AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

Ukrainian forces retake areas near Kyiv amid fear of traps

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country’s capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off streets of one town out of fear that Russian forces may have left them booby-trapped.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that departing Russian troops were creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and “even the bodies of those killed.” His claims could not be independently verified.

Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, watched as Ukrainian soldiers backed by a column of tanks and other armored vehicles used cables to drag bodies off of a street from a distance. Locals said the dead — the AP counted at least six — were civilians killed without provocation by departing Russian soldiers.

“Those people were just walking and they shot them without any reason. Bang,” said a Bucha resident who declined to give his name citing safety reasons. “In the next neighborhood, Stekolka, it was even worse. They would shoot without asking any question.”

Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine.

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West, Russia mull nuclear steps in a ‘more dangerous’ world

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia’s assault on Ukraine and its veiled threats of using nuclear arms have policymakers, past and present, thinking the unthinkable: How should the West respond to a Russian battlefield explosion of a nuclear bomb?

The default U.S. policy answer, say some architects of the post-Cold War nuclear order, is with discipline and restraint. That could entail stepping up sanctions and isolation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Rose Gottemoeller, deputy secretary-general of NATO from 2016 to 2019.

But no one can count on calm minds to prevail in such a moment, and real life seldom goes to plan. World leaders would be angry, affronted, fearful. Miscommunication and confusion could be rife. Hackers could add to the chaos. Demands would be great for tough retaliation — the kind that can be done with nuclear-loaded missiles capable of moving faster than the speed of sound.

When military and civilian officials and experts have war-gamed Russian-U.S. nuclear tensions in the past, the tabletop exercises sometimes end with nuclear missiles arcing across continents and oceans, striking the capitals of Europe and North America, killing millions within hours, said Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

“And, you know, soon enough, you’ve just had a global thermonuclear war,” Oliker said.

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UK hits record COVID-19 levels; nearly 5 million infected

LONDON (AP) — The prevalence of COVID-19 in the U.K. has reached record levels, with about 1 in 13 people estimated to be infected with the virus in the past week, according to the latest figures from Britain’s official statistics agency.

Some 4.9 million people were estimated to have the coronavirus in the week ending March 26, up from 4.3 million recorded in the previous week, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The latest surge is driven by the more transmissible omicron variant BA.2, which is the dominant variant across the U.K.

Hospitalizations and death rates are again rising, although the number of people dying with COVID-19 is still relatively low compared with earlier this year. Nonetheless, the latest estimates suggest that the steep climb in new infections since late February, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scrapped all remaining coronavirus restrictions in England, has continued well into March.

The figures came on the same day the government ended free rapid COVID-19 tests for most people in England, under Johnson’s “living with COVID” plan. People who do not have health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus now need to pay for tests to find out if they are infected.

“The government’s ‘living with COVID’ strategy of removing any mitigations, isolation, free testing and a considerable slice of our surveillance amounts to nothing more than ignoring this virus going forwards,” said Stephen Griffin, associate professor at the University of Leeds’ medical school.

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Parkland shooter’s lawyers face tough task in jury selection

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas Cruz will have one goal when jury selection starts Monday: to identify candidates who might give Cruz the single vote he needs to get a life sentence instead of death for the 2018 murders of 17 students and staff members. The process will involve a lot of educated guesses.

Court officials said perhaps 1,500 or more potential jurors could file through Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer’s courtroom over several weeks as she, prosecutors and Cruz’s public defenders select 12 panelists, plus eight alternates, for his penalty trial. Those chosen must say they can put aside their animosity toward Cruz for the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and judge the case fairly. The potential jurors must also be available through September.

Cruz’s attorneys “should not even try to get a jury or juror who doesn’t know about the case because that is ignorance; you would have to be living under a rock,” said Orlando defense attorney Mark O’Mara. O’Mara came to national prominence after his successful 2013 defense of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murdering Black teenager Trayvon Martin. He is not involved in the Cruz case.

Jury candidates who declare that they can be objective will complete a questionnaire that dives into their backgrounds and asks whether they can handle viewing graphic evidence. They will then return in a few weeks for courtroom interviews, where they must declare that they are able to vote for the death penalty but also don’t believe it should be mandatory for murder.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 first-degree murders, 17 attempted murders and a jail assault, leaving the jury to decide only whether the former Stoneman Douglas student gets death or life without parole.

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AP PHOTOS: Ukraine volunteer fighters come from near and far

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — They are old, young, local, foreign, often new to war. Thousands of people have volunteered to join Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces and resist Russia’s invasion. The Associated Press this week spent time with some of them.

A 30-year-old actor, Sergiy Volosovets, now commands a unit of 11 men and oversees the military training of other volunteers at a base northeast of the capital, Kyiv, just a few kilometers from the front line. After their training, they might join the fight or guard checkpoints.

“They never thought that they would have a gun in their hands,” Volosovets said. But “this desire just brought all of them here.”

At the beginning of the war, he said, fighters were sent to the front line after just two days of hurried training. Now instruction is more thorough. “We need self-conscious people who know what they’re doing,” he said.

Among the volunteer fighters is 24-year-old sound engineer Kostyantyn Kovalenko. “As a sound engineer, I listen to the sounds of war I can hear, I think, a bit differently,” he said. He is bothered by the sounds like anyone else, but studies them and tries to identify the weapons. “I only regret that I don’t have my recorder to record the sounds and use them for a patriotic track,” he said.

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US sends home Algerian held nearly 20 years at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Algerian man imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for nearly 20 years has been released and sent back to his homeland.

The Department of Defense announced Saturday that Sufyian Barhoumi was repatriated with assurances from the Algerian government that he would be treated humanely there and that security measures would be imposed to reduce the risk that he could pose a threat in the future.

The Pentagon did not provide details about those security measures, which could include restrictions on travel.

Barhoumi was captured in Pakistan and taken to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002. The United States eventually determined he was involved with various extremist groups but was not a member of al-Qaida or the Taliban, according to a report by a review board at the prison that approved him for release in 2016.

U.S. authorities attempted to prosecute Barhoumi in 2008 but the effort was dropped amid legal challenges to the initial version of the military commission system set up under President George W. Bush.

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Lawyers hope new evidence can stop Texas woman’s execution

HOUSTON (AP) — During hours of relentless questioning, Melissa Lucio more than 100 times had denied fatally beating her 2-year-old daughter.

But worn down from a lifetime of abuse and the grief of losing her daughter Mariah, her lawyers say, the Texas woman finally acquiesced to investigators. “I guess I did it,” Lucio responded when asked if she was responsible for some of Mariah’s injuries.

Her lawyers say that statement was wrongly interpreted by prosecutors as a murder confession — tainting the rest of the investigation into Mariah’s 2007 death, with evidence gathered only to prove that conclusion, and helping lead to her capital murder conviction. They contend Mariah died from injuries from a fall down the 14 steps of a steep staircase outside the family’s apartment in the South Texas city of Harlingen.

As her April 27 execution date nears, Lucio’s lawyers are hopeful that new evidence, along with growing public support — including from jurors who now doubt the conviction and from more than half the Texas House of Representatives — will persuade the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to grant an execution reprieve or commute her sentence.

“Mariah’s death was a tragedy not a murder. … It would be an absolutely devastating message for this execution to go forward. It would send a message that innocence doesn’t matter,” said Vanessa Potkin, one of Lucio’s attorneys who is with the Innocence Project.

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Video contrasts police depiction of stun gun on Black man

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee police officer who used his stun gun on a DoorDash driver wrote an arrest report saying the man had become argumentative while denying he was speeding, refused to hand over identifying information, demanded to see a supervisor and stayed in his car when ordered to get out.

The driver — who faces charges of speeding, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct based on the officer’s sworn affidavit — pressed record on his phone after he was pulled over. That recording, made public by the driver’s attorney, tells a different story.

It shows Delane Gordon holding his driver’s license as Collegedale Police Officer Evan Driskill stands with his taser in a firing position. “He said he pulled me over for a traffic violation and he’s gonna Tase me. You can’t do that officer because I called for your supervisor,” Gordon says.

The white officer repeatedly shouts “get out!” at Gordon, who is Black.

“I have my license. What is the reason?” Gordon asks.

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Tribes seek more inclusion, action from US officials

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It was a quick trip for U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland with stops to hike through desert scrub near the U.S.-Mexico border and to marvel at the jagged Organ Mountains before soaking in what life was like in one of the oldest settlements along a historic trade route.

For Haaland, the time spent in West Texas and New Mexico over recent days helped to highlight the work being done to conserve parts of the borderlands.

But it also marked an opportunity for Haaland — as head of the agency that has broad oversight of tribal affairs — to deliver on promises to meet with Native American tribes that have grown increasingly frustrated about the federal government’s failure to include them when making decisions about land management, energy development or the protection of sacred sites.

Haaland’s selection as the first Native American to serve in the position opened a door for tribes who pointed to a history fraught with broken promises.

“I want the era where tribes have been on the back burner to be over, and I want to make sure that they have real opportunities to have a seat at the table,” Haaland said on March 17, 2021, her first day on the job.

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Krzyzewski K-O’d: North Carolina takes out coach, Duke 81-77

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s remarkable career came to thrilling and sudden close Saturday night after Caleb Love made a key 3-pointer and three late free throws to lift archrival North Carolina to a thrill-a-minute 81-77 victory over the Blue Devils.

This was the 258th, most consequential and maybe, just maybe, the very best meeting between these teams, whose arenas are separated by a scant 11 miles down in Tobacco Road.

The Tar Heels (29-9), of all teams, pinned the 368th and final loss on the 75-year-old Coach K, exactly four weeks after they ruined the going-away party in his final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

That loss hurt. This one stopped the coach’s last-gasp, storybook run one win away from a title game and a chance at his sixth championship. When it was over, after playing through the nip-and-tuck stretch run without a timeout, Krzyzewski walked calmly to halfcourt and shook the hand of Carolina’s rookie coach, Hubert Davis.

So, instead of Krzyzewski going for his sixth title, on Monday, Carolina will go for its seventh. It will be Davis, Love, who led the Tar Heels with 28 points, and R.J. Davis, who scored 18, going against Kansas, which beat Villanova 81-65 earlier in the undercard.

The Associated Press