AP News in Brief at 12:09 a.m. EDT
Top North Korean official, Pompeo meet to discuss summit
NEW YORK (AP) - A senior North Korean official and the top U.S. diplomat had dinner in New York on Wednesday as President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un try to salvage prospects for a high-stakes nuclear summit. It's the highest-level official North Korean visit to the United States in 18 years.
Kim Yong Chol, the former military intelligence chief and one of the North Korean leader's closest aides, landed midafternoon on an Air China flight from Beijing. Associated Press journalists saw the plane taxi down the tarmac before the North's delegation disembarked at JFK International Airport.
During his unusual visit, Kim Yong Chol had dinner for about an hour-and-a-half with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled from Washington to see him. The two planned a "day full of meetings" Thursday, the White House said. Their talks will be aimed at determining whether a meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un, originally scheduled for June 12 but later canceled by Trump, can be restored, U.S. officials have said.
The talks come as preparations for the highly anticipated summit in Singapore were barreling forward on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, despite lingering uncertainty about whether it will really occur, and when. As Kim and Pompeo were meeting in New York, other U.S. teams were meeting with North Korean officials in Singapore and in the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone.
"If it happens, we'll certainly be ready," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the Singapore summit. Regarding the date for the meeting, she added, "We're going to continue to shoot for June 12th."
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3 sets of talks aimed at salvaging summit between Trump, Kim
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A top lieutenant of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in the United States conducting one of three sets of parallel talks aimed at salvaging a summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.
Kim Yong Chol is meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York to finalize plans for the summit, while lower-level officials have been meeting at the inter-Korean border and in Singapore for other pre-summit negotiations.
A look at what is at stake in the three sets of talks:
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U.S. TALKS
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AP source: Ex-FBI No. 2 official wrote memo on Comey firing
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe drafted a memo on circumstances leading up to the firing of his onetime boss, James Comey, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday night.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to discuss a secret document that has been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller. His team is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 presidential election and whether the president sought to obstruct that inquiry through actions including the firing of Comey last May.
The memo concerns a conversation that McCabe had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Rosenstein's preparations for Comey's firing. Rosenstein played an important role in that episode, having authored a memo faulting Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation that the White House held up as justification for President Donald Trump's decision to fire the FBI director.
Rosenstein has said he wrote a memo laying out his concerns with Comey after learning that the White House intended to fire him.
According to McCabe's memo, Rosenstein indicated to him that he was initially asked to reference the Russia investigation in his own memo on Comey. But the final version didn't include discussion of Russia and focused instead on the Clinton email case.
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Puerto Rico grid 'teetering' despite $3.8 billion repair job
CAIN ALTO, Puerto Rico (AP) - After months of darkness and stifling heat, Noe Pagan was overjoyed when power-line workers arrived to restore electricity to his home deep in the lush green mountains of western Puerto Rico. But to his dismay, instead of raising a power pole toppled by Hurricane Maria, the federal contractors bolted the new 220-volt line to the narrow trunk of a breadfruit tree - a safety code violation virtually guaranteed to leave Pagan and his neighbors blacked out in a future hurricane.
"I asked the contractors if they were going to connect the cable to the post and they just didn't answer," said Pagan, a 23-year-old garage worker.
After an eight-month, $3.8 billion federal effort to try to end the longest blackout in United States history, officials say Puerto Rico's public electrical authority, the nation's largest, is almost certain to collapse again when the next hurricane hits this island of 3.3 million people.
"It's a highly fragile and vulnerable system that really could suffer worse damage than it suffered with Maria in the face of another natural catastrophe," Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello said.
Another weather disaster is increasingly likely as warmer seas turbocharge the strongest hurricanes into even more powerful and wetter storms. Federal forecasters say there's a 75 percent likelihood that the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Friday, will produce between five and nine hurricanes. And there's a 70 percent chance that as many as four of those could be major Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph (179 kph) or higher.
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Florida school shooting suspect foretold intention in videos
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - In chilling cellphone videos released Wednesday, the suspect in a February massacre at a Florida high school announced his intention to become the next school shooter, aiming to kill at least 20 people and saying "you're all going to die."
The three videos released by prosecutors were found on the cellphone of suspect Nikolas Cruz after the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people and injured 17 others.
Cruz, wearing a ball cap, introduces himself in the first video and says he is "going to be the next school shooter of 2018." He goes on to say that he wants to use an AR-15 to kill at least 20 people and specifies the high school in Parkland. The videos are undated, but on one he says, "Today is the day. Today it all begins. The day of my massacre shall begin."
"When you see me on the news, you'll all know who I am," he says in another and then laughs. "You're all going to die. ... Can't wait."
In a second video, Cruz briefly discusses logistics, including that he will take Uber to campus about 2:40. He then says he'll walk onto campus, go up some stairs, open his bag to take out his weapon and start firing. School surveillance video shows that was almost exactly what he did -the only difference being that he arrived at the school at 2:19 p.m.
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Trump planning tariffs on European steel, aluminum
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's administration is planning to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports after failing to win concessions from the European Union, a move that could provoke retaliatory tariffs and inflame trans-Atlantic trade tensions.
The tariffs are likely to go into effect on the EU with an announcement by Friday's deadline, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The administration's plans could change if the two sides are able to reach a last-minute agreement, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Trump announced in March the United States would slap a 25 percent tariff on imported steel, and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, citing national security interests. But he granted an exemption to the EU and other U.S. allies; that reprieve expires Friday.
Europe has been bracing for the U.S. to place the restrictions even as top European officials have held last-ditch talks in Paris with American trade officials to try to avert the tariffs.
"Realistically, I do not think we can hope" to avoid either U.S. tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminum, said Cecilia Malmstrom, the European Union's trade commissioner. Even if the U.S. were to agree to waive the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, Malmstrom said, "I expect them nonetheless to want to impose some sort of cap on EU exports."
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Harvey Weinstein indicted on rape, criminal sex act charges
NEW YORK (AP) - Harvey Weinstein was indicted on rape and criminal sex act charges, furthering the first criminal case to arise from a slate of sexual misconduct allegations against the former movie mogul.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said Wednesday's indictment brings Weinstein "another step closer to accountability" for alleged attacks on two women in New York.
Weinstein's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said he would "vigorously defend" against the indictment and ask a court to dismiss it. He called the allegations "unsupported" and reiterated that Weinstein strongly denies them.
The indictment came hours after Weinstein's lawyer said the film producer would decline to testify before the grand jury because there wasn't enough time to prepare him and "political pressure" made an indictment unavoidable.
"Regardless of how compelling Mr. Weinstein's personal testimony might be, an indictment was inevitable due to the unfair political pressure being placed on Cy Vance to secure a conviction of Mr. Weinstein," the statement said.
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'Slain' Russian journalist turns up alive at news conference
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - To the gasps, whoops and applause of stunned colleagues, Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko walked into a news conference Wednesday, less than a day after police in the Ukrainian capital said he had been assassinated.
Authorities said his death had been staged to foil a plot on his life by Moscow's security services and one arrest was made. Russia denounced the faked killing as an outlandish attempt at defamation by its neighbor and foe.
Even Babchenko's wife was unaware of the deception, and the 41-year-old Kremlin critic who fled to Ukraine 15 months ago apologized to her "for the hell she had to go through in the past two days. There was no choice there, either."
Neither Babchenko nor Ukrainian Security Service chief Vasyl Gritsak gave details of the sting operation or how they made his wife believe he was dead.
Kiev Police Chief Andriy Krishchenko had announced Babchenko's death Tuesday, saying the journalist's wife found him bleeding at their apartment building in Kiev but that he died en route to the hospital. Lawmaker Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, said the assailant had waited on a staircase in the building and shot Babchenko in the back as he was going to buy bread.
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ABC and 'Roseanne': Many warning signs before racist tweet
NEW YORK (AP) - An old picture of Roseanne Barr dressed as Adolf Hitler, wearing a swastika and pulling burnt cookies from an oven, splashed on the front of the New York Daily News Wednesday like a neon sign asking ABC executives: What were you thinking?
Given Barr's past incidents of bad behavior and questionable social media posts, ABC faced questions Wednesday about why it went back into business with her before it all blew apart. ABC canceled its successful reboot of "Roseanne" on Tuesday following the star's racist tweet likening former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to a cross between the Muslim Brotherhood and a "Planet of the Apes" actor.
Barr continued tweeting on Wednesday, at one point saying the offending tweet was composed at 2 a.m. after she took the insomnia drug Ambien. That led the drug maker Sanofi to say on social media that "racism is not a known side effect" of their product.
President Donald Trump, noting in a tweet that Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's parent Walt Disney Co., had called Jarrett to apologize, wondered why ABC hadn't apologized for "HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC."
On social media, Barr wrote that what she said was indefensible, then retweeted several statements others made supporting her. She apologized to those who had lost their jobs because of her action, but also condemned cast members who threw her under the bus, in her words.
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Caps hold off Knights 3-2 in Game 2, even Stanley Cup Final
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Alex Ovechkin, Braden Holtby and the Washington Capitals stayed cool in the 100-degree Vegas heat and evened the Stanley Cup Final.
Holtby made 37 saves, Ovechkin scored a power-play goal and Lars Eller added a goal and two assists in the Capitals' 3-2 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 2 on Wednesday night.
The Caps hung on through a scoreless third period for their first Stanley Cup Final victory in franchise history largely because of a bounce-back performance by Holtby, who was battered in Vegas' 6-4 series-opening win.
Holtby capped his energetic performance with a jaw-dropping stick save with 1:59 to play, stretching back to rob Alex Tuch of a possible tying goal.
"We refocus and pick each other up and that's a sign of a good team," Holtby said. "That's one of our strengths."