World/Nation

Hundreds surge past police near Hungarian border

ROSZKE, Hungary - Hundreds of angry and frustrated asylum-seekers broke through police lines Monday near Hungary's southern border with Serbia and began marching north toward Budapest, while Britain and France pledged to take in tens of thousands more refugees to try to ease the crisis.

As European leaders debated how to share responsibility for the more than 340,000 people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who are already seeking refuge, Germany promised to spend billions of euros in extra aid for those already there and those yet to arrive. France weighed whether increased airstrikes against Islamic State militants would help to stem the flow of those fleeing Syria.

But the Hungarian prime minister scoffed at a proposed quota system for refugees in the 28-member European Union, saying it wouldn't work unless Europe first secured its borders.

Hungary's inability to control the flow of people across its southern border with Serbia was on graphic display Monday. Crowds who had grown tired of waiting for buses at Hungary's first migrant holding center near the border village of Roszke tore down flimsy police tape, advanced down a country road and walked around and straight through rows of police trying to block them.

Police shoved individual migrants and fired jets of pepper spray, but it had little effect as about half of the 500-strong crowd reached the M5 highway that connects Serbia and Hungary. They headed north along the shoulder, raising their arms and chanting "Germany! Germany!"

Dentist in lion hunt says he acted legally

MINNEAPOLIS - The Minnesota dentist whose killing of Cecil the lion sparked a global backlash emerged for an interview in which he disputed some accounts of the hunt, expressed agitation at the animosity directed at those close to him and said he would be back at work within days.

Walter Palmer, who has spent more than a month out of sight after becoming the target of protests and threats, intends to return to his suburban Minneapolis dental practice today. In an interview Sunday evening conducted jointly by The Associated Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune that advisers said would be the only one granted, Palmer said again that he believes he acted legally and that he was stunned to find out his hunting party had killed one of Zimbabwe's treasured animals.

"If I had known this lion had a name and was important to the country or a study obviously I wouldn't have taken it," Palmer said. "Nobody in our hunting party knew before or after the name of this lion."

Cecil was a fixture in the vast Hwange National Park and had been fitted with a GPS collar as part of Oxford University lion research. Palmer said he shot the big cat with the black mane using an arrow from his compound bow outside the park's borders but it didn't die immediately. He disputed conservationist accounts that the wounded lion wandered for 40 hours and was finished off with a gun, saying it was tracked down the next day and killed with an arrow.

An avid sportsman, Palmer shut off several lines of inquiry about the hunt, including how much he paid for it or others he has undertaken. No videotaping or photographing of the interview was allowed. During the 25-minute interview, Palmer gazed intensely at his questioners, often fiddling with his hands and turning occasionally to an adviser, Joe Friedberg, to field questions about the fallout and his legal situation.

Clinton says no need to apologize for email choice

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she does not need to apologize for using a private email account and server while at the State Department because "what I did was allowed."

In an interview with The Associated Press during a Labor Day campaign swing through Iowa, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also said the lingering questions about her email practices while serving as President Barack Obama's first secretary of state have not damaged her campaign.

"Not at all. It's a distraction, certainly," Clinton said. "But it hasn't in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we're making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country. And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out."

Yet even in calling the inquiry into how she used email as the nation's top diplomat a distraction, Clinton played down how it has affected her personally as a candidate.

"As the person who has been at the center of it, not very much," Clinton said. "I have worked really hard this summer, sticking to my game plan about how I wanted to sort of reintroduce myself to the American people."

Courting unions, Obama slams GOP policies

BOSTON - Courting unions on Labor Day, President Barack Obama denounced Republicans for a "constant attack on working Americans" and said he was using his executive power to force federal contractors to give paid sick leave to their employees.

Obama was met with resounding applause at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston on Monday when he said he had signed the executive order aboard Air Force One as he flew in to mark Labor Day. He said Republicans who claim the mantle of middle-class protectors are talking big, but they "have to walk the walk."

Obama said opponents of his economic policies "won't let facts or evidence get in their way."

"You just wait, you look up at the sky and prosperity will come raining down on us from the top of whatever high-rise in New York City," he said sarcastically. "But that's not how the economy works." He added that the GOP's mindset has been "wrecking the economy for a long, long time."

The Labor Day gesture to workers' groups came as Obama works to smooth over tensions with the labor movement over his trade agenda. Major unions are opposing Obama's push for sweeping new trade deals with Asia and Europe, with some threatening to work against Democrats who voted to support those talks in Congress.

- The Associated Press