AP News in Brief at 12:01 a.m. EDT

Pakistan PM warns of ‘bloodbath’ in Kashmir; India PM silent

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Insisting he wasn’t making a threat, Pakistan’s leader denounced his Indian counterpart on Friday and warned that any war between the nuclear rivals could “have consequences for the world.” India’s prime minister took the opposite approach, skipping any mention at the United Nations of his government’s crackdown in the disputed region of Kashmir.

“When a nuclear-armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have consequences for the world,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a wide-ranging, at times apparently extemporaneous U.N. General Assembly speech in which he called Modi’s actions in Kashmir “stupid” and “cruel.”

“That’s not a threat,” he said of his war comments. “It’s a fair worry. Where are we headed?”

An hour earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the U.N. meeting with a speech that focused primarily on his country’s development, though he warned of the spreading spectre of terrorism. He never mentioned Kashmir directly.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region. They’ve been locked in a worsening standoff since Aug. 5, when Modi stripped limited autonomy from the portion of Kashmir that India controls.

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Subpoenas mark first concrete steps for Trump impeachment

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump on Friday, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling legal depositions for other State Department officials.

At the end of a stormy week of revelation and recrimination, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the impeachment inquiry as a sombre moment for a divided nation.

“This is no cause for any joy,” she said on MSNBC.

At the White House, a senior administration official confirmed a key detail from the unidentified CIA whistleblower who has accused Trump of abusing the power of his office. Trump, for his part, insisted anew that his actions and words have been “perfect” and the whistleblower’s complaint might well be the work of “a partisan operative.”

The White House acknowledged that a record of the Trump phone call that is now at the centre of the impeachment inquiry had been sealed away in a highly classified system at the direction of Trump’s National Security Council lawyers.

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US official: Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine has resigned

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO caught in the middle of a whistleblower complaint over the President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, resigned Friday from his post as special envoy to the Eastern European nation, according to a U.S. official.

The official said Volker told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday of his decision to leave the job, following disclosures that he had connected Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice-President Joe Biden and his family over allegedly corrupt business dealings.

Giuliani has said he was in frequent contact with Volker about his efforts. The State Department had no immediate comment on his resignation and has said only that Volker put Giuliani in touch with an aide to Ukraine’s president.

Pompeo said Thursday that as far as he knew, all State Department employees had acted appropriately in dealing with Ukraine.

Volker was brought into the Trump administration by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to serve as envoy for Ukraine. He worked in a volunteer capacity and had retained his job as head of the John McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University. Arizona State’s student newspaper was the first to report his resignation.

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Judge blocks Trump rules for detained migrant kids

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A U.S. judge on Friday blocked new Trump administration rules that would enable the government to keep immigrant children in detention facilities with their parents indefinitely.

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said the rules conflict with a 1997 settlement agreement that requires the government to release immigrant children caught on the border as quickly as possible to relatives in the U.S. and says they can only be held in facilities licensed by a state.

Gee said the Flores agreement — named for a teenage plaintiff — will remain in place and govern the conditions for all immigrant children in U.S. custody, including those with their parents.

“The agreement has been necessary, relevant, and critical to the public interest in maintaining standards for the detention and release of minors arriving at the United States’ borders,” the judge wrote in her decision.

“Defendants willingly negotiated and bound themselves to these standards for all minors in its custody, and no final regulations or changed circumstances yet merit termination of the Flores agreement.”

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China’s government, turning 70, tells its story at the UN

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Four days before its communist government’s 70th birthday, China on Friday condemned protectionism and unilateralism as “major threats,” took not-entirely-subtle shots at U.S. economic policies and proudly pronounced itself “a country that is open and on the move.”

With Chinese President Xi Jinping not attending this year’s U.N. General Assembly, it fell to Foreign Minister Wang Yi to tell the story of the People’s Republic of China at the seven-decade mark. He did so with dispatch and style, plowing through a speech that outlined many of his country’s accomplishments, challenges, philosophies and international beefs.

He called China “an anchor of stability for world peace” and much more.

“Seventy years ago, China put an end to a period in modem history in which the country was torn apart and trampled upon. We stood up and became true masters of our country,” Wang said.

The current chapter for China, a culture thousands of years old, began on Oct. 1, 1949 when Mao Zedong stood at a microphone atop Tiananmen Square in Beijing and declared a new government in the nation his communist guerrillas took from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists after a civil war.

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Afghans vote for president amid Taliban threats

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghans headed to the polls on Saturday to elect a new president amid high security and Taliban threats to disrupt the elections, with the rebels warning citizens to stay home or risk being hurt.

Still at some polling stations in the capital voters lined up even before the centres opened, while in others election workers had yet to arrive by poll opening time.

Imam Baksh, who works as a security guard, said he wasn’t worried about his safety as he stood waiting to mark his ballot, wondering who he would vote for.

“All of them have been so disappointing for our country,” he said.

The leading contenders are incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and his partner in the 5-year-old unity government, Abdullah Abdullah, who already alleges power abuse by his opponent.

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Joe Wilson, skeptic on Iraq War intelligence, dies at age 69

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69.

Wilson died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium.

The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice-presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.

President Donald Trump pardoned Libby in 2018.

Plame, who is running as a Democrat for Congress — in part as a Trump adversary — called Wilson “a true American hero, a patriot, and had the heart of a lion.” Plame and Wilson moved to Santa Fe in 2007 to raise twin children and divorced in 2017.

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US probe of vaping illnesses focuses on THC from marijuana

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials said Friday that their investigation into an outbreak of severe vaping-related illnesses is increasingly focused on products that contain the marijuana compound THC.

Most of the 800 people who got sick vaped THC, the ingredient in marijuana that causes a high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But officials said they didn’t know if the THC is the problem or some other substance added to the vaping liquid, such as thickeners.

“The outbreak currently is pointing to a greater concern around THC-containing products,” said the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat.

So far, investigators have not identified a particular electronic cigarette, vaping device, liquid or ingredient behind the outbreak. But officials say patients have mentioned the name Dank Vapes most frequently. Many of the people who got sick in Illinois and Wisconsin said they used prefilled THC cartridges sold in Dank Vapes packaging.

“It’s a generic product name that doesn’t really tie back to one store or one distributor,” said Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health.

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Poignant New Year for Jewish community scarred by massacre

There will be some differences — and some constants — over the coming days as the New Light congregation observes Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, for the first time since three of its members were among 11 Jews killed by a gunman nearly a year ago at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The man who last year blew New Light’s shofar, the ram’s horn trumpet traditionally sounded to welcome the High Holy Days, was among those killed. Richard Gottfried, 65, a dentist nearing retirement, was one of the congregation’s mainstays in reading the haftara, a biblical passage that follows the Torah reading.

In Gottfried’s place, the shofar will be blown this year by the congregation’s rabbi, Jonathan Perlman. And the venue for the services will not be the Tree of Life synagogue, the site of the massacre. All three congregations that shared space there have been worshipping at neighbouring synagogues since the attack on Oct. 27, 2018.

However, Perlman’s wife, writer Beth Kissileff, said the congregation plans no changes in the substance of its services over the two-day holiday that starts Sunday evening.

“I feel conducting Rosh Hashana prayers as we have in the past is a form of spiritual resistance,” Kissileff said. “Part of our defiance of what the shooter was trying to do is to conduct our religious lives with as much normality as possible.”

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Decorum prevails as nations at odds take each other on

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Pakistan and India sparred over Kashmir, Russia chided the West and said its influence in world affairs was diminishing and China’s top diplomat warned that unilateralism and protectionism “are posing major threats to the international order” — a veiled reference to its ongoing tariff war with the United States.

Nations at odds with each other didn’t shy away from taking gibes Friday as their leaders took to the podium on the fourth day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. Decorum prevailed, but that didn’t mean they were playing nice.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, pointedly accused Indian leader Narendra Modi of “cruelty” in the Muslim-majority region and warned of catastrophe if the two nuclear-armed nations tumbled into war.

As protesters for both sides shouted outside the U.N. compound in New York City, Khan said the actions of Modi’s government in the Indian portion of the disputed mountainous region of Kashmir were shortsighted and could end in a bloodbath.

“I picture myself (if) I’m a Kashmiri,” he said. “I’ve been locked up for 55 days. There’ve been rapes, (the) Indian army going into homes, soldiers. Would I want this humiliation? Would I want to pick up a gun?”

The Associated Press