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

Winter storms sow more chaos, shut down much of Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Winter storms sowed more chaos across the U.S. on Thursday, shutting down much of Oregon’s largest city with almost a foot of snow and paralyzing travel from parts of the Pacific Coast all the way to the northern Plains.

The nearly 11 inches (28 centimeters) that fell in Portland amounted to the second snowiest day in the city’s history. It took drivers by surprise, stalling traffic during the Wednesday evening rush hour and trapping motorists on freeways for hours.

Some spent the night in their vehicles or abandoned them altogether as crews struggled to clear roads. Other commuters got off spun-out buses and walked in groups to safety. The National Weather Service, which had predicted only a slim chance of significant snow, planned to review its work.

The weather also knocked out power to almost a million homes and businesses in multiple states, closed schools and grounded or delayed thousands of flights. The system even brought snow to usually balmy Southern California.

Kim Upham endured a 13-hour ordeal as snow brought to a standstill the traffic on U.S. 26, a mountainous highway that connects Portland to the coast. Already treacherous because of its steep grade, the highway was covered in a sheet of ice, forcing some drivers to leave their cars in the middle of the road.

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Train crew had little warning before Ohio wreck, probe finds

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (AP) — The crew operating a freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, didn’t get much warning before dozens of cars went off the tracks, and there is no indication that crew members did anything wrong, federal investigators said Thursday as they released a preliminary report into the fiery wreck that prompted a toxic chemical release and an evacuation.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made his first visit to the crash site and took shots at former President Donald Trump, who had visited the day before and criticized the federal response to the train derailment. Their back-and-forth was the latest sign that the East Palestine wreck has become a hot-button political issue, prompting a rebuke from the head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Enough with the politics. I don’t understand why this has gotten so political,” safety board Chair Jennifer Homendy, clearly exasperated, said at a briefing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “This is a community that is suffering. This is not about politics. This is about addressing their needs, their concerns.”

The NTSB report, which laid out the facts that investigators have gathered to date, said crew members had no indication the train was in trouble until an alarm sounded just before it went off the tracks.

An engineer slowed and stopped the train after getting a “critical audible alarm message” that signaled an overheated axle, according to the report. The three-person crew then saw fire and smoke and alerted dispatch, the report said.

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‘Never saw such hell’: Russian soldiers in Ukraine call home

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — One Russian soldier tells his mother that the young Ukrainians dead from his first firefight looked just like him. Another explains to his wife that he’s drunk because alcohol makes it easier to kill civilians. A third wants his girlfriend to know that in all the horror, he dreams about just being with her.

About 2,000 secret recordings of intercepted conversations between Russian soldiers in Ukraine and their loved ones back home offer a harrowing new perspective on Vladimir Putin’s year-old war. There is a human mystery at the heart of this conversations heard in intercepted phone calls: How do people raised with a sense of right and wrong end up accepting and perpetrating terrible acts of violence?

The AP identified calls made in March 2022 by soldiers in a military division that Ukrainian prosecutors say committed war crimes in Bucha, a town outside Kyiv that became an early symbol of Russian atrocities.

They show how deeply unprepared young soldiers — and their country — were for the war to come. Many joined the military because they needed money and were informed of their deployment at the last minute. They were told they’d be welcomed as heroes for liberating Ukraine from its Nazi oppressors and their Western backers, and that Kyiv would fall without bloodshed within a week.

The intercepts also show that as soldiers realized how much they’d been misled, they grew more and more afraid. Violence that once would have been unthinkable became normal. Looting and drinking offered moments of rare reprieve. Some said they were following orders to kill civilians or prisoners of war.

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Jimmy Carter: White House rise depended on twists before ’76

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Jimmy Carter’s path to the presidency is an oft-told story, especially by aspiring presidents trying to be the next politician to defy Washington expectations.

As a little-known Georgia governor, Carter announced in late 1974 that he’d seek the presidency. Atlanta’s largest newspaper answered with a mocking headline: “Jimmy Who?” National media mostly yawned.

Undeterred, the peanut farmer took his family and friends to Iowa and New Hampshire, where “the Peanut Brigade” set the modern standard for a retail campaign and helped elect Carter as the 39th president.

But the long odds weren’t just about 1976 for Carter, who is 98 and now receiving end-of-life care at his home in Plains, Georgia. Carter’s early life and career were replete with dominoes that could have blocked his White House road before he knew he was on it.

Here are some “What Ifs?” that, had they played out differently, may have made it impossible for Americans ever to answer that mocking question from Atlanta newspaper editors.

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Israel approves over 7,000 settlement homes, groups say

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s far-right government has granted approval for over 7,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, settlement backers and opponents said Thursday. The move defies growing international opposition to construction in the occupied territory.

The announcement came just days after the U.N. Security Council passed a statement strongly criticizing Israeli settlement construction on occupied lands claimed by the Palestinians. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, blocked what would have been an even tougher legally binding resolution, with diplomats saying they had received Israeli assurances of refraining from unilateral acts for six months.

The new approvals took place during a two-day meeting that ended Thursday and appeared to contradict those claims. The U.S. has repeatedly criticized Israeli settlement construction, saying it undermines hopes for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but taken no action to stop it.

Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group that attended the meeting, said a planning committee granted approvals for some 7,100 new housing units across the West Bank.

The group said the committee scheduled a meeting next month to discuss plans to develop a strategic area east of Jerusalem known as E1. The U.S. in the past has blocked the project, which would largely bisect the West Bank and which critics say would make it impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

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Trump investigation: Could grand juror’s words tank charges?

ATLANTA (AP) — Almost as soon as the foreperson of the special grand jury in the Georgia election meddling investigation went public this week, speculation began about whether her unusually candid revelations could jeopardize any possible prosecution of former President Donald Trump or others.

Emily Kohrs first spoke out in an interview published Tuesday by The Associated Press, a story that was followed by interviews in other print and television news outlets. In detailed commentary, she described some of what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room — how witnesses behaved, how prosecutors interacted with them, how some invoked their constitutional right not to answer certain questions.

Lawyers for Trump say the revelations offered by Kohrs shattered the credibility of the entire special grand jury investigation. People hoping to see the former president indicted worried on social media that Kohrs may have tanked a case against the former president. But experts said that while Kohrs’ chattiness in news interviews probably aggravated Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who’s leading the investigation, they were not legally damaging.

Willis likely “wishes that this woman hadn’t gone on the worldwide tour that she did,” said Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney in Georgia who’s not involved in the case. “But is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law.”

Trump’s attorneys in Georgia, however, are jumping on the interviews.

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Russia launches rescue ship to space station after leaks

Russia launched a rescue ship on Friday for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose original ride home sprang a dangerous leak while parked at the International Space Station.

The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.

The capsule leak in December was blamed on a micrometeorite that punctured an external radiator, draining it of coolant. The same thing appeared to happen again earlier this month, this time on a docked Russian cargo ship. Camera views showed a small hole in each spacecraft.

The Russian Space Agency delayed the launch of the replacement Soyuz, looking for any manufacturing defects. No issues were found, and the agency proceeded with Friday’s predawn launch from Kazakhstan of the capsule with bundles of supplies strapped into the three seats.

Given the urgent need for this capsule, two top NASA officials traveled from the U.S. to observe the launch in person. To everyone’s relief, the capsule safely reached orbit nine minutes after liftoff — “a perfect ride to orbit,” NASA Mission Control’s Rob Navias reported from Houston.

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Police: ‘Random’ shootings leave woman, child, reporter dead

A man riding in a car with his cousin shot and killed another passenger then returned to the same neighborhood near Orlando hours later and shot four more people, killing a journalist covering the original shooting and a 9-year-old girl, Florida police and witnesses said.

Orange County Sheriff John Mina characterized the shootings Wednesday as random acts of violence. Mina said during a news conference that 19-year-old Keith Melvin Moses has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the initial shooting that killed Nathacha Augustin, 38, and that “numerous more charges” would follow.

Spectrum News 13 identified the slain reporter as Dylan Lyons. Photographer Jesse Walden was also wounded. Mina said Walden has been talking to investigators while being treated at a hospital.

The two were in an unmarked news vehicle on Wednesday afternoon covering the first homicide when a man approached and shot them, Mina said. The man then went to a nearby home where he fatally shot T’yonna Major and critically wounded the girl’s mother. Officials have not released the mother’s name.

Mina said Thursday that investigators do not know the motive for any of the shootings. He said Moses is a known gang member but that the shootings didn’t appear to be gang-related. It was not clear if Moses knew that two of the victims were journalists and Mina noted that their vehicle didn’t look like a typical news van or feature the station’s logo.

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In Russia-Ukraine war, more disastrous path could lie ahead

For Russia, it’s been a year of bold charges and bombardments, humiliating retreats and grinding sieges. Ukraine has countered with fierce resistance, surprising counteroffensives and unexpected hit-and-run strikes.

Now, on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion that has killed tens of thousands and reduced cities to ruins, both sides are preparing for a potentially even more disastrous phase that lies ahead.

Russia recently intensified its push to capture all of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. Kyiv and its Western allies also say Moscow could try to launch a wider, more ambitious attack elsewhere along the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

Ukraine is waiting for battle tanks and other new weapons pledged by the West for it to reclaim occupied areas.

What’s nowhere in sight is a settlement.

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Review: ‘Cocaine Bear,’ 100% pure, uncut junk with no high

Yes, there’s a giant bear and, yes, it does a ton of coke. And, yes, just as you probably suspected, the movie blows.

We have officially sunk very low with “Cocaine Bear,” way past other films where the title alone describes the only thing that happens, like “Snakes on a Plane,” “We Bought a Zoo” or “Sharknado.”

Aping other genres of filmmaking, this one never finds its own voice or a way to integrate the ultra-violence with the dark comedy. It’s like a parody of a parody that director Elizabeth Banks has turned limp and pointless. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

But where does it all go from here? Just match an apex predator with a Schedule II drug and fall deeper into a movie future with “Oxycodone Osprey” or “Codeine Crocodile”?

The best thing to say is that, even at an efficient 95 minutes, “Cocaine Bear” just snorts along. When a drug runner in a plane in 1985 drops an outstanding amount of cocaine on Blood Mountain in Georgia, a 500-pound black bear ingests a brick of it and naturally wants more (At this point, we must call it Pablo Escobear, right?).

The Associated Press