For a year, U.S. officials have been saying that taking out a terrorist threat in Afghanistan with no American troops on the ground would be difficult but not impossible. Last weekend, the U.S. did just that — killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri with a CIA drone strike. Other high-profile airstrikes in the past had inadvertently killed innocent civilians. In this case, the U.S. carefully chose to use a type of Hellfire missile that greatly minimized the chance of other casualties. Although U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed which variant of the Hellfire was used, experts and others familiar with counterterrorism operations said a likely option was the highly secretive Hellfire R9X — know by various nicknames, including the “knife bomb” or the “flying Ginsu.” That potential use of the R9X, said Klon Kitchen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former intelligence analyst, suggests the U.S. wanted to kill al-Zawahri with “limited likelihood of collateral death and destruction and for other relevant political reasons.” A look at the Hellfire, and how al-Zawahri likely was killed: WHAT IS A HELLFIRE MISSILE? Originally designed as an anti-tank missile in the 1980s, the Hellfire has been used by military and intelligence agencies over the last two decades to strike targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. The precision-guided missiles can be mounted on helicopters and unmanned drones and are used widely in combat around the world. More than 100,000 Hellfire missiles have been sold to the U.S. and other countries, according to Ryan Brobst, an analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. “It can do enough damage to destroy most targets such as vehicles and buildings while not doing enough damage to level city blocks and cause significant civilian casualties,” Brobst said. The U.S. military has routinely used Hellfire missiles to kill high-value targets, including a senior al-Qaida leader in Syria last year, and al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. WHAT KILLED AL-ZAWAHRI? The U.S. had multiple options for the attack. It could have used a traditional Hellfire, a bomb dropped from an manned aircraft, or a far more risky assault by ground forces. U.S. Navy SEALs, for example, flew into Pakistan on helicopters and took out Osama bin Laden in a raid. In this case, the CIA opted for a drone strike. And while the CIA generally doesn’t confirm its counterterrorism missions and closely guards information about strikes it conducts, U.S. government officials have said that two Hellfire missiles were fired at the balcony of the building where al-Zawahri was living in Kabul. Online images of the building show damage to the balcony, where the U.S. says al-Zawahri was, but the rest of the house is standing and not badly damaged. Unlike other models of the Hellfire, the R9X doesn’t carry an explosive payload. Instead, it has a series of six rotating blades that emerge on its final approach to a target, Kitchen said. “One of their utilities is in opening up vehicles and other obstructions to get to the target without having to use an explosive warhead,” he said. AVOIDING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES U.S. officials and experts made clear this week that avoiding civilian casualties was a crucial element in the choice of weapon. Less than a year ago, a U.S. drone

Now that the Mega Millions lottery jackpot has topped $1 billion — only the fourth time a lottery game has reached such heights — plenty of people who rarely play the game are considering risking $2 or joining an office pool in hopes of an immense payoff. Buying a ticket is easy, but it’s also easy to be confused about the odds, how the prizes are set and how the winnings will eventually be paid out. DO YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING RISE OR FALL AS THE JACKPOT GROWS? Your chances of winning the jackpot always remain one in 302.5 million, regardless of whether the big prize is $20 million or the current $1.02 billion. You do increase your odds of winning if you buy more tickets but before laying down $100 at the Quicky Mart for 50 tries, keep in mind that in the big scheme of things, 50 chances out of 302.5 million isn’t much better than one. Also realize that the $1.02 billion amount is for the annuity option, paid annually over 29 years. The cash option would pay $602.5 million. IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO PLAY OTHER LOTTERY GAMES? Just like the Mega Millions odds don’t change, the odds of winning a prize in Powerball, the other big nationwide game, and other smaller state games are fixed, too. Given that, you have no better odds now than at any other time. However, with fewer people buying tickets in those games, there is less of a chance that multiple players could win the jackpot, forcing you to share your winnings. WHAT STATES HAVE THE MOST MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT WINNERS? Time for a road trip to a lottery nirvana? Probably not. Since 2016, players have won 40 Mega Millions jackpots, with the fortuitous few scattered through 22 states. And not surprisingly, there have been more winners in states with greater populations and thus more players. California takes the prize for the most Mega Millions jackpot winners during that span, with six lucky players. That’s followed by five winners in New York, four in New Jersey and three in Illinois. Notably, population heavyweights Texas and Florida have had few Mega Millions winners since 2016. Texas had two and Florida had one. WHERE DO THE DRAWINGS TAKE PLACE? The drawings happen at 11 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday and Friday and are held at the WSB-TV studios in Atlanta. DO RETAILERS GET ANYTHING OUT OF THIS? Rules vary by state but retailers usually get a reward for selling a ticket that wins a jackpot. In Ohio, for example, retailers get $1,000 for every million dollars of a jackpot, with a cap of $100,000. WHAT IF I CHOOSE AN ANNUITY BUT DIE BEFORE RECEIVING ALL THE PAYMENTS? Most jackpot winners opt for cash but receiving your winnings through an annuity, with 30 payments over 29 years, can help people slightly reduce their tax burden. If winners die before receiving all their winnings, the future payments would go to their estate. WHO RUNS MEGA MILLIONS AND HOW DO THEY DECIDE JACKPOT AMOUNTS? The lottery game is overseen by 45 state lotteries as well as game officials in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A group comprising representatives from the lotteries meets twice a week to determine the estimated jackpots. (AP)

Russian missiles struck a city in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president alleged the attack deliberately targeted civilians in locations without military value. Officials said Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea struck civilian buildings in Vinnytsia, a city 268 kilometers (167 miles) southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Vinnytsia region Gov. Serhiy Borzov said Ukrainian air defenses downed two of the four Russian missiles that were launched. National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko said only six bodies have been identified so far, while 39 people are still missing. Three children where among the dead. Of the 65 people hospitalized, five remain in critical condition while 34 sustained severe injuries, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. “There was a building of a medical organization. When the first rocket hit it, glass fell from my windows,” said Vinnytsia resident Svitlana Kubas, 74. “And when the second wave came, it was so deafening that my head is still buzzing. It tore out the very outermost door, tore it right through the holes.” Along with hitting buildings, the missiles ignited a fire that spread to 50 cars in a parking lot, officials said. “These are quite high-precision missiles … They knew where they were hitting,” Borzov told the AP. Russia hasn’t officially confirmed the strike. But Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-controlled Russian television network RT, said on her messaging app channel that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of intentionally aiming missiles at civilians. The strike happened as government officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands, to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions of potential war crimes committed in Ukraine. “Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, directing missiles at civilian objects. Where there is no military (targets). What is it if not an open act of terrorism?” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky echoed Zelenskyy, calling the missile attack a “war crime” intended to intimidate Ukrainians while the country’s forces hold out in the east. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv issued a security alert late Thursday urging all U.S. citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave immediately. The alert, which appeared to be in response to the Vinnytsia attack, asserted that large gatherings and organized events “may serve as Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including its western regions.” Vinnytsia is one of Ukraine’s largest cities, with a prewar population of 370,000. Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its offensive, have fled there since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Kateryna Popova said she saw many injured people lying on the street after the missiles struck. Popova had fled from Kharkiv in March in search of safety in “quiet” Vinnytsia. But the missile attack changed all that. “We did not expect this. Now we feel like we don’t have a home again,” she said. Borzov said 36 houses were damaged and residents have been evacuated while a 24-hour hotline has been set up for information on those injured or missing. July 14 will be declared as a day of mourning, he said. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell won praise for his deft leadership during the maelstrom of the pandemic recession. As threats to the U.S. economy have mounted, though, Powell has increasingly struck Fed watchers as much less sure-footed. Inflation has proved higher and far more persistent than he or the Fed’s staff economists had foreseen. And at a policy meeting last week, Powell announced an unusual last-minute switch to a bigger interest rate hike than he had previously signaled — and then followed with a news conference that many economists described as muddled and inconsistent. It’s been a sharp turnaround for Powell, who is widely credited with preventing what could have been a far worse economic crisis during the pandemic and who last month won an easy bipartisan Senate confirmation for a second four-year term. Now, as he confronts chronically high inflation, plunging financial markets and the growing threat of a recession, Powell is facing questions — and criticism — surrounding his stewardship of the Fed at a time when its challenges are multiplying. Thanks to a once-in-a-century pandemic, the first European war in decades and soaring gas and food prices that the Fed has limited power to affect, Powell could become the first Fed chair since Paul Volcker in the early 1980s to grapple with “stagflation,” a miserable combination of slow economic growth and high inflation. Struggling to curb the worst inflation outbreak in four decades, Powell last week engineered a three-quarters-of-a-point increase in the Fed’s short-term interest rate — the largest single rate hike in a quarter-century. It was an unexpectedly aggressive move after Powell had made clear a month earlier that a more modest half-point rate hike was coming. At his news conference, Powell defended the Fed’s decision by noting that the most recent inflation readings had been even more worrisome than expected. The Fed’s hike will make it more expensive for many consumers and businesses to borrow. Yet Powell’s explanation was faulted by many Fed watchers, with some complaining that he had failed to articulate a coherent and consistent policy. “The Fed was ad-libbing, scrambling to catch up to the painfully higher inflation,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The Fed doesn’t have a script and is kind of making it up as it goes here.” William Dudley, who, as the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, served with Powell on the Fed’s Board of Governors, said on a think tank webcast last week that the central bank’s leader was putting its credibility at risk. “When the Fed changes their mind at the last minute like this,” Dudley said, “it does have the potential to undermine the credibility” of its critically important communications with markets and the public. As those criticisms echo, Powell will visit Capitol Hill this week to give his semi-annual testimony to House and Senate committees, where he could face tougher questions than at any other point in his tenure as Fed chair. He will testify one year after he stressed his confidence to Congress that inflation was temporary and would likely “wane.” It has not. In May, the government reported, consumer prices accelerated 8.6% from a year earlier. At his news conference last week, Powell said the Fed had been surprised by the latest figures, which have

As Russian tanks and trucks rumbled close to their village, a Ukrainian teenager and his father stealthily launched their small drone into the air. Working as a team, they took bird’s-eye photos of the armored column moving toward Kyiv and pinpointed its coordinates, swiftly messaging the precious information to the Ukrainian military. Within minutes, artillery batteries rained shells down on the invading forces, with deadly effect. Andriy Pokrasa, 15, and his dad, Stanislav, are being hailed in Ukraine for their volunteer aerial reconnaissance work in the early days of the invasion, when Russian troops barreling in from the north made an ultimately failed attempt to take the capital and bring the country to its knees. For a full week after the Feb. 24 invasion, the pair made repeated sorties with their drone — risking capture or worse had Russian troops been aware of their snooping. “These were some of the scariest moments of my life,” Andriy recounted as he demonstrated his piloting skills for an Associated Press team of journalists. “We provided the photos and the location to the armed forces,” he said. “They narrowed down the coordinates more accurately and transmitted them by walkie-talkie, so as to adjust the artillery.” His father was happy to leave the piloting to the boy. “I can operate the drone, but my son does it much better. We immediately decided he would do it,” Stanislav Pokrasa, 41, said. They aren’t sure how many Russian targets were destroyed using information they provided. But they saw the devastation wrought on the Russian convoy when they later flew the drone back over the charred hulks of trucks and tanks near a town west of Kyiv and off a strategically important highway that leads to the capital. “There were more than 20 Russian military vehicles destroyed, among them fuel trucks and tanks,” the father said. As Russian and Ukrainian forces battled furiously for control of Kyiv’s outskirts, Ukrainian soldiers finally urged the Pokrasa family to leave their village, which Russian troops subsequently occupied. With all adult men up to age 60 under government orders to stay in the country, the elder Pokrasa couldn’t join his wife and son when they fled to neighboring Poland. They came back a few weeks ago, when Andriy had finished his school year. “I was happy that we destroyed someone,” he said. “I was happy that I contributed, that I was able to do something. Not just sitting and waiting.” (AP)

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol played out for the world to see, but the House committee investigating the attack believes a more chilling story has yet to be told — about the president and the people whose actions put American democracy at risk. With personal accounts and gruesome videos the 1/6 committee expects Thursday’s prime-time hearing to begin to show that America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how the president, Donald Trump, refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee’s year-long investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire in 1814, and ensure it never happens again. “This is not a game,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” who has written extensively on the world’s democratic governments. “We suffered an assault on our democracy the likes of which none of us have seen in our lifetime.” Emotions are still raw at the Capitol 17 months after Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency. That was on a Wednesday, two months after the election, a traditionally celebratory if ho-hum day when Congress is tasked with certifying the November results. Security will be tight for the hearings. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress. Against this backdrop, the committee will try to speak to a divided America, ahead of the fall midterm elections when voters will decide which party controls the Congress. Most TV networks will carry the hearings live, Fox News will not. “We’re going to tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” says Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee. “You really have to go back to the Civil War to understand anything like it.” First up will be wrenching accounts from police who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the mob, with testimony from U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who was seriously injured in the melee. Also appearing Thursday will be documentary maker Nick Quested who filmed the extremist Proud Boys storming the Capitol. Some of that group’s members have since been indicted as have some from the Oath Keepers on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack. In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Department of Justice to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases and his own attorney general attesting there was no fraud on a scale that that could have tipped the results in his favor. “It’s going to be there for the permanent record, and I think that’s important for history,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia. The panel, made up of nine lawmakers, faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol played out for the world to see, but the House committee investigating the attack believes a more chilling story has yet to be told — about the president and the people whose actions put American democracy at risk. With personal accounts and gruesome videos the 1/6 committee expects Thursday’s prime-time hearing to begin to show that America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how the president, Donald Trump, refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee’s year-long investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire in 1814, and ensure it never happens again. “This is not a game,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” who has written extensively on the world’s democratic governments. “We suffered an assault on our democracy the likes of which none of us have seen in our lifetime.” Emotions are still raw at the Capitol 17 months after Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency. That was on a Wednesday, two months after the election, a traditionally celebratory if ho-hum day when Congress is tasked with certifying the November results. Security will be tight for the hearings. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress. Against this backdrop, the committee will try to speak to a divided America, ahead of the fall midterm elections when voters will decide which party controls the Congress. Most TV networks will carry the hearings live, Fox News will not. “We’re going to tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” says Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee. “You really have to go back to the Civil War to understand anything like it.” First up will be wrenching accounts from police who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the mob, with testimony from U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who was seriously injured in the melee. Also appearing Thursday will be documentary maker Nick Quested who filmed the extremist Proud Boys storming the Capitol. Some of that group’s members have since been indicted as have some from the Oath Keepers on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack. In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Department of Justice to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases and his own attorney general attesting there was no fraud on a scale that that could have tipped the results in his favor. “It’s going to be there for the permanent record, and I think that’s important for history,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia. The panel, made up of nine lawmakers, faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation

Russian and Ukrainian troops engaged in close-quarter combat in an eastern Ukraine city Sunday as Moscow’s soldiers, supported by intense shelling, attempted to gain strategic footholds for conquering the region in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Ukrainian regional officials reported that Russian forces were “storming” Sievierodonetsk after trying unsuccessfully to encircle the city. The fighting knocked out power and cellphone service, and a humanitarian relief center could not operate because of the danger, the mayor said. Sievierodonetsk, located about 143 kilometers (89 miles) south of the Russian border, emerged in recent days as the epicenter of Moscow’s quest to capture all of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region. Russia also stepped up its efforts to take nearby Lysychansk, where civilians rushed to escape persistent shelling. The two cities are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk province, which makes up the Donbas together with neighboring Donetsk. Russia is focused, after failing to seize Ukraine’s capital, on occupying parts of Donbas not already controlled by pro-Moscow separatists. Russian forces made small advances in recent days as bombardments chewed away at Ukrainian positions and kept civilians trapped in basements or desperately trying to get out safely. Attacks to destroy military targets throughout the country also caused casualties in civilian areas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the east as “indescribably difficult.” The “Russian army is trying to squeeze at least some result” by concentrating its attacks there, he said in a Saturday night video address. Civilians who reached the eastern city of Pokrovsk, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Lysychansk, said they held out as long as they could before fleeing the Russian advance. Yana Skakova choked back tears as she described leaving with her 18-month and 4-year-old sons while her husband stayed behind to take care of their house and animals. The family was among 18 people who lived in a basement for the past 2 1/2 months until police told them Friday it was time to evacuate. “None of us wanted to leave our native city,” she said. “But for the sake of these small children, we decided to leave.” Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said there was fighting at the city’s bus station on Saturday. Residents remaining in the city, which had a prewar population of around 100,000, risked exposure to shelling to get water from a half-dozen wells, and there was no electricity or cellphone service, Striuk said. Striuk has estimated that 1,500 civilians have died in Russian attacks since the beginning of the war, as well as from a lack of medicine and diseases that couldn’t be treated. The Institute for the Study of War. a think tank based in Washington, questioned the Kremlin’s strategy of assembling a huge military effort to take Sieverodonetsk, saying it was proving costly for Russia and would bring few returns. “When the Battle of Sieverodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back,” the institute said in an assessment published late Saturday. The deteriorating conditions raised fears that Sieverodonetsk could become the next Mariupol, a port city 281 kilometers (175 miles) to the south that spent nearly three months under siege

COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States – and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking. Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions. Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk — mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Those are areas where people should already be considering wearing masks indoors — but Americans elsewhere should also take notice, officials said. “Prior increases of infections, in different waves of infection, have demonstrated that this travels across the country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said at a White House briefing with reporters. For an increasing number of areas, “we urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment,” she said. However, officials were cautious about making concrete predictions, saying how much worse the pandemic gets will depend on several factors, including to what degree previous infections will protect against new variants. Last week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned in an interview with The Associated Press the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn’t swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments. Jha warned that without additional funding from Congress for the virus would cause “unnecessary loss of life” in the fall and winter, when the U.S. runs out of treatments. He added the U.S. was already falling behind other nations in securing supplies of the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines and said that the domestic manufacturing base of at-home tests is already drying up as demand drops off. Jha said domestic test manufactures have started shuttering lines and laying off workers, and in the coming weeks will begin to sell off equipment and prepare to exit the business of producing tests entirely unless the U.S. government has money to purchase more tests, like the hundreds of millions it has sent out for free to requesting households this year. That would leave the U.S. reliant on other countries for testing supplies, risking shortages during a surge, Jha warned. About 8.5 million households placed orders for the latest tranche of 8 free tests since ordering opened on Monday, Jha added. The pandemic is now 2 1/2 years old. And the U.S. has seen — depending how you count them — five waves of COVID-19 during that time, with the later surges driven by mutated versions of the coronavirus. A fifth wave occurred mainly in December and January, caused by the omicron variant. The omicron variant spread much more easily than earlier versions. Some experts are worried the country now is seeing signs of a sixth wave, driven by an omicron subvariant. On Wednesday, Walensky noted a steady increase in COVID-19 cases in the past five weeks, including a 26% increase nationally in the last week. Hospitalizations also are rising, up 19% in the past week, though they remain much lower than during the omicron wave, she said. In late February, as that

A near-physical altercation in the nasty Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Ohio led to a demand Monday from some military veterans that one candidate apologize for his seeming insult, while the target of their request said he respects and honors the military but stands by his statement. The heated argument came during a debate Friday evening among five candidates running for the GOP nomination to replace the retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman. Democrats view the open seat as among their best chances to flip a seat nationally. The debate became intense almost as soon as it began as former state Treasurer Josh Mandel attacked investment banker Mike Gibbons’ business dealings in his opening remarks. Soon, the two were standing face to face on the debate stage, shouting at each other as the moderator tried to keep their argument from further escalating. Mandel accused Gibbons of “making millions” off stock in a Chinese company and Gibbons dismissively accused Mandel, who served in the U.S. Marines, of not understanding how investments work. “You’ve never been in the private sector in your entire life,” Gibbons charged. “You don’t know squat.” “Two tours in Iraq,” Mandel shouted after rising from his seat. “Don’t tell me I haven’t worked!” “Back off, buddy, or you’re going to end up — ,” Gibbons told him, not finishing the sentence. “You’re dealing with the wrong dude.” “No, you’re dealing with the wrong guy,” Mandel countered. “You watch what happens.” Candidate J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” appeared unimpressed. “Sit down. Come on,” he said, sitting in a row with the remaining candidates. “This is ridiculous.” Vance, who is also a military veteran, later slammed Mandel as “disgraceful” for using the Marine Corps as a “political football,” drawing loud applause from the crowd. “What a joke,” he said. But 15 veterans backing Mandel wrote an open letter Monday saying they were “disgusted beyond belief” at Gibbons’ comments. “Gibbons owes Josh and all veterans and those currently in the service an apology, (for) implying that ‘WE’ who served our country honorably and faithfully, never earned our way working in the private sector,” they wrote. “We all volunteered to serve our country away from our families, putting our lives in danger, so people like Mike Gibbons could make millions.” Gibbons, meanwhile, said Mandel had initiated the physical aggression and made “several false, petty comments in an attempt to smear the new front-runner.” “Josh Mandel is unhinged, unfit and flailing — because he’s losing,” Gibbons campaign spokesperson Samantha Cotten said. “He is only a professional at one thing: running for office.” On the “Always Right With Bob Frantz” radio show out of Cleveland on Monday, Gibbons noted that his son and daughter-in-law are both active-duty U.S. Navy pilots. Gibbons told Frantz that whenever he questions Mandel’s credentials on the economy, “his response is always, ‘I’m a Marine.’” “My son’s risking his life every day for this country; Josh risked his life for our country. I have absolute nothing but respect for that, but it’s not the answer to every single issue,” he said. “You should have some expertise in something that might apply to the economic problem in this country, because we have a huge one.” Even before the Republicans’ event, the Ohio Democratic Party had predicted

The heat on the train was as thick as the anxiety. Ukrainian survivors of one of the most brutal sieges in modern history were in the final minutes of their ride to relative safety. Some carried only what they had at hand when they seized the chance to escape the port of Mariupol amid relentless Russian bombardment. Some fled so quickly that relatives who were still in the starving, freezing Ukrainian city on the Sea of Azov aren’t aware that they have gone. “There is no city anymore,” Marina Galla said. She wept in the doorway of a crowded train compartment that was pulling into the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The relief of being free from weeks of threats and deprivation, of seeing bodies in the streets and drinking melted snow because there was no water, was crushed by sadness as she thought of family members left behind. “I don’t know anything about them,” she said. “My mother, grandmother, grandfather and father. They don’t even know that we have left.” Seeing her tears, her 13-year-old son kissed her over and over, offering comfort. Mariupol authorities say nearly 10% of the city’s population of 430,000 have fled over the past week, risking their lives in convoys out. For Galla, the memories are too fresh. For three weeks, she and her son lived in the basement of Mariupol’s Palace of Culture to hide from the constant Russian shelling, moving underground after the horizon turned black with smoke.   “We had no water, no light, no gas, absolutely no communications,” she said. They cooked meals outside with wood in the yard, even while under fire. Even as they finally fled Mariupol, aiming to reach trains heading west to safety, Russian soldiers at checkpoints made a chilling suggestion: It would be better to go to the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol or the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula instead. It’s a suggestion that residents found ludicrous after the Russians on Wednesday bombed a Mariupol theater where children and others were sheltering, and after authorities on Sunday said an art school holding hundreds of people in Mariupol had been bombed. For hours on Sunday’s train journey, survivors shared their experiences with fellow passengers. Even residents of other Ukrainian cities that have been battered or occupied by the Russians see Mariupol as a horror apart. One resident of Melitopol, Yelena Sovchyuk, shared a train compartment with a Mariupol family. She bought them food, she said. They had nothing, only a small bag. “Everyone from there is in deep shock,” Sovchyuk said. She recalled seeing convoys from the besieged city on the road. “There’s a way to tell a Mariupol car,” she said. “They have no glass in their windows.” With deep disdain, Sovchyuk said Russian soldiers amid such devastation were still encouraging Ukrainians to come to Russia, claiming it would be for their safety. The Mariupol City Council has asserted that several thousand residents were taken into Russia against their will over the past week. On Sunday, the Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said 2,973 people had been “evacuated” from Mariupol since March 5, including 541 over the last 24 hours. The train of survivors on Sunday afternoon approached the central station of Lviv, the city near Poland that has absorbed an estimated 200,000 people fleeing other areas

In a private video call with American lawmakers over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a “desperate” plea to the United States to help Kyiv get more warplanes to fight Russia’s invasion and retain control of its airspace. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington has given a “green light” to the idea and is currently “very, very actively” looking at a proposal under which Ukraine’s neighbor Poland would supply Kyiv with Soviet-era fighters and in turn receive American F-16s to make up for their loss. However, the proposition is fraught with uncertainty and Poland has been less than enthusiastic about it in public, largely because Russia has warned that supporting Ukraine’s air force would be seen in Moscow as participating in the conflict and open up suppliers to possible retaliation. Official comment from NATO and European Union member Poland has been only to confirm continuing talks on the subject. WHY DOES UKRAINE NEED WARPLANES? Ukraine’s air force uses Soviet-made Mig-29 and Su jet fighters to defend its skies and territory from Russia’s military invasion that began Feb. 24 and has appealed for more warplanes to be able to continue the mission in the long run. The air force has been far outnumbered by the much more powerful Russian air force, but Ukrainian pilots have continued to fly combat sorties and claim kills in combat despite repeated assertions by the Russian military that it has suppressed Ukraine’s air power and air defense assets. WHY NOT US WARPLANES? Ukraine’s military pilots aren’t trained to fly U.S. jet fighters and would be far more equipped to handle MiG-29 or Su planes that are currently used by former Soviet-bloc NATO members Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia. Ukrainian pilots would be able to fly MiGs right away, but Poland isn’t eager to lose significant amounts of its air force without replacements. U.S.-made F-16s are becoming the mainstay of Poland’s air force as it modernizes its military. WHAT IS POLAND’S RESPONSE? Blinken has said there is a “green light” for Poland to send planes to Ukraine. “We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that Poland can provide to Ukraine and looking at how we might be able to backfill should Poland decide to supply those planes. I can’t speak to a timeline, but I can just tell you we’re looking at it very, very actively,” Blinken said on Sunday in Moldova. The response from Poland was restrained, though. “As far as sending planes, I can only repeat that no decisions have been taken on the subject,” government spokesman Piotr Mueller said. Mueller denied allegations that Poland could be making its airfields available to Ukrainian warplanes. Russia alleges that Romania and some other countries it didn’t name are hosting Ukraine’s warplanes. Meanwhile, Poland has been supportive of Ukraine both politically, supporting it’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, and on a humanitarian level, opening its border to refugees from the non-EU country. WHY IS POLAND NON-COMMITAL? Despite it’s supportive stance toward Ukraine in its struggle, Warsaw is facing a crucial and challenging decision regarding making its planes available to Ukraine. Russia has warned Ukraine’s neighbors against hosting its warplanes on their territory saying Moscow could consider that as their “engagement in the military conflict.” That could mean an opening of hostilities. Russia’s words could

In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion. “Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!” read a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to operate them. One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in Europe. “Why are we doing this? We have no other choice. This is our land, our home,” said Denys Sushko, head of operations at Kyiv-based industrial drone technology company DroneUA, which before the war was helping to provide drone services to farmers and energy companies. Sushko fled his home late last week after his family had to take cover from a nearby explosion. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone and text message Friday after climbing up a tree for better reception. “We try to use absolutely everything that can help protect our country and drones are a great tool for getting real-time data,” said Sushko, who doesn’t have a drone with him but is providing expertise. “Now in Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can.” Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren’t much use as weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and heat sensors. But there’s a downside: DJI, the leading provider of consumer drones in Ukraine and around the world, provides a tool that can easily pinpoint the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really knows what the Chinese firm or its customers might do with that data. That makes some volunteers uneasy. DJI declined to discuss specifics about how it has responded to the war. Taras Troiak, a dealer of DJI drones who started the Kyiv retail store, said DJI has been sending mixed signals about whether it’s providing preferential access to — or disabling — its drone detection platform AeroScope, which both sides of the conflict can potentially use to monitor the other’s flight paths and the communication links between a drone and the device that’s controlling it. DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg said wartime uses were “never anticipated” when the company created AeroScope to give policing and aviation authorities — including clients in both Russia and Ukraine — a window into detecting drones flying in their immediate airspace. He said some users in Ukraine have reported technical problems but DJI has not disabled the tool or given preferential access. In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they’ve been doing whatever they can to teach operators how to protect their whereabouts. “There are a number of tricks that allow you to increase the level of

Russia has some of the best hackers in the world, but in the early days of the war in Ukraine, its ability to create mayhem through malware hasn’t had much of a noticeable impact. Instead, it’s Ukraine that’s marshalled sympathetic volunteer hackers in an unprecedented collective global effort to make the Kremlin pay for making war on its neighbor. It’s a kind of cyber free-for-all that experts say risks escalating a moment already fraught with extraordinary danger after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on alert. So far, Ukraine’s internet mostly works, its president still able to rally global support via a smartphone, and its power plants and other critical infrastructure still able to function. The kind of devastating cyberattacks thought likely to accompany a large-scale Russian military invasion haven’t happened. “It has not played as large a component as some people thought it might and it definitely has not been seen outside of Ukraine to the extent that people feared,” said Michael Daniel, a former White House cybersecurity coordinator. “Of course, that could still change.” It’s not clear why Russia hasn’t landed a more powerful cyber punch. Russia might have determined that the impact wouldn’t be serious enough — Ukraine’s industrial base is far less digitized than in Western nations, for one. Or Russia might have determined that it couldn’t do serious harm to Ukraine without risking collateral impact outside its borders. Many cybersecurity experts believe the Kremlin, at least for now, prefers to keep Ukraine’s communications open for the intelligence value. Whatever the reasons, the conflict’s early days have been marked by lower-level cyberattacks that appear to be done both by freelancers and state actors. Prior to the invasion, hackers knocked offline or defaced Ukrainian government websites and wiped some servers with destructive malware. Now, an ad hoc army of hackers — some marshaled online by Ukraine’s SBU security service — are claiming credit for takedowns and defacements of Russian government and media sites. A volunteer group calling itself the IT Army of Ukraine has more than 230,000 followers on a Telegram channel and is constantly listing targets for hackers to hit, like Russian banks and cryptocurrency exchanges. On Monday, Ukraine’s SBU made its recruitment of allied volunteer hackers official. “CYBER FRONT IS NOW OPEN! Help Ukrainian cyber experts hack occupant’s platforms!” it said on its Telegram channel, asking for tips on vulnerabilities in Russian cyber defenses, including software bugs and login credentials. “It is the first time that states have openly called for citizens and volunteers to cyberattack another state,” said Gabriella Coleman, a Harvard anthropology professor who has charted the rise of hacktivism. The move mirrors Ukraine’s reliance on its citizens for other areas of defense. “It shouldn’t be surprising that Ukraine is dipping into all possible resources to fight off the Russians, a much stronger foe. Just like civilians are coming out to fight in the street, it doesn’t surprise me that they are trying to call forward civilians to support this through the digital space,” said Gary Corn, a retired Army colonel who served as general counsel to U.S. Cyber Command. One hacker group that first appeared last year, the Belarus Cyber Partisans, claimed Monday to have disrupted some rail service in Belarus, the northern neighbor of Ukraine from which several prongs

The streets around the Canadian Parliament are quiet now. The Ottawa protesters who vowed never to give up are largely gone, chased away by police in riot gear. The relentless blare of truckers’ horns has gone silent. But the trucker protest, which grew until it closed a handful of Canada-U.S. border posts and shut down key parts of the capital city for weeks, could echo for years in Canadian politics and perhaps south of the border. The protest, which was first aimed at a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers but also encompassed fury over the range of COVID-19 restrictions and hatred of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, reflected the spread of disinformation in Canada and simmering populist and right-wing anger. “I think we’ve started something here,” said Mark Suitor, a 33-year-old protester from Hamilton, Ontario, speaking as police retook control of the streets around Parliament. Protesters had essentially occupied those streets for more than three weeks, embarrassing Trudeau and energizing Canada’s far right. Suitor believes the protests will divide the country, something he welcomes. “This is going to be a very big division in our country,” he said. “I don’t believe this is the end.” While most analysts doubt the protests will mark a historic watershed in Canadian politics, it has shaken both of Canada’s two major parties. “The protest has given both the Liberals and the Conservatives a black eye,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. Trudeau’s Liberals look bad for allowing protesters to foments weeks of chaos in the capital city, he said, while the Conservatives look bad for championing protesters, many of them from the farthest fringes of the right. The conservatives “have to be careful not to alienate more moderate voters, who are generally not sympathetic to the protesters or right-wing populism more generally,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. The self-styled Freedom Convoy shook Canada’s reputation for civility, inspired convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands and interrupted trade, causing economic damage on both sides of the border. Hundreds of trucks eventually occupied the streets around Parliament, a display that was part protest and part carnival. Authorities moved quickly to reopen the border posts, but police in Ottawa did little but issue warnings until the past couple days, even as hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the city and besieged Parliament Hill. Truckers ignored warnings that they were risking arrest and could have their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen under the new emergency powers invoked by Trudeau. The truckers, parked on the streets in and around Parliament, blared their horns in defiance of a court injunction against honking, issued after residents said the constant noise was making the neighborhood unlivable. “It’s high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” Trudeau declared in Parliament a few days ago, speaking just a few hundred meters from the protests. On Friday, authorities launched the largest police operation in Canadian history, arresting a string of Ottawa protesters and increasing that pressure on Saturday until the streets in front of Parliament were clear. Eventually, police arrested at least 191 people and towed away 79 vehicles. Many protesters retreated as the pressure increased. The Ottawa protests — the movement’s last major stronghold

President Joe Biden will use a speech in Georgia to endorse changing Senate rules that have stalled voting rights legislation, saying it’s time to choose “democracy over autocracy.” But some civil rights groups won’t be there, in protest of what they say is administration inaction. As he turns to his current challenge, Biden on Tuesday is also paying tribute to civil rights battles past — visiting Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once held forth from the pulpit, and placing a wreath at the crypt of King and his wife, Coretta Scott King. With Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., setting next Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a deadline to either pass voting legislation or consider revising the rules around the chamber’s filibuster blocking device, Biden is expected to evoke the memories of the U.S. Capitol riot a year ago in more forcefully aligning himself with the voting rights effort. Biden plans to tell his audience, “The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation.” “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch,” he’ll say, according to prepared remarks. “I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of the United States Senate stand?” A White House official, previewing the speech on the condition of anonymity, said Biden would voice support for changing the Senate filibuster rules only so far as ensuring the right to vote is defended — a strategy some Democrats have been looking to the president to embrace. The current rules require 60 votes to advance most legislation including voting rights — a threshold that Senate Democrats can’t meet alone because they only have a 50-50 majority with Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties. Republicans unanimously oppose the voting rights measures. Biden in the past has waded more cautiously into the debate. He is a former longtime senator who largely stands by existing rules but is also under enormous political pressure to engineer a breakthrough. Even with his pressure, it’s not clear what practical effect he can have. Not all Democrats are on board with changing the filibuster rules. And should the Democrats clear the obstacles to passage of the voting rights laws, it could be too late to counter widespread voting restrictions passed in 19 states following former president Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and his lies — embraced by many in the GOP — that the election was stolen through voter fraud. Some voting rights advocates planned to boycott Biden’s speech. Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, known for her untiring voting rights work, also was skipping the event. The White House, meanwhile, sent out an unusually long list of attendees for the speech. Aides said Abrams had a conflict but didn’t explain further, though she tweeted support for the president. Biden said before his trip the two had a scheduling mix-up but had spoken and were “all on the same page.” When asked what he was risking politically by speaking out when there aren’t enough votes to change the rules, he said:

As the omicron variant sparks worldwide fears of renewed COVID-19 outbreaks, Americans’ worries about infection are again on the rise, but fewer say they are regularly wearing masks or isolating compared with the beginning of the year. A new poll conducted by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 36% of Americans now say they are very or extremely worried that they or a family member will be infected with the virus, up from 25% who said the same in late October. Another 31% now say they’re somewhat worried. The percentage saying they are highly worried is slightly lower now than it was in August, as the delta variant was taking hold, and still below the level of concern Americans expressed through much of 2020 as deaths and case counts varied widely across regions and seasons. Hugh Gordon said he and his wife, Lillian, have continued to avoid people as much as possible and wear masks when they do go out to visit a doctor or retrieve groceries ordered online. But the 81-year-old retiree from Dalton, Georgia, said getting vaccinated made him feel comfortable seeing the couple’s children and 10 grandchildren — even attending the oldest granddaughter’s wedding this fall. The Gordons hope to host 10 or 12 family members for Christmas at their house this month, a far cry from last year’s holiday when they just “worked the phones,” he said. Although most of those who are vaccinated still say they’re at least somewhat worried about infections, 55% of those who are unvaccinated say they have little or no worry. Roughly 8 in 10 Democrats say they’re at least somewhat worried, compared with about half of Republicans. The poll also shows that 57% of Americans now say they’re wearing masks always or often when around other people outside their homes, a slight increase from 51% in August. But that’s well below the 82% who said the same in an AP-NORC poll conducted in February and March, before many Americans had a chance to get vaccines. Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said people become less likely to alter their lives as a threat becomes familiar to them. “We’ve been dealing with COVID for a long time, and we’re going to be dealing with it for a long time,” she said. “People are going to want to do things, so the focus should be on how can we help people think through those risks … rather than saying don’t do ‘X’ or focusing on getting to zero risk.” Those calculations differ from one person to another, Sell said. For instance, parents of children younger than 5 who are not yet approved for COVID-19 vaccines or people living with elderly relatives may have a lower tolerance for risking infection. John O’Dell, a 25-year-old from Nashville, said getting his initial vaccination and a booster shot made him more comfortable getting together with friends, eating at restaurants and attending NFL and NHL games along with large crowds this year. But he also said looser rules on mask wearing in Tennessee has influenced his own relaxation on wearing masks or avoiding people. This week, O’Dell and his father spent several hours browsing a Nashville mall for Christmas gifts and he’s

Soon after a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges against him, defense attorney Mark Richards took a swipe at his predecessors, telling reporters that their tactics — leaning into Rittenhouse’s portrayal as a rallying point for the right to carry weapons and defend oneself — were not his. “I was hired by the two first lawyers. I’m not going to use their names,” Richards said Friday. “They wanted to use Kyle for a cause and something that I think was inappropriate — and I don’t represent causes. I represent clients.” Richards, beaming as he talked to reporters outside his Racine law office after the acquittal, said that to him, the only thing that mattered was “whether he was found not guilty or not.” It seemed an apt comment from Richards. Along with co-counsel Corey Chirafisi, he spent the months leading up to the case in virtual silence — “I don’t do interviews,” he said brusquely to one emailed request in December — and sought at trial to minimize the polarizing questions about Second Amendment rights. Hours after the verdict, Fox News touted an exclusive interview and upcoming documentary on Rittenhouse, with footage that made it clear a crew had been embedded with him during the trial. Richards told The Associated Press on Saturday that he opposed the crew as inappropriate, but that it was arranged by those raising money for Rittenhouse. Youtube video thumbnail “It was not approved by me, but I’m not always in control,” he said, adding that he had to toss the crew out of the room on several occasions: “I think it detracted from what we were trying to do, and that was obviously to get Kyle found not guilty.” Regardless of what was happening behind the scenes, the strategy from Richards and Chirafisi in court was clear: get the jury to regard Rittenhouse as a scared teenager who shot to save his life. They repeatedly focused on the two minutes, 55 seconds in which the shootings unfolded — the critical moments in which Rittenhouse, then 17, said he felt a threat and pulled the trigger. “These guys have a client who is a human being … that’s what they’re rightly focused on,” said Dean Strang, a defense attorney and distinguished professor in residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Strang, who spoke to the AP before Friday’s verdict and who wasn’t connected to the case, said Richards and Chirafisi see Rittenhouse “as an 18-year-old kid who landed in a whole lot of trouble, more than he could handle.” In the days after the shootings, Rittenhouse — who brought an AR-style rifle to a protest, saying he was protecting a stranger’s property — was initially represented by attorneys John Pierce and Lin Wood, who painted Rittenhouse as a defender of liberty and a patriot who was exercising his right to bear arms. Pierce tweeted a video of Rittenhouse speaking by phone from a jail in Illinois, where he’s from, thanking supporters. A video released by a group tied to his legal team said Rittenhouse was being “sacrificed by politicians” whose “end game” was to stop the “constitutional right of all citizens to defend our communities.” Rivers of money flowed in to a legal defense fund — more than enough for Rittenhouse to post

Should all school-age kids get Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine? That’s the question before an influential government advisory panel Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized emergency use of kid-size doses for children ages 5 to 11. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also must sign off before widespread vaccinations begin in that age group. CDC’s advisers are weighing who will get the most benefit as they deliberate whether to recommend the shots for up to 28 million more children, or perhaps only for those most vulnerable to serious illness. Their recommendation goes to the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, for the final say. “Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic,” Walensky told the advisory panel Tuesday. She said while the risk of severe disease and death is lower in young children than adults, it is real — and that COVID-19 has had a profound social, mental health and educational impact on youngsters, including widening disparities in learning. “There are children in the second grade who have never experienced a normal school year,” Walensky said. “Pediatric vaccination has the power to help us change all of that.” Shots into little arms could begin this week, as Pfizer already is packing and shipping the first orders, millions of doses, to states and pharmacies to be ready. Doctors who’ve cared for hospitalized youngsters hope parents embrace Pfizer’s kid shots, saying they’re safe and far better than gambling that a child will escape a coronavirus infection. “I’ve seen plenty of children in this age group that have been seriously ill,” said Dr. Matthew Linam, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “The risk of significant infection is still very real in this population.” There have been more than 8,300 hospitalizations of kids ages 5 to 11, about a third requiring intensive care, according to government data. The CDC has recorded at least 94 deaths in that age group. And while the U.S. has seen a recent downturn in COVID-19 cases, experts are worried about another uptick with holiday travel and as winter sends more activity indoors where it’s easier for the coronavirus to spread. Pfizer’s kid shots contain a third of the vaccine dose that’s already been used to vaccinate millions of people 12 and older. The 5- to 11-year-olds will receive two shots, three weeks apart, the same schedule as everyone else — but a smaller amount in each shot, using a smaller needle. A study of 2,268 youngsters found the kid-size vaccine is nearly 91% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 — based on 16 diagnoses among kids given dummy shots compared to just three who got the real vaccination. The FDA examined more children, a total of 3,100 who were vaccinated, in concluding the shots are safe. The younger children experienced similar or fewer reactions — such as sore arms, fever or achiness — than teens or young adults get after larger doses. That study wasn’t large enough to detect any extremely rare side effects, such as the heart inflammation that occasionally occurs after the second full-strength dose, mostly in young men and teen boys. The FDA ultimately decided the benefits from vaccination outweigh the potential that younger kids getting a smaller dose also might experience that rare risk. The FDA’s decision came

A former utility executive who lied to ratepayers and regulators costing billions of dollars after he found out a pair of nuclear reactors being built in South Carolina were hopelessly behind schedule will soon be heading to prison for two years. A state judge Monday accepted the negotiated sentence of former SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh. He is the first executive to go to prison over the project, which lasted nine years and never generated a watt of power. Marsh has cooperated with investigators, spending at least seven days talking to the FBI, prosecutors said. “A CEO for a Fortune 500 company is going to prison and is paying $5 million to the people of South Carolina,” state Attorney General Alan Wilson said outside the Spartanburg County courtroom. Under the agreement, Marsh is to report in early December to a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, which includes a large hospital — rather than a state facility. He will serve the entire federal two-year federal sentence. South Carolina Circuit Judge Mark Hayes suspended a 10-year state sentence, but told Marsh he will have to serve it if he does not keep cooperating or fails to successfully serve three years of probation. Marsh isn’t the only executive facing legal problems. A second former SCANA executive and an official at Westinghouse Electric Co., the lead contractor to build two new reactors at the V.C. Summer plant north of Columbia, have also pleaded guilty. A second Westinghouse executive has been indicted and is awaiting trial. Prosecutors now are expected to turn their attention to Westinghouse. While Marsh lied about the lack of progress in the final years of construction of the reactors, Westinghouse knew of the problem long before and did not tell Marsh or other SCANA executives, U.S. Assistant Attorney Brook Andrews said at Marsh’s sentencing Thursday in federal court. Marsh’s lawyer asked the judge — and by extension the public — to remember that this should not be the end. “A project like this doesn’t go down the tubes because one person was involved,” said defense attorney Robert Bolchoz, who compared Marsh to a captain of a ship who trusted a crew working against him. Marsh pleaded guilty in federal court in February to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and in state court to obtaining property by false pretenses. The nuclear debacle was set up by a law passed in 2007 that allowed utilities to charge ratepayers to build power plants before they started generating power. “It divorced the risk from the people who were spending the money,” state Assistant Attorney General Creighton Waters said. “You won if you won and you won if you lost. If the project was a failure and you abandoned it, you still got to recoup that cost from customers.” That put a lot of responsibility on Marsh as the leader of SCANA and he failed by keeping his mouth shut when problems mounted and collecting bonuses instead of risking his job, Waters said. Marsh made $5 million in 2017, the year the utility abandoned the hopelessly behind-schedule project. His plea agreement requires $5 million in restitution, which has already been paid to a fund that provides help to pay electric bills of low income people. The actions by Marsh and other executives took more

Dozens of trucks carrying Iranian diesel arrived in Lebanon on Thursday, the first in a series of deliveries organized by the militant Hezbollah. The powerful group operates independently from Lebanese authorities, which are struggling to deal with a crippling energy crisis. The overland delivery through neighboring Syria violates U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran after former President Donald Trump pulled America out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018. The shipment is being portrayed as a victory by Hezbollah, which stepped in to supply the fuel from its patron, Iran, while the cash-strapped Lebanese government grapples with months-long fuel shortages that have paralyzed the country. “This is a very big and great thing for us because we broke the siege of America and foreign countries. … We are working with the help of God and our great mother Iran,” said Nabiha Idriss, a Hezbollah supporter gathered with others to greet the convoy as it passed through the eastern town of Al-Ain. There was no immediate comment from Lebanese or U.S. officials on the Iranian fuel delivery. Local commentators said Washington, worried about chaos in Lebanon amid raging, multiple crises, may have decided to look the other way. Hezbollah has portrayed the Lebanese economic meltdown, which began in late 2019, as partly caused by an informal siege imposed by America due to the militant group’s power and influence in Lebanon. The group — designated a terrorist organization by Washington — has been sanctioned by consecutive U.S. administrations. Lebanon’s crisis is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class and a sectarian-based political system that thrives on patronage and nepotism. Severe shortages in fuel have resulted in crippling power cuts. People wait hours in line for gasoline. Protests and scuffles have broken out at gas stations around Lebanon including in some Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, announced last month that Iran was sending fuel to Lebanon to help ease the crisis. The first Hezbollah-commissioned Iranian oil tanker arrived in the Syrian port of Baniyas on Sunday and the diesel was unloaded to Syrian storage places before it was brought overland to Lebanon on Thursday by tanker trucks. The convoy of 60 trucks, each carrying 50,000 liters (13,210 gallons), went through an informal border crossing in Qusayr in Syria. Another convoy of 60 tanker trucks is expected Friday. Hezbollah, often accused of operating a state-within-a-state, has been taking part in Syria’s civil war alongside government forces. It manages its own crossing points along the Lebanon-Syria border, away from formal border crossings. Nasrallah said in a televised speech earlier this week that the tanker did not offload its cargo directly in Lebanon to avoid embarrassing authorities and risking sanctions on Lebanon. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV called it “the tanker truck convoys to break the American siege.” It said the trucks were on their way to the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek where a Hezbollah-linked distribution company will start distributing the fuel. Nasrallah said the company, al-Amana, which is already under U.S. sanctions, won’t risk new penalties. For critics, however, the convoy is a symbol of the dissolution of the Lebanese state. While the oil delivery was seen as a victory for Hezbollah, the group is facing growing internal criticism for increasingly pulling Lebanon into Iran’s orbit and