WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the Islamic State group will have lost by next week all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. He said the U.S. will not relent in fighting remnants of the extremist organization despite his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria over the objections of some of his most senior national security advisers.

The president told representatives of a 79-member, U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group that the militants held a tiny percentage of the vast territory they claimed as their “caliphate.”

“It should be formally announced sometime, probably next week, that we will have 100 percent of the caliphate,” Trump said.

U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, has lost 99.5 percent of its territory and is holding on to less than 2 square miles, in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where the bulk of the fighters are concentrated.

But there are fears the impending U.S. pullout will imperil those gains. Trump told coalition members meeting at the State Department that while “remnants” of the group were still dangerous, he was determined to bring U.S. troops home. He called on coalition members to step up and do their “fair share.”

Even as Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the withdrawal, some military leaders, renewed their concerns.

While the withdrawal would fulfill a Trump goal, top military officials have pushed back for months, arguing the Islamic State group remains a threat and could regroup.

Holocaust survivors receive reparations for deportations

WASHINGTON — More than seven decades after World War II, 49 Holocaust survivors are receiving $402,000 each from the French government in reparations for the French trains that deported them to Nazi concentration camps, the State Department said Wednesday.

Thirty-two surviving spouses of deportees who died after the war will receive up to $100,500 each, officials said.

The payments fall under a 2014 U.S.-France agreement in which the French government offered $60 million in reparations for Holocaust deportations. In exchange, the U.S. government asked courts to dismiss any lawsuits against the French railway, known as SNCF, and the French government.

Experts said the agreement is unique because it also includes compensation for heirs.

Conviction upheld for woman who urged boyfriend’s suicide

BOSTON — A young woman who as a teenager encouraged her boyfriend through dozens of text messages to kill himself is responsible for his suicide, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Wednesday in upholding her involuntary manslaughter conviction.

The Supreme Judicial Court said in a unanimous decision that Michelle Carter’s actions caused Conrad Roy to die in a truck filled with toxic gas in a deserted parking lot nearly five years ago.

“After she convinced him to get back into the carbon monoxide filled truck, she did absolutely nothing to help him: she did not call for help or tell him to get out of the truck as she listened to him choke and die,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote.

Carter, now 22, was sentenced to 15 months in jail, but has remained free while pursuing appeals.

Boyfriend of admitted Russian spy faces unrelated charges

PIERRE, S.D. — The boyfriend of a Russian woman who admitted she was a secret agent for the Kremlin is charged with fraud in South Dakota.

The South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that 56-year-old Paul Erickson pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of wire fraud and money laundering.

The charges appear unrelated to the case of 30-year-old Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty in December for trying to infiltrate conservative political groups.

Prosecutors say Erickson defrauded “many victims” from 1996 through 2018 in a variety of development schemes.

Erickson in 2015 helped arrange speeches in South Dakota for Butina to talk about freedom and entrepreneurship at a school, at a university and a teenage Republican camp.

Palestinians: U.S.-backed Mideast summit ‘futile’

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior Palestinian official says the Palestinians have not been invited to next week’s Mideast conference in Poland and have no desire to participate unless the U.S. changes its policies.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Wednesday that current U.S. policies will “only lead to futile results.”

The U.S. and Poland are sponsoring the Feb. 13-14 conference, which they say is aimed at promoting peace and security in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans on attending.

The Palestinians accuse the Trump administration of being unfairly biased in favor of Israel, and say they will reject any U.S. peace initiative unless it endorses an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Mexican authorities surround caravan

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico — A caravan of about 1,600 Central American migrants was surrounded Wednesday by Mexican authorities in an old factory a short distance from Texas, where they hoped to seek asylum even as U.S. authorities sent extra law enforcement and soldiers to stop them.

The migrants arrived Monday in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas. The caravan is the first in recent months to head toward Texas instead of California.

But Mexican police and soldiers are holding the caravan in the factory and not letting them go elsewhere, in part to prevent a mass attempt by migrants to cross the Rio Grande. Only migrants who receive a humanitarian visitor visa from Mexico were to be allowed to leave the factory, officials said.

In Africa: The U.S. is scaling back its security assistance to Cameroon after credible allegations that the Cameroonian military carried out human rights violations, the State Department said Wednesday. Cameroon is a key U.S. security partner, and about 300 U.S. troops are based there to train and assist its military.

In Michigan: Former Rep. John Dingell, 92, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, is receiving hospice care, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

His wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, tweeted Wednesday morning that she was with him at their home in Dearborn.