Bomb shelters, guerrilla war: Building Ukraine's resistance
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The table tennis coach, the chaplain's wife, the dentist and the firebrand nationalist have little in common except a desire to defend their hometown and a sometimes halting effort to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian.
The situation in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from some of the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border of Ukraine, feels particularly perilous. Ukraine's second-largest city is one of its industrial centers and includes two factories that restore old Soviet-era tanks or build new ones.
It's also a city of fractures: between Ukrainian speakers and those who stick with the Russian that dominated until recently; between those who enthusiastically volunteer to resist a Russian offensive and those who just want to live their lives. Which side wins out in Kharkiv could well determine the fate of Ukraine.
If Russia invades, some of Kharkiv’s 1 million plus people say they stand ready to abandon their civilian lives and wage a guerrilla campaign against one of the world’s greatest military powers. They expect many Ukrainians will do the same.
“This city has to be protected,” said Viktoria Balesina, who teaches table tennis to teenagers and dyes her cropped hair deep purple at the crown. “We need to do something, not to panic and fall on our knees. We do not want this.”
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A Uyghur gets death sentence, as China bans once OK'd books
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison last year for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.
An AP review of images and stories presented as problematic in a state media documentary, and interviews with people involved in editing the textbooks, found they were rooted in previously accepted narratives — two drawings are based on a 1940s movement praised by Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949. Now, as the party’s imperatives have changed, it has partially reinterpreted them with devastating consequences for individuals, while also depriving students of ready access to a part of their heritage.
It is a less publicized chapter in a wide-ranging crackdown on Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups, which has prompted the U.S. and others to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics that open Friday. Foreign experts, governments and media have documented the detention of an estimated 1 million or more people, the demolition of mosques and forced sterilization and abortion. The Chinese government denies human rights violations and says it has taken steps to eliminate separatism and extremism in its western Xinjiang region.
The attack on textbooks and the officials responsible for them shows how far the Communist Party is going to control and reshape the Uyghur community. It comes as President Xi Jinping, in the name of ethnic unity, pushes a more assimilationist policy on Tibetans, Mongolians and other ethnic groups that scales back bilingual education. Scholars and activists fear the disappearance of Uyghur cultural history, handed down in stories of heroes and villains across generations.
“There’s much more intense policing of Uyghur historic narratives now,” said David Brophy, a historian of Uyghur nationalism at the University of Sydney. “The goalposts have shifted, and rather than this being seen as a site of negotiation and tension, now it’s treated as separatist propaganda.”
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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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Whoopi Goldberg sorry for Holocaust not about race remark
NEW YORK (AP) — The actress Whoopi Goldberg has apologized for saying the Holocaust was not about race, comments that caused a backlash.
She made the initial comments on ABC's ‘’The View"’ program on Monday morning. Her apology came in a tweet hours later.
“On today's show, I said the Holocaust 'is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man.' I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, 'The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.' I stand corrected," Goldberg said.
"The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg," she said.
The hosts on “The View” were discussing a Tennessee school board's banning of “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War Two. The board cited nudity and profanity as its reasons for banning the book, which has won several literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.
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Taliban raised on war bring a heavy hand to security role
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — As they headed home at night from a wedding, everyone in the car went quiet when they approached the checkpoint in Kabul manned by two Taliban with automatic rifles.
One of the fighters shone a light into the car. Fatima Abdullahi was in the backseat, her two children perched on her lap, squeezed between her younger sister Zainab and a work colleague. The fighter waved them through.
Seconds later, two shots rang out. Zainab slumped against her sister. Abdullahi screamed, pleading with her to wake up. Zainab, 25, was dead.
“I took her face in my hands but she didn’t move. Then I saw behind her there was blood, and she had been shot,” Abdullahi recounted to The Associated Press.
Taliban officials say the Jan. 13 shooting was a mix-up, with one guard not realizing the other had given the car the go ahead to leave. Both guards have been arrested, and the Taliban administration apologized for the killings, going to the home of Zainab’s parents, promising them justice and giving them 600,000 afghanis ($5,825).
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Jury questioning to begin in case related to Breonna Taylor
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Questioning of potential jurors begins Tuesday for the trial of a former Kentucky police officer involved in a botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical technician.
Brett Hankison is standing trial on three counts of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing wildly into Taylor’s neighbors’ apartments in March 2020. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot multiple times during the raid. No drugs were found, and the warrant was later found to be flawed.
No officers were charged for their role in causing Taylor's death, despite protests nationwide, with many demonstrators demanding that the officers involved stand trial for murder. That set the outcome apart from two other cases that put race relations in the national spotlight in 2020 with the killing of Black people at the hands of white people: the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in the custody of a police officer and the Georgia shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. The 25-year-old Black man was shot to death while being chased by three white men while out jogging through a neighborhood.
The three white men who pursued Arbery were convicted of murder in November and given life prison sentences in early January. Last year, former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in state court in the videotaped killing of Floyd.
In the Taylor case, Kentucky's Republican Attorney General, Daniel Cameron determined that the officers fired into the woman's apartment in self-defense after her boyfriend, who was in the apartment with her, shot at them first. Cameron, who is Black, did not give a grand jury considering the case the option of charging those officers in connection with Taylor's death, though he acknowledged that her death was heartbreaking.
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Amnesty joins rights groups in accusing Israel of apartheid
JERUSALEM (AP) — Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948, one that meets the international definition of apartheid.
With the release of a 278-page report compiled over a period of four years, the London-based rights group joins Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B'Tselem in accusing Israel of apartheid — both within its borders and in the occupied territories.
Their findings are part of a growing international movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute. Those efforts have gained strength in the decade since the peace process ground to a halt, as Israel has consolidated its control over the occupied territories and soured on the idea of a Palestinian state.
Israel rejects any allegation of apartheid, saying its own Arab citizens enjoy equal rights. It granted limited autonomy to the Palestinian Authority at the height of the peace process in the 1990s and withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005.
But Amnesty and the other groups say the very fragmentation of the territories in which Palestinians live is part of an overall regime of control designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
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Myanmar takeover anniversary marked by strike, int'l concern
BANGKOK (AP) — Opponents of military rule in Myanmar marked the one-year anniversary of the army’s seizure of power with a nationwide strike Tuesday to show their strength and solidarity amid concern about what has become an increasingly violent contention for power.
The “silent strike” sought to empty the streets of Myanmar’s cities and towns by having people stay home and businesses shut their doors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
In Yangon, the country’s largest city, and elsewhere, photos on social media showed normally busy streets were almost empty.
The anniversary has also attracted international attention, especially from Western nations critical of the military takeover, such as the United States.
President Joe Biden in a statement called for the military to reverse its actions, free the country’s ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other detainees and engage in meaningful dialogue to return Myanmar on a path to democracy.
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On Lunar New Year, Chinese pray outside shut temples
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese people on Tuesday rang in the Lunar New Year despite pandemic restrictions, as small crowds gathered outside shut temples offering traditional prayers for the Year of the Tiger.
At the Lama Temple in Beijing, dozens of people gathered to bow in prayer before the ornate west gate of the Tibetan Buddhist site that was often thronged with worshipers before the pandemic.
Wang Ying, who works at an accounting firm, said praying outside the temple was better than burning incense at home.
"I think sincerity is more important than burning incense sticks,” she said, after finishing her devotions.
Wang also said she is looking forward to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday. Marking the holiday, Beijing residents also took photos outside displays for the Games in the city's central Tiananmen Square.
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Pressure on Biles, Summer Olympians resonated with Shiffrin
Alpine skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin was paying attention when gymnastics superstar Simone Biles opened up about being burdened by “the weight of the world” and sat out a string of finals at the Tokyo Olympics six months ago.
Shiffrin was listening, too, when swimming superstar Caeleb Dressel revealed, after finishing first in five races at the Summer Games, how “terrifying” it was to confront “so much pressure in one moment; your whole life boils down to a moment.”
Observed Shiffrin: “He won all of the gold medals that were in Tokyo and, like, STILL felt that way.”
Empathizing with other athletes’ frank conversations about mental health got the 26-year-old from Colorado thinking about what awaits her at the Beijing Olympics, where the first of what could be five individual races for Shiffrin is next Monday’s giant slalom, an event she won at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
There’s the physical aspect of what she’ll need to do on the slopes. What she’ll need to do before competing to prepare. What she’ll need to do afterward to recover. And then there’s the psychological side of it all, a lot of which comes down to absorbing or deflecting the anxiety and stress that derive from expectations emanating from everywhere for someone successful enough to own three Olympic medals, three World Cup overall titles and six world championship golds.
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