Key Ukrainian city's rapid fall leaves unanswered questions
KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — When about 100 Russian troops rolled into Kherson's Lilac Park on the morning of March 1, Oleh Shornik was one of about 20 lightly armed Ukrainian volunteers who didn't stand a chance against them.
Ukraine's military was nowhere to be seen, and Russian troops in armored vehicles had easily entered the Shumensky neighborhood, opening fire and sending shrapnel flying everywhere, witnesses said. Civilians walking to work were hit in the short, fierce battle. The volunteers, hiding among the trees in the park, were cut down so rapidly that they weren't even able to throw the Molotov cocktails they had prepared.
“They did not have time to do anything,” said Anatolii Hudzenko, who was inside his home next to the park during the attack, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Left seemingly on their own, the civilian volunteers fell quickly. A day later, so did Kherson.
Thousands of Russian troops, sweeping up from the Crimean Peninsula on Feb. 24, captured the city on the Dnieper River so rapidly that many residents say they felt abandoned by the Ukrainian military and its quick withdrawal, leaving the city without an adequate defense.
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Libya militia held Lockerbie suspect before handover to US
CAIRO (AP) — Around midnight in mid-November, Libyan militiamen in two Toyota pickup trucks arrived at a residential building in a neighborhood of the capital of Tripoli. They stormed the house, bringing out a blindfolded man in his 70s.
Their target was former Libyan intelligence agent Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, wanted by the United States for allegedly making the bomb that brought down New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, just days before Christmas in 1988. The attack killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground.
Weeks after that night raid in Tripoli, the U.S. announced Mas'ud was in its custody, to the surprise of many in Libya, which has been split between two rival governments, each backed by an array of militias and foreign powers.
Analysts said the Tripoli-based government responsible for handing over Mas'ud was likely seeking U.S. goodwill and favor amid the power struggles in Libya.
Four Libyan security and government officials with direct knowledge of the operation recounted the journey that ended with Mas'ud in Washington.
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Economic pain, Turkish strikes drive Syrian Kurds to Europe
QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — Baran Ramadan Mesko had been hiding with other migrants for weeks in the coastal Algerian city of Oran, awaiting a chance to take a boat across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
Days before the 38-year-old Syrian Kurd was to begin the journey, he received news that a smuggler boat carrying some of his friends had sunk soon after leaving the Algerian coast. Most of its passengers had drowned.
It came as a shock, after spending weeks to get to Algeria from Syria and then waiting for a month for a smuggler to put him on the boat.
But having poured thousands of dollars into the journey, and with his wife and 4- and 3-year-old daughters counting on him to secure a life safe from conflict, the engineer-turned-citizen journalist boarded a small fishing boat with a dozen other men and took a group selfie to send to their families before they went offline.
After a 12-hour overnight journey, Mesko made his way to Almería, Spain, on Oct. 15, and then flew to Germany four days later, where he is now an asylum seeker in a migrant settlement near Bielefeld. He’s still getting used to the cold weather, and is using a translation app on his phone to help him get around while learning German. He said he’s hopeful his papers will be settled soon so his family can join him.
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N Korea fires 2 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Japan
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea test-fired a pair of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles with a range of striking Japan on Sunday, in a possible protest of Tokyo’s adoption of a new security strategy to push for more offensive footing against North Korea and China.
The launches also came two days after the North claimed to have performed a key test needed to build a more mobile, powerful intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the U.S. mainland.
The two missiles traveled from the country’s northwest Tongchangri area about 500 kilometers (310 miles) at a maximum altitude of 550 kilometers (340 miles) before landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, according to the South Korean and Japanese governments.
South Korea’s military said both missiles were launched at a steep angle, suggesting the weapon could have traveled farther if fired at a standard trajectory. North Korea usually tests medium- and longer-range missiles at a high angle to avoid neighboring countries, though it fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan in October, forcing Tokyo to issue evacuation alerts and halt trains.
In an emergency meeting, top South Korean security officials deplored North Korea's continued provocations that they said came despite “the plight of its citizens moaning in hunger and cold due to a serious food shortage.” They said South Korea will boost a trilateral security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan, according to South Korea's presidential office.
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McCarthy's race for speaker risks upending House on Day One
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his quest to rise to House speaker, Kevin McCarthy is charging straight into history — potentially becoming the first nominee in 100 years unable to win the job on a first-round floor vote.
The increasingly real prospect of a messy fight over the speaker’s gavel on Day One of the new Congress on Jan. 3 is worrying House Republicans, who are bracing for the spectacle. They have been meeting endlessly in private at the Capitol trying to resolve the standoff.
Taking hold of a perilously slim 222-seat Republican majority in the 435-member House and facing a handful of defectors, McCarthy is working furiously to reach the 218-vote threshold typically needed to become speaker.
“The fear is, that if we stumble out of the gate,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a McCarthy ally, then the voters who sent the Republicans to Washington “will revolt over that and they will feel let down.”
Not since the disputed election of 1923 has a candidate for House speaker faced the public scrutiny of convening a new session of Congress only to have it descend into political chaos, with one vote after another, until a new speaker is chosen. At that time, it eventually took a grueling nine ballots to secure the gavel.
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Dead boy pulled from rubble of latest Russian hit on Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency crews pulled the body of a toddler from the rubble in a pre-dawn search Saturday for survivors of a Russian missile strike that tore through an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
The missile was one of what Ukrainian authorities said were 16 that eluded air defenses among the 76 missiles fired Friday in the latest Russian attack targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, part of Moscow's strategy to leave Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the dark and cold this winter.
Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Kryvyi Rih is located, wrote on the Telegram social media app that "rescuers retrieved the body of a 1-1/2-year-old boy from under the rubble of a house destroyed by a Russian rocket.” In all, four people were killed in the strike, and 13 injured — four of them children — authorities said.
Reznichenko said the pounding from Russian forces continued overnight, damaging power lines and houses in the cities and towns of Nikopol, Marhanets and Chervonohryhorivka, which are across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
By Saturday morning, Ukraine’s military leadership said Russian forces had fired more than a score of further missiles since the barrage a day earlier. It did not say how many of those might have been stopped by the air defenses.
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Israel deports Palestinian activist to France
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said it deported a Palestinian lawyer and activist to France early Sunday, claiming he has ties to a banned militant group, despite objections from the French government.
The expulsion of Salah Hammouri underscored the fragile status of Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, where most hold revocable residency rights but are not Israeli citizens. It also set up a possible diplomatic spat with France, which had repeatedly appealed to Israel not to carry out the expulsion.
“I’m happy to announce that justice was served today and the terrorist Salah Hammouri was deported from Israel," Israel's interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, announced in a videotaped statement. He was set to land in Paris just before 10 a.m. local time.
Hammouri was born in Jerusalem but holds French citizenship.
Israel says Hammouri is an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that it has labeled a terrorist organization. He has worked as a lawyer for Adameer, a rights group that assists Palestinian prisoners that Israel has banned for alleged ties to the PFLP.
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'Tired of this war': Congolese cope with M23 rebel violence
BENI, Congo (AP) — Kavira Mathe was making dinner for her two sons when bullets began flying. Eastern Congo's M23 rebels had attacked her village, killing scores of civilians. She and others fled for their lives, she said.
“I lost several friends,” said Mathe speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Kanyabayonga where she now shelters. Trekking 50 kilometers (some 30 miles) to safety, she saw roads littered with bodies that appeared to have been bound and shot, she said.
“It was really horrible to see," said Mathe. "We are tired of this war.”
Communities in eastern Congo are struggling to survive in the wake of that massacre and others in which at least 130 people were killed by M23 rebels in what the United Nations called “unspeakable violence” against civilians.
Nearly 26,000 people have been displaced since the attacks at the end of November, according to the U.N. refugee agency, adding to hundreds of thousands who have been uprooted since fighting began between M23 and a coalition of armed civilian protection militia more than a year ago.
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AP PHOTOS: 'Preventive conservation' at Venetian palace
VENICE, Italy (AP) — Art restorers in Venice are conducting an ambitious monitoring project to analyze and intervene early on precious artworks and elaborate ornamentation at a landmark Venetian palace that was at the heart of political life in the powerful maritime Republic of Venice.
The project at the Doge's Palace, handled by the Fondazione Musei Civici of Venice, began in June and will last roughly 14 months as restorers examine every centimeter of the surfaces of the palace — known as Palazzo Ducale — which contains some of the world’s most magnificent artworks, including paintings by Tintoretto and Titian.
The Italian government has provided 500,000 euros in funding for the project.
Using mobile scaffolding, so they can work on small portions at a time and leave the space open to visitors, restorers climb back and forth every day up a series of ladders to the ceilings where their tools include soft brushes and syringes.
In the Chamber of the Great Council, one of the largest paintings in the world, Tintoretto’s “Il Paradiso” at roughly 150 square meters (1,600 square feet), restorer Alberto Marcon is mapping out the surface centimeter by centimeter (inch by inch) noting the decayed parts that will require intervention or restoration.
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Watson throws for TD, wins home debut as Browns down Ravens
CLEVELAND (AP) — Deshaun Watson dropped to a knee for the third time to extinguish the final seconds. He turned and walked alone, taking a few steps before tilting his head back screaming into the frosty air.
This win meant a little bit more.
“It was special,” he said.
Watson threw a touchdown pass in his home debut for Cleveland, leading the Browns to an ugly 13-3 win on Saturday over the Baltimore Ravens, who need injured star quarterback Lamar Jackson to get back quickly.
In his third game after serving an 11-game NFL suspension for alleged sexual misconduct, Watson wasn't spectacular. But he did enough to help the Browns (6-8) keep their miniscule playoff hopes alive while knocking the Ravens (9-5) off stride.
The Associated Press
