AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Sticky impeachment trial questions: How long? Who testifies?

WASHINGTON (AP) — What will the impeachment trial look like?

While a Senate trial of President Donald Trump now appears inevitable, details of how it will unfold remain unknown. How long will proceedings last? Can either party summon witnesses to make its points? Senators will have to decide these and other, potentially thorny questions.

Presiding will be Chief Justice John Roberts — that’s in the Constitution — and theoretically he could issue key rulings on some of these questions. But Roberts is not likely to want to be in the spotlight, and a Senate majority could overrule him in any case.

Almost everything can be negotiated between Republicans and Democrats. That’s what happened in 1999, when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and the Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, worked out agreements for how Bill Clinton’s trial would run, including its length.

They never resolved their disagreement over witnesses, although in the end Senate Republicans approved calling just three people for testimony in private, far fewer than House Republicans who prosecuted the case wanted.

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Trump signs bills in support of Hong Kong; China furious

BEIJING (AP) — China reacted furiously to President Donald Trump’s signing of two bills on Hong Kong human rights and said the U.S. will bear the unspecified consequences.

A foreign ministry statement Thursday repeated heated condemnations of the laws and said China will counteract. It said all the people of Hong Kong and China oppose the move.

It’s still unclear, however, how China will respond exactly.

Trump signed the bills, which were approved by near unanimous consent in the House and Senate, even as he expressed some concerns about complicating the effort to work out a trade deal with China’s President Xi Jinping.

“I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong,” Trump said in a statement. “They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all.”

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Trump knew of whistleblower before releasing Ukraine aid

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was briefed on the whistleblower complaint about his dealings with Ukraine before the White House released nearly $400 million in military aid to Kyiv, officials say, shedding new light on events that triggered the impeachment inquiry.

Trump was told about the complaint in late August in a briefing by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and John Eisenberg, an attorney with the White House National Security Council, according to two officials not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The lawyers told the president about the complaint, explaining that they were trying to determine whether they were legally required to give it to Congress, the officials said. The aid was released on Sept. 11 amid growing pressure from lawmakers.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House has claimed there was no link between the military aid suspension and the president’s request for Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his family.

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Officials: Iraq protesters burn down Iran consulate in Najaf

BAGHDAD (AP) — Anti-government protesters burned down an Iranian consulate building in southern Iraq on Wednesday, while six protesters were killed by security forces who fired live rounds amid ongoing violence in the country, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Protesters torched the consulate in the holy city of Najaf in the evening. One protester was killed and at least 35 people were wounded when police fired live ammunition to prevent them from entering the building, a police official said.

The demonstrators removed the Iranian flag from the building and replaced it with an Iraqi one. Iranian staff were not harmed and escaped the building from the back door and authorities imposed a curfew in Najaf. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The incident marked an escalation in the demonstrations that have raged in Baghdad and across the mostly Shiite southern Iraq since Oct. 1. The protesters accuse the Shiite-led government of being hopelessly corrupt and complain of poor public services and high unemployment. They are also decrying growing Iranian influence in Iraqi state affairs.

Protesters previously attacked the Iranian consulate in Karbala earlier this month, scaling concrete barriers running the building.

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Winter storm threatens to scramble Thanksgiving travel plans

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A day after bringing havoc to the Rocky Mountains, a powerful winter storm rolled across the Midwest on Wednesday, threatening to scramble Thanksgiving plans for millions of people during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.

The storm, which was blamed for one death and hundreds of cancelled flights, pushed east into South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It dropped close to a foot of snow in some areas even as the system weakened and headed toward New York and Pennsylvania.

But the West was not free of heavy weather. A “bomb cyclone” caused by a rapid drop in air pressure brought snow to the mountains and wind and rain along the California and Oregon coasts. Drivers on Interstate 5 near the Oregon-California border spent 17 hours or more in stopped traffic as blizzard conditions whirled outside. Some slept in their vehicles.

“It’s one of those things, you couldn’t make it up if you tried,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brent Hewett said of back-to-back storms forming around the holiday.

Christina Williams and her 13-year-old son, who live in Portland, Oregon, got stuck in the storm as they tried to drive to the San Francisco area for Thanksgiving. Williams said she and other stranded drivers connected on Twitter using weather-related hashtags and began to communicate to find out what conditions were like in other parts of the backup.

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Utah hearing for Hawaii suspect in extreme cyberstalking

HONOLULU (AP) — A man arrested in Hawaii will be sent to Utah, where he’s accused of tormenting a family for more than year by sending more than 500 people to their house for unwanted services including food deliveries, repairs, tow trucks, locksmiths, plumbers and prostitutes.

Loren Okamura was in Honolulu’s federal courthouse Wednesday, for a scheduled detention hearing. His federal defender, Sharron Rancourt, said he wants to have that hearing in Utah.

He was indicted in Utah last month on charges of cyberstalking, interstate threats and transporting people for prostitution, court documents show. He was arrested at a Honolulu supermarket last week.

A magistrate judge ordered Okamura detained in Honolulu until he’s transported to Utah. It’s unclear when the hearing will be, but he would have had to face the charges in Utah eventually. Morgan Early, an assistant U.S. attorney in Honolulu, didn’t object to having the hearing in Utah, as long as Okamura continues to be detained.

Okamura, 44, targeted a father and his adult daughter, sending the woman threatening messages and posting her picture and address online, authorities said. One posting said the homeowner wanted drugs and prostitutes at the house in a quiet, middle-class neighbourhood in a Salt Lake City suburb.

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Labour says UK health service ‘for sale’ in US trade talks

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s health system became a battleground in the country’s election campaign on Wednesday, as opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accused Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson of secretly seeking a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States that would drive up the cost of drugs and imperil the state-funded service.

With the future of the National Health Service a hot issue in campaigning ahead of the Dec. 12 general election, Corbyn waved 451 pages of documents at a press conference declaring that they covered six rounds of negotiations between U.S. and U.K. negotiators over two years from July 2017. The documents, which have previously been published in redacted form, cover preliminary soundings ahead of formal trade talks that are set to begin once Britain leaves the European Union.

Corbyn said the leaked trade dossier provided proof Johnson was planning to put the National Health Service “up for sale” in trade talks.

“He tried to cover it up in a secret agenda and today it has been exposed,” Corbyn said.

Johnson — who was not prime minister for most of the period when the talks took place — rejected the claim.

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The small-town movie house braces for an unexpected threat

NEW YORK (AP) — The Callicoon Theater is a single-screen cinema along the banks of the Delaware River in the Catskills, in rural upstate New York. It has an art-deco facade and 380 seats. “We never sell out,” its box-office phone line promises. There’s not another theatre for 30 miles.

Kristina Smith last year moved up from Brooklyn and bought the Callicoon, becoming only its third owner. The Callicoon, she says, is more than a place to see “Frozen 2” or “Parasite.” It’s a meeting place, a Main Street fixture, a hearth.

“It’s been like that for a really long time. All the locals up here, from third-generation farmers to school teachers and families, they kind of rely on it,” says Smith. “In some of these rural areas in America, a little movie theatre is kind of a little beating heart of a town.”

Somehow, the Callicoon has managed to operate continuously for 71 years. It has survived television. It has survived the multiplex. It has survived Netflix. But, like a lot of small-town movie houses with one or two screens, the Callicoon is facing a new uncertainty. This time it’s not because of something new but the eradication of something old.

The Justice Department last week moved to terminate the Paramount Consent Decrees, the agreement that has long governed the separation of Hollywood studios from movie theatres. Hatched in the aftermath of a 1948 Supreme Court decision that forced the studios to divest themselves of the theatres they owned, the Paramount Decrees disallowed several then-common practices of studio control, like “block-booking,” or forcing theatres to take a block of films in order to play an expected hit.

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Stop! Washing your Thanksgiving turkey could spread germs

NEW YORK (AP) — Go ahead and rinse your cranberries, potatoes and green beans. But food experts say don’t — repeat don’t — wash the turkey before popping it in the oven on Thanksgiving Day.

They say that could spread the germs lurking on your turkey in the kitchen sink or nearby food. But it’s been a challenge trying to convince cooks to stop rinsing off raw poultry.

“If your mother did it and your grandmother did it, and suddenly the (government) says not to wash your turkey, you may take some time to adjust,” said Drusilla Banks, who teaches food sanitation for the University of Illinois Extension.

Germs that can make people sick are common in the guts of healthy poultry and are legally allowed to be on raw turkey and chicken. The assumption is that nobody eats their poultry rare, and that thorough cooking will kill the bacteria.

So it’s possible that two common causes of food poisoning — salmonella and campylobacter — are on the turkey, said Mindy Brashears, a food safety official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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3 hurt at Texas chemical plant hit by 2 massive explosions

PORT NECHES, Texas (AP) — Two massive explosions 13 hours apart tore through a Texas chemical plant Wednesday, and one left three workers injured.

The blasts blew out windows and doors of nearby homes and prompted a mandatory evacuation of a 4-mile (seven-kilometre) radius from the plant in Port Neches in Southeast Texas, about 80 miles (129 kilometres) east of Houston. Officials say they have no estimate for how long the fire will burn.

The initial explosion at the TPC Group plant, which makes chemical and petroleum-based products, occurred around 1 a.m. It sent a large plume of smoke stretching for miles and started a fire.

The three workers hurt during the blast —two TPC employees and a contractor — were treated at hospitals and released, said Troy Monk, TPC’s director of health, safety and security. About 30 employees working at the plant at the time of the explosion were all accounted for, according to TPC.

Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick, the top county official, told Beaumont TV station KFDM that it’s a miracle no one died. He said one worker suffered burns and the others had a broken wrist and a broken leg.