AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Earthquake stuns Syria’s Aleppo even after war’s horrors

BEIRUT (AP) — For years, the people of Aleppo bore the brunt of bombardment and fighting when their city, once Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan, was among the civil war’s fiercest battle zones. Even that didn’t prepare them for the new devastation and terror wreaked by this week’s earthquake.

The natural disaster piled on many man-made ones, multiplying the suffering in Aleppo and Syria more broadly.

Fighting largely halted in Aleppo in 2016, but only a small number of the numerous damaged and destroyed buildings had been rebuilt. The population has also more recently struggled with Syria’s economic downslide, which has sent food prices soaring and residents thrown into poverty.

The shock of the quake is all too much.

Hovig Shehrian said that during the worst of the war in Aleppo, in 2014, he and his parents fled their home in a front-line area because of the shelling and sniper fire. For years, they moved from neighborhood to neighborhood to avoid the fighting.

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Tyre Nichols documents: Officer never explained stop to him

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) — The officer who pulled Tyre Nichols from his car before police fatally beat him never explained why he was being stopped, newly released documents show, and emerging reports from Memphis residents suggest that was common.

The Memphis Police Department blasted Demetrius Haley and four other officers as “blatantly unprofessional” and asked that they be stripped of the ability to work as police for their role in the Jan. 7 beating, according to documents released Tuesday by the Tennessee Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission.

They also include revelations that Haley took photographs of Nichols as he lay propped against a police car, then sent the photos to other officers and a female acquaintance.

Nichols died three days later — the latest police killing to prompt nationwide protests and an intense public conversation about how police treat Black residents.

Yet what led to it all remains a mystery.

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Biden warns of GOP plans for Medicare, Social Security cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden suggested that Republicans want to slash Medicare and Social Security, the GOP howls of protest during his State of the Union address showcased a striking apparent turnaround for the party that built a brand for years trying to do just that.

Biden is not about to let Republicans off easily and forget that history.

The record ranges from President George W. Bush’s ideas about privatizing Social Security to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s sweeping Medicare overhaul plan to current Sen. Rick Scott’s idea of allowing those and other federal programs to “sunset.”

As budget negotiations move ahead, expect the long history of GOP efforts to slash the popular entitlement programs for seniors to remain a politically powerful weapon the White House intends to wield.

“They sure didn’t like me calling them on it,” Biden said Wednesday about his address that drew heckling from Republicans the night before.

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Zelenskyy seeks weaponry in surprise trips to London, Paris

PARIS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought Western support for his country in surprise visits to Britain and France on Wednesday, pushing for fighter jets to battle Russian invaders in a dramatic speech to the U.K. Parliament, and then flying to Paris to meet the French and German leaders over dinner at the Elysee Palace.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy will join EU leaders at a summit in Brussels, which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described as a “signal of European solidarity and community.”

Zelenskyy’s European tour and pleas for more advanced weapons came as Ukraine braces for an expected Russian offensive and hatches its own plans to retake land held by Moscow’s forces. Western support has been key to Kyiv’s surprisingly stiff defense, and the two sides are engaged in grinding battles.

Zelenskyy thanked the British people for their support since “Day One” of Moscow’s invasion nearly a year ago, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said fighter jets were “part of the conversation” about aid to Ukraine.

“Nothing is off the table,” he said at an evening news conference at a British army base. “We must arm Ukraine in the short term, but we must bolster Ukraine for the long term.”

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North Korea’s Kim Jong Un presides over big military parade

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un brought his young daughter to a huge military parade showing off the latest hardware of his fast-growing nuclear arsenal, including intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the United States, state media said Thursday.

North Korean photos of Wednesday night’s parade in the capital, Pyongyang, showed Kim, wearing a black coat and fedora, attending the event with his wife and daughter, in the young girl’s latest recent public appearance. Kim was smiling and raising his hand from a balcony as thousands of troops lined up in a brightly illuminated Kim Il Sung Square, named after his grandfather and the nation’s founder.

The parade marked the 75th founding anniversary of North Korea’s army and came after weeks of preparations involving huge numbers of troops and civilians mobilized to glorify Kim’s rule and his relentless push to cement the North’s status as a nuclear power.

State media reports didn’t immediately mention whether Kim delivered a speech during the event. The parade came after Kim met with his top military brass on Monday and ordered an expansion of combat exercises, as he continues to escalate an already provocative run in weapons demonstrations in face of deepening tensions with his neighbors and Washington.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the parade featured a variety of nuclear-capable weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons targeting South Korea; and ICBMs, which the agency described as crucial weapons supporting the North’s ongoing “power-to-power, all-out confrontation” against its enemies.

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Residents can return after air deemed safe from derailment

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (AP) — Evacuated residents can return to the Ohio village where crews burned toxic chemicals after a train derailed five days ago near the Pennsylvania state line now that monitors show no dangerous levels in the air, authorities said Wednesday.

Around-the-clock testing inside and outside the evacuation zone around the village of East Palestine and a sliver of Pennsylvania showed the air had returned to normal levels that would have been seen before the derailment, said James Justice of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Hundreds and hundreds of data points we’ve collected over the time show the air quality is safe,” he said.

Residents were ordered to evacuate when authorities decided on Monday to release and burn five tankers filled with vinyl chloride, sending hydrogen chloride and the toxic gas phosgene into the air.

Monitors did detect toxins in the air during the controlled burn at the derailment site, but other samples outside that area did not, Justice said.

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Brazil pushes illegal miners out of Yanomami territory

ALTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) — Armed government officials with Brazil’s justice, Indigenous and environment ministries pressed illegal gold miners out of Yanomami Indigenous territory Wednesday, citing widespread river contamination, famine and disease they have brought to one of the most isolated groups in the world.

People involved in illegal gold dredging streamed away from the territory on foot. The operation could take months. There are believed to be some 20,000 people engaged in the activity, often using toxic mercury to separate the gold. An estimated 30,000 Yanomami people live in Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory, which covers an area roughly the size of Portugal and stretches across Roraima and Amazonas states in the northwest corner of Brazil’s Amazon.

The authorities — the Brazilian environmental agency Ibama, with support from the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples and the National Guard — found an airplane, a bulldozer, and makeshift lodges and hangars, and destroyed them — as permitted by law. Two guns and three boats with 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of fuel were seized. They also discovered a helicopter hidden in the forest and set it ablaze.

Ibama established a checkpoint next to a Yanomami village on the Uraricoera River to interrupt the miners’ supply chain there. Agents seized the 12-meter (39-foot) boats, loaded with a ton of food, freezers, generators, and internet antennas. The cargo will now supply the federal agents. No more boats carrying fuel and equipment will be allowed to proceed past the blockade.

The large amount of supplies bound upriver could indicate some of the gold miners were ignoring President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s promise to expel them after years of neglect under his predecessor, Bolsonaro, who tried to legalize the activity.

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Probe into US Olympic failings stunted by red tape in DC

DENVER (AP) — More than 27 months since it was greenlighted by Congress, the panel established to investigate the inner workings of the U.S. Olympic structure has yet to conduct a formal interview because of bureaucratic red tape and slow action from the same lawmakers who had expressed a pressing need for better oversight.

Two Olympics — the Summer Games in Tokyo and Winter Games in Beijing — have come and gone since the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics was signed into law and charged with looking into, among other topics, the handling of sex-abuse cases that were mismanaged for decades.

It took 19 months after it was established by the new law in October 2020 for the commission to be able to access the $2 million Congress budgeted for its use, then four more months for the government to post the job, and four months after that to identify and hire the panel’s executive director. Now that the money is available and the leader is in place, budgeting laws dictate that the commission has to decide how to spend the $2 million by Sept. 30 or risk not being able to use it.

Executive director Kevin Brown – who, to this date, is the panel’s only paid employee – says it’s an unrealistic timeline. He said emails and phone calls explaining the issue to lawmakers and their staffs have not led to much discussion, let alone an extension. Brown’s group plans on conducting dozens of interviews and gathering thousands of pages of documents. It must hold at least one public hearing and write a report to detail its findings. He anticipates the project will take around a year.

“The bottom line is, through no fault of its own, the commission has struggled to get underway, and now that we are moving forward with our work, our ability to do it meaningfully is being taken away from us,” Brown told The Associated Press.

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Chasing Horse charged with federal crimes in sex abuse probe

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (AP) — A former “Dances With Wolves” actor accused of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls for decades was charged with federal crimes Wednesday, adding to the growing list of criminal cases against Nathan Chasing Horse since his arrest last week in Nevada.

Chasing Horse, 46, now faces two counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday afternoon in Nevada U.S. District Court. Authorities have said Chasing Horse filmed sexual assaults.

The federal charges came hours after a state judge on Wednesday granted $300,000 bail to Chasing Horse, who has been in Las Vegas police custody since his Jan. 31 arrest near the home he shared with his five wives.

Earlier Wednesday, about two dozen of Chasing Horse’s relatives and friends had filed into a North Las Vegas courtroom in a show of support, hoping he would be released on bail. They cheered and celebrated the judge’s decision as they left the courthouse, waving signs that translate to “Justice for Chasing Horse.” Now, if he posts bail, he is likely to be taken into federal custody.

In state court, Chasing Horse is charged with eight felonies, including sexual assault, sex trafficking and child abuse. He has not entered a plea.

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AP source: Lakers trading Westbrook to Utah in 3-team swap

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Lakers are trading Russell Westbrook to Utah and reacquiring guard D’Angelo Russell from Minnesota in a three-team, eight-player deal, a person with knowledge of the trade told The Associated Press on Wednesday night.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the teams hadn’t announced the major deal made ahead of the NBA’s trade deadline Thursday.

Los Angeles is also getting guard Malik Beasley and forward Jarred Vanderbilt from the Jazz, bolstering its core around LeBron James in a bid to jump-start its sputtering season. The Lakers fell to 25-30 on Tuesday while James set the NBA’s career scoring record, and they sit in 13th place in the 15-team Western Conference.

The Lakers are sending Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and their first-round pick in 2027 to Utah with Westbrook.

ESPN and The Athletic first reported the trade. Those outlets also said Minnesota is getting Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker from Utah, along with three second-round picks.

The Associated Press