Fond remembrances for Jimmy Carter after entering hospice

ATLANTA (AP) — Dozens of well-wishers made the pilgrimage Sunday to The Carter Center in Atlanta, as prayers and memories of former President Jimmy Carter's legacy were offered up at his small Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, a day after he entered hospice care.

Among those paying homage was his niece, who noted the 39th president's years of service in an emotional address at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter taught Sunday school for decades.

“I just want to read one of Uncle Jimmy’s quotes," Kim Fuller said during the Sunday school morning service, adding: "Oh, this is going to be really hard.”

She referenced this quote from Carter: “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. I’m free to choose that something. ... My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can.”

“Maybe if we think about it, maybe it’s time to pass the baton,” Fuller said before leading those gathered in prayer. “Who picks it up, I have no clue. I don’t know. Because this baton’s going to be a really big one.”

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Russia's year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Moscow's nights display few signs of a nation at war.

Cheerful crowds packed restaurants and bars in the Sretenka neighborhood on a recent Saturday night, watched by officers marked as “tourist police.” Nearby, a top-hatted guide led about 40 sightseers to a 300-year-old church.

There's only an occasional “Z” — the symbol of Russia's “special military operation,” as the Ukraine invasion is officially known — seen on a building or a shuttered store abandoned by a Western retailer. A poster of a stern-faced soldier, with the slogan “Glory to the heroes of Russia,” is a reminder the conflict has dragged on for a year.

Western stores are gone, but customers can still buy their products — or knockoffs sold under a Russian name or branding.

The painful, bruising changes to Russian life require more effort to see.

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Mexican musician finds refuge in saxophone after acid attack

MEXICO CITY (AP) — María Elena Ríos has conflicting feelings about her saxophone: She once blamed the instrument for bringing her to the brink of death — but it also has been her salvation.

Ríos, 29, thought her career as a musician and her devotion to her saxophone were what led her former boyfriend — an influential politician — to hire the men who splashed acid onto her face and body, disfiguring her. Later, she learned he simply couldn't accept that she had broken off their relationship.

Some of the attackers and the ex-boyfriend are in jail, but Ríos still had to come to terms with her instrument. Her love of the saxophone, in the end, is helping heal the psychological scars left by the terrifying attack.

“We are reconciling, little by little,” Ríos said of the musical instrument. “I hated it, because I thought it was responsible” for the 2019 attack in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca. She's performed live since then, but still wears a mask covering her lower face.

“It bothered my attacker a lot that I was a musician," Ríos recounts, "because he said we musicians were vagrants, poverty stricken, that we just took drugs and that when I went to concerts I probably participated in orgies.”

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Health care vaccine mandate remains as some push for an end

LOWRY CITY, Mo. (AP) — At Truman Lake Manor in rural Missouri, every day begins the same way for every employee entering the nursing home's doors — with a swab up the nose, a swirl of testing solution and a brief wait to see whether a thin red line appears indicating a positive COVID-19 case.

Only the healthy are allowed in to care for virus-free residents.

Despite those precautions, a coronavirus outbreak swept through the facility late last year. An inspector subsequently cited it for violating the federal government's COVID-19 vaccination requirement for health care facilities.

Truman Lake Manor is one of about 750 nursing homes and 110 hospitals nationwide written up for violating federal staff vaccination rules during the past year, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Most were given a bureaucratic nudge to do better — though some nursing homes also received fines, especially when they had multiple other problems.

One year after it began being enforced nationwide on Feb. 20, 2022, the vaccination requirement affecting an estimated 10 million health care workers is the last remaining major mandate from President Joe Biden's sweeping attempt to boost national vaccination rates. Similar requirements for large employers, military members and federal contractors all have been struck down, repealed or partially blocked.

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North Korea fires short-range missiles after making threats

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast on Monday in its second weapons test in three days that drew quick condemnation from its rivals.

The weapons firings follow an intercontinental ballistic missile launch Saturday and North Korea’s threats to take an unprecedented strong response to U.S.-South Korean military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal. Some experts say North Korea could use a new testing spree to expand its arsenal and intends eventually to use its boosted capability as leverage in negotiations the United States.

South Korea's military said it detected the two missile launches from a western coastal town, just north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Monday morning. Japan said both missiles landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan and that no damage involving aircraft and vessels in the area was reported.

According to Japanese and South Korean assessments, the North Korean missiles flew at a maximum altitude of 50-100 kilometers (30-60 miles) and a distance of 340-400 kilometers (210-250 miles).

South Korea’s military said North Korea’s repeated missile launches are “a grave provocation” that undermine international peace. Japan condemned the launches as a threat to the peace and safety of Japan and the international society.

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Biden’s test: Sustaining unity as Ukraine war enters Year 2

WASHINGTON (AP) — One year ago, President Joe Biden was bracing for the worst as Russia massed troops in preparation to invade Ukraine.

As many in the West and even in Ukraine doubted Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions, the White House was adamant: War was coming and Kyiv was woefully outgunned.

In Washington, Biden's aides prepared contingency plans and even drafts of what the president would say should Ukraine's capital quickly fall to Russian forces — a scenario deemed likely by most U.S. officials. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was offered help getting out of his country if he wanted it.

Yet as Russia's invasion reaches the one-year mark, the city stands and Ukraine has beaten even its own expectations, buoyed by a U.S.-led alliance that has agreed to equip Ukrainian forces with tanks, advanced air defense systems, and more, while keeping the Kyiv government afloat with tens of billions of dollars in direct assistance.

For Biden, Ukraine was an unexpected crisis, but one that fits squarely into his larger foreign policy outlook that the United States and like-minded allies are in the midst of a generational conflict to demonstrate that liberal democracies such as the U.S. can out-deliver autocracies.

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'I just want my legs back': Myanmar landmine casualties soar

BANGKOK (AP) — The 3-year-old boy had taken only two steps from his mother’s lap when a deafening explosion rang out. The blast caught the woman in the face, blurring her vision. She forced her eyes open and searched for her son around the busy jetty where they’d been waiting for a ferry, near their small village in south-central Myanmar.

Through the smoke, she spotted him. His small body lay on the ground, his feet and legs mangled with flesh peeled away, shattered bones exposed.

“He was crying and telling me that it hurt so much,” she said. “He didn’t know what just happened.”

But she did.

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'All Quiet' wins 7 BAFTAs, including best film, at UK awards

LONDON (AP) — Antiwar German movie “All Quiet on the Western Front” won seven prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, building the somber drama’s momentum as awards season rolls toward its climax at next month’s Oscars.

Irish tragicomedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” and rock biopic “Elvis” took four prizes each.

“All Quiet,” a visceral depiction of life and death in the World War I trenches based on Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel, won Edward Berger the best director award. Its other trophies included adapted screenplay, cinematography, best score, best sound and best film not in English.

Austin Butler was a surprise best actor winner for “Elvis.” Baz Lurhmann’s flamboyant musical also won trophies for casting, costume design and hair and makeup. Cate Blanchett won the best actress prize for orchestral drama “Tár."

Martin McDonagh’s “Banshees,” the bleakly comic story of a friendship gone sour, was named best British film.

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Richard Belzer, stand-up comic and TV detective, dies at 78

NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV's most indelible detectives as John Munch in "Homicide: Life on the Street" and “Law & Order: SVU,” has died. He was 78.

Belzer died Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft said. Scheft, a writer who had been working on a documentary about Belzer, said there was no known cause of death, but that Belzer had been dealing with circulatory and respiratory issues. The actor Henry Winkler, Belzer's cousin, tweeted, “Rest in peace Richard.”

For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode of “Homicide” and last played him in 2016 on “Law & Order: SVU.”

Belzer never auditioned for the role. After hearing him on “The Howard Stern Show,” executive producer Barry Levinson brought the comedian in to read for the part.

“I would never be a detective. But if I were, that's how I'd be," Belzer once said. "They write to all my paranoia and anti-establishment dissidence and conspiracy theories. So it's been a lot of fun for me. A dream, really.”

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Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins longest Daytona 500 in history

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has had a rollercoaster career in which he had to fight to keep a job, lost his seat at a NASCAR powerhouse team and opened his 14th season mired in a five-year losing streak.

To say this Daytona 500 was a milestone race was an understatement — for Stenhouse and for NASCAR.

Stenhouse won the Daytona 500 in double overtime and under caution on Sunday in the longest running of “The Great American Race.” The two overtimes pushed the 65th running of the race to a record 212 laps — a dozen laps beyond the scheduled distance and a whopping 530 miles.

It provided anxious moments before a landmark celebration: The first Daytona 500-winning team co-owned by a Black man and a woman.

Stenhouse’s win for JTG Daugherty Racing was the third of his career. JTG is the first single-car team to win the Daytona 500 since The Wood Brothers Racing did it with Trevor Bayne in 2011.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023