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Russia swept up in patriotic fervor for bringing Crimea back into its territory
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia was swept up in patriotic fervor Friday for bringing Crimea back into its territory, with tens of thousands of people thronging Red Square waving flags and chanting "Crimea is Russia!" as a parliamentary leader declared that the peninsula would be welcomed as an "equal subject" of Russia.
The semi-autonomous region belongs to Ukraine, but the local parliament has called a March 16 referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia, a move President Barack Obama has called a violation of international law.
Tensions in Crimea were heightened late in the evening when pro-Russian forces tried to seize a Ukrainian military base in the port city of Sevastopol, according to the Ukrainian branch of the Interfax news agency. No shots were fired, but stun grenades were thrown, according to the report, citing Ukrainian officials.
About 100 Ukrainian troops are stationed at the base and they barricaded themselves inside one of their barracks, and their commander began negotiations, the report said. Crimea's pro-Moscow leader denied any incident at the base.
In the week since Russia seized control of Crimea, Russian troops have been neutralizing and disarming Ukrainian military bases on the Black Sea peninsula. Some Ukrainian units, however, have refused to surrender.
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Russia and Ukraine give different versions of sniper tragedy that drove Yanukovych from power
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — One of the biggest mysteries hanging over the protest mayhem that drove Ukraine's president from power: Who was behind the snipers who sowed death and terror in Kiev?
That riddle has become the latest flashpoint of feuding over Ukraine — with the nation's fledgling government and the Kremlin giving starkly different interpretations of events that could either undermine or bolster the legitimacy of the new rulers.
Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's government to Vladimir Putin's Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion. Russia suggests that the snipers were organized by opposition leaders trying to whip up local and international outrage against the government.
The government's new health minister — a doctor who helped oversee medical treatment for casualties during the protests — told The Associated Press that the similarity of bullet wounds suffered by opposition victims and police indicates the shooters were trying to stoke tensions on both sides and spark even greater violence, with the goal of toppling Yanukovych.
"I think it wasn't just a part of the old regime that (plotted the provocation), but it was also the work of Russian special forces who served and maintained the ideology of the (old) regime," Health Minister Oleh Musiy said.
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Blast of winter weather can't faze US employers; stepped-up hiring lifts hopes for more growth
WASHINGTON (AP) — Brutal winter weather snarled traffic, canceled flights and cut power to homes and factories in February. Yet it didn't faze U.S. employers, who added 175,000 jobs, far more than the two previous months.
Modest but steady job growth has become a hallmark of a nearly 5-year-old economic rebound that remains sluggish yet strikingly resilient. The economy has been slowed by political gridlock, harsh weather and global crises. But those disruptions have not derailed growth.
Though the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent from a five-year low of 6.6 percent, it did so for an encouraging reason: More people began seeking work. The unemployment rate ticked up because most did not immediately find jobs.
Friday's report from the Labor Department suggested that a long-hoped-for acceleration in growth and hiring still has not occurred. But that might not be all bad: Households have pared debt and avoided the excessive spending and borrowing that have undercut explosive economies in the past.
Total U.S. credit card debt is still 14 percent lower than before the Great Recession began in December 2007, according to the Federal Reserve.
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Al-Qaida breakaway group transforms Syrian city into nucleus of Islamic state it aspires to
BEIRUT (AP) — Once a vibrant, religiously mixed community, Syria's eastern city of Raqqa is now a shell of its former self, terrorized by hard-line militants who have turned it into the nucleus of their vision for the Islamic caliphate they hope one day to establish in Syria and Iraq.
In rare interviews with The Associated Press, residents and activists in Raqqa describe a city where fear prevails. Music has been banned, Christians have to pay an Islamic tax for protection, people are executed in the main square and face-veiled women and pistol-wielding foreigners in Afghan-style outfits patrol the streets enforcing Shariah restrictions.
Raqqa, on the banks of the Euphrates River, is now the only city in Syria fully under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaida breakaway group that is considered the most ferocious of the militant factions that have latched onto the revolt against President Bashar Assad's rule. Black Islamic banners flutter on street corners and atop buildings — including churches — as the extremists put their strict Islamic stamp on the city.
"They have taken us back to medieval times," said one resident. He and three other residents — all in the city except one who recently fled to Turkey — spoke to the AP by Skype on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by militants.
It was exactly a year ago that an alliance of Islamic brigades and other rebel groups swept into the city, cheering as they brought down the bronze statue of the late President Hafez Assad. Others tore down a huge portrait of his son Bashar, the current president, hitting it with shoes in euphoric scenes captured by activists and posted online.
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Mother who drove kids into ocean off Florida faces attempted murder, child abuse charges
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A pregnant South Carolina woman who drove a minivan carrying her three young children into the ocean surf off Florida was charged Friday with attempted murder and child abuse, with authorities saying the children were screaming to bystanders that she was trying to kill them.
Bystanders and officers helped rescue 32-year-old Ebony Wilkerson and her children, ages 3, 9 and 10, from their minivan as it was almost submerged on Tuesday on Daytona Beach.
Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said Wilkerson has denied trying to hurt her children. However, the children told investigators otherwise and witnesses said she tried to keep them from rescuing them. The windows were rolled up and the doors were locked, and one of the children tried to wrestle the steering wheel away from her, Johnson said.
"She told them to close their eyes and go to sleep. She was trying to take them to a better place," Johnson said.
One of the children lowered the windows and the siblings yelled for help, attracting the bystanders, a sheriff's office report said. Wilkerson told them "everyone was OK" but the children screamed that their mother was trying to kill them. As water rushed into the minivan, Wilkerson left the vehicle with her children inside, the report said.
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Accuser takes stand at Army general's sexual assault trial, says he threatened to kill her
FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — An Army captain who says she was sexually assaulted by a general sobbed Friday as she testified that they had a three-year affair and that he threatened to kill her and her family — and "do it in a way no one would ever know" — if she ever told anyone.
The testimony came on the opening day of the trial of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer ever court-martialed on sexual assault charges.
Asked by a prosecutor to identify her abuser, the woman looked quickly in Sinclair's direction at the defense table and pointed at the man with whom she admits violating military law by having an adulterous relationship.
She was given immunity in exchange for her testimony, which was expected to continue through Friday afternoon. She had yet to be asked about the explosive central allegation — that Sinclair twice ended arguments about their relationship by unbuttoning his pants and forcing her head into his lap to perform oral sex.
The trial is unfolding with the Pentagon under heavy pressure to confront rape and other sexual misconduct in the ranks that even the military has called epidemic. On Thursday, the Senate rejected a bill that would have stripped commanders of the authority to decide whether to prosecute rapes and other serious crimes.
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Oscar Pistorius trial: Guard says runner told him, after shooting, that everything was fine
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — In a day of damaging testimony, a former girlfriend of Oscar Pistorius said at his murder trial Friday that he once shot his gun out of a car sunroof and later cheated on her with the woman he killed last year, and a security guard recalled the athlete telling him everything was "fine" after neighbors reported gunshots coming from Pistorius' house on the night of her death.
The gripping accounts capped the first week of the televised trial of the double-amputee Olympian, whose chief defense lawyer has tried to sow doubt about the testimony of neighbors who said they heard a woman's screams before gunshots. Proceedings have also focused on past incidents involving alleged gunplay, part of an apparent prosecution effort to portray Pistorius, 27, as a hothead who sometimes thought he was above authority.
Prosecutors say he intentionally killed Reeva Steenkamp during an argument, but he insists it was a mistake, and that he fired through the locked toilet door in his bathroom believing an intruder was behind it.
The security guard, Pieter Baba, testified that he telephoned Pistorius after the reported gunshots in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 14, 2013, and that the athlete assured him in their brief conversation: "Security, everything is fine."
Moments later, Baba said, Pistorius phoned him back, started crying and didn't say anything and then the line went dead. It was minutes after he shot Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model.
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APNewsBreak: FBI takes over Idaho investigation into private prison company; inmates have sued
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the company's running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it "Gladiator School."
The Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA has operated Idaho's largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies. The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements.
The Idaho State Police was asked to investigate the company last year but didn't, until amid increasing political pressure, the governor ordered the agency to do so last month. Democratic state lawmakers asked the FBI to take up the case last month.
Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff Ray confirmed Friday that the FBI met with department director Brent Reinke on Thursday to inform him about the investigation. Idaho State Police spokeswoman Teresa Baker said her agency was no longer involved with the investigation and the FBI has taken it over entirely.
""They (the FBI) have other cases that are tied to this one so it worked out better for them to handle it from here," Baker said.
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Republican divide on social issues highlighted at conservative showcase
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Some of the GOP's most prominent conservatives insisted Friday that Republicans should emphasize hot-button social issues like abortion and gay marriage in this year's midterm elections, exposing an ideological divide within a party trying to capture the Senate and then the White House.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist pastor, set the tone early in the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
"If this nation forgets our God, then God will have every right to forget us," Huckabee said to cheers. "It's time for government to scale back, not for people of faith to scale back."
The day also featured Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who, like Huckabee, have run presidential campaigns fueled in part by support from religious voters.
But Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the final speakers of the day, represents a new generation of libertarian-minded Republicans less likely to oppose gay marriage or embrace laws allowing the government to affect people's private lives.
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Ukraine decides against boycott and will compete in Winter Paralympics in Sochi
SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Ukraine will compete in the Winter Paralympics in Sochi despite Russia's military moves in Crimea.
The Ukrainian Paralympic Committee decided against boycotting the games, announcing a few hours before Friday's opening ceremony that its athletes would stay.
The decision came after discussions between Ukrainian officials and athletes over whether to pull out in light of the crisis back home and Russia's military takeover of the Crimean peninsula.
"We are staying at the Paralympics," Valeriy Sushkevich, president of the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine, said at a news conference.
However, he added that the circumstances were far from ideal.
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