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

China’s Xi heads for North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping departed Thursday morning for a two-day state visit to North Korea, where he’s expected to talk with leader Kim Jong Un about the stalled negotiations with Washington over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that Xi was accompanied by his wife, Peng Liyuan, and several Communist Party officials. He would be the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years.

The upcoming summit comes as both Xi and Kim are locked in separate disputes with the United States — Xi over trade and Kim over his nuclear weapons.

A Xinhua commentary said China could play a unique and constructive role in breaking the cycle of mistrust between North Korea and the U.S. so they can work out a roadmap to achieve denuclearization.

The U.S. is demanding that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons development before international sanctions are lifted. North Korea is seeking a step-by-step approach in which a step toward its denuclearization would be matched by a concession from the U.S., notably a relaxation of economic sanctions.

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‘Joints will be separated’: Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, retold

GENEVA (AP) — The gathering on the second floor of the Saudi consulate featured an unlikely collection: a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers, agents of the crown prince’s office. As they waited for their target to arrive, one asked how they would carry out the body.

Not to worry, the doctor said: “Joints will be separated. It is not a problem,” he assured. “If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them.”

Their prey, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, would not leave the consulate in Istanbul alive. And on Wednesday, more than eight months after his death, a U.N. special rapporteur revealed new details of the slaying — part of a report that insisted there was “credible evidence” to warrant further investigation and financial sanctions against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The report brought the grisly case back into the spotlight just as the prince and his country appeared to be emerging from the stain of the scandal. But it contained no smoking gun likely to cause President Donald Trump to abandon one of his closest allies — and none likely to send the crown prince before a tribunal.

And yet the details of the Oct. 2 killing were so chilling, and now so public, that it’s hard to fathom that there won’t be repercussions.

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Amid urgent climate warnings, EPA gives coal a reprieve

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings, the Trump administration ordered a sweeping about-face Wednesday on Obama-era efforts to fight climate change, easing restrictions on coal-fired power plants in a move it predicted would revitalize America’s sagging coal industry.

As miners in hard hats and coal-country lawmakers applauded, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler signed a measure that scraps one of President Barack Obama’s key initiatives to rein in fossil fuel emissions. The replacement rule gives states more leeway in deciding whether to require plants to make limited efficiency upgrades.

Wheeler said he expects more coal plants to open as a result. But one state, New York, immediately said it would go to court to challenge the action, and more lawsuits are likely.

The EPA move follows pledges by candidate and then President Donald Trump to rescue the U.S. coal industry, which saw near-record numbers of plant closings last year in the face of competition from cheaper natural gas and renewables. It’s the latest and one of the biggest of dozens of environmental regulatory rollbacks by his administration.

It came despite scientists’ cautions that the world must cut fossil fuel emissions to stave off the worst of global warming and the EPA’s own analysis that the new rule would result in the deaths of an extra 300 to 1,500 people each year by 2030 compared to the never fully enacted Clean Power Plan, owing to additional air pollution from the power grid.

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Biden not apologizing for remarks on segregationist senators

Joe Biden refused calls to apologize Wednesday for saying that the Senate “got things done” with “civility” even when the body included segregationists with whom he disagreed.

His rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, including the two major black candidates in the contest, roundly criticized Biden’s comments. But Biden didn’t back down and was particularly defiant in the face of criticism from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who said the former vice-president should apologize for his remarks.

Biden countered that it was Booker who should apologize because the senator “should know better” than to question his commitment to civil rights.

“There’s not a racist bone in my body,” Biden said. “I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career.”

Speaking on CNN, Booker responded: “I was raised to speak truth to power and that I shall never apologize for doing that. And Vice-President Biden shouldn’t need this lesson.”

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Dominican AG: Ortiz shooting result of mistaken identity

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Former Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was shot in the back by a gunman who mistook him for the real target, another man who was seated at the same table at an outdoor cafe, Dominican officials said Wednesday.

The Dominican Republic’s attorney general and national police director told reporters that the attempted murder was ordered from the United States by Victor Hugo Gomez, an associate of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel. They said Gomez had hired a gang of killers to eliminate his cousin, whom Gomez suspected of turning him in to Dominican drug investigators in 2011.

The cousin, Sixto David Fernández, was seated with the former baseball star on the night of June 9, when a gunman approached and fired a single shot at Ortiz, the officials said. Fernández owned an auto-repair shop and was friends with Ortiz, according to Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez and Maj. Gen. Ney Aldrin Bautista Almonte, director of the Dominican Republic’s national police.

Ortiz remains hospitalized in Boston, where doctors have upgraded his condition from guarded to good.

At least 11 people have been arrested in the case so far, ranging from the alleged gunman to a series of drivers and relatively minor accomplices. Rodríguez and Bautista said the case of mistaken identity began when one of the accomplices shot a blurry photo of Fernández seated at the Dial Bar and Lounge in an upscale section of Santo Domingo. In the photo, a white freezer obscures Fernández’s lower body, making it look like he was wearing white pants when, in fact, he was wearing black pants, officials said.

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‘Why not now?’ Lawmakers debate reparations for slavery

WASHINGTON (AP) — The debate over reparations catapulted from the campaign trail to Congress on Wednesday as lawmakers heard impassioned testimony for and against the idea of providing compensation for America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, the sponsor of a resolution to study reparations, put a fine point on the discussion: “I just simply ask: Why not and why not now?”

It was Congress’ first hearing on reparations in more than a decade, and came amid a growing conversation both in the Democratic Party and the country at large about lingering racial disparities in the United States. Once considered a fringe topic, mostly pushed aside in Congress, the possibility of reparations was treated with seriousness by the witnesses and lawmakers alike, though Republicans made clear their opposition.

One of the most striking moments came as writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a widely read 2014 essay making the case for reparations, challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s assertion that no one alive today is responsible for the past treatment of black Americans.

“It’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery,” Coates told the House Judiciary panel.

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Witness: Navy SEAL called dead prisoner an ‘ISIS dirtbag’

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A Navy SEAL charged with killing a captive militant boy in his care had told fellow troops that if they encountered a wounded enemy, he wanted medics to know how “to nurse him to death,” a former comrade testified Wednesday.

When a radio call announced an Islamic State prisoner was wounded on May 3, 2017, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher replied: “Don’t touch him, he’s all mine,” Dylan Dille told jurors in a military courtroom.

The captive was on the hood of a Humvee fading in an out of consciousness with only a minor leg wound visible when Iraqi forces delivered him to a SEAL compound in Mosul.

Dille said he was not the grizzled warrior he expected to find.

“He looked about 12 years old,” Dille said. “He had a wrist watch around his bicep. He was rail thin.”

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LA mayor targeted by recall effort over homeless crisis

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mayor Eric Garcetti didn’t create the homeless crisis in Los Angeles, but he owns it.

The two-term Democrat who not long ago flirted with a presidential run has been besieged by complaints about homeless encampments that have gotten so widespread he’s facing a potential recall campaign.

The low-key mayor who in 2016 helped convince voters to borrow $1.2 billion to construct housing for the homeless has found himself in an awkward position — explaining why the problems have only gotten worse.

Figures released earlier this month showed a 16% jump in Los Angeles’ homeless population over the last year, pegging it at 36,300 — the size of a small city.

That’s no surprise to anyone who lives or works downtown, where tents crowd sidewalks within sight of City Hall and the stench of urine fills the air.

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10-year-old Colorado girl ‘overwhelmed’ after Yosemite climb

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 10-year-old Colorado girl scaled Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan and may have become the youngest person to climb one of the most celebrated and challenging peaks in the world.

Selah Schneiter of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, completed the 3,000-foot (910 metres) climb of the vertical rock formation with the help of her father, Mike Schneiter, and family friend, Mark Regier.

The trio took five days to climb the Nose — the best known route — and reached the summit on June 12, Mike Schneiter said. It typically takes accomplished climbers four or five days to complete.

Reaching the top “was really overwhelming and emotional,” Selah said in a telephone interview from New York City, where she spent Wednesday doing media interviews.

“I was also kind of sad because it was over,” she added.

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UN health agency to remove controversial opioid guidelines

The World Health Organization notified U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that it will discontinue two publications on prescribing opioid painkillers in response to allegations that the pharmaceutical industry influenced the reports.

The pledge to remove the guidelines comes a month after U.S. Reps. Katherine Clark and Hal Rogers accused the WHO of being influenced by Purdue Pharma, the American manufacturer of the potent painkiller OxyContin. The lawmakers’ report claimed the guidelines, crafted in part by organizations with financial ties to the company, downplay the risk of opioids despite the American epidemic that has killed more than 390,000 since 1999.

WHO’s reports are viewed around the world as best practices in public health policy, and the opioid prescribing documents have been in circulation for years.

“That is a very dangerous situation,” Clark said. “We do not want to see the opioid crisis in this country exported around the globe.”

The WHO, the health arm of the United Nations, could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening. Purdue has denied the allegations, and said it transparently discloses its relationships with doctors and organizations and markets its drugs only as they have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.