Russia pours in more troops and presses attack in the east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia assaulted cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long and poured more troops into Ukraine on Tuesday in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the country's eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.
If successful, the Russian offensive in what is known as the Donbas would essentially slice Ukraine in two and give President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory following the failed attempt by Moscow's forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and heavier-than-expected casualties nearly two months into the war.
The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk came under deadly attack. Russia also said it struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles. Multiple explosions were heard early Wednesday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. A hospital was reported shelled earlier in the nearby town of Bashtanka.
In Mariupol, the now-devastated port city in the Donbas, Ukrainian troops said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs to flatten what was left of a sprawling steel plant and hit a hospital where hundreds were staying.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Moscow's forces bombarded numerous Ukrainian military sites, including troop concentrations and missile-warhead storage depots, in or near several cities or villages. Those claims could not be independently verified.
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EXPLAINER: How Russia's eastern push in Ukraine may unfold
Russia's massive, new offensive in eastern Ukraine reflects Moscow's hope to reverse its battlefield fortunes after a catastrophic seven weeks of war.
Russian forces have sharply intensified artillery barrages and airstrikes on Ukrainian positions in the industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
A look at the war in Ukraine so far:
A FALTERING START
Russian troops rolled to the outskirts of the capital of Kyiv days after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, but the offensive was quickly stymied by staunch resistance.
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Feds will appeal mask ruling only if mandate still needed
The Justice Department said Tuesday it will not appeal a federal district judge’s ruling that ended the nation’s federal mask mandate on public transit unless the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes the requirement is still necessary.
In a statement released a day after a Florida judge ended the sweeping mandate, which required face coverings on planes and trains and in transit hubs, Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said officials believe that the federal mask order was “a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health.” He said it was “an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve.”
Coley said the CDC had said it would continue to assess public health conditions, and if the agency determined a mandate was necessary for public health, the Justice Department would file an appeal.
As of Tuesday, the agency hadn’t made a determination, officials said.
The federal judge's ruling did away with the last major vestige of federal pandemic rules and led to a mishmash of new locally created rules that reflected the nation’s ongoing divisions over how to battle the virus.
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Moving beyond masks: Biden toils to put pandemic behind him
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration has been working for months to prepare people to rethink their personal risk calculations as the nation gets used to the idea of living with an endemic COVID-19.
But that measured approach disappeared abruptly when a federal judge on Monday threw out the federal requirement to mask up when using mass transit. The ruling added to the urgency of the messaging challenge as the administration tries to move past the virus in the lead-up to midterm elections.
After the government last month eased indoor mask-wearing guidelines for the vast majority of Americans – even in schools — masking on planes was one of the last redoubts of the national COVID-19 restrictions. Now, as the policy falls, the administration turns to accelerating its efforts to provide the best advice for millions making their own personal safety decisions in the still-dangerous pandemic.
It's both a public health imperative and an important shift in emphasis for Biden's political future.
“There is an opportunity now, instead of saying this is a disappointing ruling, they could say this is a good time to have a conversation about how we move forward in this pandemic about risk calculation,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja an infectious disease physician and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
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Massive flames force evacuation of hundreds of Arizona homes
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Winds kicked up a towering wall of flames in rural northern Arizona on Tuesday, tearing through two-dozen structures and forcing the evacuation of more than 700 homes.
Coconino County declared an emergency Tuesday as the fast-moving wildfire outside of the Northern Arizona University college town of Flagstaff ballooned to over 9 square miles (23 square kilometers) Tuesday, Sheriff Jim Driscoll said during a news conference.
County officials said 766 homes and 1,000 animals have been evacuated. More than 2,000 people live in the area, officials said.
A couple of hundred homes are still threatened as smoke billowed into the air in an all-too-familiar scene. Residents recalled scrambling to pack their bags and flee a dozen years ago during a much-larger wildfire burned in the same area.
Driscoll said the sheriff’s office got a call saying a man was trapped in his house, but that firefighters couldn’t get to him. They do not know if he survived.
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For Russian diplomats, disinformation is part of the job
As governments and social media companies have moved to suppress Russia's state media and the disinformation it spreads about the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin's diplomats are stepping up to do the dirty work.
Russian embassies and consulates around the world are prolifically using Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to deflect blame for atrocities while seeking to undermine the international coalition supporting Ukraine.
Tech companies have responded by adding more labels to Russia's diplomatic accounts and by removing the accounts from its recommendations and search results. But the accounts are still active and are disseminating disinformation and propaganda in nearly every nation, in part because their diplomatic status gives them an added layer of protection from moderation.
With hundreds of social media accounts on every continent, Russia’s diplomatic corps acts as a global network for propaganda, in which the same claims can be recycled and tweaked for different audiences in different nations. And, so far, steps to substantially curtail that effort have fallen short.
“Each week since the beginning of the war these diplomats have posted thousands of times, gaining more than a million engagements on Twitter per week," said Marcel Schliebs, a disinformation researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. He has tracked more than 300 social media accounts linked to Russian embassies, consulates and diplomatic groups.
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Energy shift creates opening for 'world's largest batteries'
LUDINGTON, Mich. (AP) — Sprawled like a gigantic swimming pool atop a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is an asphalt-and-clay pond holding enough water to produce electricity for 1.6 million households.
It's part of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, which uses simple technology: Water is piped from a lower reservoir — the lake, in this case — to an upper one, then released downhill through supersized turbines.
Supporters call these systems “the world's largest batteries" because they hold vast amounts of potential energy for use when needed for the power grid.
The hydropower industry considers pumped storage the best answer to a question hovering over the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy to address climate change: where to get power when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
“I wish we could build 10 more of these. I love 'em," Eric Gustad, community affairs manager for Consumers Energy, said during a tour of the Ludington facility.
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Johnny Depp on stand: Ex-wife Heard's allegations 'heinous'
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — Actor Johnny Depp told jurors Tuesday that he felt compelled to sue his ex-wife Amber Heard for libel out of an obsession for the truth after she accused him of domestic violence.
“My goal is the truth because it killed me that all these people I had met over the years ... that these people would think that I was a fraud,” he said.
Depp flatly denied ever hitting Heard, calling the physical and sexual assault allegations against him disturbing, heinous and “not based in any species of truth.”
“Nothing of the kind ever happened,” Depp said in court.
Alluding to the fall his career has taken since Heard levied abuse allegations against him, the former “Pirates of the Caribbean” star said, “it’s been six years of trying times. It’s very strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, and then in 0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo.”
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Netflix shares drop 25% after service loses 200K subscribers
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Netflix suffered its first subscriber loss in more than a decade, causing its shares to plunge 25% in extended trading amid concerns that the pioneering streaming service may have already seen its best days.
The company’s customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, according to its quarterly earnings report released Tuesday. It's the first time that Netflix's subscribers have fallen since the streaming service became available throughout most of the world outside of China six years ago. The drop this year stemmed in part from Netflix's decision to withdraw from Russia to protest the war against Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 700,000 subscribers.
Netflix acknowledged its problems are deep rooted by projecting a loss of another 2 million subscribers during the April-June period.
If the stock drop extends into Wednesday’s regular trading session, Netflix shares will have lost more than half of their value so far this year — wiping out about $150 billion in shareholder wealth in less than four months.
Netflix is hoping to reverse the tide by taking steps it has previously resisted, including blocking the sharing of accounts and introducing a lower-priced — and ad-supported — version of its service.
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Dede Robertson, wife of religious broadcaster, dies at 94
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Dede Robertson, the wife of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and a founding board member of the Christian Broadcasting Network, died Tuesday at her home in Virginia Beach, the network said in a statement.
Robertson was 94. The statement did not provide her cause of death.
Robertson became a born-again Christian several months after her husband found his faith. The couple, who met at Yale University in 1952, embarked on a journey that included living in a roach-infested commune in New York before Pat Robertson bought a tiny television station in Virginia that would become the Christian Broadcasting Network.
He later ran for president of the United States in 1988, with his wife campaigning by his side.
“Mom was the glue that held the Robertson family together," said Gordon Robertson, one of her four children, and the president and CEO of CBN. “She was always working behind the scenes. If it weren’t for Mom, there wouldn’t be a CBN.”
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