AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST
Russia, US exchange accusations over Ukraine at UN
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia accused the West on Monday of “whipping up tensions” over Ukraine and said the U.S. had brought “pure Nazis” to power in Kyiv as the U.N. Security Council held a stormy and bellicose debate on Moscow's troop buildup near its southern neighbor.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shot back that Russia's growing military force of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders was “the largest mobilization" in Europe in decades, adding that there has been a spike in cyberattacks and Russian disinformation.
“And they are attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack,” she said.
The harsh exchanges in the Security Council came as Moscow lost an attempt to block the meeting and reflected the gulf between the two nuclear powers. It was the first open session where all protagonists in the Ukraine crisis spoke publicly, even though the U.N.'s most powerful body took no action.
Hours later, the Russian government sent a written response to a U.S. proposal aimed at deescalating the crisis, according to three Biden administration officials. The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity. A State Department official declined to offer details of the response, saying it “would be unproductive to negotiate in public” and that they would leave it up to Russia to discuss the counterproposal.
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Judge rejects plea deal for man who killed Ahmaud Arbery
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A federal judge rejected a plea agreement Monday that would have averted a hate crimes trial for the white man convicted of murder for fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery, whose parents angrily objected to the deal as unfair and unjust.
The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood came just hours after prosecutors gave notice that son and father Travis and Greg McMichael had agreed to plead guilty to hate crime charges that they chased, threatened and killed 25-year-old Arbery because he was Black.
But Travis McMichael's sentencing hearing Monday afternoon turned emotional and contentious as federal prosecutors urged the judge to approve the deal even after Arbery's parents pleaded passionately for her to deny it.
Travis McMichael would have received 30 years in federal prison to be served alongside the penalty of life in prison without parole imposed by a state court judge for the murder conviction. By pleading guilty, he would have given up the chance to appeal his federal sentence.
But Arbery's family objected to a provision that sought to transfer Travis McMichael immediately to federal custody from state prison. Arbery's parents argued that conditions in federal prison wouldn't be as tough for the McMichaels.
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White House: No 'gaming the system' on Supreme Court pick
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will meet with Senate Judiciary Committee leaders on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court vacancy and the president's promise to nominate a Black woman to the high court. Aides said Biden's list of potential candidates is longer than three.
The White House also pushed back Monday on the idea that the president would be open to “gaming the system” by choosing a nominee solely based on her likelihood of garnering bipartisan support.
Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking minority member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will meet with Biden at the White House to go over potential nominees to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement last week. Biden himself served as head of the Judiciary Committee when he was a senator and presided over the confirmations of six high court picks, including Breyer.
“He's steeped in this process,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, “and looks forward to advice from members of both parties on the Hill as well as top legal experts and scholars across the country. I think you will see those consultations start this week."
Biden has said since his campaign that he would nominate a Black woman to the nation's highest court and he personally interviewed a few of the nominees when they were under consideration for appointment to the federal bench. Some Republicans have already voiced support for U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs, who is a favorite of key Democratic ally South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn. But the White House pushed back on the idea of choosing a candidate just to get bipartisan support, saying Biden would chose the best woman for the job, period.
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Omicron amps up concerns about long COVID and its causes
More than a year after a bout with COVID-19, Rebekah Hogan still suffers from severe brain fog, pain and fatigue that leave her unable to do her nursing job or handle household activities.
Long COVID has her questioning her worth as a wife and mother.
“Is this permanent? Is this the new norm?’’ said the 41-year-old Latham, New York, woman, whose three children and husband also have signs of the condition. “I want my life back.’’
More than a third of COVID-19 survivors by some estimates will develop such lingering problems. Now, with omicron sweeping across the globe, scientists are racing to pinpoint the cause of the bedeviling condition and find treatments before a potential explosion in long COVID cases.
Could it be an autoimmune disorder? That could help explain why long COVID-19 disproportionately affects women, who are more likely than men to develop autoimmune diseases. Could microclots be the cause of symptoms ranging from memory lapses to discolored toes? That could make sense, since abnormal blood clotting can occur in COVID-19.
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All-out effort to keep Biden COVID-free; no 'normal' yet
WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden met with U.S. governors at the White House on Monday, he was the only one given a glass of water — lest anyone else remove their mask to take a drink.
The president was seated more than 10 feet from everyone, including Vice President Kamala Harris and members of his Cabinet.
A White House staffer who was wearing a surgical mask when Biden entered the room was quickly handed an N95 version.
These are just some of the extraordinary efforts on the part of the White House to keep the president from getting COVID-19, even though he's gotten both of his regular vaccinations and his booster.
It’s no surprise that unusual steps are taken to protect any president. But the strict precautions could also threaten to undercut the Biden administration's own efforts to tell Americans — especially those who are vaccinated and boosted — that they can get on with something closer to their normal lives in the face of the omicron wave.
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Measuring climate change: It's not just heat, it's humidity
When it comes to measuring global warming, humidity, not just heat, matters in generating dangerous climate extremes, a new study finds.
Researchers say temperature by itself isn’t the best way to measure climate change's weird weather and downplays impacts in the tropics. But factoring in air moisture along with heat shows that climate change since 1980 is nearly twice as bad as previously calculated, according to their study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The energy generated in extreme weather, such as storms, floods and rainfall is related to the amount of water in the air. So a team of scientists in the U.S. and China decided to use an obscure weather measurement called equivalent potential temperature — or theta-e — that reflects “the moisture energy of the atmosphere,” said study co-author V. “Ram” Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Cornell University. It’s expressed in degrees, like temperature.
“There are two drivers of climate change: temperature and humidity,” Ramanathan said. “And so far we measured global warming just in terms of temperature.”
But by adding the energy from humidity, “the extremes — heat waves, rainfall and other measures of extremes — correlate much better,” he said.
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California moves to dismantle nation's largest death row
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, now is moving to dismantle the United States' largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years.
The goal is to turn the section at San Quentin State Prison into a "positive, healing environment.” Newsom said Monday it's an outgrowth of his opposition to what he believes is a deeply flawed system, one that "gets my blood boiling."
“The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence,” he said. “We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row.”
California, which last carried out an execution in 2006, is one of 28 states that maintain death rows, along with the U.S. government, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. While other states like Illinois have abolished executions, California is merging its condemned inmates into the general prison population with no expectation that any will face execution anytime in the near future.
“We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation,” California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Vicky Waters told The Associated Press.
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Georgia DA investigating Trump asks FBI for security help
ATLANTA (AP) — The prosecutor who's investigating whether Donald Trump and others broke the law by trying to pressure Georgia officials to overturn Joe Biden's presidential election victory is asking the FBI for security help after the former president railed against prosecutors investigating him.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Sunday wrote a letter to the FBI office in Atlanta asking for a risk assessment of the county courthouse, where her office is located, and government center. She also asked the FBI to provide protective resources, “to include intelligence and federal agents.”
At his rally Saturday night outside Houston, Trump lashed out against the ongoing investigations in New York, Georgia and Washington and called on his supporters to stage mass protests if he is mistreated by them. In her letter, Willis quoted comments Trump made at the rally.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt,” Trump said.
The comments were particularly notable given Trump’s role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol building. Trump also suggested he might pardon those charged for their role in the riot if he runs for president again and wins reelection.
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EXPLAINER: The Winter Games, a different kind of Olympics
BEIJING (AP) — The first so-called modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens. But the inaugural Winter Olympics were not held until 1924 in Chamonix, France.
Calvin Coolidge was the American president at the time, and Vladimir Lenin died that year in the newly established Soviet Union. A new car in the United States cost as little as $300.
From 1924 through 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympics were the same year. In '92 the Winter Games were celebrated in Albertville, France, followed by the Summer Games in Barcelona.
Then change came.
Since 1994, an Olympics has been held every two years. The '94 Winter Olympics took place in Lillehammer, Norway, followed by the Summer Games in 1996 in Atlanta. Nagano, Japan, was next in 1998 with the Winter Games. That pattern was broken by the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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EXPLAINER: What will Neil Young's protest mean for Spotify?
NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young vs Joe Rogan seems like the strangest of cultural clashes.
Yet the 76-year-old rock star's protest over coronavirus-related content on Rogan's popular Spotify podcast has ignited a hot debate over misinformation and free speech, bruising a streaming service that has become the central way that millions of people around the world experience music.
“Rockin' in the Free World”? Not on Spotify. Not anymore. Here's what's going on.
WHY IS YOUNG UPSET?
His protest came after dozens of doctors and scientists wrote an open letter to Spotify, complaining about Rogan's decision to have a podcast discussion with Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who has been banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation on COVID-19. Malone has become a hero in the anti-vaccination community.
