AP News in Brief at 12:19 a.m. EDT

Ukraine by rail: Inside Zelenskyy’s efforts to buoy a nation

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — The caravan of unmarked vehicles tears across the muddy grass next to the playground. On the merry-go-round, the children stop swinging and spinning. The curious — parents and other residents of this southeastern town — gather around. Car doors swing open, and heavily armed security guards in battlefield fatigues spill out.

And just like that, he is among them: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wartime leader and his country’s chief morale officer.

This week, Zelenskyy shuttled across the country on a 48-hour train trip to rally soldiers who are battling Russian forces — and, just as important, to buoy the communities often caught in the crossfire. Here, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the front lines, Zelenskyy came to see for himself the destruction from a Russian attack that damaged dozens of apartments one week ago.

The violence hit just steps from the playground and merry-go-round. One person was killed and 30 others wounded. For Zaporizhzhia, the attack was a reminder of the often-arbitrary nature of the threats many Ukrainians face each day as Russian missile strikes stretch beyond the front lines.

But with the conflict now in its second year, Zelenskyy worries that both the outside world and Ukrainians far from the front lines are starting to become numb to the harsh, daily realities of war.

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Taiwan’s president begins US visit to shore up support

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan’s president is beginning a swing through the United States and Central America, a visit aimed at showing that her self-ruled island has allies as it faces a rising threat from China.

Taiwan was carefully calibrating President Tsai Ing-wen’s stops in the United States, and as always forgoing any official meetings with senior U.S. leaders in Washington, in an effort to contain what China said would be a strong but as yet unspecified response.

Tsai arrived in New York on Wednesday and was scheduled to spend Thursday in the city, but few details of the trip were made public.

A senior Chinese diplomat in Washington, embassy charge d’affaires Xu Xueyan, pointed to an expected meeting between Tsai and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy elsewhere in the country. The meeting would have serious repercussions overall and a “serious, serious, serious” impact on U.S.-China relations, she said in a virtual session with reporters on Wednesday.

Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he hopes any U.S. officials meeting unofficially with the president convey that American support for Taiwan is “strong and unequivocal.”

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GOP lawmakers override veto of transgender bill in Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kentucky on Wednesday swept aside the Democratic governor’s veto of a bill regulating some of the most personal aspects of life for transgender young people — from banning access to gender-affirming health care to restricting the bathrooms they can use.

The votes to override Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto were lopsided in both legislative chambers — where the GOP wields supermajorities — and came on the next-to-last day of this year’s legislative session. The Senate voted 29-8 to override Beshear’s veto. A short time later, the House completed the override on a vote of 76-23.

As emotions surged, some people protesting the bill from the House gallery were removed and arrested after their prolonged chanting rang out in the chamber. The protesters, their hands bound, chanted “there’s more of us not here” as they waited to be taken away from the Capitol.

Nineteen people were arrested and charged with third-degree criminal trespassing after the sergeant of arms requested assistance in restoring order, Kentucky State Police said. Officers gave each person “the option to leave without any enforcement action or be placed under arrest,” said Capt. Paul Blanton, a state police spokesperson.

“I think it’s unfortunate that it reached that level and certainly they were given, as I’ve been told since then, multiple opportunities to either quiet their chants or to leave voluntarily,” Republican House Speaker David Osborne said later.

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House GOP pushes sprawling bill to ‘unleash’ American energy

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are set to approve a sprawling energy package that seeks to undo virtually all of President Joe Biden’s agenda to address climate change.

The massive GOP bill up for a vote Thursday would sharply increase domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal, and ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects. It also would boost production of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt that are used in products such as electric vehicles, computers and cellphones.

Republicans call the bill the “Lower Energy Costs Act” and have given it the symbolic label H.R. 1 — the top legislative priority of the new GOP majority, which took control of the House in January. The measure, which combines dozens of separate proposals, represents more than two years of work by Republicans who are have chafed at Biden’s environmental agenda. They say Biden’s efforts have thwarted U.S. energy production and increased costs at the gas pump and grocery store.

“Families are struggling because of President Biden’s war on American energy,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., one of the bill’s main authors. “We have way too many energy resources here in America to be relying on hostile nations and paying (high prices) at the pump.”

The GOP bill will “unleash those resources so we can produce energy in America,” Scalise said. “We don’t have to be addicted to foreign countries that don’t like us.”

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Biden: World ‘turning the tide’ after backslide on democracy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday offered an optimistic outlook on the health of democracy worldwide, declaring that leaders are “turning the tide” in stemming a yearslong backslide of democratic institutions.

Opening his second democracy summit, Biden looked to spotlight hopeful advancements over the past year despite Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine and U.S. tensions with China over its military and economic influence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

The president cited signs of progress across the globe, from Angola’s effort to create an independent judiciary, Croatia’s move to boost government transparency and the Dominican Republic’s anti-corruption steps. At home, Biden pointed to his stalled push for voting protections in Congress as evidence of his administration’s commitment to support democracy.

“Today, we can say, with pride, democracies of the world are getting stronger, not weaker,” Biden said. “Autocracies of the world are getting weaker, not stronger. That’s a direct result of all of us.”

The summits, which Biden promised as a candidate in 2020, have become an important piece of his administration’s effort to try to build deeper alliances and nudge autocratic-leaning nations toward at least modest changes.

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Pope to be hospitalized for days with respiratory infection

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis was hospitalized with a respiratory infection Wednesday after experiencing difficulty breathing in recent days and will remain in the Rome hospital for several days of treatment, the Vatican said.

The 86-year-old pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, doesn’t have COVID-19, spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement late Wednesday.

The hospitalization was the first since Francis spent 10 days at the Gemelli hospital in July 2021 to have 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed.

It immediately raised questions about Francis’ overall health, and his ability to celebrate the busy Holy Week events that are due to begin this weekend with Palm Sunday.

Bruni said Francis had had trouble breathing in recent days and went to the Gemelli hospital Wednesday for tests.

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Musk, scientists call for halt to AI race sparked by ChatGPT

Are tech companies moving too fast in rolling out powerful artificial intelligence technology that could one day outsmart humans?

That’s the conclusion of a group of prominent computer scientists and other tech industry notables such as Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak who are calling for a 6-month pause to consider the risks.

Their petition published Wednesday is a response to San Francisco startup OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-4, a more advanced successor to its widely-used AI chatbot ChatGPT that helped spark a race among tech giants Microsoft and Google to unveil similar applications.

WHAT DO THEY SAY?

The letter warns that AI systems with “human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity” — from flooding the internet with disinformation and automating away jobs to more catastrophic future risks out of the realms of science fiction.

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Mexico investigates 8 over deadly fire at migrant facility

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Mexican authorities said Wednesday that eight employees or officials are being investigated for possible misconduct at a migrant detention center where a fire killed 39 detained men.

Anger and frustration in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez boiled over as hundreds of migrants walked to a U.S. border gate hoping to make a mass crossing.

Mexican officials appeared to place blame for the deaths in the fire late Monday largely on private, subcontracted security guards at the detention center in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Video showed guards hurrying away from the smoky fire apparently without trying to free detainees.

No charges were announced, but authorities said they would seek at least four arrest warrants later in the day, including one for a migrant who was part of what they described as a small group that started the fire. They said a migrant also damaged a security camera inside the cell where the fire occurred.

Five of those under investigation for possible misconduct are private security guards, two are federal immigration agents and one is a Chihuahua state officer, federal Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez. said

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Victims of Nashville school shooting honored in somber vigil

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Hundreds gathered Wednesday at a candlelight vigil in Nashville to honor and mourn the three children and three adults who were killed in a shooting at a Christian school this week.

The downtown ceremony for the victims of the shooting at The Covenant School was somber and at times tearful, as speaker after speaker read the names of the victims and offered condolences to their loved ones. The family of Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian who was among those killed, was in attendance, including his seven children.

First lady Jill Biden also was on hand but did not address the crowd. Sheryl Crow sang “I Shall Believe” and ended with the lyrics from a Dionne Warwick song, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.” Margo Price sang an a cappella version of “Tears of Rage.” And Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show led the crowd in the Christian hymn, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” which brought many to tears.

“Just two days ago was our city’s worst day,” Mayor John Cooper said. “I so wish we weren’t here, but we need to be here.”

Shaundelle Brooks, who lost her 23-year-old son, Akilah Dasilva, in the 2018 Nashville Waffle House shooting, said she went to the vigil to support the families of those slain at the school.

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California reparations amount, if any, left to politicians

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The leader of California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force on Wednesday said it won’t take a stance on how much the state should compensate Black residents whom economists estimate may be owed more than $800 billion for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination.

The $800 billion is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.

“All forms of discrimination should be considered in reparations,” Thomas Craemer, a public policy professor at the University of Connecticut, told the panel Wednesday. “The task force should feel free to go beyond our loss estimates, and determine what the right amount would be.”

Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom will ultimately decide whether any reparations are to be paid. The task force faces a July 1 deadline to recommend the forms of compensation to be awarded and who should receive it, along with other remedies to repair the harm.

But the panel’s chair, Kamilah Moore, said Wednesday it’s up to the state Legislature to ascribe a restitution amount based on the methodology economists recommended, and which the task force approved on Wednesday.

The Associated Press