10 things you need to know today: April 29, 2019

1. Barr warns Democrats he might not attend House hearing

Attorney General William Barr reportedly threatened Sunday to back out of plans to testify before the House Judiciary Committee after a dispute over the format of the hearing. Barr is supposed to appear before the Senate and House judiciary committees on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russia's 2016 election meddling. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House panel, said the committee would subpoena Barr if he refused to appear willingly. "The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct its hearing, period," Nadler told CNN. A Justice Department official said at this point Barr's plan to appear had not changed. "Our position is the attorney general agreed to appear before Congress," the official said.

The New York Times The Washington Post

2. Avengers: Endgame shatters box office records

Avengers: Endgame smashed box office records on its opening weekend. It had the biggest domestic debut ever, bringing in an estimated $350 million. The film soared beyond forecasts of North American ticket sales between $260 million to $300 million, which would have been enough to set a new high mark. Endgame also rocketed past the previous international opening weekend record of $640.6 million set by Avengers: Infinity War, piling up $1.2 billion in global ticket sales. That international total was already more than blockbusters such as Skyfall, Aquaman, and The Dark Night Rises made in their entire cinematic runs. Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, praised Marvel Studios for challenging "notions of what is possible at the movie theaters."

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3. Former GOP Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar dies at 87

Former Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, died Sunday. He was 87. Lugar, a two-time chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, worked for years to push a program that destroyed nuclear and chemical weapons amassed by the former Soviet Union following the end of the Cold War, and he was an early voice in alerting Americans to the threat that terrorists could get ahold of such weapons of mass destruction. "Every stockpile represents a theft opportunity for terrorists and a temptation for security personnel who might seek to profit by selling weapons on the black market," Lugar said in 2005. He made a failed bid for the White House in 1996, with a focus on "nuclear security and fiscal sanity."

The Associated Press

4. Rabbi says 'terror will not win' after synagogue shooting

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was shot in the hand when a gunman opened fire in the banquet hall of a California synagogue, said Sunday that the congregation will not be "intimidated or deterred" by the attack, which authorities called a hate crime. "Terror will not win," he said. The gunman shot Goldstein with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, then shot and killed Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, and wounded two other people. Goldstein, not even realizing several of his fingers had been blown off, rushed to guide a group of children to safety. The suspected attacker, 19-year-old John Earnest, was charged early Sunday with one count of murder and three of attempted murder.

The New York Times

5. Afghan leaders meet to discuss how to approach Taliban talks

Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, opened a traditional Loya Jirga grand council on Monday, bringing together more than 3,200 politicians, tribal elders, and other leaders to discuss a unified strategy for peace talks with the Taliban. "We are all here to talk about the framework of peace talks with the Taliban ... reaching a sustainable peace is very important to us," Ghani said in his welcome address. The gathering is meant to promote unity, but it risks highlighting divisions within the government. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's chief executive and Ghani's partner in a U.S.-brokered unity government, is among prominent leaders not attending the council. U.S. negotiators have held talks with the Taliban, but the latest attempt at direct talks between the Islamist group and the government, scheduled in Qatar this month, dissolved over a disagreement on who would participate.

The Associated Press

6. Spain's Socialists win election but need partners

Spain's Socialist party won Sunday's general election, giving Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez a chance to negotiate a governing coalition with the far-left United We Can Party. The alliance will have to find about 15 more lawmakers from other parties to join in to give Sanchez the majority he needs to hold onto his post. Sanchez's incumbent party won 122 seats in the lower house of Parliament, while the conservative Popular Party that once led Parliament won just 65 seats, down from 137 seats in 2016. One reason for the backsliding was a surge by the new far-right Vox party, which won 24 seats.

The Associated Press

7. Guantanamo commander fired after 'loss of confidence' in leadership

The leader of the U.S. Southern Command, Adm. Craig Faller, has relieved Guantanamo Bay commander Rear Adm. John Ring over a "loss of confidence" in his leadership, the Southern Command said Sunday. Ring had been scheduled to leave the post in seven weeks. He was fired after a month-long investigation. Ring "will be temporarily assigned duties elsewhere," Col. Amanda Azubuike, a Southern Command spokeswoman, said. Ring's deputy, Brig. Gen. John Hussey, has been assigned to replace him as acting commander. For a year, Ring was in charge of Guantanamo, which has 40 terror-war detainees and 1,800 military personnel and civilian employees. He had pressed for upgrades, warning the camp was "falling into the ground and deteriorating rapidly" and would be inadequate as detainees aged.

The New York Times NBC News

8. Trump says ending family separations was 'a disaster'

President Trump said Sunday that ending the separations of undocumented immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border had been "a disaster" that caused a surge of migrants trying to get into the U.S. Trump said in a TV interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that family separations had been a "disincentive" for people seeking to get into the U.S. illegally. "Now you don't get separated, and while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have literally ... 10 times as many families coming up because they're not going to be separated from their children," he said. "It's like Disneyland now," he added later. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that the number of illegal crossings is now six times higher than it was when the family separation policy was ended last June.

The Washington Post

9. Southwest says Boeing delayed mentioning safety feature was turned off

Boeing didn't tell Southwest and other airlines that it had disabled a safety feature in its 737 MAX jets until after the October Lion Air crash in Indonesia, Southwest said. Federal Aviation Administration inspectors also reportedly were not aware of the disabling of the standard feature, which is designed to warn pilots when sensors monitoring the pitch of a plane's nose malfunctioned and gave bad data. Southwest said it turned the feature back on in its planes after receiving the information. The popular 737 MAX planes were grounded worldwide after a second deadly crash that investigators have linked to problems with an automated flight control system that automatically pushed down the plane's nose to avoid a stall when sensors said the nose was rising too sharply.

The Wall Street Journal The Associated Press

10. Congress reconvenes with Democrats pushing Trump investigations

Congress returns to work Monday after a two-week Easter break with Democrats planning to press ahead with investigations of President Trump. Lawmakers have been in recess since the release of a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election interference, which found insufficient evidence to conclude Trump associates collaborated with Moscow, but explicitly did not exonerate Trump on whether he obstructed justice. Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to appear before Senate and House committees on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss Mueller's report. Democrats are outraged by Barr's presentation of the report in a way they said was designed to water down damning information about Trump's actions.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution CNN