SLOVYANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Government forces traded fire Monday with pro-Russian separatists who control an eastern Ukraine city, after the country's new president announced daily negotiations were underway toward ending the conflict.

Loud booms and shelling were heard in downtown Slovyansk, where at least six buildings bore damage from shelling a day earlier. The city has been an epicenter of a nearly two-month standoff between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels, who have seized administrative buildings, police stations and border posts across the region.

The clashes come a day after President Petro Poroshenko announced that negotiations had started in Kiev between Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Poroshenko said the meeting focused on strengthening the porous Ukraine-Russia border, and said Ukraine "must cease fire by the end of this week." While he promised the negotiators would meet daily until the crisis was resolved, he did not say whether results had been achieved on Sunday.

The OSCE, whose rotating presidency is currently held by Switzerland, said Heidi Tagliavini, a Swiss diplomat who has worked on crises in places like Chechnya and Georgia, was its representative in the negotiations. Poroshenko's office said Russia's ambassador to Ukraine and the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany also took part.

On Monday, Ukraine's acting defense minister, Mykhailo Koval, told journalists that Poroshenko was working toward bringing the conflict to an end "in the quickest time period," according to the Interfax news agency. He did not give a specific date. Russia has repeatedly called for Ukraine to end its operation in the east, while Ukraine has blamed Russia for fomenting tensions in the region and backing the rebels materially.

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Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire at the burning furniture factory after a mortar attack fro …

Fighting resumed Monday in Slovyansk, where residents said at least six buildings — including a petrol station, two shopping centers and two apartment buildings — had been hit by mortars a day earlier.

Andriy, a local plainclothes policeman who wouldn't give his last name, was standing with other officers in uniform near the debris.

"Yesterday the center of the city was hit the hardest," he said. "There were a lot of injured people, and a lot of buildings were hit that haven't been hit before."

Dozens of cars carrying civilians were seen leaving the city by road, and a bus with a sign in the windshield reading "children" left the city on Monday. The UN Refugee Agency estimated in late May that at least 10,000 people in Ukraine were internal refugees, a figure that has undoubtedly grown as both Ukrainian and Russian sides dig in. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that his government was providing aid to Ukrainian refugees within Russia, who he previously estimated to number about 4,000.

"They will end the shooting only when they erase us from the face of the planet, when nothing remains here but a flat space," said Svetlana, a 52-year-old resident of Slovyansk who would not give her last name. "Only then the war will be finished."

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Refugees sit in a bus, leaving Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine, Monday, June 9, 2014 after a mortar attac …

Rebels have held the Ukrainian government responsible for the rising number of civilian casualties in the conflict, while the Kiev leadership says the insurgents have attacked civilians in order to foment resentment against the government.

Government officials say at least 200 people — most of whom were civilians — have been killed in the conflict so far.

The spokesman for Ukraine's operation in the east, Vladislav Seleznev, wrote on Facebook late Sunday that the separatists were responsible for the shelling in Slovyansk.

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Mills contributed reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Jim Heintz contributed reporting from Moscow.

U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Berghdal is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Army and received by Reuters on May 31, 2014. REUTERS/U.S. Army/Handout via Reuters

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A political storm over the trade of five Taliban inmates for a captured American soldier intensified on Monday when Obama administration officials told U.S. lawmakers that up to 90 people within the administration - but no members of Congress - were told in advance about the swap.

"It strikes me as unfortunate that they could have 80 to 90 people in the administration aware of what was happening and not be able to trust a single Republican or Democrat in the House or the Senate," Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, a member of the House of Representatives Republican leadership, told reporters after leaving a briefing on the exchange.

The White House has been trying to appease angry lawmakers since President Barack Obama announced on May 31 that Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl had been exchanged for the five inmates from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

House Republicans said they planned an investigation of the exchange deal.

Lawmakers and human rights activists said they expected the furor would make it more difficult to win Congress' backing for Obama's avowed intention to close the detention camp, long criticized by human rights groups and others.

"Congress does not like to be left out of the loop," Texas Representative Gene Green, a Democrat, told Reuters. If the White House had called at least the leaders of national security committees, "that would have been much better and maybe we would not have had this controversy," he said.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said in a Senate speech on Monday he would introduce a bill this week that would bar any federal funding for Guantanamo transfers for six months.

Congressional aides told Reuters that similar legislation is expected to be introduced as soon as this week in the Republican-led House, where opposition to closing the Guantanamo prison is far stronger than in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Members of Congress were not informed about the prisoner swap deal despite U.S. law requiring that the House and Senate be given 30 days' notice before any prisoners are transferred from Guantanamo.

Top White House staff have apologized to a few senior lawmakers. They have also held classified briefings including Monday's session for the House and a similar one for the Senate last week.

A classified Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the matter is planned for Tuesday with senior defense and intelligence officials. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will testify in a public House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

California Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, promised an investigation of the swap deal. He said it would start with the hearing on Wednesday with Hagel, but include additional hearings and briefings.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gay couples across Wisconsin rushed to wed Monday, as more than half of the counties in the state began issuing licenses ahead of an expected hold on a ruling that the state's same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in Madison struck down the ban Friday in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the prohibition. But she didn't order county clerks to begin issuing licenses or block them from handing them out. Instead, she asked the ACLU to submit a proposed order spelling out how the organization wants her decision implemented, which the ACLU did late Monday.

For now, her stance has left county clerks to decide on their own whether they can legally issue licenses to same-sex couples. Clerks in Milwaukee and Madison, the state's liberal hubs, began issuing licenses to same-sex couples within hours of the ruling. Together the counties issued 238 licenses on Friday and Saturday.

At least 42 of Wisconsin's 72 counties were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Monday, according to a canvass by The Associated Press. Clerks in a handful of counties did not answer phone calls. Many, but not all, also waived the state's five-day waiting period.

Dozens of couples were initially refused licenses in Appleton, Green Bay and elsewhere on Monday while county clerks in those communities sought advice from the Wisconsin Vital Records Office, which keeps marriage records. Nearly 100 people at the Outagamie County Clerk's office in Appleton objected when told they could not apply for licenses.

"We did tell them we weren't leaving until licenses were issued," said Kathy Flores, 47, of Appleton, who hopes to marry her partner, Ann Kendzierski.

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Stacie Christian, right, and Julie Tetzlaff, left, celebrate their marriage Monday, June 9, 2014, af …

Soon after, Outagamie County attorney Joe Guidote told couples that he had advised Clerk Lori O'Bright to accept applications for licenses. Flores said later that she knew one couple who received a waiver because a parent was very ill.

Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno said she decided to issue licenses to about 10 couples at her Green Bay office after failing to reach anyone in the Wisconsin Vital Records Office. She said she explained to couples the work would stop as soon as a court put the judge's decision on hold.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Novack said her office west of Milwaukee began accepting applications for licenses about 9:30 a.m. Monday after she talked to a county attorney, saw what other counties were doing and spoke with waiting couples. Her office had issued about a half-dozen licenses in the first half-hour and expected perhaps two dozen or so more by the end of the day.

The Rock County clerk's office in Janesville said it issued two licenses before noon on Monday. Kenosha County Clerk Mary T. Schuch-Krebs said she gave a license to one couple who told her they planned to marry that night.

"I don't see anything that tells me otherwise," she said.

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Berri West, left, and new spouse Lisa West, right, hold their daughter Sylas just before they were m …

St. Croix County deputy clerk Cheryl Harmon said a county attorney told her office in Hudson not to issue licenses until after Crabb's June 16 deadline for the ACLU to submit its proposed order. La Crosse County Clerk Ginny Dankmeyer said her county's attorney initially gave the same advice but she issued a license later in the day, after Crabb refused Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's request for an emergency order halting the marriages.

But how long the couples' window stays open is anyone's guess.

Van Hollen also appealed Crabb's decision to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked it to stop the ceremonies.

"There is absolutely no reason to allow Wisconsin's county clerks to decide for themselves, on a county-by-county basis, who may and may not lawfully get married in this state," Van Hollen said in a statement.

Crabb said in rejecting Van Hollen's request for an emergency hold that clerks weren't issuing licenses because of anything she did. The judge said since she hasn't yet issued an order it's not clear what Van Hollen wants to stop. Once both sides have a chance to weigh in on the scope of the ACLU's proposed order she'll decide whether to put it on hold, she said.

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Jen Wold and Jodi Bova, of Wind Lake, Wis. wait in the Racine County Clerk's office on Monday, J …

The order would require state officials to let gay couples marry and to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. It also would guarantee gay couples who marry the same rights as opposite-sex couples.

The 7th Circuit, meanwhile, could rule at any moment.

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Saturday he expected Crabb's order to be put on hold. But he noted that more than 1,000 couples married in Utah before a hold was issued there, and a judge recently said those marriages were valid. That decision, like others related to gay marriage, has been appealed.

Given events around the nation, Tobias said he expects the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue next year.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that everything will be fine for those couples," Tobias said, "but we just don't know right now."

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Johnson reported from Milwaukee. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison and Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

Militants seize Iraq's second-largest city

Mosul (Iraq) (AFP) - Gunmen seized Iraq's second-largest city Tuesday as troops threw away their uniforms and abandoned their posts, officials said, in another blow to the authorities, who appear incapable of stopping militant advances.

Predominantly Sunni Muslim Mosul, 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Baghdad, has long been a militant stronghold and one of the most dangerous areas in the country.

Capital of Nineveh province, it is the second city after Fallujah, west of the capital, that the government has lost this year.

"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an interior ministry official told AFP, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms.

Adding that the gunmen were Sunni, he said they announced over loudspeakers that they had "come to liberate Mosul and would fight only those who attack them."

A brigadier general in the military command responsible for Nineveh told AFP clashes with hundreds of militants from the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) began late Monday.

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Iraqi soldiers gather as their unit is shipped north from the central Shiite Muslim shrine city of N …

He said military units withdrew from the city's east to its west, and then began leaving the city, with the militants now in control.

The militants seized the headquarters of the provincial government and the Nineveh Operations Command as well as the airport, and freed hundreds of prisoners from three jails, according to the officer.

An AFP journalist, himself fleeing the city with his family, said shops were closed, security forces had abandoned vehicles and a police station had been set ablaze.

Militants have launched major operations in Nineveh, Anbar, Diyala, Salaheddin and Baghdad provinces since Thursday, killing scores of people and highlighting both their long reach and the weakness of Iraq's security forces.

In early January, the government lost control of Fallujah, just a short drive from Baghdad.

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Iraqis inspect destruction in the street following an explosion the previous day in Sadr City, Baghd …

Violence is running at its highest levels since 2006-2007, when tens of thousands were killed in sectarian conflict between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority.

More than 900 people were killed last month, according to figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government.

So far this year, more than 4,600 people have been killed, according to AFP figures.

Officials blame external factors for the rising bloodshed, particularly the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

But analysts say widespread Sunni Arab anger with the Shiite-led government has also been a major factor.

Gunmen seize the northern city of Mosul as troops throw away their uniforms and abandon their posts.
'Outside the control of the state'

Pakistan: Karachi airport training center attacked

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen in Pakistan attacked a training facility near the Karachi airport on Tuesday, a spokesman said.

Pakistani television stations showed images of security guards rushing to the scene and frantically taking up positions behind buildings or earthen berms around the facility, which serves as a training center for airport security personnel. The facility is roughly one kilometer (half mile) from the Karachi international airport.

The attack began as at least two groups of gunmen tried to enter the facility from two different entrances, said Ghulam Abbas Memon, a spokesman for the Airport Security Force. The security forces were fighting them back, he said. Memon did not know how many attackers were involved or whether there were any casualties.

Details were sketchy and no one immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack.

The firefight came on the heels of a brazen siege by the Taliban who on Sunday night stormed Karachi's Jinnah International Airport in an attack that killed 36 people, including the 10 Taliban gunmen. At least 11 members of the Airport Security Force were killed during that attack.

The Civil Aviation Authority, which is responsible for running the country's airports, said in its Twitter feed that all flights at the Karachi international airport have been suspended because the academy for the ASF was under attack.

The organization called on people to be calm and patient.