usa
Firefighters increase containment on Colorado wildfire
A wildfire south of Boulder that forced nearly 20,000 people to flee was listed at 35% contained by Sunday afternoon and most evacuations had been lifted, officials with Boulder Fire-Rescue said.
The fire, which ignited Saturday, burned to within 1,000 yards (914 meters) of homes on the west end of Boulder, said Mike Smith, incident commander. No homes were lost and no injuries were reported, he said.
A quick initial attack “combined with all of the fuels mitigation treatments that we've done in this area is one of the reasons that we've had such great success," Smith said Sunday.
Read:Colorado wildfires burn hundreds of homes, force evacuations
Fire crews were also able to use aircraft to fight the fire, laying down lines of fire retardant near homes in the rolling hills south of the college town, he said.
The evacuation area was reduced late Saturday to cover about 1,700 people and 700 residences, down from about 8,000 homes earlier in the day. Fire managers hoped to allow more people back into their homes Sunday as the area becomes safe, officials said. New information for those still evacuated was expected by Sunday evening, Smith said.
Work on Sunday focused on reinforcing the fire line and making sure the fire didn't burn toward the city of Boulder or down toward Eldorado Canyon, Smith said. Crews were working to corral the fire into an area of rocks and snow.
“Today was a good day,” Smith said during a Sunday afternoon briefing as a helicopter flew in the background. “This morning was a little bit cooler, the wind was a little bit calmer and as we moved through the day we were happy to see that some of the winds that were forecast didn't actually come to fruition.”
The containment level increased from 21% on Sunday morning to 35% on Sunday afternoon while the area burned remained the same — an estimated 189 acres (77 hectares), Smith said.
Read: Out West, Biden points to wildfires to push for big rebuild
The fire burned in dormant trees and dry grass not far from where a late December fire, pushed by strong winds, burned over 9 square miles (24 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.
Fire crews are concerned about the upcoming fire season, Smith said.
“I think this is just a sign of the way things are going to go,” he said. “We continue to work on our planning processes. We continue to work on the team building and work with our partners to make sure that we're as dialed as we can be. We're feeling good, but we're a little nervous about the upcoming season.”
The fire burned protected wildland near the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder police said. Authorities have called it the NCAR fire and its cause is not yet known, although officials have found the spot where it was believed to have started, Smith said.
Driver crashes into Oregon homeless camp, killing 4
A driver crashed their car into a homeless encampment in Salem, Oregon, early Sunday morning, killing four people and injuring three more, including the driver, authorities said.
Police arrested Enrique Rodriguez Jr., 24, on Sunday evening. Rodriguez was charged with four counts of first-degree manslaughter, second and third-degree assault and six counts of reckless endangerment.
In a statement, authorities said the Salem Police Traffic Team believes “alcohol may have been a contributing factor” in the crash.
Read:Firefighters increase containment on Colorado wildfire
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Rodriguez had retained an attorney.
Nathan Rose tells the Salem Statesman Journal that he and his girlfriend were in their tent when they heard two loud thuds. The car just missed their tent, Rose said.
Rose said he saw some of his friends pinned under the car and called 911. He said he helped pull one person from under the car but witnesses were unable to help the others.
“From there, it was just chaos,” Rose told the newspaper.
Police said in a statement Sunday afternoon that the driver was the only occupant of the two-door sports coupe.
The crash happened at about 2 a.m. Sunday near a new men’s shelter, which has beds for about 300 people, and a program that offers emergency housing assistance and other services for the homeless.
The camp is a small triangle of trees and grass, not far from the Willamette River.
Two people who were at the encampment died at the scene. Four others were taken to Salem Health with with life-threatening injuries and two died at the hospital. The driver was also taken to the hospital.
Officials have not released the victims’ names or the conditions of those who remain hospitalized.
Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, said homeless people spend much of their day trying to find a safe place to sleep and rest, “but events like this remind us that there is no safe space.”
The crash comes after Washington, D.C., police arrested a man earlier this month who is suspected of stalking and shooting homeless people asleep on the streets of New York City and the nation's capital.
“No one deserves to have to live in unsheltered conditions and they damn sure do not deserve to die in them,” Jones said. “Tragedies like this will continue until this nation makes a serious commitment to the idea that housing is a human right, and that everyone deserves a warm, safe and dry place where they can live with dignity.”
Read:Much of Shanghai locked down as mass COVID-19 testing begins
More than 1,000 people sleep outside in the Salem area on any given night, the newspaper reported. The city has a population of over 175,000, according to the 2020 U.S. census.
Mike Wade came to the camp after hearing one of his close friends had died. He helped others in the camp salvage their belongings and prayed for the victims.
“It gets me weaker every day hearing about us die one by one,” Wade said. “My friends are dead and I don’t know what to say.”
Biden pledges new Ukraine aid, warns Russia on chem weapons
President Joe Biden and Western allies pledged new sanctions and humanitarian aid on Thursday in response to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, but their offers fell short of the more robust military assistance that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for in a pair of live-video appearances.
Biden also announced the U.S. would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees — though he said many probably prefer to stay closer to home — and provide an additional $1 billion in food, medicine, water and other supplies.
The Western leaders spent Thursday crafting next steps to counter Russia’s month-old invasion — and huddling over how they might respond should Putin deploy chemical, biological or even a nuclear weapon. They met in a trio of emergency summits that had them shuttling across Brussels for back-to-back-to-back meetings of NATO, the Group of Seven industrialized nations and the 27-member European Council.
Biden, in an early evening news conference after the meetings, warned that a chemical attack by Russia “would trigger a response in kind."
Also read: Biden, Western allies open 1st of 3 summits on Russian war
“You’re asking whether NATO would cross. We’d make that decision at the time,” Biden said.
However, a White House official said later that did not imply any shift in the U.S. position against direct military action in Ukraine. Biden and NATO allies have stressed that the U.S. and NATO would not put troops on the ground in Ukraine.
The official was not authorized to comment publicly by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Zelenskyy, while thankful for the newly promised help, made clear to the Western allies he needed far more than they're currently willing to give.
“One percent of all your planes, one percent of all your tanks,” Zelenskyy asked members of the NATO alliance. “We can’t just buy those. When we will have all this, it will give us, just like you, 100% security.”
Biden said more aid was on its way. But the Western leaders were treading carefully so as not to further escalate the conflict beyond the borders of Ukraine.
“NATO has made a choice to support Ukraine in this war without going to war with Russia," said French President Emmanuel Macron. "Therefore we have decided to intensify our ongoing work to prevent any escalation and to get organized in case there is an escalation.”
Poland and other eastern flank NATO countries are seeking clarity on how the U.S. and European nations can assist in dealing with their growing concerns about Russian aggression as well as the refugee crisis. More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in recent weeks, including more than 2 million to Poland.
Biden is to visit Rzeszów, Poland, on Friday, where energy and refugee issues are expected to be at the center of talks with President Andrzej Duda. He'll get a briefing on humanitarian aid efforts to assist fleeing refugees and he'll meet with U.S. troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who have been deployed in recent weeks to bolster NATO's eastern flank.
Billions of dollars of military hardware have already been provided to Ukraine. A U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Western nations were discussing the possibility of providing anti-ship weapons amid concerns that Russia will launch amphibious assaults along the Black Sea coast.
Biden said his top priority at Thursday's meetings was to make certain that the West stayed on the same page in its response to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
"The single most important thing is for us to stay unified," he said.
Finland announced Thursday it would send more military equipment to Ukraine, its second shipment in about three weeks. And Belgium announced it will add one billion euros to its defense budget in response to Russia’s invasion..
At the same time, Washington will expand its sanctions on Russia, targeting members of the country’s parliament along with defense contractors. The U.S. said it will also work with other Western nations to ensure gold reserves held by Russia's central bank are subject to existing sanctions.
With Russia facing increasing international isolation, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also warned China against coming to Moscow's rescue. He called on Beijing “to join the rest of the world and clearly condemn the brutal war against Ukraine and not support Russia.”
But Stoltenberg, too, made clear that the West had a "responsibility to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war in Europe.”
The possibility that Russia will use chemical or even nuclear weapons has been a grim topic of conversation in Brussels.
Stoltenberg said that NATO leaders agreed Thursday to send equipment to Ukraine to help protect it against a chemical weapons attack.
White House officials said that both the U.S. and NATO have been working on contingency planning should Russia deploy nonconventional weaponry. NATO has specially trained and equipped forces if there should be such an attack against a member nation's population, territory or forces. Ukraine is not a member.
Stoltenberg said in an NBC News interview that if Russia deployed chemical weapons, that would make “an unpredictable, dangerous situation even more dangerous and even more unpredictable.” He declined to comment about how the alliance might respond.
The White House National Security Council launched efforts days after the invasion through its “Tiger Team,” which is tasked with planning three months out, and a second strategy group working on a longer term review of any geopolitical shift that may come, according to a senior administration official. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Also read: Biden seeks new sanctions, help for Ukrainians in Europe
Both teams are conducting contingency planning for scenarios including Russia’s potential use of chemical or biological weapons, targeting of U.S. security convoys in the region, disruptions to global food supply chains and the growing refugee crisis.
Biden before departing for Europe on Wednesday said that the possibility of a chemical attack was a “real threat.” In addition, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN this week that Russia could consider using its nuclear weapons if it felt there were “an existential threat for our country.”
Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Thursday warned, “Russia is capable of anything.”
"They don’t respect any rules,” Marin told reporters. “They don’t respect any international laws that they are actually committed to.”
The Russian invasion has spurred European nations to reconsider their military spending, and Stoltenberg opened the NATO summit by saying the alliance must “respond to a new security reality in Europe.”
The bolstering of forces along NATO's eastern flank will put pressure on national budgets.
The energy crisis exacerbated by the war is a particularly hot topic for the European Council summit, where leaders from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are hoping for an urgent, coordinated bloc-wide response. EU officials have said they will seek U.S. help on a plan to top up natural gas storage facilities for next winter, and they also want the bloc to jointly purchase gas.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed calls to boycott Russian energy supplies, saying it would cause significant damage to his country's economy. Scholz is facing pressure from environmental activists to quickly wean Germany off Russian energy, but he said the process will have to be gradual.
“To do so from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and all of Europe into recession," Scholz said Wednesday.
Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive arm, said before Biden’s visit that she wanted to discuss the possibility of securing extra deliveries of liquefied natural gas from the United States for the 27-nation bloc “for the next two winters.”
The EU imports 90% of the natural gas used to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying almost 40% of EU gas and a quarter of its oil. The bloc is hoping to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by diversifying suppliers.
The U.S. is looking for ways to “surge” LNG supplies to Europe to help, said Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser.
Four new NATO battlegroups, which usually number between 1,000-1,500 troops, are being set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.
6 students killed in Oklahoma crash were in car that seats 4
Six teenage girls on a high school lunch break were killed when their small car with only four seats collided with a large truck hauling rocks, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Wednesday.
The crash occurred shortly after noon Tuesday in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City, the patrol said. Those killed included the 16-year-old driver, three 15-year-olds, and two 17-year-old passengers, according to the patrol.
Read:One 'black box' found in China Eastern plane crash
While what led to the crash is unknown, it highlighted concerns of teenagers carrying other young passengers.
“Just adding a single passenger under age 21 increases the risk of crashing by 44%” when the driver is a teen," said William Van Tassel with AAA’s national office.
The crash report, released Wednesday morning, said the circumstances of the wreck remained under investigation. But Highway Patrol Trooper Shelby Humphrey said Tuesday night that the girls’ car was making a right turn when it collided with the truck, KXII-TV reported.
"One of the main concerns and risks of having multiple teenagers in a car is the distractions that come with that,” Van Tassel said.
“If one of the passengers is over 35 (the risk) goes down by 62%. That implies teens can drive safely when there’s an adult in the car," Van Tassel told The Associated Press.
Only the 16-year-old driver and front-seat passenger were wearing seat belts when the 2015 Chevrolet Spark collided with the truck, according to the Highway Patrol.
“The unbelted people put everyone at risk," Van Tessel said. "In a crash, the unbuckled people fly around all over the place,” injuring others inside the vehicle.
Oklahoma is the only state where passengers who are older than 7 years old and in the back seat of a car do not have to wear a seat belt, said Leslie Gamble, the manger of public and government relations for AAA-Oklahoma.
“A 41-member coalition of traffic safety advocates has pushed for a bill to be passed by our state legislators for the past three years without success,” Gamble said
The crash occurred about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Tishomingo High School.
Students in the district of about 850 students were in class Wednesday, Tishomingo Public School Superintendent Bobby Waitman said.
“Academics are secondary, frankly, at this point to the students knowing that they belong, that they have a safe place,” Waitman said.
“You'll never fully understand, I don't think we'll ever fully understand a loss like this," Waitman added.
The girls' names weren't released because they are juveniles.
The Highway Patrol identified the driver of the truck as Valendon Burton, 51, of Burneyville, Oklahoma. The report said Burton was not injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team, according to NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson.
Read:Tornado rips through New Orleans and its suburbs, killing 1
Waitman said funerals for the students were not yet scheduled and that the district would work with their families to potentially schedule a memorial service on campus.
The crash happened one week after nine people were killed — including six members of a New Mexico college’s golf team and their coach — died in a crash in West Texas. In that crash, the NTSB determined that a 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a truck when it blew a tire and struck the van carrying University of the Southwest students.
UN members urged to acknowledge Rohingya genocide, refer Myanmar to ICC
United Nations member states should publicly acknowledge the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and ensure that the UN Security Council refers the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC), said Fortify Rights Monday.
Today, the US announced that the Myanmar military is responsible for committing genocide against the Rohingya people.
"It is a signalling and remarkable milestone for Rohingya victims and survivors that the US has formally determined that the violence committed against Rohingya by the Myanmar military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity," said Zaw Win, human rights specialist at Fortify Rights.
"It has been a long-term expectation for the Rohingya community. Declaring that what happened to the Rohingya is in fact genocide should spur international accountability efforts and make it more difficult for the Myanmar military to continue its atrocity crimes."
In November 2019, the Gambia filed a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the UN's highest court, for failing to prevent or punish genocide against Rohingya Muslims. The case is ongoing.
In September 2018, the ICC granted the chief prosecutor jurisdiction to investigate and possibly prosecute the crime against humanity of forced deportation of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, as well as persecution and other inhumane acts.
Last month, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan concluded his first visit to Bangladesh as part of the ongoing investigation.
READ: Rohingya Crisis: KSA to keep supporting Bangladesh, The Gambia
While the ICC is investigating forced deportation, it is not yet investigating the crime of genocide against Rohingya.
The intergovernmental organisation and international tribunal has not yet accepted the National Unity Government of Myanmar's declaration delegating jurisdiction of the court.
The UN Security Council members should immediately put forward a resolution to refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC, said Fortify Rights.
The UN members should also acknowledge the legitimacy of the National Unity Government of Myanmar and get fully behind its efforts to delegate jurisdiction to the court.
"Secretary Blinken's announcement is historic for the Rohingya and all people of Myanmar and also for wider efforts to prevent and remedy genocide," said Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights.
"To prevent genocide, governments must at least acknowledge it when it happens, which is precisely what the US government did today."
US says Myanmar repression of Muslim Rohingya is genocide
Violent repression of the largely Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar amounts to genocide, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, a declaration intended to both generate international pressure and lay the groundwork for potential legal action.
Authorities made the determination based on confirmed accounts of mass atrocities on civilians by Myanmar's military in a widespread and systematic campaign against the ethnic minority, Blinken said in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It is the eighth time since the Holocaust that the U.S. has concluded a genocide has occurred. The secretary of state noted the importance of calling attention to inhumanity even as horrific attacks occur elsewhere in the world, including Ukraine.
“Yes, we stand with the people of Ukraine," he said. "And we must also stand with people who are suffering atrocities in other places.”
The government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, is already under multiple layers of U.S. sanctions since a military coup ousted the democratically elected government in February 2021. Thousands of civilians throughout the country have been killed and imprisoned as part of ongoing repression of anyone opposed to the ruling junta.
The determination that a genocide has occurred could lead other nations to increase pressure on the government, which is already facing accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
“As we lay the foundation for future accountability, we’re also working to stop the military’s ongoing atrocities, and support the people of Burma as they strive to put the country back on the path to democracy,” Blinken said.
More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when Myanmar's military launched an operation aimed at clearing them from the country following attacks by a rebel group.
The status of the plight of the Rohingya had been under extended review by U.S. government legal experts since the Trump administration, given potential legal ramifications of such a finding. The delay in the determination had drawn criticism from both inside and outside the government, which has been accused through successive administrations of being too slow in making such decisions on this and in other cases, most notable in Sudan’s Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Read: Rohingya case: Bangladesh assures continued support for The Gambia
Human rights groups and members of Congress welcomed the announcement despite the delay in a determination that has already been made by other countries, including Canada, France and Turkey.
“The U.S. determination of the crime of genocide against us is a momentous moment and must lead to concrete action to hold the Burmese military accountable for their crimes,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK.
Human Rights Watch said the U.S. and other governments should seek justice for crimes carried out by the military and impose stronger sanctions against its leadership.
“The U.S. government should couple its condemnations of Myanmar’s military with action,” said John Sifton, the group’s Asia advocacy director. “For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmar’s generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences.”
A 2018 State Department report documented instances of Myanmar's military razing villages and carrying out rapes, tortures and mass killings of civilians since at least 2016. Blinken said evidence showed the violence wasn't isolated, but part of a systematic program that amounts to crimes against humanity.
Read:Roving with Rohingyas: How feminine hearts can make a difference, from scare to care
“The evidence also points to a clear intent behind these mass atrocities, the intent to destroy Rohingya, in whole or in part, through killings, rape, and torture,” he said.
Previous determinations of genocide by the U.S. include campaigns against Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities in China as well as in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Darfur.
Gunfire at Arkansas car show leaves 1 dead, 27 wounded
One man was killed and 27 people were wounded when two people got into a gunfight during a car show that's part of an annual community event in a small southeast Arkansas town, authorities said Sunday.
A person who left the scene of the Saturday evening shooting has been arrested on unrelated charges and is being questioned about the shooting in Dumas, a city of about 4,000 located about 90 miles (144 kilometers) southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas State Police Col. Bill Bryant said.
“All we know at this time, there was two individuals that got in a gunfight,” Bryant said at a Sunday afternoon news conference.
Read:Car runs into Carnival revelers in Belgium, killing 6
He said several children were among the wounded, including two under the age of 2.
The car show is part of a community event held each spring called Hood-Nic, which is short for neighborhood picnic. The Hood-Nic Foundation says on its website that its mission is to “rebuild, reunite, and respond to the needs of the youth in our communities.”
The event, which helps raise funds for scholarships and school supplies, also included a bonfire, a basketball tournament, musical performances, a teen party and a balloon release.
“The purpose of Hood-Nic has always been to bring the community together,” the foundation said on its Facebook page. “This senseless violence needs to end.”
“It’s always been a family-friendly event with a message of non-violence,” said Kris Love-Keys, the foundation's chief development officer.
Cameron Shaffer, 23, of Jacksonville, Arkansas, was killed in the gunfire, Bryant said. He said authorities have no indication that he was involved in the gunfight.
Earlier in the day, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on Twitter that one of the two suspects had been arrested and was being held on unrelated charges. But state police later would only say the person who was arrested was being questioned.
“As the investigation continues I will examine details to see if there are any steps that could have been taken to prevent this type of tragedy,” Hutchinson said.
Read:Car crash kills 7 in southern Myanmar
Six people under the age of 18 who were wounded by gunfire were taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, according to a spokeswoman. Most had been released as of Sunday afternoon.
Wallace McGehee, the car show's organizer, told KARK that that when the bullets started flying, he began “running, ducking, getting down, trying to get kids out of the way.”
Candace McKinzie, who helped organize the event, told The New York Times that the gunfire seemed to come out of nowhere.
“You went from laughing and talking and eating and everything to random firing,” she said.
McKinzie said people started running and tripping over one another and older people were falling.
Those who were shot include McKinzie’s cousin and sister. She said both were expected to recover.
Chris Jones, a Democrat running for Arkansas governor, tweeted that he was at the event earlier Saturday, registering voters and enjoying “a positive family atmosphere.”
“I am deeply saddened (and honestly angered) by this tragedy,” Jones said in a statement.
American lost in Ukraine flew into war to help sick partner
Katya Hill tried to talk her brother out of it. She urged Jimmy Hill to postpone his trip to Ukraine as she saw reports of Russian tanks lining up at the border. But he needed to help his longtime partner, who has been suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis.
“He said, ‘I don’t know what I would do if I lost her, I have to try to do everything I can to try to stop the progression of MS,’” Katya said. “My brother sacrificed his life for her.”
James “Jimmy” Hill, 68, was killed in a Russian attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that was reported Thursday, as his partner Irina Teslenko received treatment at a local hospital. His family says she and her mother are trying to leave the city, but because of her condition they would need an ambulance to help and it was unclear when or if that could happen.
In an interview from Pittsburgh Saturday, Hill’s sister called her brother’s relationship with Irina a “beautiful love story, but unfortunately it has a tragic ending.”
Katya Hill said Irina’s illness had progressed to the point that she had lost the ability to walk and much of the use of her hands. She said her brother — a native of Eveleth, Minnesota, who was living in Driggs, Idaho — had spent months trying to secure treatments to stop the progression of the disease and had finally arranged for treatment in February.
Katya said the two met while her brother, who taught social work and forensic psychology at universities in various countries, was teaching a class in Ukraine. He knew instantly that he was in love and they spent years together, talking for hours every day on the phone when Jimmy was back in the Unites States.
READ: Russians push deeper into Mariupol as locals plead for help
Katya said in the last few weeks as the bombings grew more frequent and resources more scarce, her brother had been daydreaming of ways to get Ukrainian families to the U.S. to set up a “little Ukraine” at his Airbnb properties he owned in Idaho and Montana. She said her brother loved Ukraine and even on the day he was killed, friends had helped her piece together that he had decided to stay to be with Teslenko and her mother at the hospital.
It was initially reported that Jimmy was gunned down while waiting in a breadline, but Katya said the family had received new details through their senators and from Jimmy’s friends in Ukraine Saturday.
Katya said Jimmy and a friend who lives near the hospital had gone to an area where they had heard buses were waiting to evacuate people who wanted to leave the city via a safe corridor. There were more than a thousand people already waiting in line, and Jimmy told the friend he was going to return to the hospital. The friend told Katya that Russian shelling began as he was leaving, and the blast that killed her brother had caused the friend to lose hearing in one of her ears.
Katya said her family is still waiting to hear directly from the U.S. State Department to get details of where his body is.
Chernihiv police and the State Department confirmed the death of an American but did not identify him. The Associated Press reached out to the State Department to confirm details of Hill’s death, but had not received information as of early Saturday.
In poignant posts on Facebook in the weeks before his death, Hill described “indiscriminate bombing” in a city under siege. Katya said he had described increasing hardships in a Facebook Messenger group, starting each day by saying he was still alive.
But electricity and heat had been cut off, and food and supplies were becoming more scarce. Katya said he would go out to wait in line for food and supplies and bring back whatever he could for the hospital staff.
READ: Denied swift victory, Russian military maintains strong hand
Most patients at the hospital had moved to the basement bomb shelter, but Irina and her mother remained in the upper levels because of the cold and so she could continue the treatment.
Katya said Irina’s mother had been told about Jimmy’s death, but had not wanted to tell her daughter. She said they had hoped for help to evacuate back to their home village southeast of Kyiv, where Irina’s father was waiting, but it was unclear whether they could find an ambulance to take them or a safe route for the trip.
Video shows cop kneeling on Wisconsin student’s neck
School officials in Kenosha, Wisconsin, released surveillance footage that shows an off-duty police officer putting his knee on a 12-year-old girl’s neck to restrain her amid a lunchtime fight.
The Kenosha Unified School District released redacted footage of the March 4 fight on Friday. It shows Kenosha officer Shawn Guetschow intervening in the fight and then scuffling with the girl, before falling to the ground and hitting his head on a table.
Guetschow, who was working as a security guard at the school, then pushes the girl’s head into the ground and uses his knee on her neck for about half a minute before handcuffing her and walking her out of the cafeteria.
READ: Ukraine, Russia continue talks over video
Jerrel Perez, the girl’s father, has called for criminal charges against Guetschow for using a type of restraint that was banned for Wisconsin law enforcement officers last year. He said his daughter is in therapy and seeing a neurologist for her injuries.
The school district initially placed Guetschow on paid leave. He resigned from his part-time security job with the school on Tuesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
In his resignation letter, Guetschow complained that the school district has not supported him and that the incident has placed a heavy burden on his family.
The district told the newspaper that it would not provide any additional details and did not respond to messages left by The Associated Press on Saturday. Kenosah police, in a statement, said Guetschow is still employed by the department.
READ: Remove Riaz's father-in-law's 'suicide' video from social media: HC
“We continue our investigation, paying careful attention to the entire scope of the incident,” the statement said. “We have no further update at this time.”
Don’t help Russia’s invasion, Biden tells China’s Xi
Face to face by video, President Joe Biden laid out to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday the stiff consequences the Chinese would face from the U.S. if they provide military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There was no indication he got any assurance in return.
In fact, Xi blamed the U.S. for the crisis and insisted with a Chinese proverb that the next move was up to Biden:
“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off,” Xi said, according to a Chinese government readout.
More formally after the nearly two-hour conversation, China’s Foreign Ministry deplored “conflict and confrontation” as “not in anyone’s interest,” but assigned no blame to Russia and said nothing of next steps.
At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki said, “China has to make a decision for themselves, about where they want to stand and how they want the history books to look at them and view their actions.”
She declined to detail possible consequences Biden specified to the Chinese president if his country provides support for the Russian invasion.
But a senior administration official who briefed reporters following the leaders’ call said that Biden pointed to the economic isolation that Russia has faced — including economy-battering sanctions and major Western corporations suspending operations — as he sought to underscore the costs that China might suffer.
Xi urged the U.S. and Russia, which have had limited engagement since the Feb. 24 invasion, to negotiate. He noted China’s donations of humanitarian aid for Ukraine, while accusing the U.S. of provoking Russia and fueling the conflict by shipping arms to the embattled country. He also renewed China’s criticism of sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion, according to State media. As in the past, Xi did not use the terms war or invasion to describe Russia’s actions.
Ahead of the call, Psaki noted Beijing’s “rhetorical support” of Putin and an “absence of denunciation” of Russia’s invasion.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying pushed back, calling the U..S. administration “overbearing” for suggesting China risks falling on the wrong side of history.
The two leaders also discussed the longer-simmering U.S.-China dispute over Taiwan. In a reminder of China’s threat to assert its claim by force, the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, just hours before the Biden-Xi call. The U.S. is legally obligated to ensure the self-governing island democracy can defend itself and treats threats to it with “grave concern.”
Planning for the leaders’ discussion had been in the works since Biden and Xi held a virtual summit in November, but differences between Washington and Beijing over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prosecution of his three-week-old war against Ukraine were at the center of Friday’s conversation.
The U.S.-China relationship, long fraught, has only become more strained since the start of Biden’s presidency. Biden has repeatedly criticized China for military provocations against Taiwan, human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and efforts to squelch pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
But the relationship may have reached a new low with the Russian invasion.
In the days after Putin deployed Russian forces in Ukraine, Xi’s government tried to distance itself from Russia’s offensive but avoided the criticism many other nations have leveled at Moscow. At other moments, Beijing’s actions have been provocative including amplifying unverified Russian claims that Ukraine ran chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support.
Earlier this week, the U.S. informed Asian and European allies that American intelligence had determined that China had signaled to Russia that it would be willing to provide both military support for the campaign in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off the impact of severe sanctions imposed by the West.
Read: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike
The White House says China has been sending mixed messages. There were initial signs that Chinese state-owned banks were pulling back from financing Russian activities, according to a senior Biden administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal analyses. But there have also been public comments by Chinese officials who expressed support for Russia being a strategic partner.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi met in Rome this week for an intense, seven-hour talk about the Russian invasion and other issues.
Read: Rescuers search theater rubble as Russian attacks continue
Ahead of the Rome talks, Sullivan said the U.S. wouldn’t abide China or any other country helping Russia work around economy-jarring sanctions inflicted by the U.S. and other allies in response to the invasion.
Sullivan also said the administration determined China knew that Putin “was planning something” before the invasion of Ukraine, but the Chinese government “may not have understood the full extent” of what Putin had in mind.
Xi and Putin met in early February, weeks before the invasion, with the Russian leader traveling to Beijing for the start of the Winter Olympics. The two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless “friendship.”
Beijing’s leaders would like to be supportive of Russia, but they also recognize how badly the Russian military action is going as an overmatched Ukrainian military has put up stiff resistance, according to a Western official familiar with current intelligence assessments.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Beijing is weighing the potential “reputational blowback” of being associated with the Russian camp. The Chinese response to Russia’s request for help is still being formulated, the official said.
Though seen as siding with Russia, China has also reached out to Ukraine, with its ambassador to the country on Monday quoted as saying: “China is a friendly country for the Ukrainian people. As an ambassador, I can responsibly say that China will forever be a good force for Ukraine, both economically and politically.”
“We have seen how great the unity of the Ukrainian people is, and that means its strength,” Fan Xianrong was quoted by Ukraine’s state news service Ukrinform as telling regional authorities in the western city of Lviv, where the Chinese Embassy has relocated to.
State media quoted Xi as saying China-U.S. relations had yet to “emerge from the dilemma created by the previous U.S. administration, but instead encountered more and more challenges,” singling out Taiwan as one area in particular.
“If the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it will have an undermining impact on the relationship between the two countries,” Xi reportedly told Biden.