Nation and World briefs for November 16

Southwest Airlines worker dead in Oklahoma airport shooting

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A Southwest Airlines employee was shot outside Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport on Tuesday and died after police closed the sprawling complex to search for his killer.

Oklahoma City police identified the victim as Michael Winchester, 52. A hometown wasn’t listed. The airline said it was helping police officers with their investigation. Police have not detained a suspect in the shooting.

“It is with great sorrow that Southwest Airlines confirms that a Southwest Employee who was injured during a shooting incident today at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City has died from injuries,” the airline said in a statement. It said it would cancel flights out of the city for the remainder of the day even if the rest of the terminal reopens.

Police and airport officials closed the complex after the 1 p.m. shooting and directed that people inside the terminal take shelter. At late afternoon, officers said the agency would begin moving people outside of the building, which handles between 7,000 and 8,000 passengers daily for Alaska, Delta, Southwest and United airlines.

The airport is also a major transfer center for federal inmates, but its terminal is in a separate building. A jet carrying inmates to the transfer site was allowed to land while the rest of the airport was shuttered.

Amid signs of transition trouble, Trump huddles with Pence

NEW YORK (AP) — Hidden from the public in his Manhattan high-rise, Donald Trump huddled Tuesday with Vice President-elect Mike Pence as he tried to fill out key posts in his Cabinet. But the transition team appeared to be straining under the enormous challenge of setting up a new administration.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, a respected Republican voice on national security issues, announced he was quitting the transition effort. And an apparent clerical oversight effectively halted the Trump team’s ability to coordinate with President Barack Obama’s White House.

With Trump out of sight for several days, his allies engaged in an unusual round of public speculation about his potential appointments — including their own futures — as the president-elect and his aides weighed the nation’s top national security posts.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani seemed to be angling for secretary of state. But Trump’s transition team was reviewing Giuliani’s paid consulting work for foreign governments, which could delay a nomination or bump Giuliani to a different position, according to a person briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Giuliani founded his own firm, Giuliani Partners, in 2001, and helped businesses on behalf of foreign governments, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. He also advised TransCanada, which sought to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and helped the maker of the painkiller drug OxyContin settle a dispute with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Russia announces major operation in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — Russian missiles pounded opposition targets in Syria on Tuesday, the start of a much-anticipated offensive, while activists reported the resumption of bombing in rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo for the first time in nearly a month, apparently by Syrian government warplanes.

The Russian blitz began hours after President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump discussed Syria in a phone call and agreed on the need to combine efforts in the fight against what the Kremlin called their No. 1 enemy — “international terrorism and extremism.”

Russia said its offensive, using long-range missiles and its carrier-borne jets in combat for the first time on opposition areas in Syria, focused on rebel-held northern Idlib province and parts of the central province of Homs. It didn’t mention the besieged eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo.

The new offensive was a sharp snub to the Obama administration and its policy toward Syria, and augurs a major escalation in the coming days that would put tens of thousands of civilians in serious danger.

Months of negotiations between Moscow and the Obama administration have failed to cement a long-term cease-fire in Aleppo, which has become the focus of the war between President Bashar Assad and rebels fighting to topple him, some of whom receive U.S. aid. Al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate is fighting alongside the rebels, but the Islamic State group has no presence in Aleppo.

Obama: World leaders must heed people’s economic fears

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Drawing a broad lesson from the election of Donald Trump, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that world leaders need to pay attention to people’s very real fears of economic dislocation and inequality in the midst of globalization.

“The more aggressively and effectively we deal with those issues, the less those fears may channel themselves into counterproductive approaches that can pit people against each other,” Obama said as he opened the last foreign tour of his presidency.

Obama, in a joint news conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, said that both Trump’s election and the British vote to leave the European Union reflected the need to deal with “people’s fears that their children won’t do as well as they have.”

“Sometimes people just feel as if we want to try something and see if we can shake things up,” Obama said.

The president seemed skeptical that “the new prescriptions being offered” would satisfy the frustrations and anger evident in election. And he played a bit of defense, saying that his agenda over past eight years had dealt with economic issues head on and “the country’s indisputably better off.”

House GOP nominates Ryan as speaker, with Trump’s support

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Paul Ryan unanimously won his GOP colleagues’ votes on Tuesday for another term at the helm of the House. He told fellow Republicans he had President-elect Donald Trump’s support, and heralded “the dawn of a new, unified Republican government.”

“It feels really good to say that actually,” Ryan told reporters. “This will be a government focused on turning President-elect Trump’s victory into real progress for the American people.”

While victory was the GOP unifier, Democrats were verging on disarray. House Democrats abruptly announced Tuesday that they were delaying their own leadership elections set for Thursday until Nov. 30 to give lawmakers more time to process disastrous election results.

It’s not clear whether the election delay might morph into a real challenge to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She has led House Democrats for more than 12 years and has consolidated support with strong fundraising and an ability to deliver votes, but there’s long been grumbling from Democrats who say new leadership is needed at the top.

As for Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican still has to win a floor vote for speaker in January, when all members of the House will cast ballots, including Democrats.

‘Sanctuary cities’ vow to protect immigrants from Trump plan

SEATTLE (AP) — Democratic mayors of major U.S. cities that have long had cool relationships with federal immigration officials say they will do all they can to protect residents from deportation, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to withhold potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money if they do not cooperate.

New York City’s Bill de Blasio, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and Seattle’s Ed Murray are among those in “sanctuary cities” that have tried to soothe worried immigrant populations.

“Seattle has always been a welcoming city,” Murray said Monday. “The last thing I want is for us to start turning on our neighbors.”

In Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Jorge Elorza, the son of Guatemalan immigrants, said he would continue a longstanding policy of refusing to hold people charged with civil infractions for federal immigration officials. Newark, New Jersey’s Ras Baraka echoed that decision, calling Trump’s rhetoric on immigration “scary.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times that he’s committed to a longtime policy of staying out of immigration issues. Mayor Eric Garcetti has backed that up but stopped short of calling LA a sanctuary city because the term is “ill-defined.”

Never mind closing Guantanamo, Trump might make it bigger

WASHINGTON (AP) — Never mind closing Guantanamo. It might be getting bigger.

President Barack Obama is running out of time to fulfill his longstanding promise to shutter the prison at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sixty inmates remain in the facility and only a third are cleared for release.

If Obama can’t close it, his successor likely won’t. Donald Trump has not only pledged to keep Guantanamo open, in April he said that “we’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me. We’re gonna load it up.”

He told The Miami Herald in an interview that month that he would support trying U.S. citizens accused of terrorism at the base, though that would require Congress to change federal law and would likely face constitutional challenges.

Opened in 2002 as a makeshift camp to hold men captured in the early fight against al-Qaida, Guantanamo has become a symbol of the strong-handed U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Its advocates say it keeps dangerous terrorists locked up. Opponents say it violates basic human rights, with prisoners held indefinitely without charges. Obama has said it feeds anti-U.S. sentiment worldwide and that the prisoners could be held for less money at facilities in the United States.