Hillary Clinton announced Friday that she wants to enlist 5 million new volunteers into a “National Service Reserve” aimed at 18- to 30-year-olds.

“What if we strengthen the culture of service in America so it wasn’t just something we did one day a year, but it became a regular part of our lives?” she asked at a Florida rally on the topic of national service on Friday.

The former secretary of state argued that her volunteer plan would help combat growing self-segregation in America, where people surround themselves with people who think, talk, look and read the same news as they do. “That comes with a cost. It magnifies our differences,” she said, adding that the election has drawn attention to that trend. “Then it makes it harder to put those differences aside when our country needs us.”

Reservists, under Clinton’s plan, would respond to natural disasters, help the homeless or tackle other local problems, the campaign said. Under the plan, they would be eligible for college credit, time off from work, or even a “modest stipend,” based on financial need, to participate in the Reserve. (Clinton will negotiate with higher education institutions and corporations to get those benefits.)

Clinton also wants to expand AmeriCorps, a paid-service organization, from 75,000 members to 250,000, and expand the Peace Corps for those who want to volunteer abroad. The “ultimate goal” is that anyone who wants to serve full time will be able to do so, Clinton said in her speech. Part of the plan is also aimed at adding volunteer opportunities for Americans over 55 by increasing slots for them in AmeriCorps and involving them in other volunteer organizations.

A Clinton campaign aide said the program offers a contrast to Trump’s “self-centered message” during a week in which he has feuded with a former beauty queen on Twitter and in interviews. “As we see Trump focused on making sexist and derogatory comments and dividing the country, we are going to continue to run a campaign that’s about bringing the country together,” the aide said of Clinton’s national service speech.

The plan also offers an opportunity for the candidate to emphasize her own record of service for children — which could help combat her high unfavorable ratings — while also reaching out to voters under 30.

Clinton has struggled to consolidate support among millennials, whose votes she needs to win crucial swing states like Florida and North Carolina. Earlier this month, she gave a speech aimed at the group,admitting that many of them have doubts about her but vowing to win their support. Her top surrogates, including Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders, have fanned out on college campuses in battleground states to urge young voters to back Clinton and to tout her plan to make college “debt free” for middle-class families.

The campaign noted that millennials are particularly interested in volunteerism and that five times as many people apply for AmeriCorps than get accepted.   AP

RUTHERFORD, Calif. (AP) — Driving north through the Napa Valley before sunrise, portable lights like spaceships illuminate workers in the vineyards. The smell of fermentation and grapes fill the air — the annual wine harvest is underway.

At Quintessa winery, grape picking began under a crescent moon at 4 a.m. Wednesday, with the fruit sorted and dropped into tanks a few hours later for fermentation. Napa is known for its Cabernet and brings in most of its grapes for red wines in early September. White grapes are harvested a month or two earlier.

Winemaker Rebekah Wineburg said Quintessa's harvest began Sept. 8 and will continue through the end of October.

"There is an even pace of the harvest this year. The quality is excellent, and our yields are back to average, which is nice after the light yield in 2015," Wineburg said.Crews spread out over the Dragon's Terrace vineyard, one of the winery's premier vineyards, to pick Cabernet Sauvignon grapes amid the hum of tractors and workers yelling as they dropped grapes into bins.

Twenty tons of grapes were brought to the crush pad, where the fruit is sorted and de-stemmed before falling into the "gravity-flow winery," where fermentation takes place.

Andy Beckstoffer of Beckstoffer Vineyards, who is one of the largest wine growers the valley, said this season's batch should have enhanced flavors and less alcohol content.

"Harvest started at a normal time, but the cooler days at the beginning allowed for greater flavor development without much sugar accumulation," he said.Wineburg said she's excited by what she is seeing with the harvest.

"It makes me expect another great vintage," she said.  AP

FORT LEE, Va. (AP) — In a farewell visit of sorts, President Barack Obama on Wednesday told Virginia-based service members that the U.S. military is setting a good example for the rest of the country during a heated and divisive political campaign season.

The outgoing commander in chief thanked them for serving and said the U.S. military is the world's best because "we've got the best people."

"Sometimes, especially during election season, the country seems divided," Obama told about 550 troops at Fort Lee, without elaborating further on the heated presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

He praised the troops for setting a good example."You're unified in your mission. You do your job. You look out for each other," said Obama, who will leave office in January. "You remind us we're one team, we're one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. That's what you stand for."

While at Fort Lee, Obama also participated in a town hall-style event that was airing Wednesday night on CNN. Obama visited the same day that the Pentagon announced that 615 more troops were being sent to Iraq to help set the stage for an Iraqi-led battle to claim Mosul. The northern Iraqi city has been the Islamic State group's main stronghold for more than two years.

Obama reflected on his nearly eight years as president, saying that of all the privileges of the Oval Office, there's none greater than serving as commander in chief of the finest military in the world."We have the strongest military because we have the best people. You inspire me and Michelle and the American people," he said. "I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart."

Obama occasionally makes such thank-you visits, meeting mostly recently with troops at Naval Station Rota during a July trip to Spain. Similar stops have taken place over the years at bases in Texas, California and New Jersey, among others, where he meets with soldiers he has sent into harm's way, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama took office with the U.S. in the midst of wars in both of those countries. In Iraq, he steadily lowered troop levels and declared on Aug. 31, 2010, that their combat mission was ending, though at least 4,565 troops remain in an advise-and-assist role. In Afghanistan, Obama increased troop levels, which peaked at about 100,000 in 2010 before a steady reduction. About 8,400 troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan through the end of his administration in January. They have two missions: training and advising Afghan forces, and supporting counter-terrorism operations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. leads a coalition of 60-plus nations working to defeat the Islamic State group, which has footholds in Syria, Iraq and Libya.  AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that the central bank has no "fixed timetable" for raising interest rates but she believes the economy is ready for a rate hike by the end of the year.

She said during an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee that when the Fed met last week, a majority of her colleagues believed it would be appropriate to raise rates before the end of this year.

The Fed boosted its key policy rate in December 2015 to a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. But since then, officials have left the rate unchanged. Yellen told the lawmakers that she believed it would make sense to boost the rate again "if things continue on the current path and no significant new risks arise."

The Fed last week voted 7-3 to keep its key interest rate where it has been all year. But it did send a strong signal that it is prepared to raise rates before the end of the year, with many expecting a move in December.Yellen said that while inflation is not a threat at the moment, it is possible that the economy could begin to overheat with prices rising too quickly, forcing the Fed to accelerate the pace of rate hikes and raising the threat of a recession.

"If we allow the economy to overheat, we could be faced with having to raise interest rates more rapidly than we would want which could conceivably jeopardize that good state of affairs that we have come close to achieving," Yellen told lawmakers.

Some Republicans on the panel echoed a charge that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made during Monday's debate that the Fed had become too political and was delaying rate hikes in an effort to help Democrats win the election."We are in a big, fat ugly bubble," Trump said during the debate. "We have a Fed that's doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed."

Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., pressed Yellen to say whether she believed Fed board member Lael Brainard should recuse herself from voting on interest rate decisions given that she has donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Yellen said that federal law allows Fed governors to make political donations. Garrett also said he viewed Yellen's meetings with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and other Treasury Department officials as evidence she was too close to the Obama administration.

All Fed leaders, whether Democrats or Republicans, have followed the practice of holding weekly sessions with the Treasury secretary to review U.S. and global economic developments."I certainly have never been pressured in any way by the administration," Yellen told the committee. "The (Obama) administration, my experience has been, greatly respects the Fed's independence to make decisions in accordance with the Fed's mandate."

Yellen, who was testifying Wednesday on the Fed's role in regulating the nation's banking system, received a number of questions from lawmakers about the situation at Wells Fargo and whether federal banking regulators fell down on the job by not detecting practices at the nation's second largest bank that allegedly had Wells Fargo employees opening millions of accounts without customers' permission.

Yellen said it was important for top management at all banks to make sure that the compensation policies they establish do not create incentives for executives to pursue improper policies that harm customers or put the banks' safety at risk.In her testimony, Yellen said that the health of the financial system has strengthened considerably since the 2008 economic crisis, in part because of tougher regulations passed by Congress in 2010.

She said the Fed wants to make sure that the new requirements keep the country's largest banks from failing and destabilizing the entire financial system, while avoiding undue burdens on smaller institutions.

As part of that effort, the Fed has put forward a proposal to ease requirements for annual stress tests for all but the largest institutions.

Under the change the Fed is mulling, all banks with more than $50 billion in assets would still have to undergo annual stress tests to see if they would have a sufficient capital buffer to withstand loan losses in a severe economic downturn. But a concurrent, more detailed review would be dropped for all banks but those with more than $250 billion in assets.

While members of the committee praised this step, many Republican lawmakers complained that the Fed was still not doing enough to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens.  AP

Two officers responding to several calls for help in dealing with a mentally unstable person confronted an African-American man in his 30s walking in traffic in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, according to local police.

One policeman opened fire with his service pistol, while the other officer at the same time fired off a Taser stun gun - after the man pulled an unspecified object from his pants pocket and took aim at them in a "shooting stance," according to police. No weapon from the man, however, was recovered from the scene, police said.

Police did not immediately identify the victim, but local activists and friends named him as Ugandan-born Alfred Olango. They said he was mentally ill and that he may have been suffering a seizure in the moments before his death.

One of two officers dispatched to the scene had been trained as part of the San Diego County's Psychiatric Emergency Response Team, or PERT, El Cajon police said.

Days earlier, two black men were killed by police under questionable circumstances in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, igniting demonstrations against racial bias in U.S. policing and demanding greater accountability for law enforcement officers.

The shooting in Charlotte sparked a week of sometimes violent protests, prompting authorities there to impose a state of emergency and curfew.

CRIES FOR 'JUSTICE'

In El Cajon, a predominantly white city of about 100,000 residents with a significant community of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, civil rights activists and as many as 300 protesters gathered outside the police department, where they chanted "murder," "justice for Alfred Olango" and "black lives matter."

"We are not going to stop until we get justice," the Reverend Shane Harris, president of the National Action Network's San Diego chapter, said at the demonstration. "We do not trust local prosecutors to investigate local police."

"Mr. Olango was killed for three strikes against him. The first strike, being black. The second strike, being mentally ill. The third strike, not following orders," Christopher Rice-Wilson, a community activist, said.

Police acknowledged that emergency dispatchers had received three calls about a man suffering from mental distress before dispatching two patrol officers, who encountered the man, pacing back and forth behind a restaurant, at mid-afternoon on Tuesday. The man disregarded officers' commands to show both his hands as they tried talking with him.

The two officers then fired simultaneously when the man suddenly placed his hands together, armed extended, pointing an unknown object at them. Olango died after being taken to the hospital.

El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis told reporters later that no weapon was found at the scene. He did not say what the man appeared to be pointing at police.

"Now is a time for calm," Davis said. "I implore the community to be patient with us, work with us, look at the facts at hand before making any judgment."

The officers were placed on administrative leave.

Police said they obtained cellphone video that a bystander had taken of the shooting. But authorities released only a still frame from the footage that shows two officers pointing weapons at a man who was aiming an object at them.

In a separate video clip taken moments after the shooting and posted on social media, a woman who refers to herself as the victim's sister is heard crying in anguish.

"Oh my God. You killed my brother. I just called for help and ... you killed him," the unidentified woman says, sobbing.

Agnes Hassan, a refugee from Sudan, told the rally she had spent time in a refugee camp 

US and European markets moved higher on Wednesday as oil producing countries reached a surprise deal to cut oil production, causing crude prices to jump more than five percent.

Following the agreement reached in Algiers by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, oil stocks moved higher in New York, bringing the rest of the market up with them.

The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.6 percent while the broader S&P 500 gained 0.5 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.2 percent.

Oil producers saw strong gains on hopes that tighter global supplies could put an end to two years of moribund crude prices: Exxon Mobil rose 4.7 percent, Chevron gained 3.3 percent and ConocoPhillips ended up 7.7 percent higher.Earlier in the trading day, European stocks also rebounded, brushing aside a broad retreat across Asia, as oil prices pushed higher and Deutsche Bank shares rose, recouping some of their previous days' losses.

London's benchmark FTSE 100 index increased by 0.6 percent. In the eurozone, Frankfurt's DAX 30 was up 0.7 percent at the close the Paris CAC 40 gained 0.8 percent on the day.

OPEC member country officials in Algiers said they had reached an agreement to limit production to between 32.5 million and 33 million barrels per day, cutting daily output by about 750,000 barrels.

The subsequent rally saw the price for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate jump $2.38 in New York to $47.05. North Sea Brent rose $2.72 to finish at $48.69 in London.

- Deutsche Bank rebounds -

Shares in Germany's troubled Deutsche Bank rose more than 2 percent in Frankfurt as the German government and the bank sought to end speculation that authorities could bail out the lender, which has a weak capital base and faces a hefty sanction from US prosecutors in a financial crisis-related investigation.

Earlier this week, the company's share price had sunk to a record low on reports that Germany's biggest bank had asked Berlin for help after US authorities demanded a $14-billion fine.

Investors were also cheered by the decision from Canadian smartphone pioneer BlackBerry to cease manufacturing its own handsets and outsource production. The 

ATLANTA (AP) — An exit button inside a walk-in freezer in a downtown Atlanta hotel where a worker was found dead failed to work during an inspection, trapping two people who had to beat on the door to alert someone to let them out, a medical examiner found.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office has amended its autopsy for 61-year-old Carolyn Mangham to include the new details about the freezer exit button at the Westin Peachtree Plaza.

The hotel's parent firm, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, has cooperated fully with investigators, Starwood spokeswoman Carrie Bloom said.

The autopsy report, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, lists the cause of Mangham's death as "undetermined" but includes updated information about testing of the