https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-mideast-turkey/trump-adviser-kushner-meets-turkeys-erdogan-on-israel-palestinian-peace-plan-idUSKCN1QG1O1

Trump adviser Kushner meets Turkey's Erdogan on Israel-Palestinian peace plan

Kushner, who has responsibility for Washington’s Israel-Palestinian policy, has said the peace plan will address final-status issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including establishing borders.

The White House said the meeting with Erdogan included Kushner, Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook.

“They discussed increasing cooperation between the United States and Turkey, and the Trump administration’s efforts to facilitate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians,” the White House said. “Additionally, they discussed ways to improve the condition of the entire region through economic investment.”

Erdogan has been one of the most vocal critics of U.S. President Donald Trump’s support for Israel.

Last year he said the United States had forfeited its role as mediator in the Middle East by moving its Israel embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.

“The United States has chosen to be part of the problem rather than the solution,” the Turkish president said last May, days before he hosted a summit of Muslim leaders which threatened economic measures against countries which followed the United States in moving their embassies to Jerusalem.

INSIGHT: Trump, Kim kick off second summit

Israel calls all of Jerusalem its “eternal and undivided capital”, a status not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured and occupied by Israel in a 1967 war, as capital of a future state.

In an interview broadcast on Monday on Sky News Arabia during a visit to U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states, Kushner made no specific mention of a Palestinian state, whose creation had been a key goal of Washington’s peace efforts for two decades.

But he said the long-awaited peace proposal would build on “a lot of the efforts in the past”, including the 1990s Oslo accords that provided a foundation for Palestinian statehood, and would require concessions from both sides.

U.S. officials said that Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, is expected to focus on the economic component of the plan during his week-long trip to the region.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-congress/u-s-house-approves-expanded-background-checks-for-gun-sales-idUSKCN1QG2VD

U.S. House approves expanded background checks for gun sales

The background check bill, which was approved by a 240-190 vote, is the first gun control measure taken up by Democrats since they regained control of the House in the 2018 congressional midterm elections.

The bill is likely to face opposition when it goes to the Republican-controlled Senate, however. It would also need President Donald Trump’s signature in order to become law.

The White House said on Monday that Trump’s advisers would recommend the president veto the legislation because it would apply “burdensome requirements” that are “incompatible with the Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to keep arms.”

Trump has previously indicated he supported efforts to extend background checks to all gun sales.

“I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue - I hope!” Trump tweeted a year ago, after a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.

Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans had prevented a vote on a background check bill when they controlled the chamber, and that while there were differences among Democrats about how to curb gun violence, the background check bill had broad support.

House passes bill to block Trump's 'emergency'

“The carnage that we’ve seen perpetrated by gun violence over the last decade has heightened the American people’s concern, and the bill that we’re putting on the floor we believe has the support of 90 percent of the American people,” Hoyer said.

From 2009 to 2017, there were at least 173 shootings in the United States in which four or more people were killed, with at least 1,001 total deaths, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee where the background check bill originated, said on Wednesday that the bill was ineffective because it “foolishly presumes criminals who flout existing laws will suddenly submit themselves to background checks.”

>The House is set to vote on Thursday on a second bill that would extend the time it takes to conduct a background check before a gun sale to 10 days from minutes.