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Tag: War and unrest

  • Russian court fines Wikipedia for article about Ukraine war

    Russian court fines Wikipedia for article about Ukraine war

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    A Moscow court on Thursday again fined Wikipedia for a Russian-language article it refused to remove about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest in a series of government moves to silence objective reporting or criticism of the war and restrict the Russian public’s access to information.

    The court fined Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the free, publicly-edited online encyclopedia, 2 million rubles ($24,464) for not removing a Wikipedia article titled “Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia region,” a reference to one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia annexed last September. Most countries have condemned the annexation, as well as that by Russia in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, as illegal.

    The state Tass news agency said the Wikimedia Foundation had failed to heed the demands of Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove articles containing “false information.” Tass said a Wikipedia representative asked the court to reject the removal demand as vague.

    President Vladimir Putin in recent years has increased his crackdown on criticism and factual reporting that doesn’t correspond to his government’s views or versions of events. The crackdown has widened since his troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, focusing especially on information and dissent against what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” in the neighboring country.

    Through Roskomnadzor, his government has also tried, with mixed success, to technically limit Western news reports that can be seen in Russia. The BBC and some Voice of America sites are among those it has blocked but which Russians can access using virtual private networks.

    This is not the first time Wikipedia has been fined for refusing to delete “false” information about the war in Ukraine.

    Last week, the same Moscow court issued a fine of 800,000 rubles ($9,785) to the Wikimedia Foundation for not removing materials linked to a song by a Russian rock band called Psychea, which Russian authorities consider to be extremist.

    In November 2022, the organization was fined 2 million rubles for refusing to delete “false” information in seven Wikipedia articles about the “special military operation,” including information about atrocities in Bucha and the destruction of Mariupol’s theater.

    Wikipedia didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment but says in its online encyclopedia about censorship: “Since the early 2010s, Russian Wikipedia and its editors have experienced numerous and increasing threats of nationwide blocks and country-wide enforcement of blacklisting by the Russian government, as well as several attempts to censor pages, spread propaganda, and disinform.”

    Tass said Roskomnadzor will label Wikimedia in search engines as a violator of Russian law, and that more action against specific articles is planned.

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  • China warns as US, Philippines stage combat drills

    China warns as US, Philippines stage combat drills

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    MANILA, Philippines — China warned on Wednesday that a deepening security alliance between the United States and the Philippines should not harm its security and territorial interests and interfere in long-simmering territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

    When asked to comment on the combat exercises between American and Filipino forces that started on Tuesday in the Philippines, the Chinese Embassy in Manila on Wednesday issued a statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, who said that such drills “should not target any third party and should be conducive to regional peace and stability.”

    Wang did not say how China would respond if it concludes that the U.S.-Philippine security cooperation was hurting Beijing’s core interests.

    In Washington, the U.S. and Philippine defense and foreign secretaries met on Tuesday to discuss the development of nine Philippine military camps, where American forces have been allowed to stay indefinitely under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

    “These sites will support combined training exercises and interoperability between our forces to ensure that we’re even better prepared for future crises,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. He added the U.S. was allocating more than $100 million to build infrastructure at the sites, where Americans would be stationed.

    China has strongly opposed that agreement, which would allow American forces to establish military staging grounds and surveillance outposts in the northern Philippines across the sea from the Taiwan Strait and in western Philippine provinces facing the disputed South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety on historical grounds. Washington disputes China’s claims.

    Austin said he also discussed with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez, the U.S. delivery of much-needed defense equipment, including radars, unmanned aerial systems, military transport aircraft and coastal and air defense systems to Philippines over the next five to 10 years under a security assistance roadmap.

    This year’s Balikatan exercises between the treaty allies are the largest since the two sides started joint military combat-readiness exercises in the early 1990s. They will run until April 28 and involve more than 17,600 American and Filipino personnel and a small Australian contingent. About a dozen countries including Japan and India but not China were sending observers, organizers said.

    In a live-fire drill the allies will stage for the first time, U.S. and Filipino forces will sink a ship in Philippine territorial waters off western Zambales province on April 26 in a coordinated coastal artillery bombardment and airstrike, Col. Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters on Tuesday.

    President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been briefed about the live-fire drill and plans to watch it, Logico said.

    In Palawan, which faces the South China Sea, the exercises will involve beach assaults and retaking an island seized by enemy forces, Logico said.

    Marcos, who took office in June last year, has nurtured closer relations with Washington than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who often lashed out at U.S. security policies while praising China and Russia. Duterte tried to abrogate a key defense pact that would have restrained American forces from entering the Philippines for large-scale war drills but later backpedaled from the effort.

    The drills are the latest display of American firepower in Asia, as the Biden administration strengthens an arc of alliances to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan, an island democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

    That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under Marcos to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea.

    The ongoing drills, which started in the early 1990s, will showcase U.S. warships, fighter jets, Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.

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  • China warns as US, Philippines stage combat drills

    China warns as US, Philippines stage combat drills

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    MANILA, Philippines — China warned on Wednesday that a deepening security alliance between the United States and the Philippines should not harm its security and territorial interests and interfere in long-simmering territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

    When asked to comment on the combat exercises between American and Filipino forces that started on Tuesday in the Philippines, the Chinese Embassy in Manila on Wednesday issued a statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, who said that such drills “should not target any third party and should be conducive to regional peace and stability.”

    Wang did not say how China would respond if it concludes that the U.S.-Philippine security cooperation was hurting Beijing’s core interests.

    In Washington, the U.S. and Philippine defense and foreign secretaries met on Tuesday to discuss the development of nine Philippine military camps, where American forces have been allowed to stay indefinitely under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

    “These sites will support combined training exercises and interoperability between our forces to ensure that we’re even better prepared for future crises,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. He added the U.S. was allocating more than $100 million to build infrastructure at the sites, where Americans would be stationed.

    China has strongly opposed that agreement, which would allow American forces to establish military staging grounds and surveillance outposts in the northern Philippines across the sea from the Taiwan Strait and in western Philippine provinces facing the disputed South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety on historical grounds. Washington disputes China’s claims.

    Austin said he also discussed with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez, the U.S. delivery of much-needed defense equipment, including radars, unmanned aerial systems, military transport aircraft and coastal and air defense systems to Philippines over the next five to 10 years under a security assistance roadmap.

    This year’s Balikatan exercises between the treaty allies are the largest since the two sides started joint military combat-readiness exercises in the early 1990s. They will run until April 28 and involve more than 17,600 American and Filipino personnel and a small Australian contingent. About a dozen countries including Japan and India but not China were sending observers, organizers said.

    In a live-fire drill the allies will stage for the first time, U.S. and Filipino forces will sink a ship in Philippine territorial waters off western Zambales province on April 26 in a coordinated coastal artillery bombardment and airstrike, Col. Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters on Tuesday.

    President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been briefed about the live-fire drill and plans to watch it, Logico said.

    In Palawan, which faces the South China Sea, the exercises will involve beach assaults and retaking an island seized by enemy forces, Logico said.

    Marcos, who took office in June last year, has nurtured closer relations with Washington than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who often lashed out at U.S. security policies while praising China and Russia. Duterte tried to abrogate a key defense pact that would have restrained American forces from entering the Philippines for large-scale war drills but later backpedaled from the effort.

    The drills are the latest display of American firepower in Asia, as the Biden administration strengthens an arc of alliances to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan, an island democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

    That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under Marcos to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea.

    The ongoing drills, which started in the early 1990s, will showcase U.S. warships, fighter jets, Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.

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  • Biden to help mark decades of relative peace in N Ireland

    Biden to help mark decades of relative peace in N Ireland

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    BELFAST, Northern Ireland — President Joe Biden is in Northern Ireland to participate in marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to this part of the United Kingdom after the U.S. helped negotiate an end to decades of sectarian violence that killed thousands.

    On his first presidential visit to Northern Ireland, Biden was set to deliver congratulations and encourage the country’s leaders to work on universally beneficial trade and economic policies when he speaks Wednesday at a business development event at Ulster University’s campus in Belfast.

    But Biden was not expected to make any attempt to help resolve a new political crisis that has rattled the Good Friday peace deal and put Northern Ireland’s government on pause.

    Instead, the Democratic president will deliver at least two messages, said White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, who is traveling with Biden.

    “Congratulations on 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement, which has brought unprecedented peace and prosperity,” Kirby said. “And that kind of goes to the second goal, which is to talk about the importance of trying to work on trade and economic policies that benefit all communities, as well as the United States.”

    Biden opens his brief public schedule in Northern Ireland on Wednesday over coffee with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Before speaking at Ulster, he will meet with each of the leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties.

    Northern Ireland is without a functioning government. Stormont, the seat of its assembly, has been suspended since the Democratic Unionist Party, which formed half of a power-sharing government, walked out a year ago over a post-Brexit trade dispute.

    Britain’s departure from the European Union left Northern Ireland poised uneasily between the rest of the U.K. and EU member Ireland, and put the peace agreement under increased strain.

    After much wrangling, Britain and the EU struck a deal in February to address the tensions over trade, an agreement welcomed by the U.S., which had urged London and Brussels to end their post-Brexit feud. The Democratic Unionist Party, though, says the Windsor Framework doesn’t go far enough and has refused to return to government.

    As he set off for Belfast, Biden on Tuesday said a priority of his trip to Northern Ireland was to “keep the peace.”

    After the speech at Ulster University, Biden will travel to the Republic of Ireland for a three-day visit, including an address to the Dublin parliament, attendance at a gala dinner and trips to two ancestral hometowns. He will fly to County Louth, on Ireland’s east coast, on Wednesday to visit a cemetery, tour a castle, walk around downtown Dundalk and attend a community gathering.

    A few Belfast residents said Biden’s visit was important even though it will be short.

    “I think it’s great that he’s coming because of the anniversary of ‘the Troubles,’” Julie McNeill said Monday as she waited in the rain for a bus. She was referring to more than three decades of sectarian violence that left more than 3,600 people dead. “I think it’s important that he does come.”

    Still, McNeill said she was a little disappointed that the Irish American president would spend less than a day in Belfast. But she said she understood.

    “I mean, the man’s a busy man, and he’s 80 years old. I’m sure it’s hard for him,” she said.

    Samuel Olufemia, who is studying for a degree in public health from Ulster University, said he was looking forward to meeting Biden on campus.

    “Having him in Belfast here is a privilege,” said Olufemia, who is from Nigeria. “It’s going to be an historic visit and that’s one of the reasons I’m excited.”

    He said he also understands that Biden is too busy to stay longer. “The president always have other things to do,” Olufemia said.

    A massive security operation was in place for Biden’s stay in Belfast, with a heavy police presence on blocked off streets around the president’s hotel and the Ulster campus.

    Last month, U.K. intelligence services raised the country’s terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe.” But Biden said then that not even the heightened risk of an attack would keep him from making the trip.

    Biden last visited Ireland in 2016, when he was U.S. vice president.

    ___

    Lawless reported from London.

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  • Today in History: April 11, Civil Rights Act becomes law

    Today in History: April 11, Civil Rights Act becomes law

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    Today in History

    Today is Tuesday, April 11, the 101st day of 2023. There are 264 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act, a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

    On this date:

    In 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as Emperor of the French and was banished to the island of Elba. (Napoleon later escaped from Elba and returned to power in March 1815, until his downfall in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.)

    In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to a crowd outside the White House, saying, “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.” (It was the last public address Lincoln would deliver.)

    In 1899, the treaty ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect.

    In 1913, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, during a meeting of President Woodrow Wilson’s Cabinet, proposed gradually segregating whites and Blacks who worked for the Railway Mail Service, a policy that went into effect and spread to other agencies.

    In 1945, during World War II, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.

    In 1947, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers played in an exhibition against the New York Yankees at Ebbets Field, four days before his regular-season debut that broke baseball’s color line. (The Dodgers won, 14-6.)

    In 1961, former SS officer Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Israel, charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the Nazi Holocaust. (Eichmann was convicted and executed.)

    In 1970, Apollo 13, with astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert, blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon. (The mission was aborted when an oxygen tank exploded April 13. The crew splashed down safely four days after the explosion.)

    In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

    In 1996, 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff, who hoped to become the youngest person to fly cross-country, was killed along with her father and flight instructor when their plane crashed after takeoff from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

    In 2020, the number of U.S. deaths from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world, topping 20,000.

    Ten years ago: Congress’ most serious gun-control effort in years cleared its first hurdle as the Senate pushed past conservatives’ attempted blockade, rebuffing 68-31 an effort to keep debate from even starting. (However, proposals for tighter background checks for buyers as well as bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines went down to defeat six days later.) Comedian Jonathan Winters, 87, died in Montecito, California.

    Five years ago: House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he would retire rather than seek another term in Congress. California Gov. Jerry Brown accepted President Donald Trump’s call to send the National Guard to the Mexican border but said the troops would have nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Pope Francis admitted he made “grave errors” in judgment in Chile’s sex abuse scandal; during a January visit to Chile, Francis had strongly defended Bishop Juan Barros despite accusations by victims that Barros had witnessed and ignored their abuse. A military transport plane crashed just after takeoff in Algeria, killing 257 people in the worst aviation disaster in the history of the North African country. Mitzi Shore, owner of the Los Angeles club the Comedy Store, died at the age of 87.

    One year ago: The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said more than 10,000 civilians died in the Russian siege of his city. Philadelphia becomes the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate after reporting a sharp increase in coronavirus infections. A jury was selected to hear a libel lawsuit Johnny Depp filed against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, whom he accused of falsely portraying him as a domestic abuser. Mimi Reinhard, a secretary in Oskar Schindler’s office who typed up the list of Jews he saved from extermination by Nazi Germany, died at age 107.

    Today’s Birthdays: Ethel Kennedy is 95. Actor Joel Grey is 91. Actor Louise Lasser is 84. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman is 82. Movie writer-director John Milius is 79. Actor Peter Riegert is 76. Movie director Carl Franklin is 74. Actor Bill Irwin is 73. Country singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale is 66. Songwriter-producer Daryl Simmons is 66. Rock musician Nigel Pulsford (Bush) is 62. Actor Lucky Vanous is 62. Country singer Steve Azar is 59. Singer Lisa Stansfield is 57. Actor Johnny Messner is 54. Rock musician Dylan Keefe (Marcy Playground) is 53. Actor Vicellous (vy-SAY’-luhs) Shannon is 52. Rapper David Banner is 49. Actor Tricia Helfer is 49. Rock musician Chris Gaylor (The All-American Rejects) is 44. Actor Kelli Garner is 39. Singer Joss Stone is 36. Actor-dancer Kaitlyn Jenkins is 31.

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  • North Korean leader vows ‘offensive’ nuclear expansion

    North Korean leader vows ‘offensive’ nuclear expansion

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    SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to enhance his nuclear arsenal in more “practical and offensive” ways as he met with senior military officials to discuss the country’s war preparations in the face of his rivals’ “frantic” military exercises, state media said Tuesday.

    The meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission on Monday came amid heightened tensions as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the U.S.-South Korean joint military drills have intensified in recent weeks in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

    North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the commission’s members discussed unspecified issues related to strengthening defense capacities and perfecting war preparations to counter the threat posed by the allies’ drills, which the North portrays as invasion rehearsals.

    Kim reviewed the country’s frontline attack plans and various combat documents and stressed the need to bolster his nuclear deterrent with “increasing speed on a more practical and offensive” manner, KCNA said.

    The report did not specify the directions the North intended to take. KCNA also published photos of Kim talking to officials while pointing to certain spots on a blurred map that appeared to be of South Korea.

    KCNA said Kim and the military commission members analyzed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula “in which the U.S. imperialists and the (South) Korean puppet traitors are getting ever more undisguised in their moves for a war of aggression” and discussed preparation for proposed military actions that their enemy has no way of counteracting.

    The U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted their biggest field exercises in years last month and separately held joint naval and air force drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group and nuclear-capable U.S. bombers. KCNA claimed the drills simulated an all-out war against North Korea and communicated threats to occupy Pyongyang and decapitate its leadership.

    The United States and South Korea have described their exercises as defensive in nature and said that the expansion of those drills are necessary to cope with the North’s evolving threats. South Korea’s government did not immediately respond to Kim’s comments.

    Tensions are likely to be prolonged as the allies continue their drills and North Korea uses them as a pretext to advance weapons development and intensify military training involving its nuclear-capable missiles.

    The North Korean report came as South Korean officials said the North did not respond to South Korean calls placed over inter-Korean liaison and military hotlines for the fifth consecutive day. South Korean officials say North Korea cut off communications after the South last week urged the North to stop using without permission South Korean assets left at a now-shuttered joint factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.

    The paused military hotlines are particularly concerning in a time of heightened tensions as they are intended to prevent accidental clashes along the rivals’ sea borders.

    South Korean Unification Minister Kwon Youngse, Seoul’s point man on the North, in a news conference Tuesday expressed “strong regret” over North Korea’s “unilateral and irresponsible attitude “over the communication lines and also warned of unspecified legal action over its use of the Kaesong assets.

    When asked about Kim’s comments during the military meeting, Kwon said it’s likely that North Korea currently sees the buildup of tensions as favorable to its interests and that Seoul is closely analyzing the North’s intent.

    South Korea pulled its companies out of Kaesong in 2016 following a North Korean nuclear test, removing the last remaining major symbol of cooperation between the rivals. North Korean state media recently showed what appeared to be South Korean commuter buses running in the streets of Kaesong and Pyongyang.

    North Korea in 2023 so far has fired around 30 missiles in 11 different launch events, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that demonstrated potential range to reach the U.S. mainland and several shorter-range weapons designed to deliver nuclear strikes on South Korean targets.

    The North was already coming off a record year in weapons testing, after launching nearly 70 missiles in 2022.

    Experts say Kim’s provocative run in weapons displays is aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and negotiating economic concessions from a position of strength.

    Nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled since 2019 over disagreements in exchanging crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North’s steps to wind down its nuclear weapons program.

    South Korean officials say North Korea may soon up the ante by staging more provocative displays of its military might, including its first nuclear test detonation since 2017.

    North Korea last month unveiled what appeared to be a new nuclear warhead designed to fit on various delivery systems as Kim called for his nuclear scientists to increase production of weapons-grade material to make bombs to put on his growing range of weapons.

    North Korea has also issued veiled threats to test fire an ICBM on a normal ballistic trajectory toward the Pacific, which would be seen as a major provocation as its previous long-range tests were conducted on high angles to avoid the territories of neighbors.

    The North also previously said it aims to finish preparations to launch a military spy satellite into space by April, an event its rivals would almost certainly see as a test of ICBM technology banned by international sanctions.

    ___

    Find more AP coverage of the Asia-Pacific region at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • US, Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters

    US, Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters

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    MANILA, Philippines — The United States and the Philippines on Tuesday launch their largest combat exercises in decades that will involve live-fire drills, including a boat-sinking rocket assault in waters across the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait that will likely inflame China.

    The annual drills by the longtime treaty allies called Balikatan — Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder — will run up to April 28 and involve more than 17,600 military personnel. It will be the latest display of American firepower in Asia, where Washington has repeatedly warned China over its increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed sea channel and against Taiwan.

    The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in a possible confrontation over Taiwan.

    That dovetails with efforts by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea by boosting joint military exercises with the U.S. and allowing rotating batches of American forces to stay in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.

    About 12,200 U.S military personnel, 5,400 Filipino forces and 111 Australian counterparts are taking part in the exercises, the largest in Balikatan’s three-decade history. America’s warships, fighter jets as well as its Patriot missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers and anti-tank Javelins, would be showcased, according to U.S. and Philippine military officials.

    “We are not provoking anybody by simply exercising,” Col. Michael Logico, a Philippine spokesman for Balikatan, told reporters ahead of the start of the maneuvers.

    “This is actually a form of deterrence,” Logico said. “Deterrence is when we are discouraging other parties from invading us.”

    In a live-fire drill the allied forces would stage offshore for the first time, Logico said U.S. and Filipino forces would sink a 200-foot (61-meter) target vessel in Philippine territorial waters off the western province of Zambales this month in a coordinated airstrike and artillery bombardment.

    “We will hit it with all the weapons systems that we have, both ground, navy and air,” Logico said.

    That location facing the South China Sea and across the waters from the Taiwan Strait would likely alarm China, but Philippine military officials said the maneuver was aimed at bolstering the country’s coastal defense and was not aimed at any country.

    Such field scenarios would “test the allies’ capabilities in combined arms live-fire, information and intelligence sharing, communications between maneuver units, logistics operations, amphibious operations,” the U.S. Embassy in Manila said.

    Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over the long-seething territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines and four other governments and Beijing’s goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.

    China last week warned against the intensifying U.S. military deployment to the region. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a regular news briefing in Beijing that it “would only lead to more tensions and less peace and stability in the region.”

    The Balikatan exercises were opening in the Philippines a day after China concluded three days of combat drills that simulated sealing off Taiwan, following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week in California that infuriated Beijing.

    On Monday, the U.S. 7th Fleet deployed guided-missile destroyer USS Milius within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a Manila-claimed coral outcrop which China seized in the mid-1990s and turned into one of seven missile-protected island bases in the South China Sea’s hotly contested Spratlys archipelago. The U.S. military has been undertaking such “freedom of navigation” operations for years to challenge China’s expansive territorial claims in the busy seaway.

    “As long as some countries continue to claim and assert limits on rights that exceed their authority under international law, the United States will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all,” the 7th Fleet said. “No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms.”

    ___

    Find more AP coverage of the Asia-Pacific region at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • In Ukrainian village, a family lives under cloud of shelling

    In Ukrainian village, a family lives under cloud of shelling

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    BOHOYAVLENKA, Ukraine — In a small village in eastern Ukraine the sounds of war echo in the distance while 10-year old Khrystyna Ksenofontova plays. She pets the neighborhood cats, paints and, like everyone else here, hopes the fighting will end soon.

    The small village of Bohoyavlenka, in Donetsk province, lies 20 kilometers (13 miles) from the active front line. Khrystyna’s days are spent scrounging the bits of childhood she still can. Her family refuses to evacuate and lives under a cloud of constant shelling. She wears headphones to block out the booms of the explosions.

    ”(I feel) fear, trembling,” she says. The explosions resound at night most of the time, she says, brushing aside her sandy blond hair. But sometimes they come in the morning, too.

    Her mother, Yulia, and grandmother chose not to leave the village, which had a pre-war population of 1,400, after her father died from a brain injury suffered in an attack that destroyed one of their homes. They prefer to bear the brunt of the war in their hometown rather than be displaced and penniless, Yulia says.

    It’s a common story along the dozens of towns and villages that span the 1,000-kilometer (more than 600-mile) front line in eastern Ukraine. Despite the severity of the fighting, many families have refused to leave their homes, rejecting evacuation attempts and choosing to risk their lives under bombardment. Aid groups concentrate on delivering food and supplying heating to these areas, where supplies are difficult to access.

    The majority of those who stay are the elderly, many of whom rarely ventured outside their homes before the war. It is increasingly rare to find families with young children choosing to live so close to combat lines.

    But Khrystyna still finds moments of delight amid the devastation.

    In the basement, a litter of kittens was recently born. Picking up two, she smiles as their newborn eyes struggle to adjust to the light. She dreams of being a veterinarian.

    All her friends have gone. The child finds ways to occupy her time by studying — when the power is on she studies online — and taking care of the cats.

    Her grandmother — the mother of Khrystyna’s dead father — weeps, praying for normalcy to return to their lives.

    Yulia strategizes ways to gather food to last the week. Sometimes the family travels to a nearby town where the supermarkets are still open. The shops, hospitals and schools in their village closed several months ago.

    Like many residents in the area, her husband was a coal miner. Before the war he worked in the nearby hilltop town of Vuhledar, which has been the site of fierce fighting for months with Ukrainian forces still holding the town.

    Yulia fears a much anticipated Russian counteroffensive expected in the spring will finally push them to leave. But where? She doesn’t know. She wishes she could see her mother in Russian-occupied Crimea, but that is impossible now.

    “Everyone is worried about it (the potential counteroffensive),” she said. “Who knows, anything could happen.”

    While she speaks, a distant boom thunders. She brushes it off. “It’s normal.”

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  • Today in History: April 9, Lee surrenders to Grant

    Today in History: April 9, Lee surrenders to Grant

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    Today in History

    Today is Sunday, April 9, the 99th day of 2023. There are 266 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

    On this date:

    In 1413, the coronation of England’s King Henry V took place in Westminster Abbey.

    In 1939, Marian Anderson performed a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after the Black singer was denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

    In 1940, during World War II, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

    In 1942, during World War II, some 75,000 Philippine and American defenders on Bataan surrendered to Japanese troops, who forced the prisoners into what became known as the Bataan Death March; thousands died or were killed en route.

    In 1959, NASA presented its first seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 91, died in Phoenix, Arizona.

    In 1968, funeral services, private and public, were held for Martin Luther King Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and Morehouse College in Atlanta, five days after the civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

    In 1979, officials declared an end to the crisis involving the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania, 12 days after a partial core meltdown.

    In 1996, in a dramatic shift of purse-string power, President Bill Clinton signed a line-item veto bill into law. (However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the veto in 1998.)

    In 2003, jubilant Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, beheading a toppled statue of their longtime ruler in downtown Baghdad and embracing American troops as liberators.

    In 2005, Britain’s Prince Charles married longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles, who took the title Duchess of Cornwall.

    In 2010, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement. (His vacancy was filled by Elena Kagan.)

    In 2021, Britain’s Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 99; he was Britain’s longest-serving consort.

    Ten years ago: Thirteen people were shot to death during a pre-dawn, house-to-house rampage in the Serbian village of Velika Ivanca; authorities identified the gunman as a 60-year-old veteran of the Balkan wars who took his own life. Fourteen people were injured by a knife-wielding attacker at Lone Star College in Cypress, Texas; a suspect was later sentenced to 48 years in prison. Connecticut’s women’s basketball team won its eighth NCAA championship with a 93-60 rout of Louisville at New Orleans Arena.

    Five years ago: Federal agents raided the office of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, seizing records on matters including a $130,000 payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Opening statements began in the retrial of Bill Cosby, charged with drugging and molesting Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home. (Cosby was convicted and sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but the state’s Supreme Court would later throw out the conviction.) Facebook began alerting some users that their data had been swept up in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.

    One year ago: Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine, a day after a Russian missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station where thousands clamored to leave before an expected Russian onslaught. Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins was killed in an auto accident in Florida. Community activists in South Florida sprang into action after West Point cadets on spring break were sickened by fentanyl-laced cocaine at a house party. They blitzed beaches and warned spring breakers of a surge in recreational drugs cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid.

    Today’s Birthdays: Satirical songwriter and mathematician Tom Lehrer is 95. Actor Michael Learned is 84. Country singer Margo Smith is 81. Actor Dennis Quaid is 69. Comedian Jimmy Tingle is 68. Country musician Dave Innis (Restless Heart) is 64. Talk show host Joe Scarborough is 60. Actor-sports reporter Lisa Guerrero is 59. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is 59. Actor Mark Pellegrino is 58. Actor-model Paulina Porizkova is 58. Actor Cynthia Nixon is 57. TV personality Sunny Anderson is 48. Rock singer Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance) is 46. Actor Keshia Knight Pulliam is 44. Rock musician Albert Hammond Jr. (The Strokes) is 43. Actor Charlie Hunnam is 43. Actor Ryan Northcott is 43. Actor Arlen Escarpeta is 42. Actor Jay Baruchel is 41. Actor Annie Funke is 38. Actor Jordan Masterson is 37. Actor Leighton Meester is 37. Actor-singer Jesse McCartney is 36. R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan is 36. Actor Kristen Stewart is 33. Actor Elle Fanning is 25. Rapper Lil Nas X is 24. Actor Isaac Hempstead Wright is 24. Classical crossover singer Jackie Evancho (ee-VAYN’-koh) is 23.

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  • Today in History: April 7, Billie Holiday is born

    Today in History: April 7, Billie Holiday is born

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    Today in History

    Today is Friday, April 7, the 97th day of 2023. There are 268 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On April 7, 1984, the Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.

    On this date:

    In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

    In 1915, jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,” was born in Philadelphia.

    In 1922, the Teapot Dome scandal had its beginnings as Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts.

    In 1945, during World War II, American planes intercepted and effectively destroyed a Japanese fleet, which included the battleship Yamato, that was headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.

    In 1949, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” opened on Broadway.

    In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” (This became known as the “domino theory,” although Eisenhower did not use that term.)

    In 1957, shortly after midnight, the last of New York’s electric trolleys completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.

    In 1959, a referendum in Oklahoma repealed the state’s ban on alcoholic beverages.

    In 1962, nearly 1,200 Cuban exiles tried by Cuba for their roles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion were convicted of treason.

    In 1966, the U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.

    In 1994, civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi; in the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

    In 2020, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned after lambasting the officer he’d fired as the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which had been stricken by a coronavirus outbreak; James McPherson was appointed as acting Navy secretary.

    Ten years ago: A fierce battle between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan left nearly 20 people dead, including 11 Afghan children killed in an airstrike and an American civilian adviser. In Egypt, Christians angered by the killing of four Christians in sectarian violence clashed with a Muslim mob throwing rocks and firebombs, killing one and turning Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral into a battleground.

    Five years ago: Opposition activists and local rescuers said at least 40 people were killed in a suspected poison gas attack on the last remaining foothold for the Syrian opposition in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was taken into police custody after a showdown with his own supporters, who tried to keep him from surrendering to face prison time for a corruption conviction.

    One year ago: The Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, shattering a historic barrier by securing her place as the first Black female justice and giving President Joe Biden a bipartisan endorsement for his effort to diversify the high court. In a Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders, a move many health experts described as dangerously short-sighted. Five-time champion Tiger Woods returned to golf at the Masters, shooting a 1-under 71 in his first competitive round since a devastating car wreck 14 months earlier. .

    Today’s Birthdays: Country singer Bobby Bare is 88. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown is 85. Movie director Francis Ford Coppola is 84. Actor Roberta Shore is 80. Singer Patricia Bennett (The Chiffons) is 76. Singer John Oates is 75. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is 74. Singer Janis Ian is 72. Country musician John Dittrich is 72. Actor Jackie Chan is 69. College and Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett is 69. Actor Russell Crowe is 59. Christian/jazz singer Mark Kibble (Take 6) is 59. Actor Bill Bellamy is 58. Rock musician Dave “Yorkie” Palmer (Space) is 58. Rock musician Charlie Hall (The War on Drugs) is 49. Former football player-turned-analyst Tiki Barber is 48. Actor Heather Burns is 48. Christian rock singer-musician John Cooper (Skillet) is 48. Actor Kevin Alejandro is 47. Retired baseball infielder Adrian Beltre is 44. Actor Sian Clifford is 41. Rock musician Ben McKee (Imagine Dragons) is 38. Christian rock singer Tauren Wells is 37. Actor Ed Speleers is 35.

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  • Today in History: April 6, first modern Olympics begin

    Today in History: April 6, first modern Olympics begin

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    Today in History

    Today is Thursday, April 6, the 96th day of 2023. There are 269 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On April 6, 1896, the first modern Olympic games formally opened in Athens, Greece.

    On this date:

    In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee as Confederate forces launched a surprise attack against Union troops, who beat back the Confederates the next day.

    In 1864, Louisiana opened a convention in New Orleans to draft a new state constitution, one that called for the abolition of slavery.

    In 1909, American explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson and four Inuits became the first men to reach the North Pole.

    In 1917, the United States entered World War I as the House joined the Senate in approving a declaration of war against Germany that was then signed by President Woodrow Wilson.

    In 1943, “Le Petit Prince” (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery was first published by Reynal & Hitchcock of New York.

    In 1945, during World War II, the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day.

    In 1954, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., responding to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s broadside against him on “See It Now,” said in remarks filmed for the program that Murrow had, in the past, “engaged in propaganda for Communist causes.”

    In 1968, 41 people were killed by two consecutive natural gas explosions at a sporting goods store in downtown Richmond, Indiana.

    In 1974, Swedish pop group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest held in Brighton, England, with a performance of the song “Waterloo.”

    In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, spoke of voters in Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt communities who “cling to guns or religion” because of bitterness about their economic lot; Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on the comment, calling it “elitist.”

    In 2014, legendary Hollywood actor Mickey Rooney, 93, died in North Hollywood.

    In 2017, comedian Don Rickles, known for his biting insults, died in Beverly Hills, California at age 90.

    In 2020, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was transferred to the intensive care unit of a London hospital where he was being treated for COVID-19, after his condition deteriorated.

    Ten years ago: Iran and six world powers failed to reach agreement during talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on how to reduce fears that Tehran might use its nuclear technology to make weapons. Militants killed six Americans, including diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, 25, and an Afghan doctor in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan, the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.

    Five years ago: Texas Republican congressman Blake Farenthold abruptly resigned, four months after announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election amid sexual harassment allegations. Former Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii died in Honolulu at the age of 93. Federal law enforcement authorities seized online classified site Backpage.com and its affiliated websites known for listing adult escort services. A South Korean court sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to 24 years in prison on charges including bribery and extortion stemming from a corruption scandal that removed her from office a year earlier. A transport truck collided with a bus carrying a junior hockey team in western Canada, killing 16.

    One year ago: The mayor of the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said more than 5,000 civilians had been killed during the invasion by Russian troops. In response, the U.S. and its Western allies moved to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin over what they brand war crimes. European health officials investigated a rapidly evolving outbreak of salmonella in 134 children that appears linked to chocolate Easter eggs.

    Today’s Birthdays: Nobel Prize-winning scientist James D. Watson is 95. Actor Billy Dee Williams is 86. Actor Roy Thinnes is 85. Movie director Barry Levinson is 81. Actor John Ratzenberger is 76. Actor Patrika Darbo is 75. Baseball Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven is 72. Actor Marilu Henner is 71. Olympic bronze medal figure skater Janet Lynn is 70. Actor Michael Rooker is 68. Former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is 67. Rock musician Warren Haynes is 63. Rock singer-musician Black Francis (The Pixies) is 58. Actor Ari Meyers is 54. Actor Paul Rudd is 54. Actor-producer Jason Hervey is 51. Actor Zach Braff is 48. Actor Joel Garland is 48. Actor Candace Cameron Bure (buhr-RAY’) is 47. Actor Teddy Sears is 46. Jazz and R&B musician Robert Glasper is 45. Actor Eliza Coupe is 42. Singer and guitarist Kenneth Pattengale (Milk Carton Kids) is 41. Actor Bret Harrison is 41. Actor Charlie McDermott is 33.

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  • Polish-Ukrainian friendship masks a bitter, bloody history

    Polish-Ukrainian friendship masks a bitter, bloody history

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    WARSAW, Poland — Poland has emerged as one Ukraine‘s most ardent supporters during Russia’s invasion despite historical grievances between the neighboring nations that stir up bad feelings to this day.

    The tensions between the country at war and its staunch ally were acknowledged Wednesday when Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a state visit to Poland, where he was welcomed with honors.

    President Andrzej Duda promised that Poland would keep helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s aggression, but he also acknowledged at a joint news conference with Zelesnkyy that the relationship was complicated.

    ”There are still open wounds in the memory of many people,” Duda said, an obvious reference to the massacres of some 100,000 Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during the 1940s. Poland considers the killings genocide.

    The difficult past in Poland-Ukraine relations goes back even further than that. In a part of Europe where entire nations have disappeared from maps for generations before returning from the ashes of collapsed empires, sometimes at the expense of neighbors, Poles and Ukrainians share a history of existential rivalry.

    Ukrainians, for example, harbor resentment from centuries spent under Polish rule, a period which is not remembered as completely benign.

    As the two presidents delivered public addresses to a crowd of Ukrainians and Poles in Warsaw, Duda acknowledged that both nations had made a lot of mistakes “for which we paid the ultimate price,”

    “We are sending a clear message to the Kremlin today: You will never succeed in dividing us again,” he said.

    Polish and Ukrainian officials have mostly avoided addressing the old grievances openly as they remain focused on Ukraine’s survival and worry that Russian could exploit any divisions. It is, after all, a war whose outcome will determine Ukraine’s very existence and Poland’s own security for decades to come.

    “In the future, there will be no borders between our peoples: political, economic and — what is very important — historical,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram message before his meeting with Duda. “But for that we still need to gain victory. For that, we need to walk side by side a little more.”

    By raising the matter now, the leaders seemed to acknowledge that thorny issues could not be swept under the rug forever, even with the war dragging on.

    Duda and other nationalist authorities face political pressure to make sure Polish suffering at Ukrainian hands is not forgotten, especially with the growing strength of a far-right party, Confederation, that has sometimes expressed anti-Ukrainian views. A parliamentary election in Poland before the end of the year will be a test for the ruling party, Law and Justice, and determine whether it wins a third term.

    On Wednesday, though, Zelenskyy was met with red carpets and pomp. Duda bestowed on his visitor Poland’s oldest and highest civilian distinction, The Order of the White Eagle. “You are surely one of the most outstanding people who has received the distinction,” the Polish president said.

    Zelenskyy called Duda a friend and said Polish-Ukrainian relations have never been so good. At the same time, Duda insisted the past must not be forgotten and now was the right time to confront it.

    “We cannot forget those who have perished in the past,” Duda said. “There are no taboo themes between us.”

    Probably the touchiest point of contention is how to remember one of Ukraine’s national heroes, Stepan Bandera, the far-right leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists who briefly allied himself with Germany’s Nazis.

    Efforts by Bandera-led forces to carve out an independent territory for Ukraine led them to perpetrate atrocities against Poles, Jews and Soviets.

    Such subjects were off-limits during the Soviet era, when Ukraine was a Soviet republic and Moscow also controlled Poland.

    Historians say that more than 100,000 Poles, including women and young children, perished at the hands of their Ukrainian neighbors in areas that were then located in southeastern Poland and are mostly in Ukraine now.

    The peak of the violence was on July 11, 1943, known as “Bloody Sunday,” when the Ukrainian insurgent fighters carried out coordinated attacks on Poles praying in or leaving churches in more than 100 villages, chiefly in the Volhynia region.

    Polish officials insist that only the full truth can strengthen the nations’ ties.

    Poles were angered in January when Ukraine’s parliament commemorated Bandera on the 114th anniversary of his birth by tweeting an image of the current commander of the Ukrainian armed forces against a portrait of Bandera. The post was later deleted.

    Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said then that his government took “an extremely critical stance toward any glorification or even remembrance of Bandera.”

    After meeting with Zelenskyy on Wednesday, Morawiecki said the two spoke about the crimes and Poland’s request to carry out exhumations on the Polish victims, something Ukraine has so far banned.

    “We had a very difficult history and today there is a chance to rewrite this history and base it on the truth,” Morawiecki said.

    ___

    Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed.

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  • ‘Nobody is above the law:’ Kosovo ex-president’s trial opens

    ‘Nobody is above the law:’ Kosovo ex-president’s trial opens

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    THE HAGUE, Netherlands — An international prosecutor declared Monday that “nobody is above the law,” as the trial opened for Kosovo’s former president and three other defendants on charges including murder and torture in a case that their supporters claim is unjustly targeting revered freedom fighters.

    Hashim Thaci resigned from office in 2020 to defend himself against the charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during his country’s 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia.

    “I am fully not guilty,” Thaci, who went by the nickname The Snake during the war, told judges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers as the trial opened. The other three defendants also repeated not guilty pleas made at earlier pretrial hearings.

    The case has stirred an outpouring of support from across the political spectrum in Kosovo. On Sunday, t housands of people took to the streets to show their support for the defendants. Many Kosovars consider the Netherlands-based court an injustice and view it as an attempt to rewrite the history of their struggle for independence.

    Prosecutor Alex Whiting said the KLA, a guerrilla force which battled against the powerful Serbian military, had “a very clear and explicit policy of targeting collaborators and perceived traitors including political opponents.”

    Whiting said prosecutors would prove that the KLA and was responsible for hundreds of murders and illegal detentions across Kosovo and northern Albania in 1998 and 1999 and that the four accused are responsible for those crimes as military leaders of the KLA general staff.

    “Most of the victims of the accused were fellow Kosovar Albanians. In their zeal to target and eliminate those persons they deemed to be opponents. The accused endorsed and implemented a policy that often victimized their own,” Whiting said, adding that the trial was about key defending principles.

    “Nobody is above the law, even during wartime,” he added.

    Whiting has led the prosecution office preparing the case against Thaci since late last year. He replaced Jack Smith, who was named a U.S. Justice Department special counsel last November to oversee investigations into former President Donald Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida home, as well as efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Both investigations are pending, and have not resulted in criminal charges.

    As the trial opened, hundreds of supporters of Thaci and the other defendants gathered near The Hague’s central railway station. Many waved flags and banners, including one that read: “Don’t equal victims with the criminals!” Another proclaimed: “KLA fought for freedom.”

    Vullnet Guri, who traveled from Switzerland to join the demonstration told The Associated Press: “We are protesting here for liberation of our fighters, they fight actually only for our freedom, and it is a big injustice to put them in the same quality of the Serbian army that made genocide in our country.”

    Prosecution lawyer Clare Lawson stressed that the KLA itself was not in the dock.

    “The KLA is not on trial. The liberation war waged by the KLA is not on trial. These four accused are on trial in respect of their personal responsibility for crimes committed against persons who they viewed as opponents, a majority of whom were in fact their fellow Kosovo Albanians,” she said. “In their bid for supremacy, they entrenched a climate of fear pitting neighbor against neighbor, a climate which still persists today.”

    Lawyers for Thaci and the other defendants are scheduled to deliver their opening statements on Tuesday. The first witnesses are expected to testify next week.

    Defense lawyers are expected to argue that the KLA was a loosely organized guerilla force and that the defendants had little control over local fighters and cannot be held responsible for the actions of others.

    In their opening statement, prosecutors sought to refute that claim.

    “Each of the four accused wielded power, authority and influence, which enabled them to implement the common criminal purpose charged and exercise effective control,” prosecution lawyer Matt Halling told judges.

    The trial is taking place at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which is based in the Netherlands but is part of Kosovo’s legal system.

    Thaci is standing trial along with Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi for offenses allegedly committed across Kosovo and northern Albania from 1998 to September 1999, during and after the war.

    Most of the 13,000 people who died in the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians. A 78-day campaign of NATO air strikes against Serbian forces ended the fighting. About 1 million ethnic Albanian Kosovars were driven from their homes.

    The court in The Hague and a linked prosecutor’s office were created after a 2011 report by the Council of Europe, a human rights body, that included allegations that KLA fighters trafficked human organs taken from prisoners and killed Serbs and fellow ethnic Albanians. The organ harvesting allegations weren’t included in the indictment against Thaci.

    In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, a move that Belgrade refuses to recognize. The United States and most of the West recognize the declaration, but Serbia — supported by allies Russia and China — does not.

    Kosovo-Serbia relations remain tense despite stepped-up efforts from Washington and the European Union, with a recent Western plan envisaging normalization of their relations.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C. contributed.

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  • Analysis: Saudi prince pivots to peace after years of war

    Analysis: Saudi prince pivots to peace after years of war

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In the years since Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman catapulted to power, it has been hard to find a controversy in the Middle East that doesn’t somehow involve the 37-year-old heir to the throne. Now he’s pivoting to his next audacious plan: Giving peace a chance.

    The moves toward reaching a détente with Iran, reestablishing ties to Syria and ending the kingdom’s yearslong war in Yemen could extricate Prince Mohammed from some of the thorniest regional issues he faces.

    Whether it succeeds will have profound impacts on the wider Middle East and on his expansive plans to reshape the kingdom away from oil and further into his image. Failure threatens not only his impending rule over a nation crucial to global energy supplies, but a wider region shaken by years of tensions, inflamed in part by his decisions.

    Prince Mohammed’s rise accelerated in 2015 after his father, King Salman, appointed him as deputy crown prince. That year saw Mohammed, also the country’s defense minister at the time, plunge Saudi Arabia into a military campaign in Yemen, a civil war that grew into a regional proxy battle still continuing today. Riyadh supports Yemen’s exiled government against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who hold Sanaa, the country’s capital.

    The tensions with Iran, at the time still in a nuclear deal with world powers, escalated with Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric in 2016. Protesters stormed Saudi diplomatic posts in Iran, and Riyadh broke off ties to Tehran.

    In 2017, Saudi Arabia joined three other Arab nations in boycotting Qatar, which maintains ties to Iran. The same year, the prince made what appeared to be a heavy-handed attempt to break Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s domination of Lebanon’s government by inviting Lebanon’s prime minister to the kingdom and then allegedly forcing him to announce his resignation. The attempt failed and Saudi Arabia’s influence in Lebanon has been diminished ever since.

    Prince Mohammed days later launched a purported anti-corruption campaign that saw the Saudi elite locked in the Ritz Carlton until they handed over billions in assets. The slaying of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, believed by the United States and others to be at the prince’s orders, followed in 2018.

    But an attack that followed likely changed the prince’s calculations. In September 2019, a barrage of cruise missiles and drones struck at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, temporarily halving production.

    While the Houthis initially claimed the assault, the West and Saudi Arabia later blamed the attacks on Tehran. Independent experts also linked the weapons to Iran. Though Tehran still denies carrying out the attack, even United Nations investigators said that “the Houthi forces are unlikely to be responsible for the attack.”

    Saudi Arabia never retaliated publicly for the attack, nor did the U.S. under President Donald Trump as the longtime security guarantor for the Gulf Arab states. That, as well as America’s later chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, led to a reconsideration in the region of how much to rely on U.S. promises.

    Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia maintained a close relationship with Russia as part of the OPEC+ group. The organization’s oil production cuts, even as Moscow’s war on Ukraine boosted energy prices, angered President Joe Biden and American lawmakers. China, emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, also wants to secure its supply of Saudi oil.

    Both Russia and China offer Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed the cachet of being respected by the world’s great powers without the persistent human rights concerns of the West. Prince Mohammed has hosted and spoken by phone with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

    The Chinese-mediated deal on the kingdom reestablishing ties with Iran also provides Prince Mohammed with a new opportunity to show the U.S. that others can shape Mideast politics. It also offers a needed lull to allow the prince to instead focus on his planned $500 billion futuristic desert smart city project called Neom in the kingdom’s northwest, and the Mukaab in Riyadh — a 400-meter-high (523-yard) cube-shaped mini-city full of holograms and entertainment venues — to anchor a new downtown in the Saudi capital, likely to cost billions more if completed.

    A lull in tensions is desperately sought by Iran as well, particularly in the wake of the Mahsa Amini protests that represent one of the greatest challenges to its theocracy since the chaotic years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. U.S. sanctions over Tehran’s collapsed nuclear deal as well still choke Iran’s economy.

    For Prince Mohammed, the time must have appeared right to make the move. Already, Saudi Arabia led efforts to reestablish ties to Qatar in 2021. Easing tensions with Iran may provide him the avenue to finally fully pull out of the Yemen war.

    Still, Prince Mohammed instructing Saudi officials to sit down with Iranian counterparts to reopen embassies represents a dramatic change for a leader who in 2018 said: “I believe the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good.”

    Meanwhile, talks are ongoing on restoring ties with Syria, still under Iranian-backed President Bashar Assad after years of civil war. An upcoming Arab League summit being hosted by the kingdom in May could see Syria formally brought back into the fold. Even Lebanon, beset by crises ranging from fiscal to even time keeping, could benefit from a Saudi-Iran rapprochement.

    The kingdom will also face a transition in the future. King Salman is already 87. His predecessor, King Abdullah, was the oldest Saudi monarch when he died at the age 90. Prince Mohammed likely will be the youngest ever to take the throne — and could have decades more to make his mark on the kingdom.

    What that mark will be depends just as much on him as it does on whether he can cool the tensions he helped kindle.

    ___

    EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, the news director for Gulf Arab countries and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • Explosion in Russian cafe kills prominent military blogger

    Explosion in Russian cafe kills prominent military blogger

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    An explosion tore through a cafe in Russia’s second-largest city Sunday, killing a well-known military blogger and strident supporter of the war in Ukraine. Some reports said a bomb was embedded in a bust of the blogger that was given to him as a gift.

    Russian officials said Vladlen Tatarsky was killed as he was leading a discussion at the cafe on the bank of the Neva River in the historic heart of St. Petersburg. Twenty-five people were wounded in the blast, and 19 of them were hospitalized, according to the regional governor, Alexander Beglov.

    Russian media and military bloggers said Tatarsky was meeting with members of the public when a woman presented him with a box containing a bust of him that apparently blew up. A patriotic Russian group that organized the event said it had taken security precautions but acknowledged that those measures “proved insufficient.”

    In remarks recorded on video, a witness said that a woman who identified herself as Nastya asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky during the discussion.

    The witness, Alisa Smotrova, quoted Nastya as saying she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. Nastya and Tatarsky joked and laughed. She then went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky.

    He reportedly put the bust on a nearby table, and the explosion followed. Smotrova described people running in panic, some hurt by shattered glass and covered in blood.

    A video posted on Russian messaging app channels showed the cafe after the explosion. Tables and chairs were broken and stained by blood, and shards of glass littered the floor.

    Russian media said investigators were looking at the bust as the possible source of the blast but have not ruled out the possibility that an explosive device was planted in the cafe before the event.

    Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state’s top criminal investigation agency, opened a probe on charges of murder.

    No one publicly claimed responsibility, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately pointed a finger at Ukraine and compared the bombing to the killing last August of Darya Dugina, a nationalist TV commentator. She was killed when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.

    Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.

    Her father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.

    “There must be no talks with the terrorists other than about their unconditional surrender,” Dugin said. “A victory parade must take place in Kyiv.”

    Since the fighting in Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainian authorities have refrained from claiming responsibility for various fires and explosions and apparent assassinations in Russia. At the same time, officials in Kyiv have jubilantly greeted such events and insisted on Ukraine’s right to launch attacks in Russia.

    A top Ukrainian government official cast the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal turmoil.

    “Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English on Twitter. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

    Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

    Born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Then he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

    Tatarsky was known for his blustery pronouncements and ardent pro-war rhetoric.

    After the Kremlin’s annexation of four regions of Ukraine last year that most of the world rejected as illegal, Tatarsky posted a video in which he vowed: “That’s it. We’ll defeat everybody, kill everybody, rob everybody we need to. It will all be the way we like it. God be with you.”

    Military bloggers have played an increasingly prominent and influential role in the flow of information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have almost universally championed the goals of the campaign but at times criticize Russian military strategy and tactical decisions.

    At the same time, the Kremlin has squelched alternative voices opposing the war by shutting down news outlets, limiting the public’s access to information and jailing critics.

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  • Blinken: Russia must immediately free 2 detained Americans

    Blinken: Russia must immediately free 2 detained Americans

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    WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged his Russian counterpart, in a rare phone call between the diplomats since the Ukraine war, to immediately release a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained last week as well as another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, the State Department said Sunday.

    In the call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Blinken conveyed “grave concern” over the Kremlin’s detention of journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage allegations, according to a State Department summary of the call. Blinken called for his immediate release.

    Blinken also sought the immediate release of Whelan, whom the statement said was wrongfully detained.

    Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless. He is serving a 16-year sentence.

    Blinken and Lavrov also discussed “the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work,” according to the State Department.

    The FSB, Russia’s top security agency and successor to the KGB, said Gershkovich was collecting information on an enterprise of the military-industrial complex. Russian authorities detained him last week, the first time a U.S. correspondent has been held on spying accusations since the Cold War.

    In its summary of the call, Russia’s foreign ministry said Lavrov “drew Blinken’s attention to the need to respect the decisions of the Russian authorities” about Gershkovich, whom Moscow claims, without evidence, “was caught red-handed.”

    The Journal has adamantly denied the allegations and demanded his release. U.S. officials have also called on Russia to let him go, with President Joe Biden telling reporters on Friday that his message to the country was “Let him go.”

    The Kremlin said Lavrov also told Blinken it was unacceptable for U.S. officials and Western news media to continue “whipping up excitement” and politicizing the journalist’s detention. “His further fate will be determined by the court.”

    The State Department described the detention of Gershkovich as unacceptable.

    More than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates have written the Russian ambassador in the United States to express concern Russia is sending the message that reporting inside the country is criminalized.

    And on Saturday night, basketball star Brittney Griner, who was detained for 10 months by Russian authorities before being released in a prisoner swap for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, issued a statement with her wife, Cherelle, calling for the release of the 31-year-old Gershkovich.

    “Every American who is taken is ours to fight for and every American returned is a win for us all,” the couple said in a statement posted on Instagram.

    Interactions between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats have been rare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, though they did have a brief conversation last month on the sidelines of the Group of 20 conference of foreign ministers in India. It was the highest-level in-person talks between the two countries since the war.

    That interaction was their first contact since last summer, when Blinken talked to Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Whelan and Griner. Though Whelan was not included in the one-for-one swap that resulted in the release of Griner, U.S. officials said they remain committed to bringing him home.

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  • War-crimes warrant for Putin could complicate Ukraine peace

    War-crimes warrant for Putin could complicate Ukraine peace

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    THE HAGUE, Netherlands — An international arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin raises the prospect of the man whose country invaded Ukraine facing justice, but it complicates efforts to end that war in peace talks.

    Both justice and peace appear to be only remote possibilities today, and the conflicting relationship between the two is a quandary at the heart of a March 17 decision by the International Criminal Court to seek the Russian leader’s arrest.

    Judges in The Hague found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights were responsible for war crimes, specifically the unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

    As unlikely as Putin sitting in a Hague courtroom seems now, other leaders have faced justice in international courts.

    Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a driving force behind the Balkan wars of the 1990s, went on trial for war crimes, including genocide, at a United Nations tribunal in The Hague after he lost power. He died in his cell in 2006 before a verdict could be reached.

    Serbia, which wants European Union membership but has maintained close ties to Russia, is one of the countries that has criticized the ICC’s action. The warrants “will have bad political consequences” and create “a great reluctance to talk about peace (and) about truce” in Ukraine, populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said.

    Others see consequences for Putin, and for anyone judged guilty of war crimes, as the primary desired outcome of international action.

    “There will be no escape for the perpetrator and his henchmen,” European Union leader Ursula von der Leyen said Friday in a speech to mark the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Bucha, the Ukraine town that saw some of the worst atrocities in the war. “War criminals will be held accountable for their deeds.”

    Hungary did not join the other 26 EU members in signing a resolution in support of the ICC warrant for Putin. The government’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said Hungarian authorities would not arrest Putin if he were to enter the country..

    He called the warrants “not the most fortunate because they lead toward escalation and not toward peace.”

    Putin appears to have a strong grip on power, and some analysts suspect the the warrant hanging over him could provide an incentive to prolong the fighting.

    “The arrest warrant for Putin might undermine efforts to reach a peace deal in Ukraine,” Daniel Krcmaric, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, said in emailed comments to The Associated Press.

    One potential way of easing the way to peace talks could be for the United Nations Security Council to call on the International Criminal Court to suspend the Ukraine investigation for a year, which is allowed under Article 16 of the Rome Statute treaty that created the court.

    But that appears unlikely, said Krcmaric, whose book “The Justice Dilemma,” deals with the tension between seeking justice and pursuing a negotiated end to conflicts.

    “The Western democracies would have to worry about public opinion costs if they made the morally questionable decision to trade justice for peace in such an explicit fashion,” he said, adding that Ukraine also is unlikely to support such a move.

    Russia immediately rejected the warrants. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow doesn’t recognize the ICC and considers its decisions “legally void.” And Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, which is chaired by Putin, suggested the ICC headquarters on the Netherlands’ coastline could become a target for a Russian missile strike.

    Alexander Baunov, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment, observed in a commentary that the arrest warrant for Putin amounted to “an invitation to the Russian elite to abandon Putin” that could erode his support.

    While welcoming the warrants for Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, rights groups also urged the international community not to forget the pursuit of justice in other conflicts.

    “The ICC warrant for Putin reflects an evolving and multifaceted justice effort that is needed elsewhere in the world,” Human Rights Watch associate international justice director Balkees Jarrah said in a statement. “Similar justice initiatives are needed elsewhere to ensure that the rights of victims globally — whether in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, or Palestine — are respected.”

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Today in History: Apr 1, First pro baseball, hockey strikes

    Today in History: Apr 1, First pro baseball, hockey strikes

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    Today in History

    Today is Saturday, April 1, the 91st day of 2023. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool’s Day.

    Today’s Highlights in History:

    On April 1, 1972, the first Major League Baseball players’ strike began; it lasted 12 days. Twenty years later, on April 1, 1992, the National Hockey League Players’ Association went on its first-ever strike, which lasted 10 days.

    On this date:

    In 1865, during the Civil War, Union forces routed Confederate soldiers in the Battle of Five Forks in Virginia.

    In 1891, the Wrigley Co. was founded in Chicago by William Wrigley, Jr.

    In 1924, Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. (Hitler was released in December 1924; during his time behind bars, he wrote his autobiographical screed, “Mein Kampf.”)

    In 1945, American forces launched the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II. (U.S. forces succeeded in capturing the Japanese island on June 22.)

    In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.

    In 1975, with Khmer Rouge guerrillas closing in, Cambodian President Lon Nol resigned and fled into exile, spending the rest of his life in the United States.

    In 1976, Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

    In 1977, the U.S. Senate followed the example of the House of Representatives by adopting, 86-9, a stringent code of ethics requiring full financial disclosure and limits on outside income.

    In 2003, American troops entered a hospital in Nasiriyah (nah-sih-REE’-uh), Iraq, and rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been held prisoner since her unit was ambushed on March 23.

    In 2011, Afghans angry over the burning of a Quran at a small Florida church stormed a U.N. compound in northern Afghanistan, killing seven foreigners, including four Nepalese guards.

    In 2013, Taylor Swift was named entertainer of the year for the second year in a row at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

    In 2016, world leaders ended a nuclear security summit in Washington by declaring progress in safeguarding nuclear materials sought by terrorists and wayward nations, even as President Barack Obama acknowledged the task was far from finished.

    In 2017, Bob Dylan received his Nobel Literature diploma and medal during a small gathering in Stockholm, where he was performing a concert.

    In 2020, resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order, President Donald Trump said he wanted to give governors “flexibility” to respond to the coronavirus. Under growing pressure, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined his counterparts in more than 30 states in issuing a stay-at-home order.

    Ten years ago: Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty for James Holmes should he be convicted in the July 2012 Colorado movie theater attack that killed 12 people. (Holmes, found guilty of murder, ended up being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.) A cast member of the MTV reality show “BUCKWILD,” Shain Gandee, 21, was found dead in a sport utility vehicle in a West Virginia ditch along with his uncle and a friend; the cause was accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

    Five years ago: Writer and producer Steven Bochco, known for creating the groundbreaking TV police drama “Hill Street Blues,” died after a battle with cancer; he was 74. Authorities said the SUV that had carried members of a large, free-spirited family to their deaths several days earlier may have been driven intentionally off a scenic California cliff; six adopted children were killed along with their parents.

    One year ago: Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine resumed, as another attempt to rescue civilians from the shattered and encircled city of Mariupol was thrown into jeopardy and Russia accused the Ukrainians of a cross-border helicopter attack on a fuel depot. New federal rules were unveiled requiring that new vehicles sold in the United States would have to travel an average of at least 40 miles per each gallon of gasoline by 2026. Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize, marking the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Don Hastings is 89. Actor Ali MacGraw is 84. R&B singer Rudolph Isley is 84. Reggae singer Jimmy Cliff is 75. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is 73. Rock musician Billy Currie (Ultravox) is 73. Actor Annette O’Toole is 71. Movie director Barry Sonnenfeld is 70. Singer Susan Boyle is 62. Actor Jose Zuniga is 61. Country singer Woody Lee is 55. Actor Jessica Collins is 52. Rapper-actor Method Man is 52. Movie directors Albert and Allen Hughes are 51. Political commentator Rachel Maddow is 50. Former tennis player Magdalena Maleeva is 48. Actor David Oyelowo is 47. Actor JJ Feild is 45. Singer Bijou Phillips is 43. Actor Sam Huntington is 41. Comedian-actor Taran Killam is 41. Actor Matt Lanter is 40. Actor Josh Zuckerman is 38. Country singer Hillary Scott (Lady A) is 37. Rock drummer Arejay Hale (Halestorm) is 36. Actor Asa Butterfield is 26. Actor Tyler Wladis is 13.

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  • Olympic head slams ‘deplorable’ government views on Russia

    Olympic head slams ‘deplorable’ government views on Russia

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    GENEVA — Criticism by European governments of the push to reintegrate Russian and Belarusian athletes into world sports before the 2024 Paris Games was called “deplorable” by the International Olympic Committee leader on Thursday.

    IOC president Thomas Bach also suggested those governments — which seemed to include his own home country Germany — had “double standards” for focusing on athletes from countries involved in just one of about 70 wars and armed conflicts ongoing in the world.

    Bach detailed IOC advice on Tuesday to individual Olympic sports bodies of conditions by which they could decide to approve individual Russian or Belarusians to compete as neutral athletes, while continuing a ban from team sports.

    The IOC said sports should exclude athletes who have military links, though Bach clarified on Thursday this likely should not apply to those who did one year of mandatory service.

    “We have taken note of some negative reactions by some European governments in particular,” Bach said at a news conference after an IOC executive board meeting.

    Germany sports minister Nancy Faeser said Tuesday the IOC’s shift from its position one year ago to exclude all athletes and teams from Russia and Belarus as “a slap in the face of Ukrainian athletes.”

    “Those who let the warmonger Russia use international competitions for its propaganda are damaging the Olympic idea of peace and international understanding,” Faeser said, echoing previous comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and allies including Poland.

    Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Thursday the IOC “avoids the topic of (Russian) war crimes” and showed “willful ignorance of the war reality.”

    Bach responded it was deplorable that some governments “do not want to respect the majority within the Olympic movement and of all the stakeholders nor the autonomy of sport which they are praising and requesting from other countries.”

    “It’s deplorable that these governments don’t address the question of double standards with which we have been confronted,” the German lawyer said.

    “We have not seen a single comment from them about their attitude about the participation of athletes whose countries are involved in the other 70 wars and armed conflicts in the world.”

    The Paris Olympics is the fifth straight Summer or Winter Games since the steroid-tainted 2014 Sochi Olympics where Russia has faced calls to be excluded or must compete as a neutral team without national symbols such as the flag and anthem. The previous sanctions were because of state-backed doping and cover-ups.

    Still, criticism of sports officials was only hardening their stance against lawmakers, Bach suggested, and “strengthened the unity.”

    “It cannot be up to the governments to decide which athletes can participate in which competition,” he said.

    The final decision on which Russian and Belarusian teams can compete in international events, including qualification for the Paris Olympics, is for the governing bodies of individual sports.

    One sport body to follow Bach on Thursday was the International Table Tennis Federation which said Russian and Belarusians could compete again as neutrals as soon as May.

    The ITTF cited the example of “ping pong diplomacy,” when American table tennis players traveled to China in 1971 to play exhibition games which helped thaw relations between their countries.

    However, World Athletics said last week it will continue its more than year-long exclusion for “the foreseeable future.”

    Two IOC members with connections to the Russian military — including women’s pole vault world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva, who has an army rank — have had their status referred to the Olympic body’s ethics commission for evaluation, Bach said.

    The IOC ethics panel chaired by former U.N secretary general Ban Ki-moon has no power to impose sanctions and can only recommend actions to the Bach-chaired executive board.

    Ban visited Bucha in Ukraine last August and called the mass killings there by Russian forces an “horrendous atrocity” and a crime against humanity.

    ___

    More AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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  • UN atomic watchdog chief returns to Ukraine nuclear plant

    UN atomic watchdog chief returns to Ukraine nuclear plant

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    The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog has returned to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine

    ByELENA BECATOROS Associated Press

    DNIPRO, Ukraine — The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog returned Wednesday to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a day after saying a deal to protect Europe’s largest nuclear power facility from a catastrophic accident due to the war in Ukraine was “close.”

    International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi crossed the war’s front lines for a second time to reach the plant, which is located in a partially Russia-occupied part of Ukraine where combat has intensified.

    The IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, has a rotating team permanently based at the plant. Grossi told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday he feels it is his duty to ramp up talks between Kyiv and Moscow aimed at safeguarding the facility.

    He met Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he would “most probably” head to Moscow in the coming days.

    However, Zelenskyy said in a separate interview with the AP that he was less optimistic a deal was near. “I don’t feel it today,” he said.

    The Kremlin’s forces took over the six-reactor plant after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and Zelenskyy opposes any proposal that would legitimize Russia’s control over the facility.

    Grossi repeatedly has urged Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow a protection zone around the plant, which is very near the front line of the war.

    The negotiations are specific to preventing a nuclear disaster at the plant and not aimed at securing a broader cease-fire, Grossi told the AP.

    The power station’s reactors are shut down and the plant has received the electricity it needs to run the cooling systems needed to prevent a reactor meltdown through one remaining functioning power line.

    Interruptions to the outside electricity supply due to the fighting required plant personnel to switch to emergency diesel generators six times during the 13-month war. When backup power supplies might be needed again is unpredictable, according to Grossi. ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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