Refugee count tops 1 million; Russians besiege Ukraine ports
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The number of people sent fleeing Ukraine by Russia's invasion topped 1 million on Wednesday, the swiftest refugee exodus this century, the United Nations said, as Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the country's second-biggest city, Kharkiv, and laid siege to two strategic seaports.
The tally from the U.N. refugee agency released to The Associated Press amounts to more than 2 percent of Ukraine’s population being forced out of the country in less than a week. The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, where residents desperate to get away from falling shells and bombs crowded the city's train station and tried to press onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
In a videotaped address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to keep up the resistance. He vowed that the invaders would have “not one quiet moment” and described Russian soldiers as “confused children who have been used.”
Moscow's isolation deepened when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine. And the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes.
With fighting going on on multiple fronts across the country, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Mariupol, a large city on the Azov Sea, was encircled by Russian forces, while the status of another vital port, Kherson, a Black Sea shipbuilding city of 280,000, remained unclear.
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Jan. 6 panel claims Trump engaged in 'criminal conspiracy'
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection said Wednesday night that its evidence shows former President Donald Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election, spread false information about it and pressured state officials to overturn the results.
The committee made the claims in a filing in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
The 221-page filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year’s riot, but has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.
“The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,” the filing states.
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'A blitzkrieg': Ukraine's volunteer fighters brace for more
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Andrey Gonchruk served alongside Russian soldiers when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and called them brothers. But on Wednesday, the 68-year-old wiped his face with one hand and grasped a rifle with another, ready to resist their invasion of his country.
“This is a blitzkrieg,” Gonchruk said. He stood in the rubble of a home newly shattered by what residents called a Russian airstrike in Gorenka, a village on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital that has found itself in the crossfire as Moscow attempts to take Kyiv.
The white-bearded retiree is one of tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have volunteered to defend their homeland from Russia. He and his son, Kostya, armed themselves after last week's invasion. Together, they patrol the village.
Among those patrolling was Pjotr Vyerko, 81, a French teacher who lost his wife, Lidya, to skin cancer from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Vyerko said he's prepared to use his rifle to shoot invaders because he has a daughter and grandson. But he's also considered what he'd do without his firearm.
“If they come here, I’ll jab them with a pitchfork if I don’t have weapons -- but I do have weapons,” he said.
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Biden risks progressives, Blacks with pivot to the center
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is signaling an election-year shift to the center, embracing a strategy he hopes will protect fragile Democratic majorities in Congress. But he's risking a revolt from key voices across his party's sprawling coalition.
In his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, the Democratic president embraced Republican calls to strengthen the nation’s southern border and barely mentioned climate change. He glossed over concerns about voting rights and spent little time heralding his historic decision to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. On domestic issues, he was perhaps most blunt in disavowing the push from some Black Lives Matter activists to “defund the police.”
The calculated messages, threaded through one of the most important speeches of Biden's young presidency, marked a clear effort to reset the political climate for Democrats. Polls suggest the party is losing support from almost every demographic at the outset of the 2022 campaign. But Biden's effort to stabilize the party could alienate the coalition of Black people, young people, progressives and independents who delivered him the presidency in 2020 and will be needed again this year.
His address intensified a debate inside the party about how best to proceed this year, with many veteran lawmakers embracing Biden's tone while younger, more progressive critics on the left warned he wasn't connecting with the Democrats' most loyal voters.
There was particular frustration with Biden's declaration that the nation's police need more funding, seen by some as a tone-deaf overture to white voters at the expense of millions of Black Americans still waiting for the president to deliver promised policing reforms almost two years after George Floyd's murder.
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Russians start feeling the heat of Ukraine war sanctions
MOSCOW (AP) — In the days since the West imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, ordinary Russians are feeling the painful effects — from payment systems that won't operate and problems withdrawing cash to not being able to purchase certain items.
“Apple Pay hasn't been working since yesterday. It was impossible to pay with it anywhere — in a bus, in a cafe,” Moscow resident Tatyana Usmanova told The Associated Press. “Plus, in one supermarket they limited the amount of essential goods one person could buy.”
Apple announced that it would stop selling its iPhone and other popular products in Russia along with limiting services like Apple Pay as part of a larger corporate backlash to protest the invasion.
Dozens of foreign and international companies have pulled their business out of Russia. Major car brands halted exports of their vehicles; Boeing and Airbus suspended supply of aircraft parts and service to Russian airlines; major Hollywood studios halted their film releases; and the list will likely keep growing.
That's on top of the United States and other Western nations hitting Russia with sanctions of unprecedented breadth and severity. They have thrown major Russian banks off the SWIFT international payment system, limited high tech exports to Russia and severely restricted Moscow’s use of its foreign currency reserves.
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US House 'staunchly, proudly' passes resolution for Ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has overwhelmingly approved a resolution “steadfastly, staunchly, proudly and fervently” in support of Ukraine.
Lawmakers said Wednesday that history was watching the way the world responds as Ukrainians fight to save their Western-style democracy from invasion by Russia. With intensifying urgency, many in Congress said more must be done to help Ukraine and cut off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war.
In the Senate, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was also introducing a resolution that would back Ukraine’s claim in international court that Putin and his “cronies” have committed war crimes.
“The camera of history is rolling on all of us today,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a House floor debate.
Meeks urged his colleague to provide a unanimous vote to overwhelmingly show “whether or not we stood up and stood out to protect freedom.”
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AP PHOTOS: Day 7, Ukrainians feeling weight of war
In village streets, city basements and train stations, the faces of Ukrainians reflected the steep emotional toll a week into Russian's invasion of their country.
Volunteer fighters in their 60s picked through the remains of shattered homes as elderly neighbors wept at the destruction caused by what residents called a Russian airstrike in Gorenka, a village on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital that has found itself in the crossfire as Moscow attempts to take Kyiv.
In the country's largest city, families settled into subway stations or crowded into basements seeking sheltering from Russian bombardment.
Thousands of Ukrainians have been fleeing the city through the sprawling railway complex. The U.N. refugee agency said more than 1 million people have fled Ukraine in a mounting refugee crisis on the European continent.
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Tokyo court gives ex-Nissan exec Kelly suspended sentence
TOKYO (AP) — A Tokyo court gave a suspended sentence to Greg Kelly, a former American executive at Nissan Motor charged with underreporting his boss Carlos Ghosn’s pay.
The verdict announced Thursday of a 6-month sentence suspended for three years will allow Kelly to return to the U.S. even if prosecutors appeal.
Kelly was arrested in November 2018 at the same time as Ghosn, former Nissan chairman and head of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance. Both have insisted they are innocent, arguing that the money at the center of the charges was never paid or decided.
Chief judge Kenji Shimotsu said the court found Kelly not guilty of some counts and guilty of charges for one year only, fiscal 2017.
The trial began in September 2020, with Ghosn absent after he jumped bail in late 2019, hiding in a box for music instruments on a private jet. He fled to Lebanon, which has no extradition treaty with Japan, and has been writing books and making movies about the ordeal after his arrest.
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New Biden pandemic plan: Closer to normal for the nation
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's time for America to stop letting the coronavirus “dictate how we live,” President Joe Biden’s White House declared Wednesday, outlining a strategy to allow people to return to many normal activities safely after two years of pandemic disruptions.
One highlight is a new “test to treat” plan to provide free antiviral pills at pharmacies to people who test positive for the virus.
The 90-page National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan spells out initiatives and investments to continue to drive down serious illness and deaths from the virus, while preparing for potential new variants and providing employers and schools the resources to remain open.
“We know how to keep our businesses and our schools open with the tools that we have at our disposal,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.
Meanwhile, 140 million Americans, or 43% have now had COVID, according to a new assessment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That estimate comes from a surveillance program that tested nearly 72,000 blood samples that were sent to commercial labs from late December to late January. The samples were checked for antibodies from infection, and were distinguishable from antibodies that came from vaccination.
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Texas still working through rejected ballots after primary
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans promised new voting rules would make it “easier to vote and harder to cheat.” But as the dust settled Wednesday on the nation’s first primary, voters in both parties had their ballots caught by the changes.
By and large, Texas' primary that put the 2022 midterm election season in full swing saw no significant issues at polling locations Tuesday under typically low turnout. But although most races were decided by Wednesday, counties that had rejected thousands of mail ballots for not complying with Texas' strict new election law still do not know how many will end up counting.
That answer is still likely days away, and for Republicans who rushed to put in place new voting laws across the U.S. after the 2020 elections, the stakes go beyond Texas as the GOP pushes back against accusations of trying to suppress likely Democratic voters. But there is little question the changes in Texas caused hurdles for even Republican voters, who accounted for roughly 40 percent of all mail-in ballots.
“Texans are the ones feeling the impact now, but unfortunately this is just a preview of what could happen in other states,” said Mimi Marziani, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which has sued Texas over the law.
Republicans broadly expressed satisfaction with the debut of the tougher rules and looked ahead to November, when another provision under Texas' sweeping new law will give expanded powers to partisan poll watchers.
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