BEIRUT — The Latest on the Syrian conflict (all times local):

10:20 p.m.

The British Cabinet has given Prime Minister Theresa May the green light to join the U.S. and France in planning military strikes in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria.

After meeting for more than two hours on Thursday, the Cabinet backed May’s plan to work with the two allies “to coordinate an international response.” But it gave no indication of the timing or scale of any action.

The three nations have been working on a plan for military strikes in response to last week’s attack in Douma.

May’s office said the Cabinet “agreed on the need to take action to alleviate humanitarian distress and to deter the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime.”

Opposition lawmakers have called for Parliament to be given a vote before any military action. May isn’t legally required to do that, though it is conventional.

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10:15 p.m.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador is calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to hear from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on threat to international peace and security from possible military action against Syria by the U.S. and its allies.

Vassily Nebenzia told reporters after a closed council meeting Thursday on chemical weapons in Syria that he hopes an open meeting with the U.N. chief can be held “soon.”

Nebenzia says: “The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war.”

He said the second priority now is to get inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to the Damascus suburb of Douma where a suspected poisonous gas attack took place last weekend to see what happened — and “that nothing prevents them from doing it.”

The OPCW said Thursday the investigators will start work on Saturday.

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9:20 p.m.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador says the top priority now is to avert war in Syria and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a U.S.-Russian conflict.

Vassily Nebenzia said Russia is very concerned with “the dangerous escalation” of the situation and “aggressive policies” and preparations that some governments are making, a clear reference to the Trump administration and its allies.

He said: “We hope that there will be no point of no return — that the U.S. and their allies will refrain from military action against a sovereign state.”

Nebenzia told reporters after a closed emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that “the danger of escalation is higher than simply Syria, because our military are there on the invitation of the Syrian government.”

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8 p.m.

Sweden has proposed a way forward to the paralyzed U.N. Security Council that would include immediately sending a high-level disarmament mission to Syria to address outstanding issues on the use of chemical weapons “once and for all.”

A Swedish draft resolution, circulated to council members Thursday and obtained by AP, would also express the council’s determination to establish “a new impartial, independent and professional” investigative body to determine responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

It would ask Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to submit proposals to the council within 10 days.

The draft would also give council support to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ fact-finding mission that Sweden’s U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog said “is on its way” to Syria to determine whether chemical weapons were used in the Damascus suburb of Douma last weekend.

Skoog said he expects the proposal to be addressed at Thursday’s closed-door emergency council meeting on Syria.

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7:15 p.m.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says that a special fact-finding mission is on its way to Syria and will start investigating the suspected chemical attack there as of Saturday.

The OPCW team will be seeking to find out if and what kind of chemicals were used in the attack of last weekend, the organization based in the Netherlands said in a statement on Thursday.

Western powers are convinced a chemical attack was instigated by the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad while Syria and Russia have dispelled such reports.

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7 p.m.

Britain’s U.N. ambassador says she will be stressing at an emergency Security Council meeting that chemical weapons are being used on innocent civilians in Syria, and Russia “has not lived up to its responsibilities to prevent that happening.”

Karen Pierce told reporters before Thursday’s closed council session called by Bolivia, a Russian ally, that the U.K. believes a fact-finding mission by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is important to determine whether chemical weapons were used last weekend in the Damascus suburb of Douma, and if so what kind.

But Pierce said she will also stress that “an independent investigation is needed to establish who is responsible.”

Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution last November to renew the joint U.N.-OPCW body that was determining responsibility, and rival U.S. and Russian resolutions to replace that body were defeated on Tuesday.

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6:30 p.m.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador says it will facilitate a visit by international chemical weapons inspectors at “any point they want” in the town where a suspected gas attack occurred last weekend.

Speaking in New York on Thursday, Bashar Ja’afari said an inspection team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is on its way to Damascus and that visas are being provided.

Ja’afari said any delay or “disruption of their visit” would be as a result of “political pressure” from Western countries, which Syria says have politicized the issue.

Ja’afari denied his government has used chemical weapons and said “terrorists” have access to such weapons.

The attack last weekend in the town of Douma killed more than 40 people, according to Syrian opposition activists and rescuers. The U.S. and its allies blamed government forces, and have threatened military action.

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6:15 p.m.

Bolivia’s U.N. ambassador, who has called an emergency Security Council meeting on the threat of an attack on Syria, said he wants all members to agree that “no unilateral action should be taken.”

Sacha Llorentty Soliz said any unilateral action against Syria should be considered “illegal” by all countries.

He told reporters ahead of Thursday’s closed council meeting that his message to the U.S. government “is for them to comply with international law, to at least have at first a complete investigation of what happened” in the Damascus suburb of Douma, where a chemical attack is alleged to have taken place late Saturday.

After an investigation, he said, the Security Council should be asked “to adopt any measures” in response to the findings.

The U.S., Britain and France blame Syria for the suspected gas attack in Douma, while Syria and its close ally Russia deny any attack took place.

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6 p.m.

Officials from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office say the Turkish leader and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have discussed the latest developments in Syria and agreed to keep in close contact.

The officials said the two leaders held a telephone conversation on Thursday hours after Erdogan said he would discuss ways of ending the “chemical massacre” in Syria with Putin.

The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.

Erdogan earlier criticized the United States and Russia, accusing them of “relying on their military might” and of turning Syria into “a virtual wrestling ground.”

He said Turkey’s traditional ties to the West and growing ties to Russia and Iran were no obstacles to Ankara pointing out their mistakes.

—Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey

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5 p.m.

NATO is calling on Russia and Iran to make sure that international observers and medical staff are being allowed in and around the area of the suspected chemical attack in Syria.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters that beyond Syrian President Bashar Assad, the alliance also wants Syria’s “supporters Iran and Russia to make that possible — both to allow international observers but also to allow medical assistance access to the area.”

Stoltenberg said that consultation were ongoing among the NATO allies on how to respond to the suspected chemical attack, and said “it is important that those responsible are held accountable.”

Syrian opposition activists and medics say a suspected gas attack last week killed more than 40 people in Douma, a town outside the capital that was then controlled by Syrian rebels. The Syrian government has denied the allegations.

The Russian military says government forces are now in full control of Douma.

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4:50 p.m.

Russia has warned the U.S. and its allies against assuming the role of a “global policeman” in response to what it describes as fake claims of chemical weapons use in Syria.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that Western leaders have no authority to be “investigators, prosecutors and executioners.”

Syrian opposition activists and medics say a suspected gas attack last week killed more than 40 people in Douma, a town outside the capital that was then controlled by Syrian rebels. The Syrian government has denied the allegations.

Zakharova described the allegations as fake, but said the international chemical weapons watchdog should investigate them. She said Russia would ensure the monitors’ security.

Zakharova called for de-escalating the situation, urging the West to carefully weigh the consequences before taking any action.

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3:40 p.m.

An aide to Iran’s supreme leader says he hopes Syrian forces will “expel the American occupiers” in the country’s northeast after they retake other areas of the country from insurgents.

Ali Akbar Velayati, speaking in the Syrian capital on Thursday, said he visited eastern Ghouta a day earlier, calling the capture of the Damascus suburbs one of the most important victories of the seven-year civil war.

Iran is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has sent thousands of troops and allied militiamen to support his forces.

Velayati said he hoped the northern Idlib province, which is dominated by al-Qaida militants would be the next to fall to government forces. He said Assad’s forcers should then push east of the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops are embedded with Kurdish forces.

He said: “We are hopeful that major and extensive steps are taken later to liberate this area and expel the American occupiers.”

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3:05 p.m.

President Emmanuel Macron says France has proof that the Syrian government launched chlorine gas attacks.

Macron said Thursday that France would not tolerate “regimes that think everything is permitted.” Speaking on TF1 television, Macron said “we have proof that chemical weapons were used, at least chlorine” in recent days by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

He did not say whether France is planning military action against Assad’s government. Macron said he has been talking regularly this week with U.S. President Donald Trump about the most effective response.

With increasing concerns about a U.S.-Russia proxy war in Syria, Macron insisted that “France will not allow an escalation or something that could damage the stability” of the region. On Tuesday, Macron said any French action would target Syria’s chemical weapons abilities.

Syrian opposition activists and medics say a suspected gas attack last week in Douma killed more than 40 people. The Syrian government has denied the allegations.

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3 p.m.

Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany won’t participate in possible military action in Syria, but supports sending a message that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable.

Merkel stressed the importance of a united position in the face of a suspected chemical weapons attack that the West is blaming on President Bashar Assad’s forces. She said she spoke Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Merkel said in Berlin: “Germany will not take part in possible military action — I want to make clear again that there are no decisions — but we see, and support this, that everything is being done to send a signal that this use of chemical weapons is not acceptable.”

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2:45 p.m.

Russia has warned the U.S. and its allies against any steps that could destabilize the situation in Syria.

Asked to comment on possible U.S. strikes, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Thursday that “it’s necessary to avoid any steps that may fuel tensions in Syria.” Dmitry Peskov added that it would have an “utterly destructive impact on the Syrian settlement.”

Peskov wouldn’t say if Moscow could use a Russian-U.S. military hotline to avoid escalation in the event of a U.S. strike, saying only that “the hotline exists and has remained active.”

President Donald Trump warned Russia on Wednesday to “get ready” for a missile attack on its ally Syria, but tweeted Thursday that it may come “very soon or not so soon at all!”

The U.S. and its allies have threatened to respond militarily to an alleged chemical attack near Damascus last weekend.

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2:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he will discuss ways of ending “the chemical massacre” in Syria during a telephone call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Erdogan said he’ll talk to Putin later on Thursday, a day after he talked to President Donald Trump about Syria.

Erdogan’s remarks appear to criticize an exchange of threats by the United States and Russia, saying Turkey was “deeply disturbed by some countries that rely on their military might, turning Syria into a virtual wrestling ground.”

Erdogan says Turkey’s warming ties with Russia and Iran are “not an alternative” to its traditional ties to the West, adding that Ankara would “fight until the end” against Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and against U.S. support to a Syrian Kurdish militia that Ankara has labelled a terrorist group.

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1:45 p.m.

Syrian President Bashar Assad says Western threats to strike his country after a suspected chemical attack are based on “lies” and seek to undermine his forces’ recent advances near Damascus.

The U.S. and its allies threatened military action after an alleged gas attack by government forces over the weekend that Syrian opposition activists and medics say killed more than 40 people. The Syrian government has denied the allegations.

Assad said Thursday that Western countries were lashing out after they lost their “bet” on opposition forces in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital. Russia, a key ally of Assad, says government forces have taken full control of the town of Douma, the last rebel holdout in the region and the scene of Saturday’s alleged attack.

Assad says the Western threats endanger international peace and security, and that military action would only contribute to the “further destabilization” of the region.

Assad spoke during a meeting with Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Iran’s supreme leader.

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12:20 p.m.

Kuwait’s national carrier says it is suspending flights to Lebanon in line with security warnings from airline authorities concerning a possible strike on neighboring Syria.

Kuwait Airways released the statement overnight, saying flights to Beirut would be suspended from Thursday until further notice.

A day earlier, European airspace authorities warned aircraft to be careful over the next few days when flying close to Syria because of the possibility of air or missile strikes into the country.

The U.S. and its allies have threatened to take military action in response to an alleged chemical attack last weekend. Syrian activists and rescuers say the attack on Douma killed more than 40 people, allegations denied by the government.

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12:15 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has summoned her Cabinet back from vacation to discuss military action against Syria over an alleged chemical weapons attack.

May has indicated she wants Britain to join in any U.S.-led strikes in response to the suspected attack near Damascus. She has said the use of chemical weapons “cannot go unchallenged.”

The U.S., France and Britain have been consulting about launching a military strike, and President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that missiles “will be coming.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defense refused to comment on reports that Royal Navy submarines armed with cruise missiles have been dispatched to within range of Syria.

British opposition lawmakers are calling for Parliament to be given a vote on military action. That is not a legal requirement, though it is a convention.

Syrian opposition activists and rescuers say a chemical attack launched by government forces in a rebel-held area near Damascus late Saturday killed more than 40 people, allegations denied by the Syrian government.

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11:50 a.m.

France says it will decide in the coming days whether to launch a military strike over a suspected chemical attack in Syria.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday that President Emmanuel Macron would decide whether to launch an attack over the “non-respect of the international convention against chemical weapons,” which is a “red line” for France.

Speaking to reporters in Romania, Le Drian says: “We are very firm…as the president of the Republic said…. this situation can’t be tolerated.”

Asked about consulting the U.S, which has also threatened military action, Le Drian said “France is autonomous in taking its decisions.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday warned of imminent military action in Syria over a suspected poison gas attack near Damascus that Syrian opposition activists and first responders say killed more than 40 people. Syria has denied carrying out such an attack.

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10 a.m.

The Russian military says the Syrian government is now in full control of town on the outskirts of Damascus that was held by the rebels and that was the site of suspected chemical attack over the weekend.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the situation in the town of Douma, just east of the Syrian capital, is “normalizing.”

More than 13,500 Syrian rebel fighters and their families have left Douma this month under a so-called evacuation deal between the rebels and the Russian military, a top ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

The Russian ministry says 1,500 left the town in the past 24 hours.

There was no immediate confirmation or indication from Assad’s government that Syrian troops entered Douma on Thursday.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

President Trump ordered top administration officials Thursday to look at rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major shift on the sprawling multination trade pact he rejected just days after taking office.

Rejoining the pact would come as Trump escalates a trade conflict with China. The Pacific Rim trade deal was intended to counter China’s influence, but Trump criticized the pact as a candidate and pulled the United States out of it in one of his earliest moves as president.

Trump gave the new orders to U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow during a White House meeting with lawmakers and governors, according to several GOP senators in attendance.

Trump then told Lighthizer and Kudlow to “take a look at getting us back into that agreement, on our terms of course,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “He was very I would say bullish about that.”

Thune said he and others at the table argued that “if you really want to get China’s attention, one way to do it is start doing business with all the people they’re doing business with in the region: their competitors.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) also witnessed and applauded Trump’s surprise move.

“We should be leading TPP,” Sasse said. “China is a bunch of cheaters and the best way to push back on their cheating would be to be leading all these other rule-of-law nations in the Pacific that would rather be aligned with the U.S. than with China.”

Trump has repeatedly floated major policy proposals in meetings and then quickly abandoned them. It remains to be seen if his comments Thursday represent plans to seriously explore rejoining TPP, and some free trade supporters approached his remarks with skepticism.

“If it holds until this afternoon, that’s a good move,” remarked Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a free trade advocate and frequent Trump critic who was not at the White House meeting.

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the White House’s internal approach, said Trump has not set any goals or deadlines for Kudlow and Lighthizer for when a new agreement should be reached.

Instead, the White House is approaching potential new talks as a way to make signal that Trump is receptive to free market proposals if he feels they can be reached in a way that advances U.S. interests, the official said.

Rejoining TPP would mark a reversal on one of the core commitments of Trump’s surprise presidential run. Trump’s opposition to multination trade pacts like TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement was a central part of his 2016 campaign and accounted for some of his appeal to working-class voters. He argued the deals were terribly negotiated, ripping off the U.S. and hurt American workers and manufacturing.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country,” Trump said in June of 2016. “Just a continuing rape of our country. That’s what it is, too. It’s a harsh word — it’s a rape of our country. This is done by wealthy people that want to take advantage of us and that want to sign another partnership.”

The president’s protectionist impulses on trade since taking office have caused intense heartburn for many GOP lawmakers who continue to embrace the Republican Party’s traditional support for free trade. If the president does move forward with rejoining TPP, business groups and many Republican lawmakers would be sure to applaud the move, even as it would stand as the latest example of Trump going back on a campaign trail promise.

At least some labor groups were alarmed at Trump’s willingness to restart the TPP process. A number of labor groups have argued that these trade deals make it easier for companies to move jobs overseas, hurting American workers by depressing wages and closing factories.

“TPP was killed because it failed America’s workers and it should remain dead,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, wrote on Twitter. “There is no conceivable way to revive it without totally betraying working people.”

Trump administration officials are also working to renegotiate NAFTA, and the president told senators Thursday they were making progress.

“The president said it could be two weeks, it could be two months, it could be six months,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). “He’s keeping his options open. That’s important.”

Engaging in talks to reenter the TPP would be part of a broader White House strategy to respond to an escalating trade flap between Trump and Beijing. Trump is looking for ways to crack down on what he believes are unfair trade practices in China, but he is having a hard time rallying other countries to backstop his push to impose new tariffs or raise the costs of exports and imports for China.

The president is also running into strong pushback from Republican lawmakers, particularly those representing agricultural regions where China’s threatened retaliation against U.S. exports would hit hard.

The TPP is a trade agreement the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and a number of other countries signed in early 2016, aiming to strengthen economic ties among their nations and give them more leverage in dealing with China.

The agreement never went into effect, however, because Trump withdrew from it three days after he was sworn in. The remaining countries still ratified a version of the TPP without the United States earlier this year.

The president first raised the prospect of reentering the trade deal at the World Economic Forum in late January. He said then that he would rethink his opposition if the U.S. secured “substantially better terms,” without offering specifics.

There has been no indication since then that the administration was making any genuine effort to rejoin the agreement.

“This is another encouraging signal from the administration, following what the president said at Davos,” said Wendy Cutler, who was among the TPP negotiators. “I always thought that with time the administration would value the TPP more and more.”

One question is which TPP Trump wants to rejoin: the original 12-nation deal that the Obama administration negotiated, or the 11-nation agreement that is now moving toward implementation by the remaining countries.

When the president last year announced he was quitting the deal, the other TPP countries suspended 20 provisions in the original accord and announced a new deal, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The provisions, including key intellectual property protections such as those involving biological drugs, were measures the U.S. had demanded in return for granting access to its market.

U.S. negotiating partners might expect the U.S. to “pay for” restoring those provisions at this point, Cutler said.

The U.S. also might seek to revive the 12-nation deal, which would take effect if the U.S., Japan and four other signatories formally approved it. Or, the administration could seek to negotiate a new agreement, Cutler said.

“They do want us back in. But the question is: at what price?” Cutler said

Trump was not the only one to oppose TPP during the 2016 presidential campaign. His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, came out against the deal as she faced pressure during her primary campaign against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was outspoken against TPP. Clinton had played a role in its formation during her time as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State.

Even before Trump’s election, the Trans-Pacific Partnership began to founder and stall in Congress as it got caught up in political crosscurrents, losing support from some Republicans and progressive Democrats.

In May 2016, as domestic political backing for TPP was starting to erode, Obama wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post aiming to rally support.

“Increasing trade in this area of the world would be a boon to American businesses and American workers, and it would give us a leg up on our economic competitors, including one we hear a lot about on the campaign trail these days: China,” he wrote.

Entering into a new TPP could unify Trump with other trading partners and put new pressure on Beijing to either allow more imports into China or risk being alienated by other Asian countries, that would now received new trade benefits as part of the deal.

Senate Republicans have long been pressuring the administration to re-engage with the Pacific Rim nations. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and two dozen other Republicans wrote to Trump in February, urging him to rejoin the agreement — a letter Daines referenced during Thursday’s meeting.

The TPP is becoming one of the White House’s few remaining options as Trump searches for ways to exert pressure on China to back down from its threat of new tariffs on U.S. exports. American farm groups have said they fear getting caught in the middle of the trade spat Trump and Beijing have recently escalated, and they want assurances that they will not lose out on foreign buyers.

The White House had been looking at using a Depression-era program known as the Commodity Credit Corporation that could be used to extend subsidies to farmers, but Republican lawmakers pushed back hard on that idea during Thursday’s meeting.

“Farmers don’t want a handout. They want access to markets,” Daines said, adding that senators made that point “very clear.”

“The president was surprised by that. He’s like, ‘really?’ He said, ‘Oh really? Ok, so we won’t do that,’” Daines said.

David J. Lynch contributed to this report.

[Keep checking this page throughout the day for updated news and analysis of Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress.]

Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday clashed with a second panel of congressional lawmakers who attacked the Facebook chief executive on a litany of issues, from user privacy to Russian propaganda and illegal opioid sales.

The hearing — set before the House Energy and Commerce Committee — has proven more tense than the marathon session in the Senate a day earlier. Democrats and Republicans alike repeatedly cut off Zuckerberg, who appeared less composed than in the Tuesday hearing.

Lawmakers once again threatened regulation if Facebook failed to improve its business practices. At one point in the hearing, though, Zuckerberg acknowledged that his own information had been compromised as a result of the privacy controversy now looming over his company.

[ Facebook is now in the data-privacy spotlight. Could Google be next? ]

Opening the session, the House panel’s leader Republican Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) called Facebook an “American success story.” But he added: “While Facebook has certainly grown, I worry it has not matured. I think it is time to ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast and broken too many things.”

Driving lawmakers’ scrutiny is the controversy around Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy tapped by President Trump’s 2016 campaign that improperly accessed the names, “likes” and other personal information of millions of Facebook users. For the first time, Zuckerberg said that his data had been swept up by an app that fed data on 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica.

In the wake of its review of the firm’s activities, Facebook also has acknowledged that malicious actors scraped information from the public profiles of practically its entire base, more than 2 billion users. Such scraping heightens the odds that Facebook could be subject to major fines from the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating the matter, and it drew sharp rebukes from lawmakers who felt Facebook should have spotted it sooner.

[ Facebook stores its data in this rural North Carolina town, where the privacy debate is just beginning to catch on ]

“Facebook knew about this in 2013 and 2015, but you didn’t turn the feature off until Wednesday of last week,” said Rep. Ben Lujan (D-N.M.) at one point during the hearing. “This is essentially a tool for these malicious actors to steal a person’s identity and put the finishing touches on it.”

Zuckerberg started the House hearing by repeating the same apology he gave to the Senate a day earlier. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” he told House lawmakers.

[ Ten key moments from Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearing on Tuesday ]

Throughout the hearing, Zuckerberg’s demeanor vacillated between calm and frustrated as lawmakers challenged the 33-year-old billionaire on a host of issues.

Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield demanded that Zuckerberg improve the company’s hiring practices, pointing out that Facebook had no people of color in its highest executive ranks. Republican Rep. Joe Barton, meanwhile, pressed Zuckerberg on claims of conservative bias in the way his company handles content uploaded by its users.

Rep. David McKinley accused Zuckerberg and Facebook for “hurting people” by failing to combat users who try to sell opioids on the site. “I think there are a number of areas of content we need to do a better job of policing on our service,” Zuckerberg replied.

[ Zuckerberg gets it right, kind of. His success is not an ‘only in America’ story. ]

In one of the toughest exchanges on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo — a lawmaker who represents a slice of Silicon Valley — repeatedly needled Zuckerberg for failing to explain its data collection practices to users in “clear and pedestrian language.”

Her Democratic colleague, Lujan, raised reports that Facebook collects data on those who aren’t even users — called “shadow profiles” by some. Zuckerberg, however, said he was “not specifically familiar with that.” Nevertheless, Lujan criticized Zuckerberg for a feature that allows web users who aren’t signed up to only learn more about the data collected by the social giant if they become users.

“You’re directing people who don’t even have a Facebook page to sign up a page to reach their data,” Lujan said.

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn later remarked that Facebook looks “a whole lot like the Truman Show,” where users’ information is “made available to people they don’t know, and then that data is crunched and used and they are fully unaware of this.”

The Tennessee lawmaker cited laws that govern health data, financial transactions and other industries, before citing her bill that would require tech companies to obtain user permission before they can collect and sell user data. Facebook has long lobbied against the so-called Browser Act.

[ 14 years of Mark Zuckerberg saying sorry, not sorry ]

Repeatedly, though, lawmakers have said the Facebook leader must provide greater clarity as to exactly how Cambridge Analytica obtained data on 87 million users in the first place. They warned a suit-clad Zuckerberg that tough regulation and scrutiny might follow if Facebook failed once again to improve its business practices.

“If all we do is have a hearing and nothing happens, then that’s not accomplishing anything,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A day earlier, Senate lawmakers expressed the same fears.

“Unless there are specific rules and regulations enforced by an outside agency, I have no assurance that these kinds of vague commitments are going to produce action,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) said during the Tuesday Senate hearing.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you’ve said you’re sorry. I appreciate the apologies,” added Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) during later questioning. “But please stop apologizing and make the change.”

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a fourth person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, that person said.

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients — including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people.

The raids — part of an investigation referred by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to federal prosecutors in New York — point to escalating legal jeopardy for a longtime Trump confidant who is deeply intertwined in the president’s business and personal matters.

Stephen Ryan, an attorney for Cohen, called the tactics “inappropriate and unnecessary,” saying Cohen has “cooperated completely with all government entities, including providing thousands of non-privileged documents to the Congress and sitting for depositions under oath.”

Among the records seized by investigators were “protected attorney client communications,” Ryan said.

The aggressive tactics by prosecutors drew the president’s ire. As Trump sat down for dinner Monday with military leaders at the White House, he repeatedly called the raid “a disgrace,” railing that he and his administration are the subject of unfair, baseless and misguided investigations.

“I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now or longer,” he said. “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense; it’s an attack on what we all stand for.”

Revisiting his grievances about Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump complained about what he suggested was a concerted and sometimes partisan effort to target his leadership. He noted that he has been urged to fire the special counsel, calling Mueller’s investigators “the most biased group of people.”

Dawn Dearden, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment.

One person familiar with the probe said investigators have been gathering material on Cohen for weeks, including his bank records.

Two of the potential crimes being investigated — bank fraud and wire fraud — suggest prosecutors have some reason to think Cohen may have misled bankers about why he was using particular funds or may have improperly used banks in the transfer of funds.

Cohen has acknowledged facilitating a $130,000 payment in October 2016 to Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

Trump made his first comments about the payment last week, saying he did not know about the transaction.

Cohen has said he used a home-equity line of credit to finance the payment to Daniels and said that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him for the payment.

Banks don’t usually require much explanation from customers about how they use such credit lines. However, Cohen may have been asked to provide explanation for the large-dollar transfers he made when he moved the money to a shell company and then to a lawyer for Daniels.

The search requests for records related to the payment to Daniels cited investigators’ interest in possible violations of election law, according to one person familiar with the investigators’ work.

[Special counsel has examined episodes involving Cohen]

The seizure of Cohen’s records was first reported by the New York Times.

The Cohen raids required high-level authorization within the Justice Department. Under regulations governing the special counsel’s work, Mueller is required to consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein if his team finds information worth investigating that does not fall under his mandate to examine Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Rosenstein, as the acting attorney general supervising Mueller’s work, has the responsibility of deciding whether to expand Mueller’s mandate to include the new topic or to refer it to a U.S. attorney’s office.

Since Cohen is a practicing attorney whose communications with clients are considered privileged, federal prosecutors would have been required to first consider a less intrusive investigative tactic than a search warrant before executing the raids.

“A search warrant for a law office is extremely rare,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law. “Lawyers are given the courtesy of producing documents in response to a subpoena or a request unless the government believes a lawyer will destroy or conceal the objects of the search.”

To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who was appointed to his role by Sessions in January, as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off.

Known for his combative style and fierce loyalty to Trump, Cohen served for a decade as a top lawyer at the Trump Organization, tangling with reporters and Trump’s business competitors on behalf of the celebrity real estate mogul.

He never formally joined Trump’s campaign but was in close contact with his longtime boss from his Trump Tower office throughout the 2016 race and presidential transition.

Cohen left the Trump Organization in January 2017, around the time of Trump’s inauguration, and since then has served as a personal attorney to the president.

Squire Patton Boggs, the law firm where Cohen had an office for the past year, said in a statement Monday that its “arrangement with Mr. Cohen reached its conclusion, mutually and in accordance with the terms of the agreement.”

“We have been in contact with federal authorities regarding their execution of a warrant relating to Mr. Cohen,” the firm said. “These activities do not relate to the firm and we are in full cooperation.”

To pursue criminal charges against Cohen for breaking federal election law, prosecutors would have to prove that he made the payment to Daniels to influence the election, rather than for personal reasons — to protect Trump’s reputation, for example, or his marriage.

Cohen has acknowledged that he facilitated the payment to Daniels, but he has not said why.

On Oct. 17, Cohen established Essential Consultants LLC as a vehicle for the $130,000 payment, records show. Ten days later, on Oct. 27, the bank Cohen used in New York transferred the money to Daniels via a California bank account belonging to her lawyer, Keith Davidson.

Eleven months later, in September 2017, that California bank — City National Bank in Beverly Hills — asked Davidson about the source of the payment, according to an email reviewed by The Washington Post. Bank officials declined to comment on whether the inquiry was triggered by a request or subpoena from law enforcement.

At some point, Cohen’s New York bank, First Republic, flagged the transaction to the Treasury Department as a suspicious payment, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Cohen used his Trump Organization email in negotiating the agreement with Davidson and in communicating with his bank about the funds.

In February, after a watchdog group filed a complaint about the payment with the Federal Election Commission, Cohen released a statement saying he “used my own personal funds to facilitate” the payment. He rejected the idea that the payment should have counted as a campaign contribution.

“The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone,” he said, referring to Daniels’s real name, Stephanie Clifford.

While the timing of the payment — 12 days before the presidential election — might suggest an attempt to influence the outcome, timing is not enough to prove intent, said Rick Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California at Irvine.

“It would be very difficult to bring one of these cases without some good documentary evidence,” he said. “I think a lot of people are underestimating the hurdles that it takes to bring a criminal prosecution.”

[Trump says he didn’t know his attorney paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels]

Cohen’s work for Trump has been a topic of particular interest in recent months to Mueller’s investigators. Although there has been no sign that he is a subject or target of Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, people familiar with the investigation have said that Cohen has come up repeatedly in interviews and document requests.

Cohen played a central role in two Russia-related episodes Mueller has been investigating, including negotiations to build a Trump tower in Moscow that the Trump Organization undertook after Trump announced his candidacy for president. Cohen also was fleetingly involved with an effort to call attention to a Russia-friendly proposal for peace in Ukraine shortly before Trump took office.

Mark Berman, Emma Brown, Josh Dawsey, Anne Gearan, Rosalind S. Helderman, Beth Reinhard, Philip Rucker, Matt Zapotosky and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.