Explosions rock Kyiv again as Russians rain fire on Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pounded targets from practically one end of Ukraine to the other Thursday, including Kyiv, bombarding the city while the head of the United Nations was visiting in the boldest attack on the capital since Moscow's forces retreated weeks ago.

Several people were wounded in the attack on Kyiv, including one who lost a leg and others who were trapped in the rubble when two buildings were hit, rescue officials said.

The bombardment came barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a news conference with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Ukraine has become “an epicenter of unbearable heartache and pain.” A spokesperson said Guterres and his team were safe.

Meanwhile, explosions were reported across the country, in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa in southern Ukraine said rockets were intercepted by air defenses.

Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.

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Drop in US GDP challenges Biden's pitch to voters

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s upbeat message that the economy is cruising along hit a troublesome speed bump on Thursday when the federal government reported that U.S. gross domestic product shrank during the first three months of 2022.

Economic activity declined at annual rate of 1.4%, a sharp reversal from last year when growth was the strongest since 1984. There were technical reasons for the decline that likely obscured the actual health of the economy, yet the drop clearly put the president on the defensive after he has said repeatedly that the booming job market means the U.S. can withstand inflation at a 40-year high.

Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package was supposed to propel the economy to new heights that Democrats could then sell to voters in this year's midterm elections. But the muddled data has weakened the clarity of Biden's pitch and emboldened Republican criticism.

The president told reporters at the White House that the consumer spending and business investment portions of the GDP report were solid, evidence that growth should resume in the months to come. The biggest drag on GDP was an increase in imports, but a one-off glitch — a sharp drop in business inventories — was a key contributor to the overall drop. The inventory decline reflected the aftershocks of the pandemic, rather than the underlying health of the economy, the president said.

“What you’re seeing is enormous growth in the country that was affected by everything from COVID and the COVID blockages that occurred along the way," Biden said.

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Key players urge accountability for atrocities in Ukraine

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — For the first time, key players seeking accountability for atrocities during the Ukraine war have come together at an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council to spur investigations into abuses that many Western countries blame on Russia.

The session Wednesday included the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, the chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, Ukraine’s top prosecutor and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who has opened over 8,000 investigations into alleged violations of the laws and customs of war, said that “Russia’s actions amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes” and the pattern “resembles the crime of genocide.”

Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka, who co-sponsored and chaired the meeting, said that as a veto-holding member of the Security Council, Russia is supposed to be a guardian of international peace but has “embarked on a war of choice against a neighbor committing immeasurable crimes in the process.”

France’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Nathalie Broadhurst, the other co-sponsor, said the images of atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and other areas after Russian forces withdrew “are unbearable” and may amount to war crimes.

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FDA issues plan to ban menthol in cigarettes, cigars

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government on Thursday released its long-awaited plan to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, citing the toll on Black smokers and young people.

“The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, in a statement.

He added that the ban would also be an “important step to advance health equity” by reducing disparities in tobacco-related diseases.

The Food and Drug Administration said eliminating menthol cigarettes could prevent between 300,000 and 650,000 smoking deaths over 40 years.

Menthol accounts for more than a third of cigarettes sold in the U.S, and the mint flavor is favored by Black smokers and young people. Menthol’s cooling effect has been shown to mask the throat harshness of smoking, making it easier to start and harder to quit.

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Moderna seeks to be 1st with COVID shots for littlest kids

Moderna is seeking to be the first to offer COVID-19 vaccine for the youngest American children, as it asked the Food and Drug Administration Thursday to clear low-dose shots for babies, toddlers and preschoolers.

Frustrated families are waiting impatiently for a chance to protect the nation’s littlest kids as all around them people shed masks and other public health precautions -- even though highly contagious coronavirus mutants continue to spread. Already about three-quarters of children of all ages show signs they've been infected at some point during the pandemic.

Moderna submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration that it hopes will prove two low-dose shots can protect children younger than 6 -- although the effectiveness wasn't nearly as high in kids tested during the omicron surge as earlier in the pandemic.

“There is an important unmet medical need here with these youngest kids,” Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna's chief medical officer, told The Associated Press. Two kid-size shots “will safely protect them. I think it is likely that over time they will need additional doses. But we're working on that.”

Moderna said two kid doses were about 40% to 50% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, not a home run but for many parents, any protection would be better than none.

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Occupied Ukrainian city fears sham Russian referendum plans

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ever since Russian forces took the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson in early March, residents sensed the occupiers had a special plan for their town. Now, amid a crescendo of warnings from Ukraine that Russia plans to stage a sham referendum to transform the territory into a pro-Moscow “people's republic,” it appears locals guessed right.

After Russian forces withdrew from occupied areas around Kyiv in early April, they left behind scenes of horror and traumatized communities. But in Kherson — a large city with a major ship-building industry, located at the confluence of the Dnieper River and the Black Sea near Russian-annexed Crimea — the occupying forces have taken a different tack.

“The soldiers patrol and walk around silently. They don’t shoot people in the streets,” said Olga, a local teacher, in a telephone interview last month after the region was sealed off by Russian forces. “They are trying to give the impression that they come in peace to liberate us from something.”

“It is a little scary," said 63-year-old Alexander, who like other residents gave only his first name for fear of reprisals. "But there is no panic, people are helping each other. There is a very small minority of people who are happy that it is under Russian control, but mostly, nobody wants Kherson to become a part of Russia.”

While the city has so far been spared the atrocities committed elsewhere, daily life is far from normal. After Russia occupied Kherson and the surrounding region, all access was cut off. Kherson now suffers from a severe shortage of medicine, cash, dairy and other food products, and Ukrainian officials warn the region could face a “humanitarian catastrophe."

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Putin gas cutoff shakes up Europe at little cost to Kremlin

BRUSSELS (AP) — Cutting off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria cost Russian President Vladimir Putin very little — but it is adding stress on European countries wrestling with how to reduce the energy imports feeding the Kremlin's war chest and how to keep a united front on the war in Ukraine.

European Union officials say yielding to Putin's demand to pay for gas in rubles would violate Western sanctions imposed over the invasion. Poland and Bulgaria were cut off after refusing the demand and say they will manage because they were already working to end their dependence on Russian energy supplies.

Analysts say there is enough ambiguity in the European stance to allow the Kremlin to keep trying to undermine unity among the 27 member countries — even if an implied threat to cut off major customers such as Germany and Italy may turn out to be an empty one because it would cost Russia heavily.

The cutoff sent a chill through EU officials wondering how their utility companies will heat homes and generate electricity next winter. Putin got maximum disruption of what he regards as a hostile alliance for minimal costs because Poland and Bulgaria are relatively minor customers who were about to end their contracts at year's end anyway.

Poland's entire gas import was only 10 billion cubic meters per year, out of total European imports of 155 billion from Russia. Gas in roughly that amount is already flowing to Poland from other European countries pitching in to help.

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Democrats face worsening legal environment on redistricting

After New York state's top court this week crushed Democratic hopes of coming out ahead in this decade's redistricting cycle, the party faces an increasingly precarious legal environment in the hyper-partisan battle over drawing legislative lines.

New York's Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned a map that Democrats muscled through the state legislature there, deciding that a nonpartisan expert will instead draw the lines for the state's 26 congressional districts. It was at least the fifth time this cycle a state court has ruled that maps drawn by its state legislature were too partisan, with a Democratic map in Maryland also falling and Republican-drawn ones in Kansas, North Carolina and Ohio being tossed out as well.

Still, Republicans are favored to win state Supreme Court races in North Carolina and Ohio in November that'd enable those GOP-controlled legislatures to implement more partisan maps before 2024. In contrast, the 4-3 New York decision came from a court appointed entirely by Democrats, a party that now finds itself bound to a bipartisan process written into the state's constitution.

“Democratic judges are not really as inclined to excuse extreme partisan gerrymandering as Republican ones are,” said Lakshya Jain, a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley who writes on redistricting at the website Split Ticket. “Democrats for a long time have been pushing for redistricting reform and anti-gerrymandering legislation,” Jain noted, and that seeps into their judges' preferences.

The biggest test of this potential legal asymmetry comes in Florida, where Democrats and civil rights groups are challenging a congressional map that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the GOP-controlled legislature there. Legislators had initially balked at the map, which aggressively favors their party, because it dismantles two plurality-Black districts in possible violation of the state's Fair Districts Amendment, which requires lawmakers to draw districts that let racial and linguistic minorities pick their chosen representatives.

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Biden taking 'hard look' at student loan forgiveness

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday that he's “taking a hard look” at canceling additional federal student loan debt and will reach a decision within a month.

“I am considering dealing with some debt reduction,” Biden told reporters in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

The comments came days after Biden had a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers who pressed him on the issue. One of the lawmakers, Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., said afterwards that Biden disclosed he was exploring the possibility.

However, Biden signaled in his Thursday remarks that he wouldn't go as far as some activists want, saying $50,000 in debt forgiveness was not under consideration. He did not give a number for what he was considering.

“I'm in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness,” he said. "And I’ll have an answer on that in the next couple of weeks.”

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Your dog's personality may have little to do with its breed

WASHINGTON (AP) — Research confirms what dog lovers know — every pup is truly an individual.

Many of the popular stereotypes about the behavior of golden retrievers, poodles or schnauzers, for example, aren't supported by science, according to a new study.

“There is a huge amount of behavioral variation in every breed, and at the end of the day, every dog really is an individual,” said study co-author and University of Massachusetts geneticist Elinor Karlsson.

She said pet owners love to talk about their dog's personality, as illustrated by some owners at a New York dog park.

Elizabeth Kelly said her English springer spaniel was “friendly, but she’s also kind of the queen bee.” Suly Ortiz described her yellow Lab as “really calm, lazy and shy.”

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