Rebels ask Russia for military help in eastern Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin said rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine asked Russia for military assistance Wednesday to help fend off Ukrainian “aggression” while Ukraine declared a nationwide state of emergency amid growing fears of an all-out invasion by Russian troops.

The announcement from Moscow immediately fueled fears that the rebel request amounted to a pretext for war — a tactic that the West has warned about for weeks.

Anxiety about an imminent Russian offensive against its neighbor soared after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the separatist regions’ independence, and the West responded with sanctions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the rebel chiefs wrote to Putin, pleading with him to intervene after Ukrainian shelling caused civilian deaths and crippled vital infrastructure.

The separatists’ appeal comes after Putin sanctioned the deployment of troops to the rebel territories to help “maintain peace” and the parliament granted him permission to use military force outside the country.

Poll: Most in US oppose major role in Russia strife

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s little support among Americans for a major U.S. role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to a new poll, even as President Joe Biden imposes new sanctions and threatens a stronger response that could provoke retaliation from Moscow.

Biden has acknowledged a growing likelihood that war in Eastern Europe would affect Americans, though he has ruled out sending troops to Ukraine. Gas prices in the U.S. could rise in the short term. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has a range of tools he could use against the U.S., including cyberattacks hitting critical infrastructure and industries.

“Defending freedom will have costs for us as well, here at home,” Biden said Tuesday. “We need to be honest about that.”

Just 26% say the U.S. should have a major role in the conflict, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Fifty-two percent say a minor role; 20% say none at all.

The findings are a reminder for Biden and fellow Democrats that while the crisis may consume Washington in the coming months, pocketbook issues are likely to be a bigger priority for voters heading into the midterm elections. A December AP-NORC poll showed that Americans are particularly focused on economic issues, including rising inflation.

Vaccination drive is bottoming out as omicron subsides

HAMILTON, Ala. (AP) — A handwritten log kept by nurses tells the story of the losing battle to get more people vaccinated against COVID-19 in this corner of Alabama: Just 14 people showed up at the Marion County Health Department for their initial shot during the first six weeks of the year.

That was true even as hospitals in and around the county of roughly 30,000 people filled with virus patients and the death toll climbed. On many days, no one got a first shot at all, while a Mexican restaurant up the street, Los Amigos, was full of unmasked diners at lunchtime.

The vaccination drive in the U.S. is grinding to a halt, and demand has all but collapsed in places like this deeply conservative manufacturing town where many weren’t interested in the shots to begin with.

The average number of Americans getting their first shot is down to about 90,000 a day, the lowest point since the first few days of the U.S. vaccination campaign, in December 2020. And hopes of any substantial improvement in the immediate future have largely evaporated.

About 76% of the U.S. population has received at least one shot. Less than 65% of all Americans are fully vaccinated.

Prosecutors in charge of Trump criminal probe have resigned

NEW YORK (AP) — The two prosecutors in charge of the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump and his business dealings suddenly resigned Wednesday, throwing the future of the probe into question just as pressure was building on Trump on several legal fronts.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed the resignations of Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, top deputies who had been tasked with running the investigation on a day-to-day basis. Both started on the Trump probe under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg asked them to stay when he took office in January.

Dunne, the office’s former general counsel, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a successful, multiyear fight for Trump’s tax records. Pomerantz, a former mafia prosecutor, was brought out of private practice by Vance last year to add his expertise in white collar investigations and had been involved in questioning witnesses before the grand jury.

“We are grateful for their service,” Bragg spokesperson Danielle Filson said. She declined to comment further, saying the investigation is ongoing.

The New York Times, citing sources, reported that the grand jury investigation had stalled, with no sessions in the last month, and that Dunne and Pomerantz quit after Bragg raised doubts about pursuing a case against Trump himself. No former president has ever been charged with a crime.

US drops name of Trump’s ‘China Initiative’ after criticism

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is scrapping the name of a Trump-era initiative that was intended to crack down on economic espionage by Beijing but has been criticized as unfairly targeting Chinese professors at American colleges because of their ethnicity.

The decision to abandon the China Initiative and to impose a higher bar for prosecutions of professors was announced Wednesday by the Justice Department’s top national security official. It follows a monthslong review undertaken after complaints that the program chilled academic collaboration and contributed to anti-Asian bias. The department has also endured high-profile setbacks in individual prosecutions, resulting in the dismissal of multiple criminal cases against academic researchers in the last year.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said the department will still “be relentless in defending our country from China,” but no longer will group its investigations and prosecutions under the China Initiative label, in part out of recognition of the threats facing the U.S. from Russia, Iran, North Korea and others.

“I’m convinced that we need a broader approach, one that looks across all of these threats and uses all of our authorities to combat them,” he told reporters before a speech in which he detailed the changes.

The program was established in 2018 under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a way to thwart what officials said were aggressive efforts by China to steal American intellectual property and to spy on American industry and research.

What Lies Beneath: Vets worry polluted base made them ill

FORT ORD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. (AP) — For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills.

But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.

When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.

Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.

But in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.

High court wades into clash over Trump-era immigration rule

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court waded into a political clash Wednesday between the Biden administration and Republican-led states seeking to defend a signature Trump-era immigration rule that the new administration has abandoned.

Conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices acknowledged during arguments at the high court that when a new administration comes in, it can change policy. That’s what the Biden administration did with the Trump-era “public charge” rule that denied green cards to immigrants who use food stamps or other public benefits.

The question for the court is not the legality of the now defunct Trump-era rule, just whether a group of states led by Arizona should be able to pick up the legal fight over it.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, arguing for the group of states, that allowing the group to intervene in a case “that’s completely dead that never applied to you in the first place” is not the answer. “Whoever the federal government is, there’s always going to be a state that thinks it’s done the wrong thing,” she said. Other justices suggested a limited right to intervene might be possible.

Kagan, for her part, did question whether the Biden administration had erred by maneuvering to quickly jettison the Trump-era rule rather than going through a longer process. Justice Samuel Alito said the administration had devised a strategy to quickly set aside the rule and he wasn’t “aware of a precedent where an incoming administration has done anything quite like this.”