First lady Melania Trump hasn't been seen in public in 15 days, The Washington Post reported Friday, but President Trump says his wife's White House life is business as usual.

Reporters asked Trump about the first lady's absence on Friday, and the president pointed at a White House window, responding that "she's doing great. She's looking at us right there." But Melania was nowhere to be seen.

Melania's unusually long disappearance from public life follows a five-night stay in the hospital for a kidney operation on May 14. She was last seen on May 10. The first lady has had "several internal staff meetings in the past week around a variety of topics, including her initiatives," her spokesperson told the Post, but her office didn't say when Melania would next venture into the public eye.

The first lady hasn't attended several other recent events where she would ordinarily be expected, but according to the president, she's just "doing great" in private, watching her husband interact with reporters from on high in the White House. Summer Meza

During an interview Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal, President Trump said that while the Federal Reserve has its independence when it comes to setting economic policy, he would like Chairman Jerome Powell to know that he wants interest rates lowered.

"Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates," Trump said. Powell, he added, "almost looks like he's happy raising interest rates." Powell's four-year term started in February, and when asked if he regrets nominating Powell to the post, Trump responded, "too early to say, but maybe." He also said he believes the Fed is "the biggest risk" to the economy, because "I think interest rates are being raised too quickly." The Fed has been slowly raising rates this year to protect against higher inflation or financial bubbles.

When asked why he thought interest rates were going up, Trump continued to take jabs at Powell, saying he was "supposed to be a low-interest-rate guy. It's turned out he's not." Trump also talked about tariffs, claiming that although the United States has recently imposed tariffs on steel, solar panels, washers, and aluminum, plus $250 billion in Chinese imports, "we don't even have tariffs. I'm using tariffs to negotiate." The steel and aluminum tariffs are "small," he said, before asking, "Where do we have tariffs? We don't have tariffs anywhere." Catherine Garcia

Target's coming for you, Amazon and Walmart.

This holiday season, the company is offering free two-day shipping for online orders, covering hundreds of thousands of items, with no minimum purchase. It's a way to undercut competitors like Amazon and Walmart, The Wall Street Journal reports, with Walmart offering free two-day shipping on orders of $35 or more and Amazon providing the same service for Prime members. The promotion will run from Nov. 1 to Dec. 22.

Target CEO Brian Cornell said the company has been converting stores to distribution centers, which cuts shipping costs and enables "our digital growth and strategy." He said about half of all online orders are now fulfilled at stores, and the plan is to fulfill more than 90 percent of all two-day orders from stores. Even with free shipping, Cornell said Target stores will still be filled with customers, as "over 80 percent of all holiday shopping is going to happen in the store." Catherine Garcia

Hurricane Willa made landfall Tuesday night south of Mazatlan, Mexico, as a Category 3 storm, with winds up to 120 mph.

Mazatlan is a popular tourist destination, and several cruise ships bound for the resort town have been diverted and more than 4,000 people along the coast have been evacuated. Officials are warning of life-threatening storm surge, rainfall, and wind in parts of western Mexico, with Willa expected to be one of the most dangerous storms to hit Mexico in years, CBS News reports.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated throughout. Catherine Garcia

An Idaho-based white supremacist group is behind a racist robocall targeting Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee and Florida's Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

Gillum is black, and the same white supremacist group, which operates the website The Road to Power, sent out a racist robocall against Gillum during the primary in August. In the new shockingly racist robocall, a person using a minstrel dialect says he is Gillum, and refers to himself as a "Negro." In the background, minstrel music plays, and a monkey is occasionally heard screeching. The ad also insults Jews, saying they are "the ones that been putting Negroes in charge over the white folk, just like they done after the Civil War."

Gillum's spokesman, Geoff Burgan, called the robocalls "disgusting" and "abhorrent," and said the campaign hopes "that these calls, and the dangerous people who are behind them, are not given any more attention than they already have been." Stephen Lawson, spokesman for Gillum's Republican opponent Ron DeSantis, said their campaign had "absolutely nothing to do" with the robocalls and "joins those in condemning it." In August, DeSantis used the term "monkey it up" in reference to Gillum, but later claimed this had nothing to do with race. His comment was referred to in the robocall. Catherine Garcia

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to meet in Paris in November, National Security Adviser John Bolton said Tuesday.

Discussions are now underway for the meeting, to take place during celebrations on Nov. 11 marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Putin and Trump last met in Helsinki in July.

Bolton is in Moscow to discuss the U.S. soon withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Russia has called the step "dangerous," and per a transcript provided by the Kremlin, Putin said to Bolton, "As I recall, there is a bald eagle pictured on the U.S. coat of arms. It holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. My question: Has your eagle already eaten all the olives, leaving only the arrows?"

"I didn't bring any olives," Bolton responded. Putin and Bolton met for 90 minutes, and Bolton said he also brought up "objectionable" election meddling, and why it "was particularly harmful for Russian-American relations without producing anything in return." Catherine Garcia

The U.S. is taking its first steps toward punishing Saudi Arabia for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. had identified "at least some of the individuals" suspected to be "responsible" for Khashoggi's murder at Turkey's Saudi consulate on Oct. 2. That includes "those in the intelligence services, the royal court, the foreign ministry, and other Saudi ministries," Pompeo said. The U.S. will withdraw visas from those people and is weighing sanctions against them, among other potential consequences.

As Pompeo made the announcement, Trump was giving a wide-ranging press conference that tackled Khashoggi's death. The Saudi operation was "carried out poorly and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups," Trump said. But he maintained that he wants to "see the facts" before deciding whether to believe Turkish claims that the Saudi government pre-planned and directed the killing.

Also in their Tuesday statements, Pompeo and Trump both reiterated opposition to the migrant caravan heading north through Mexico. Pompeo declared that migrants "will not be successful at getting into the United States illegally, no matter what." The caravan is still roughly 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Kathryn Krawczyk