AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Puerto Rico governor silent as impeachment process looms

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A bizarre standoff unfolded in colonial Old San Juan on Wednesday night as Gov. Ricardo Rosselló pledged to deliver a message to the people of Puerto Rico, then passed hour after hour in unexplained silence as thousands of protesters chanted demands for his resignation.

Frustration and anger built among demonstrators who filled the streets outside Rosselló’s official residence awaiting the promised address.

An announcement was first expected at 5 p.m., filling protesters with hope that Rosselló was about to resign over widespread anger in reaction to the leak of obscenity-laced online chats between the governor and a group of close advisers.

At 6:30 p.m., Public Affairs Secretary Anthony Maceira emerged from the executive offices to say that a message from the governor was coming. Local television stations went live, and thousands filled the cobblestoned streets around La Fortaleza, the 16th century fortress that serves as the governor’s mansion.

As midnight edged ever closer, there was still nothing.

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Mueller: No Russia exoneration for Trump, despite his claims

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Mueller, the taciturn lawman at the centre of a polarizing American drama, bluntly dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims of “total exoneration” Wednesday in the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference. In a long day of congressional testimony, Mueller warned that Moscow’s actions represented — and still represent — a great threat to American democracy.

Mueller’s back-to-back Capitol Hill appearances, his first since wrapping his two-year Russia probe, carried the prospect of a historic climax to a rare criminal investigation into a sitting American president. But his testimony was more likely to reinforce rather than reshape hardened public opinions on impeachment and the future of Trump’s presidency .

With his terse, one-word answers, and a sometimes stilted and halting manner, Mueller made clear his desire to avoid the partisan fray and the deep political divisions roiling Congress and the country.

He delivered neither crisp TV sound bites to fuel a Democratic impeachment push nor comfort to Republicans striving to undermine his investigation’s credibility. But his comments grew more animated by the afternoon, when he sounded the alarm on future Russian election interference. He said he feared a new normal of American campaigns accepting foreign help.

He condemned Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks, which released Democratic emails stolen by Russia. And he said of the interference by Russians and others: “They are doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”

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Analysis: Mueller has spoken, but 2020 may be the final word

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Mueller’s testimony Wednesday sent the clearest signal yet that impeachment may be slipping out of reach for Democrats and that the ultimate verdict on President Donald Trump will be rendered by voters in the 2020 election.

Democrats had hoped the former special counsel’s appearance would be a turning point. A Marine who served in Vietnam, Mueller is the kind of square-jawed federal prosecutor to whom Americans may have once listened as a trusted source of authority. But in this era of stark political polarization, galvanizing the public is a difficult task even if Mueller wanted to produce a viral moment, which he never seemed inclined to do. Rather than swoop in to give voice to the 448-page report, Mueller said very few words.

What Mueller did say was striking: Trump was not exonerated of potential crimes. His report found Russia interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic” fashion. Accepting foreign campaign assistance is wrong, he agreed. But Mueller’s reluctance to engage, and his one-word answers, deprived the country of a where-were-you-when moment that could bring decisive conclusion to the probe and Trump’s role in trying to obstruct the investigation.

“It was not a hoax,” Mueller testified of Russian election interference.

The result, after more than six hours at the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, was that the sides in Washington were retrenching to their familiar outposts, leaving voters to decide what to do next.

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Trump soaks up Mueller hearings, claims them for a win

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he probably wouldn’t watch, but former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress on Wednesday proved irresistible.

The president fired off an onslaught of tweets before the back-to-back hearings even began at 8:30 a.m. All told, he tweeted and retweeted more than two dozen times on Mueller’s testimony about his investigation into the president and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

As it ended, Trump tweeted, “TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE!”

Then he strode out of the White House and took a victory lap in front the reporters and cameras assembled on the South Lawn.

“It’s over,” Trump declared. He blasted “the phoney cloud” created by the investigation and said, “there was no defence to this ridiculous hoax, this witch hunt.”

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N. Korea fires missiles into sea in apparent pressure tactic

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the sea Thursday, South Korea’s military said, the first weapons launches in more than two months and an apparent pressuring tactic aimed at Washington as North Korean and U.S. officials struggle to restart nuclear negotiations.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles that were fired from near the eastern coastal town of Wonsan flew about 430 kilometres (270 miles) before landing in the waters off the country’s east coast.

A South Korean defence official, requesting anonymity because of department rules, said that an initial South Korean analysis showed both missiles were fired from mobile launchers and flew at a maximum altitude of 50 kilometres (30 miles).

The North is unhappy with planned U.S.-South Korean military drills that it says are an invasion preparation, and the missile tests may be aimed at sending a message to Washington about what would happen if diplomacy fails.

The timing was also interesting, coming not long after many in the United States were focused on testimony before Congress by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, about his two-year probe into Russian election interference. And just hours before, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton left Seoul after agreeing with South Korean officials to boost co-operation to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization.

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Now British PM, brash Boris Johnson faces Brexit conundrum

LONDON (AP) — Boris Johnson took over as Britain’s prime minister Wednesday, vowing to break the impasse that defeated his predecessor by leading the country out of the European Union and silencing “the doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters” who believe it can’t be done.

But the brash Brexit champion faces the same problems that flummoxed Theresa May during her three years in office: heading a government without a parliamentary majority and with most lawmakers opposed to leaving the EU without a divorce deal.

Johnson has just 99 days to make good on his promise to deliver Brexit by Oct. 31 after what he called “three years of unfounded self-doubt.”

He optimistically pledged to get “a new deal, a better deal” with the EU than the one secured by May, which was repeatedly rejected by Britain’s Parliament.

“The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts,” he said, standing outside the shiny black door of 10 Downing St.

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Judge blocks Trump asylum restrictions at US-Mexico border

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to stop denying asylum to anyone who transits through another country to reach the U.S. border, marking the latest legal defeat for a president waging an all-out battle to stem the flow of migrants entering from Mexico.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco came hours after another federal judge in Washington, D.C., let the 9-day-old policy stand. The California judge’s preliminary injunction halts the policy while the lawsuit plays out in court.

The new policy denies asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without seeking protection there. Most crossing the Mexican border are from Central America, but it would apply to all nationalities except countries that border the U.S.

The dramatic change went into effect last week, though there were conflicting reports on whether U.S. immigration agencies were enforcing it.

Top U.S. officials said the policy would discourage migrants from leaving their countries, which they say is necessary to reduce the numbers of people that U.S. authorities are detaining.

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As the nation’s opioid crisis grew, the pills got stronger

WASHINGTON (AP) — In 2012, as the death toll from the nation’s opioid crisis mounted, drug companies shipped out enough of the powerful and addictive painkillers for every man, woman and child in the U.S. to have nearly a 20-day supply.

In some counties, mostly in Appalachia, it was well over 100 days.

An Associated Press analysis of drug distribution data released as a result of lawsuits against the industry also found that the amount of opioids as measured by total potency continued to rise early this decade even as the number of pills distributed began to dip.

The reason: Doctors were prescribing — and the industry was supplying — stronger pills.

“It shows it wasn’t just the number of pills being shipped that increased. The actual amount of opioids being prescribed and consumed went up,” said Anna Lembke, a Stanford University professor who researches opioids and is serving as a paid expert witness for plaintiffs in the litigation.

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Record Facebook fine won’t end scrutiny of the company

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook survived its latest brush with U.S. privacy regulators, at the cost of a record $5 billion fine and other restrictions imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. But it’s far from home free.

While the company looks set to prosper in the wake of the FTC case, it faces a series of other investigations into its privacy practices in Europe and across the U.S. Concerns over the limits of the just-settled probe could fuel efforts to craft tougher privacy laws at the state and federal level.

The social network is also gearing up to fight investigations into its allegedly anticompetitive behaviour, such as Facebook’s habit of buying would-be rivals like Instagram and blatantly duplicating features introduced by competing services.

The Department of Justice opened a broad antitrust probe focused on technology companies on Tuesday. On Wednesday Facebook disclosed that it also faces a fresh FTC investigation into alleged anticompetitive behaviour. It didn’t provide details of the scope or focus of the probe. Representatives of the FTC confirmed the antitrust investigation but offered no additional information.

The outcome of these investigations may well determine whether the world’s governments can actually rein in a transnational corporation that directly touches almost a third of the world’s population.

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Father: Canadian manhunt will end in son’s death

TORONTO (AP) — The father of one of the suspects in the slaying of an American woman, her Australian boyfriend and another man said Wednesday he expects a nationwide manhunt to end in the death of his son, who is on “a suicide mission.”

The grim prediction came as Canadian police said they were setting up roadblocks around the remote Manitoba town of Gillam, where two young suspects, 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, recently left a burned-out vehicle they had been travelling in.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Julie Courchaine said police “are coming from all over” to Gillam, which is more than 2,000 miles away from a region in northern British Columbia where another burned vehicle was found Friday and where the three people were apparently killed.

The victims have been identified as American Chynna Deese, 24, Australian Lucas Fowler, 23, and Leonard Dyck, 64, of Vancouver. Police released Dyck’s name late Wednesday and announced that McLeod and Schmegelsky have been charged with second-degree murder in his death.

McLeod and Schmegelsky themselves were originally considered missing persons and only became suspects in the case Tuesday. Officers across the country were searching for the young men.

The Associated Press