SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The FBI says it is investigating the deadly mass shooting in California as an “act of terrorism.”

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, made the declaration at a news conference Friday in California.

He also said the shooters attempted to destroy evidence, including crushing two cell phones and discarding them in a trash can. He said authorities continue to investigate the case to understand the motivations of the shooters and whether they were planning more attacks.

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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The woman who helped her husband kill 14 people at holiday party in California praised the leader of the Islamic State group in a Facebook post just minutes into the attack.

A Facebook executive told The Associated Press that Tashfeen Malik posted the material under an alias account at 11 a.m. Wednesday. That was about the time the first 911 calls came in and when the couple were believed to have stormed into the San Bernardino social service center and opened fire.

The executive spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not allowed under corporate policy to be quoted by name.

The company discovered the Facebook account Thursday. It removed the profile from public view and reported its contents to law enforcement.

 

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani intelligence officials say Tashfeen Malik, one of the shooters in the California massacre, moved as a child with her family to Saudi Arabia 25 years ago.

The two officials say the family is originally from the Pakistani town of Karor Lal Esan, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Islamabad in Punjab province. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press.

Her father, Gulzar Malik, moved to Saudi Arabia about three decades ago for work. The officials say his family — including Tashfeen Malik, then only a few years old — joined him there 25 years ago and have lived there since.

Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Farook, killed 14 people at a holiday banquet for his co-workers before dying in a gunbattle with police.

REDLANDS, Calif. (AP) — A California landlord has invited media into the town house rented by the California attackers.

An MSNBC reporter on Friday found a crib, toys, a child’s book of the Quran, family pictures and shredded documents inside the Redlands, California, home. There was a computer screen, but no computer.

Authorities have said that Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stockpiled 12 pipe bombs, tools to make more explosives and well over 4,500 rounds of ammunition at the home. The couple had a 6-month-old daughter.

The residence is in a neighboring city to San Bernardino, where the couple opened fire on a holiday party of Farook’s county co-workers Wednesday, killing 14 people.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A coalition of Kansas clergy has offered a petition to Governor Sam Brownback’s administration asking the governor to rescind an executive order attempting to halt the relocation of Syrian refugees in the state.

The Wichita Eagle reported Wednesday that the group representing more than 50 Kansas churches says the order impedes their religious liberty to help refugees.

Brownback issued the order on November 16th directing that no state agency or organization receiving grant money through the state government to participate or assist “in any way in the relocation of Syrian refugees to Kansas” in the wake of the November attacks in Paris.

Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for Brownback, said the state has always welcomed refugees, but the federal government cannot guarantee security checks regarding the resettlement of refugees.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska says it mistakenly disclosed personal dental claims information in statements to more than 1,800 customers.

The company said Thursday that a printing error caused some dental explanation of benefits forms to be sent to the wrong customers. The forms reveal treatment and services that the insurer paid on a customer’s behalf.

The company says an internal review found that 1,872 dental plan customers received mail statements that included another customer’s name, member identification number and dental claim information. The forms did not disclose birth dates, Social Security numbers, or financial or employment information.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska says it sent notice to affected customers, and the mistake applied to less than ½ of 1 percent of its total membership.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Lawyers for two northeast Kansas voters have temporarily withdrawn a request for a court order blocking the state from enforcing registration restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson canceled a hearing scheduled Friday in the federal lawsuit after the request was withdrawn Thursday.

Alder Cromwell of Lawrence and Cody Keener of Eudora are challenging a 2013 law requiring new voters to document their U.S. citizenship when registering and Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s directive to county election officials to cancel registrations remaining incomplete after 90 days.

Kobach’s office found documents for Cromwell and Kenner and completed their registrations after the lawsuit was filed.

Attorney Will Lawrence said their lawyers will submit a new request on behalf of all voters with incomplete registrations.

Kobach said the lawsuit is “shot through with holes.”

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Forty Kansas State University distinguished professors have signed a letter to the state Legislature, seeking a halt to plans to allow concealed weapons on campus.

The Wichita Eagle reports that the letter was posted to the university’s website Wednesday morning. The professors are asking the Legislature to grant universities “permanent relief” from the Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act.

The professors said that allowing concealed weapons would not prevent intentional shootings, but may lead to more suicides and accidental shootings.

The law set a schedule for opening public buildings to concealed carry of firearms, unless the building is secured with metal detectors and armed guards. State universities are scheduled to allow concealed weapons on campuses by July 1, 2017.

The school’s Board of Regents is trying to come up with a policy that complies with the law but minimizes gun danger on campus.

LONDON (AP) — Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch InBev is considering the sale of premium brands Peroni and Grolsch to meet regulatory concerns ahead of its purchase of SABMiller.

AB InBev agreed last month to buy SABMiller for 71 billion pounds ($107 billion). The combination would account for 29 percent of the world beer market, and regulatory worries exist in markets all over the globe.

The companies said Thursday that it will start contacting potential buyers for Peroni and Grolsch and their businesses in Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K., as well as SAB’s Meantime craft brewery in Greenwich, London.

SABMiller has already announced it will sell its 58 percent stake in a venture with fellow brewer Molson Coors for $12 billion.

Any deal would be conditional on the sale going through.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City civic and business leaders say a Missouri lawmaker’s effort to eliminate the city’s earning tax would decimate the city’s budget if it succeeds.

Missouri Sen. Kurt Schafer pre-filed a bill Tuesday that would eliminate the earnings taxes in Kansas City and St. Louis. He says the tax is outdated and “clearly unconstitutional.”

In a public statement issued Wednesday, Mayor Sly James and business leaders said Schafer’s bill is based on incorrect legal reasoning and is state government interference with local control.

The 1 percent earnings and corporate profits tax generated nearly $234 million in the fiscal year that ended April 30.

The Kansas City Star reports many Kansas City political leaders don’t expect Schaefer’s bill to get much traction in the next session.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal agency has announced that it plans to study radiological contamination at a north St. Louis County creek that some residents are concerned may be linked to several cases of cancer.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry plans to gather information on contamination at Coldwater Creek for the next 18 to 24 months. The agency met with residents Wednesday.

Since 2013, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been removing soil contaminated by processing waste from a nuclear weapons program in a government storage site near Lambert St. Louis International Airport.

The Missouri health department is looking at whether cancer cases in the area around the creek are connected to contaminated water. The St. Louis County Health Department plans a health survey of people who grew up in the area in the ’70s and ’80s.

NEW YORK (AP) — Subway hopes to revamp its tarnished image by hiring former Coca-Cola executive Joseph Tripodi as its new chief marketing officer.

Tripodi is joining the sandwich chain at a tough time for the brand. Last month, Subway’s longtime spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trading child pornography and paying for sex with underage girls. Fogle began appearing in Subway commercials in 2000, touting his dramatic weight loss by eating the chain’s sandwiches.

Subway’s previous chief marketing officer, Tony Pace, left in July nearly two weeks after Fogle’s home was raided by authorities.

Tripodi retired from Coca-Cola Co. in February, after the 60 year old spent more than seven years as the soda company’s chief marketing and commercial officer.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is pushing for changes to court rules in an effort to halt what he calls abusive debt-collection actions.

Koster will be in St. Louis Thursday to spell out details of his plan.

The Democrat says research shows that abusive debt-collection practices disproportionately target minorities.

The treatment of black and other minority residents in the St. Louis region has come under scrutiny in the 16 months since the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed. The white Ferguson police officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, was not charged, but the shooting led to an examination of the way courts, police and others interact with minority residents in the St. Louis region.