friend despite the rough patch in the past six years since Mr. Kim came to power, said Xia Yafeng, a Chinese historian at Long Island University.

“Wang Yi had a mission: to coordinate with the North Koreans on how to talk with Trump,” he said. “He can advise the North Koreans, but he cannot threaten them. He may say: ‘Be careful when you talk with Trump. We will always side with you.’”

China grudgingly went along with Washington’s demand last year that it support United Nations sanctions meant to deny the North of critical foreign currency from sales of coal, minerals, seafood and garments.

But Beijing’s desire to punish North Korea’s economy is probably wavering, Mr. Zhao said.

“I can imagine China taking additional measures to further improve ties with North Korea,” Mr. Zhao said. These would include working to connect North Korea to roads and rail networks in northeast Asia, and embracing the North in its Belt and Road Initiative.

There are already signs that China is trying to loosen some of the economic restrictions. Businessmen in the area of northeastern China that borders North Korea say that some North Korean workers are returning to China on short-term visas, and that they expect trade to pick up soon.

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“I can imagine China already starting studies into options to increase economic cooperation with North Korea in areas that would not violate existing United Nations Security Council resolutions,” Mr. Zhao said.

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Beijing was miffed and surprised at being pointedly excluded from several items in the joint declaration that North and South Korea issued last Friday at the end of their summit meeting.

The two Koreas said they would start talks with Washington to negotiate a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, which ravaged the peninsula from 1950 to 1953.

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The declaration mentioned “trilateral or quadrilateral” talks. If the talks were “trilateral” that would include North and South Korea and the United States but not China, which sent millions of troops to fight on North Korea’s side during the war. China withdrew all its troops in 1958.

“The Chinese heard it was North Korea that got the talks to be broadened to quadrilateral,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.

Beyond that, China was not invited to send observers to the planned destruction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea at the end of this month. Mr. Kim said he would invite South Korean and American experts to witness the shutdown, a gesture that American officials said would have little impact on the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“The test site is close to the Chinese border,” Mr. Haenle said. “The Chinese were upset because China is a nuclear power, South Korea is not.”

Despite these snubs, the visit of the foreign minister, Mr. Wang, was symbolically important, Mr. Xia said.

In the heyday of the China-North Korea relationship when Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was in power, top-level visits between the two countries were frequent. The grandfather visited China many times, Mr. Xia said. Even Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, made seven trips between 2000 and 2011.

The parade of visits stopped after the young Mr. Kim came to power and derailed the relationship to China by ordering the killing of senior Korean officials close to Beijing.

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Mr. Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing in late March, apparently on his own initiative, maneuvering in a way that made him look less like a supplicant and more like an equal.

Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Kim is likely to take place in the Demilitarized Zone at the border between South and North Korea, Mr. Trump has said. Some diplomats are speculating that the two leaders may meet on the northern side of the zone, drawing a distinction with the summit meeting last week on the South Korean side, and satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire for drama.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to go to Pyongyang after the Trump-Kim meeting. One of the foreign minister’s duties was to confirm details of Mr. Xi’s visit, Chinese analysts said.

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Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein took aim Tuesday at Republican lawmakers who have drafted articles of impeachment against him, saying that he would not comment on documents “that nobody has the courage to put their name on” and asserting that he will not change his behavior in the face of threats.

“I think they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said. “We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law, and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.”

Rosenstein’s comments came at the end of a wide-ranging conversation at the Newseum in Washington to commemorate Law Day, which happened to fall a day after The Washington Post reported that conservative allies of President Trump had drafted impeachment articles against the Justice Department’s No. 2 official.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) — have been in a long-running feud with Rosenstein and the Justice Department over what they see as a failure to turn over documents on a number of controversial topics, including the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

In recent days, they finalized a draft of the impeachment articles, which criticize Rosenstein for approving the warrant to monitor Page, and then failing to turn over requested documents.

[Trump-allied House conservatives draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as ‘last resort’]

In a statement, Meadows said Rosenstein’s “response to the draft articles of impeachment is reminiscent of our interactions with him over the past few months: a lot of rhetoric with little facts.”

“If he believes being asked to do his job is ‘extortion,’ then Rod Rosenstein should step aside and allow us to find a new Deputy Attorney General — preferably one who is interested in transparency,” Meadows said.

The Freedom Caucus is one of the more influential blocs in Congress, though to impeach Rosenstein, its members would need the buy-in of House or Judiciary Committee leadership, and then they would have to win over a majority of members. Removing Rosenstein would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate — which would be nigh impossible.

Critics see the move as an effort to pressure the Justice Department to turn over documents it shouldn’t, or detract from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. Rosenstein supervises that probe, because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from it. The deputy attorney general has in recent weeks become a particular focus of the president’s rage.

Rosenstein for the most part avoided addressing that and other controversial topics Tuesday.

Asked in tangential ways about Trump’s recent threats to get more involved at the Justice Department, in part over his anger at Mueller’s probe, Rosenstein insisted that Justice Department officials were complying with the rule of law and that “there are no such conflicts” between that and demands by the president.

He refused to put a timeline on Mueller’s probe, but said of all investigations, “we recognize the need to move them as expeditiously as possible.”

Rosenstein declined to address whether he believed a sitting president could be indicted, noting only that Justice Department lawyers had opined in past administrations that the president could not.

Rosenstein’s most substantive comments, though, came on the Justice Department’s feuding with several congressional committees over document requests. Rosenstein noted that, throughout American history, the Justice Department had sparred with legislators wanting documents, and while there was “actually not a constitutional basis for oversight,” he found legislators’ role to ferret out misconduct important.

He said some of his predecessors had refused to turn over any FBI documents, though the courts had in past disputes instructed the two sides to “try to compromise.”

He said he would work out disputes with Congress on a “case by case” basis. In recent weeks, the department had seemed to reach agreements with several committee leaders, including those in charge of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. The committees are seeking materials on a range of topics, including the warrant to surveil Page and the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

[Justice Dept. gives Nunes access to document on Russia probe’s origins, cooling his threat to impeach its leaders]

“If we were to just open our doors to allow Congress to come and rummage through the files, that would be a serious infringement on the separation of powers, and it might resolve a dispute today, but it would have negative repercussions in the long run, and we have a responsibility to defend the institution,” Rosenstein said.

Asked about the articles of impeachment, Rosenstein quipped, “they can’t even resist leaking their own drafts,” and then compared the document to one the Justice Department seeks in charging someone with a crime.

“We have to affix our signature to the charging document,” he said, adding later, “I just don’t have anything to say about documents like that, that nobody has the courage to put their name on, and that they leak in that way.”

Rosenstein also on Tuesday addressed a question that has long vexed members of the D.C. press corps: Should his last name be pronounced Rosen-steen or Rosen-stine?

“So, there’s no right answer to that question,” Rosenstein said, to laughter. “My family, my father, pronounces it ‘stine.’ That’s how I pronounce it. But I actually have relatives who pronounce it ‘steen,’ so I’ll answer to either one.”

They came knocking because of loose talk about the president’s hair.

On Feb. 3, 2017, Donald Trump’s longtime bodyguard, a Trump Organization lawyer and a third man allegedly pushed into the Park Avenue offices of Harold Bornstein, according to an account Trump’s former physician gave NBC News on Tuesday.

Just days before the visit, Bornstein, an Italian-speaking gastroenterologist with his own shoulder-length locks and funky eyewear, had spilled to the New York Times about his most famous patient. Bornstein slipped to the Times that Trump took Propecia, a medication that stimulates hair growth. Bornstein confided to the paper he, too, took the drug. “He has all his hair,” the doctor told the Times. “I have all my hair.”

Two days later, the men from Trump — including security head Keith Schiller and attorney Alan Garten — arrived to reclaim all the files Bornstein had on the president. According to the doctor, they spent 25 to 30 minutes hoovering up the original copies of Trump’s medical records — retaliation, he intimated this week, for speaking to the press. “It created a lot of chaos,” Bornstein told the network.

“I feel raped — that’s how I feel,” the doctor dramatically said. “Raped, frightened, and sad. I couldn’t believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important. And it certainly is not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What’s the matter with that?”

Trump’s New York inner circle often seems stocked with blaring characters tuned to the president’s own unique frequencies. There was Sam Nunberg, a fast-gabbing political operative. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a merciless reality television contestant. Michael Cohen, the tough-guy lawyer. Unbending loyalty knit them all to the man whose name was plastered on the building.

But as Trump’s tenure in the White House grinds on, squeezed by a special prosecutor, low approval ratings and the legal fallout from his alleged relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels, each of those old guard loyalists has slipped away. Nunberg repudiated the president in a bizarre blitz of cable news appearances. Manigault used a stint on “Celebrity Big Brother” to knock the administration. And Cohen, Trump’s attack-dog defender, is now the subject of a criminal investigation and featured in an unflattering light in the National Enquirer.

Bornstein, who served as Trump’s physician for more than three decades, is the latest longtime Trump figure to publicly split from the president. And the repudiation did not stop with the doctor’s revelation about the February 2017 visit. On Tuesday, Bornstein told CNN he did not write the 2015 glowing review of the president’s health, a typo-pocked assessment that brought the doctor scrutiny.

“He dictated that whole letter,” Bornstein told CNN. “I didn’t write that letter.”

Bornstein did not respond to a request for comment.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the visit to retrieve the records as “standard operating procedure for a new president.”

For Bornstein, ministering to Trump’s health has been a family business.

Bornstein’s father, Jacob Bornstein, served as Trump’s personal physician until 1980. The elder Bornstein’s life was “a tribute to the uniquely American concept of ‘anything is possible’ if you are born here,” according to his 2010 obituary. The son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Jacob graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and later earned a degree at the Harvard Medical School. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II before setting up a private practice in New York City.

Harold Bornstein followed his father into medicine, attending Tufts University School of Medicine after Tufts University in Boston. According to a 2016 article in STAT, he cut a flamboyant figure across campus, wearing his hair long and composing poetry under the pseudonym “Count Harold.”

“He was irreverent. He sat mostly near the back of the room — where most of us did — and paid varying degrees of attention to what was being said at the time,” a former classmate told STAT.

Throughout his career, Bornstein has been hit with three malpractice lawsuits, according to the Daily Beast. Two of the cases involved allegations of overmedicating that led to a patients death, the website reported. “He prescribed for her medication disproportionate for her physical weight and she ended up falling and dying,” one family members of a Bornstein patient told the Daily Beast. “I’m not saying it is because of him, but he contributed to her death.”

Each complaint was settled before a trial, and Bornstein admitted no liability.

Last February, Bornstein told the New York Times he treated Trump each year with annual checkups and colonoscopies. Trump’s first and third wives were also the doctor’s patients, and he treated Trump’s second wife occasionally. “I am probably the only person in the world who has every phone number for him and all the wives,” Bornstein told the Times.

Bornstein first came to national attention after Trump’s campaign released the December 2015 letter signed by the doctor attesting to the candidate’s health. The breathless praise immediately raised eyebrows and questions.

The letter said that Trump’s laboratory results were “astonishingly excellent.” The candidate’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.” It concluded: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

The note drew scrutiny, and Bornstein eventually admitted he dashed off the letter in five minutes while a limo from Trump waited outside the doctor’s Manhattan office. “I was just rushed for time,” the doctor told CNN in 2016. “I had people to see.”

This week, Bornstein offered a drastically different account of how the health report was compiled. According to a report from CNN, Bornstein said the letter was put together while he was on the phone with Trump. The patient offered up the language he wanted Bornstein to write, he now claims.

“[Trump] dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn’t put in there,” Bornstein told the network. “That’s black humor, that letter . . . It’s like the movie ‘Fargo.’ It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction.”

Bornstein, who once had told Trump’s personal secretary Rhona Graff he hoped to be the White House physician, said this week that his comments to the Times in February squashed that possibility. “So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you’re out,” Graff told Bornstein after the records were taken from his office, the doctor told NBC News.

An 8-by-10 picture of Bornstein grinning with his famous client once hung prominently on the doctor’s wall. According to NBC News, the photo is now lying unseen on a bookshelf. Bornstein claims Trump’s men told him to remove the photo of happier times.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says a landmark nuclear deal with Iran was “built on lies”, after Israel claimed to have proof of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Pompeo said documents revealed by Israel’s prime minister were authentic.

Analysts say they show nothing new, highlighting that concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions led to the 2015 deal.

US President Donald Trump, who opposes the accord, has until 12 May to decide whether to abandon it or not.

Other Western powers, including signatories Britain and France, say Iran has been abiding by the deal and it should be kept.

• Could the nuclear deal collapse?
• Why the bomb is back

What is Iran accused of?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of conducting a secret nuclear weapons programme, dubbed Project Amad, and said it had continued to pursue nuclear weapons knowledge after the project was shuttered in 2003.

That followed the revelation in 2002 by an exiled Iranian opposition group that Iran was constructing secret nuclear sites in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran was a signatory.

Mr Netanyahu presented what he said was evidence of thousands of “secret nuclear files” that showed Iran had lied about its nuclear ambitions before the deal was signed in 2015.

Tension between the long-standing enemies has grown steadily since Iran built up its military presence in Syria, which lies to the north-east of Israel.

Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons, and agreed three years ago to curb its nuclear energy programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.

The Israeli prime minister did not provide evidence that Iran had violated the accord since it went into effect in early 2016. But he insisted that Project Amad had continued at the Iranian defence ministry – citing the head of the programme as saying: “Special activities will be carried out under the title of scientific know-how developments.”

Mr Netanyahu said he had shared the files with the US, and they would be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been tasked with investigating Iran’s nuclear past.

What does the US say?

The new secretary of state said the documents were proof “beyond any doubt” that “the Iranian regime was not telling the truth”.

“Iran hid a vast atomic archive from the world and from the IAEA – until today,” Mr Pompeo added.

Mr Trump, who has been vocal about his opposition to the Obama-era deal, said he had viewed part of Mr Netanyahu’s presentation and said the situation was “not acceptable”.

He said he would make a decision on whether to retain the deal in the next 12 days.

What other reaction has there been?

Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the move by Mr Netanyahu was a “childish” stunt to influence Mr Trump’s decision on whether the US should stick with the nuclear deal.

He said the documents were a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the IAEA. A former chief inspector at the agency told the Guardian newspaper his department had seen some of the documentation presented by the Israeli prime minister as early as 2005.

Olli Heinonen told the newspaper his department had come to the conclusion that evidence of Project Amad was credible, but that substantial work on it had ceased in 2003.

A spokesman for the UK government, a signatory of the deal, said it would continue to back the deal, adding: “We have never been naive about Iran and its nuclear intentions.”

Rob Malley, who was on the Iran negotiating team under the Obama administration, played down the allegations, saying they were “nothing new”.

Skip Twitter post by @Rob_Malley

For those who have followed the Iranian nuclear file, there is nothing new in Bibi’s presentation. All it does is vindicate need for the nuclear deal

But the Israeli prime minister has an audience of one: Trump

And he’s unfortunately unlikely to reach the same conclusion.

— Rob Malley (@Rob_Malley) April 30, 2018

End of Twitter post by @Rob_Malley

Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the documents have not put into question Iran’s compliance with the 2015 deal and said they should be analysed by the IAEA.

How did Israel acquire the documents?

Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad had obtained 55,000 pages of evidence and a further 55,000 files on 183 CDs relating to Project Amad.

A senior Israeli official told the New York Times that the agency first discovered the warehouse in southern Tehran in February 2016, and put the building under surveillance.

In January, intelligence agents managed to break into the property in the middle of the night, remove the original documents and smuggle them back into Israel the same night, the official told the paper.

How is the 2015 deal meant to work?

The agreement signed between Iran, the US, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain lifted crippling economic sanctions in return for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Under the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran is committed to slashing the number of its centrifuges, which are machines used to enrich uranium.

It is also meant to cut its stockpile of enriched uranium drastically and not enrich remaining uranium to the level needed to produce nuclear weapons.

The number of centrifuges installed at Iran’s Natanz and Fordo sites was cut drastically soon after the deal while tonnes of low-enriched uranium were shipped to Russia.

Furthermore, monitors from the IAEA have been able to carry out snap inspections at Iranian nuclear sites.

• Iran nuclear deal: Key details

Why is Trump unhappy about it?

The US president has not held back in voicing his opposition to the deal, which he has described as the “worst ever”.

He has twice already refused to certify to Congress that Iran is complying with the agreement, and warned that the US would withdraw completely on 12 May – the next deadline for waiving sanctions – unless European signatories to the deal and Congress addressed his concerns.

He is unhappy that it only limited Iran’s nuclear activities for a fixed period and had failed to stop the development of ballistic missiles.

He also said it had handed Iran a $100bn (£72bn) windfall that it used “as a slush fund for weapons, terror, and oppression” across the Middle East.

• What did you think and do in reaction to the news that the special counsel was speaking to Mr. Rogers, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Coats?

It is not clear whether Mr. Mueller knows something specific about Mr. Trump’s reaction to these interviews, but the question shows that Mr. Mueller is keenly interested in how Mr. Trump responded to each step of his investigation.

• What was the purpose of your calls to Mr. Comey on March 30 and April 11, 2017?

Mr. Comey said that Mr. Trump called twice to ask him to say publicly that he was not under F.B.I. investigation. In the second call, Mr. Comey said, the president added: “I have been very loyal to you, very loyal. We had that thing, you know.”

• What was the purpose of your April 11, 2017, statement to Maria Bartiromo?

While the White House ultimately said Mr. Comey was fired for breaking with Justice Department policy and discussing the Clinton investigation, Mr. Trump expressed no such qualms in an interview with Ms. Bartiromo of Fox Business Network. “Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton, that I can tell you,” he said. “If he weren’t, she would be, right now, going to trial.”

• What did you think and do about Mr. Comey’s May 3, 2017, testimony?

In this Senate appearance, Mr. Comey described his handling of the Clinton investigation in detail. Mr. Comey was fired soon after. Mr. Mueller’s question suggests he wants to know why Mr. Trump soured.

• Regarding the decision to fire Mr. Comey: When was it made? Why? Who played a role?

Over the past several months, Mr. Mueller has asked White House officials for the back story, and whether the public justification was accurate. He will be able to compare Mr. Trump’s answers to what he has learned elsewhere.

• What did you mean when you told Russian diplomats on May 10, 2017, that firing Mr. Comey had taken the pressure off?

The day after Mr. Comey’s firing, Mr. Trump met with Russian officials in the Oval Office. There, The Times revealed, Mr. Trump suggested he had fired Mr. Comey because of the pressure from the Russia investigation.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

The confrontation stems from the president’s decision in March to slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum. Trump justified the action by saying it was needed to protect American metal producers from unfair competition and bolster national security. But the announcement, which followed an intense internal White House debate, triggered harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans and roiled financial markets.

At the time, Trump excluded several vital trading partners — the European Union, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil — from the tariffs.

That meant the steel tariff covered just 30 percent of all imports, according to Oxford Economics. If all the exemptions were ended, it would have deepened the impact of the tariffs on American companies that use steel and potentially affect financial markets. Stock prices fell nearly 2 percent when the tariffs were announced.

Two people familiar with the process said the Trump administration had been considering whether to provide a short-term extension of the exemptions to allow for more time to review the countries’ efforts to secure permanent exemptions.

One of the officials said the U.S. trade representative has been overseeing the process for all of the countries except for the European Union, whose tariffs are being evaluated by the Commerce Department.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

The EU and others had been asked to spell out what limits they could accept on the amount of steel they export to the United States, how they would address the issue of excess production of steel and aluminum and how they would support the U.S. before international bodies like the World Trade Organization. Security relationships with the U.S. have also been part of the criteria.

South Korea agreed to limit its exports to the United States as part of broader discussions involved in updating its bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. and was granted a permanent exemption.

China, Japan and Russia haven’t received exemptions from the duties. That will likely reduce steel shipments from those countries over time. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said late Friday that quotas on imports from Europe and other countries are necessary so imports from those countries don’t simply replace Chinese imports. The goal of the tariffs is to reduce total steel imports and boost U.S. production, Ross said.

“If you let everybody back out of the tariff, and you let them out of any kind of quota, how would you ever reduce the imports here?” Ross asked at a conference of business journalists. Ross is set to discuss the issue Monday with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.

Germany, the EU’s largest steel exporter to the U.S., accounted for about 5 percent of U.S. steel imports last year. South Korea made up the largest share, shipping about 13 percent of U.S. imports, according to an American Iron and Steel Institute analysis of government data.

The EU has compiled a list of retaliatory tariffs worth about $3.5 billion it will impose if its steel and aluminum isn’t exempted.

European leaders have resisted the idea of a quota. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement Sunday that she discussed the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May after returning from a White House visit Friday.

The three European leaders “agreed that the U.S. ought not to take any trade measures against the European Union,” which is “resolved to defend its interests within the multilateral trade framework,” Merkel’s statement said.

In her meeting with Trump, Merkel said, she saw little progress in obtaining permanent exemptions. “The decision lies with the president,” she said Friday.

A United Kingdom spokesperson called Monday’s postponement “positive” and said, “We will continue to work closely with our EU partners and the U.S. government to achieve a permanent exemption, ensuring our important steel and aluminum industries are safeguarded.”

In a separate trade battle with China, the United States has threatened to impose tariffs on $150 billion of Chinese goods in retaliation for what it argues are Beijing’s unfair trade practices and its requirement that U.S. companies turn over technology in exchange for access to its market. The White House also wants China to agree to reduce its $375 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S.

China has said it would subject $50 billion of U.S. goods to tariffs if the U.S. taxes its products. Trump has announced that an administration delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and trade adviser Peter Navarro will visit Beijing for negotiations on Thursday and Friday this week.

In addition to Mnuchin, Lighthizer, Ross and Navarro, the group will include economic adviser Larry Kudlow, U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad and Everett Eissenstat, deputy assistant to the president for International Economic Affairs.

“We’re going to have very frank discussions,” Mnuchin in an interview broadcast Monday on Fox Business.

Most analysts, however, think it’s unlikely the talks will reach permanent agreements and will more likely mark the start of longer-term negotiations.

AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.