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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats prepared Tuesday to whack $1 billion from President Barack Obama's emergency spending request for the border, while leaving out policy changes Republicans have demanded as their price for agreeing to any money. The developments pointed to a hardening stalemate over the crisis in South Texas with lawmakers preparing to leave Washington for their annual summer recess at the end of next week.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro in a visit to expand investment in the fellow communist nation, his last stop on a four-country Latin American charm offensive. Cuba, the only one-party communist state in the Americas, began opening up its economy in 2008, but has not grown as much as hoped and could desperately use more Chinese investment. Xi for his part has made a point during his tour of reaching out to countries often shunned by US and European investors, including Venezuela and Argentina as well as Cuba. The opening of the Cuban economy -- which some analysts see as an effort to follow in China's footsteps -- has created new opportunities to tighten bilateral ties, said Xi, who arrived Monday night in Havana.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Civil rights leaders at the NAACP annual convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday worried that dwindling African-American turnout in November could lead to the expansion of voter-identification laws that make it harder for that community to vote in subsequent contests.