Explosions heard in Kyiv as Russia presses Ukraine assault
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Friday as Russian forces pressed on with a full-scale invasion that resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Ukrainians in the first full day of fighting and could eventually rewrite the global post-Cold War security order.
After using airstrikes on cities and military bases, Russian military units moved swiftly to take on Ukraine's seat of government and its largest city in what U.S. officials suspect is a brazen attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to dismantle the government and replace it with his own regime.
Ukrainian leaders pleaded for help as civilians piled into trains and cars to flee, and hotels in Kyiv were being evacuated amid early indications of an assault.
Ukrainian forces braced for more attacks after enduring for hours a Russian barrage of land- and sea-based missiles, an assault that one senior U.S. defense official described as the first salvo in a likely multi-phase invasion aimed at seizing key population centers and “decapitating” Ukraine's government. Already, Ukraine officials said they had lost control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
In unleashing the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, Putin ignored global condemnation and cascading new sanctions. With a chilling reference to his country’s nuclear arsenal, he threatened any country trying to interfere with “consequences you have never seen,” as a once-hoped for diplomatic resolution now appeared impossible.
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Live updates: China seeks to fly its citizens out of Ukraine
The latest on the Russia-Ukraine crisis:
BEIJING — China’s Embassy in Ukraine says it is arranging evacuation flights for Chinese citizens. An embassy statement Friday says conditions in Ukraine have “deteriorated sharply” but makes no mention of the Russian invasion. The embassy gave no details on where the evacuation flights would be leaving from. Nor did it say when the charter flights might happen, saying that scheduling will depend on the “flight safety situation.” It says travelers should be packed and ready to react quickly once flight schedules are announced. Passengers must have a passport from China, Hong Kong or Macau or a “Taiwan compatriot card.” The embassy earlier advised Chinese in Ukraine to stay home and to put a Chinese flag on their vehicles if they planned to travel long distances.
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MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines top diplomat says he will travel to Ukraine’s border with Poland to ensure the safety of Filipinos fleeing from the eastern European country now under attack by Russian forces.
Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. did not specify in his tweet Friday where he is going. Nor did he say how many of the approximately 380 Filipinos in Ukraine are trying to flee amid the Russian invasion.
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'The worst sunrise in my life': Ukrainians wake to attack
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The missile fragment pierced the ceiling of Mikhail Shcherbakov’s apartment in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. A Russian attack, after weeks of rhetoric and warning signs, had hit home.
“I heard noise and woke up. I realized it sounded like artillery,” Shcherbakov said. He jumped from the couch and ran to wake his mother, and something exploded behind him.
The missile left a nearby computer and teacup shrouded with dust, instant artifacts of Europe’s latest crisis.
At dawn on Thursday, Ukrainians’ uneasy efforts at normality were shattered. Smoke rose from cities, even ones well away from a long-running separatist conflict in the country’s east. By the end of the day, many of the capital's residents had taken shelter deep underground, in Kyiv’s metro system.
“Today I had the worst sunrise in my life,” said another Kharkiv resident, who gave her name only as Sasha. She rushed to her balcony and realized the sounds that had woken her weren’t fireworks.
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Hundreds arrested as shocked Russians protest Ukraine attack
MOSCOW (AP) — Shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country's invasion of Ukraine as emotional calls for protests grew on social media. Some 1,745 people in 54 Russian cities were detained, at least 957 of them in Moscow.
Hundreds of posts came pouring in condemning Moscow’s most aggressive actions since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Vladimir Putin called the attack a “special military operation” to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine from “genocide” — a false claim the U.S. had predicted would be a pretext for invasion, and which many Russians roundly rejected.
Tatyana Usmanova, an opposition activist in Moscow, wrote on Facebook that she thought she was dreaming when she awoke at 5:30 a.m. to the news, which she called “a disgrace that will be forever with us now.”
“I want to ask Ukrainians for forgiveness. We didn’t vote for those who unleashed the war,” she said.
As sirens blasted in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, and large explosions were heard there and in other cities, Russians were signing open letters and online petitions demanding the Kremlin halt the assault, which the Ukrainian health minister said had killed at least 57 Ukrainians and wounded dozens more.
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US intel predicted Russia's invasion plans. Did it matter?
WASHINGTON (AP) — For months, the White House made highly unusual releases of intelligence findings about Russian President Vladimir Putin's plans to attack Ukraine. Hoping to preempt an invasion, it released details of Russian troop buildups and warned repeatedly that a major assault was imminent.
In the end, Putin attacked anyway.
Critics of U.S. intelligence — including Russian officials who dismissed invasion allegations as fantasy — had been pointing to past failures like the false identification of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Russia's invasion so far has played out largely as the Biden administration said it would back i n December, with nearly 200,000 troops striking from several sides of Ukraine.
Lawmakers from both political parties on Thursday said the accurate predictions were a credit to the often-criticized U.S. intelligence community.
But whether the White House's unprecedented public campaign delayed or limited Putin's plans could be debated for years. And some say both Washington and Kyiv could have done more with the information the two governments had beforehand.
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For world, Floyd's death was about race. Why not the trials?
For people around the world, the killing of George Floyd was about race. A white police officer, with three other officers nearby, kneeled on the neck of a Black man until he stopped breathing, and protests erupted across the country. Corporations and governments promised change, and a new generation of civil rights leaders rose up.
Yet in the courtrooms where those officers faced trial for their roles in Floyd's killing — including the three who were convicted Thursday — race was rarely mentioned, at least explicitly, and lawyers and judges told jurors not to consider it.
When a potential juror who appeared to be Black told Judge Paul Magnuson at the trial of former officers J. Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao that he didn't know if he could be impartial “because of my color,” Magnuson responded: “There is absolutely nothing about the subject of religion, race or ethnicity that’s involved in this case.” The man was later dismissed from serving on the jury.
The disconnect between the public prism through which the case was viewed and its handling in court is due partly to the specific charges federal prosecutors pursued, which didn't include a hate crime. But to some, it also reflected the failure of the legal system to confront issues of race, and how a justice system that often seeks to be colorblind may be stacked against people of color.
“Would this have happened to a white man? Probably not. Everyone on the jury knows that, and you have a jury that has no Black people on it," T. Anansi Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, said before Thursday's verdict. When he heard Magnuson's comment, Wilson said, “I thought, this is another blow to most people of color, and particularly Black folks', belief in the judicial system.”
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CDC to significantly ease pandemic mask guidelines Friday
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will significantly loosen federal mask-wearing guidelines to protect against COVID-19 transmission on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter, meaning most Americans will no longer be advised to wear masks in indoor public settings.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday will announce a change to the metrics it uses to determine whether to recommend face coverings, shifting from looking at COVID-19 case counts to a more holistic view of risk from the coronavirus to a community. Under current guidelines, masks are recommended for people residing in communities of substantial or high transmission — roughly 95% of U.S. counties, according to the latest data.
The new metrics will still consider caseloads, but also take into account hospitalizations and local hospital capacity, which have been markedly improved during the emergence of the omicron variant. That strain is highly transmissible, but indications are that it is less severe than earlier strains, particularly for people who are fully vaccinated and boosted. Under the new guidelines, the vast majority of Americans will no longer live in areas where indoor masking in public is recommended, based on current data.
The new policy comes as the Biden administration moves to shift its focus to preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19, rather than all instances of infection, as part of a strategy adjustment for a new “phase" in the response as the virus becomes endemic.
The two people familiar with the change spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the CDC's action before the announcement.
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Asia shares rise after US rebound amid sanctions on Ukraine
TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares rose Friday after U.S. stocks recovered toward the end of a wild trading day, as the world, including President Joe Biden, slapped sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 1.4% in morning trading to 26,343.02. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5% to 7,022.30. South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.2% to 2,681.19. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added nearly 0.2% to 22,941.59, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.8% to 3,456.39.
Japan announced additional sanctions on Russia, including freezing the assets of Russian groups, banks and individuals and suspending exports of semiconductors and other sensitive goods to military-linked organizations in Russia.
Earlier in the week, Japan suspended new issuances and distribution of Russian government bonds in Japan, aimed at reducing funding opportunities for Russia. It also banned trade with the two Ukrainian separatist regions.
Despite uncertainty about the Ukraine, as well as worries about inflation and the COVID-19 omicron variant, the turnaround on Wall Street seemed to buoy Asian shares.
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Texas clinics battle strict abortion law as legal hopes dim
DALLAS (AP) — The nation’s strictest abortion law went before the Texas Supreme Court on Thursday but an attorney representing abortion clinics said he no longer sees a way in this case to halt the law.
The Austin-based court took no immediate action over Texas’ restrictive law, which since September has banned abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and has resulted in a sharp drop of abortions across the state.
But an attorney for abortion clinics said that even the court's best-case ruling for them wouldn't undo the law that is enforced by private citizens who can collect $10,000 or more by suing doctors who perform abortions.
“It will not stop the bounty-hunting scheme or fully restore abortion access across the state,” Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said after the hearing.
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to keep the law in place and allowed only a narrow challenge against the restrictions to proceed. So on Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court, which is entirely controlled by Republican justices, heard arguments on the issue of whether state licensing officials have a role in enforcing the law.
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Oscar-nominated 'MASH' actor Sally Kellerman dies at 84
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sally Kellerman, the Oscar and Emmy nominated actor who played Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in director Robert Altman's 1970 film “MASH," died Thursday.
Kellerman died of heart failure at her home in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, her manager and publicist Alan Eichler said. She was 84.
Kellerman had a career of more than 60 years in film and television. She played a college professor who was returning student Rodney Dangerfield's love interest in the 1986 comedy “Back to School.” And she was a regular in Altman's films, appearing in 1970's “Brewster McCloud," 1992's “The Player” and 1994's “Ready to Wear.”
But she would always be best known for playing Major Houlihan, a straitlaced, by-the-book Army nurse who is tormented by rowdy doctors during the Korean War in the army comedy “MASH."
In the film's key scene, and its peak moment of misogyny, a tent where Houlihan is showering is pulled open and she is exposed to an audience of cheering men.
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