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

Fiery Greece train collision kills 29, injures at least 85

TEMPE, Greece (AP) — A passenger train in Greece carrying hundreds of people collided with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in the country’s north early Wednesday, killing 29 and injuring at least 85, officials said.

Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near Tempe, a small town next to a valley where major highway and rail tunnels are located, some 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens.

Hospital officials in the nearby city of Larissa said at least 25 people had serious injuries.

“The evacuation process is ongoing and is being carried out under very difficult conditions due to the severity of the collision between the two trains,” said Vassilis Varthakoyiannis, a spokesman for Greece’s firefighting service.

Survivors said several passengers were thrown through the windows of the train cars due to the impact. They said others fought to free themselves after the passenger train buckled, slamming into a field next to the tracks.

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Chicago Mayor Lightfoot ousted; Vallas, Johnson in runoff

CHICAGO (AP) — Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will meet in a runoff to be the next mayor of Chicago after voters on Tuesday denied incumbent Lori Lightfoot a second term, issuing a rebuke to a leader who made history as head of the nation’s third-largest city.

Vallas, a former schools CEO backed by the police union, and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, advanced to the April 4 runoff after none of the nine candidates was able to secure over 50% of the vote to win outright.

Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to lead the city, won her first term in 2019 after promising to end decades of corruption and backroom dealing at City Hall. But opponents blamed Lightfoot for an increase in crime and criticized her as being a divisive, overly contentious leader.

She is the first elected Chicago mayor to lose a reelection bid since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, lost her Democratic primary.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Lightfoot called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”

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Nigeria electoral commission: Tinubu wins presidential vote

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Election officials declared ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election early Wednesday, with the two leading opposition candidates already demanding a revote in Africa’s most populous nation.

The overnight announcement was likely to lead to a court challenge by his main opponents Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Abubakar also finished second in the last vote in 2019, then appealed those results before his lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.

On Tuesday, the two leading opposition parties had demanded a revote, saying that delays in uploading election results had made room for irregularities. The ruling All Progressives Congress party urged the opposition to accept defeat and not cause trouble.

Tinubu received 37% of the vote, or nearly 8.8 million, while main opposition candidate Abubakar won 29% with almost 7 million. Third-place finisher Obi took 25% with about 6.1 million, according to the results announced on live television by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

Tinubu “having satisfied the requirements of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected,” said the country’s election chief, Mahmood Yakubu.

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Supreme Court seems ready to reject student loan forgiveness

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative justices holding the Supreme Court’s majority seem ready to sink President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans.

In arguments lasting more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative colleagues in questioning the administration’s authority to broadly cancel federal student loans because of the COVID-19 emergency.

Loan payments that have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic three years ago are supposed to resume no later than this summer. Without the loan relief promised by the Biden plan, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer said, “delinquencies and defaults will surge.”

The plan has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges on lower courts. It did not appear to fare any better with the six justices appointed by Republican presidents.

Biden’s only hope for being allowed to move forward appeared to be the slim possibility, based on the arguments, that the court would find that Republican-led states and individuals challenging the plan lacked the legal right to sue.

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Elizabeth Holmes has 2nd child as she tries to avoid prison

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is citing her recently born child as another reason she should be allowed to delay the start of a more than 11-year prison sentence while her lawyers appeal her conviction for duping investors about the capabilities of her failed company’s blood-testing technology.

The birth of Holmes’ second child was confirmed in court documents filed last week in advance of a March 17 hearing about her bid to remain free during an appeals process that could take years to complete.

The filing didn’t disclose the date of the birth or the child’s gender, but the news isn’t a surprise. Holmes, 38, was pregnant at the time of her Nov. 18 sentencing in the same San Jose, California, courtroom where a jury convicted her on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy.

The start of that trial had been delayed so Holmes could give birth to her first child, a son. Holmes had both children with her current partner, William “Billy” Evans. She met Evans after her 2016 break-up with her former lover and business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy in a separate trial.

Balwani, 57, is also trying to convince U.S. District Judge Edward Davila to delay the start of his nearly 13-year prison sentence. A hearing on his request was held earlier this month, but Davila hasn’t issued a ruling yet.

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Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.

Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly have avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

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While California wearies of snowstorms, Northeast greets one

RUNNING SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — Jennifer Cobb and her husband planned on staying four days in their vacation rental in Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. But that stretched into a week as they were trapped by a relentless series of storms that has piled snow so high they can barely see out the windows.

When they try to shovel themselves out, it just snows again. They’re thinking of walking to a main road to see if they can hitch a ride down the mountain so they can get home to their teenage daughter and Cobb’s elderly father in San Diego County.

“We hear the phantom sounds of plows, but they never come,” said Cobb, 49. “Being stuck up here in this beautiful place shouldn’t be awful, but it is.”

Cobb and other beleaguered Californians weathered yet another storm Tuesday, as blizzard warnings blanketed the Sierra Nevada range in the northern half of the state, more snow was on its way to the southern mountains like the San Bernardino range, and forecasters warned that any travel was dangerous.

On the eastern flank of the Sierra, the Mono County Sheriff’s Office bluntly tweeted: “The roads are closed. All of them. There is no alternate route, back way, or secret route. It’s a blizzard, people.”

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How officials cracked case of eyedrops that blinded people

NEW YORK (AP) — The patients’ eyes were painfully inflamed. They could sense light but could see almost nothing else. A doctor called one case the worst eye infection he’d ever seen.

It was the beginning of a national outbreak caused by an extremely worrisome bacteria — one that some say heralds an era in which antibiotics no longer work and seemingly routine infections get horribly out of hand.

At last count, 58 Americans in 13 states have been infected, including at least one who died and at least five who suffered permanent vision loss. All have been linked to tainted eyedrops, leading to a recall.

Experts marvel at how disease detectives pieced together the case: Patients were scattered across the country. The illnesses occurred over the span of months. The infections were found in different parts of the body — in the blood of some patients, in the lungs of others.

But scientists also shudder, because they have long worried common bacteria will evolve so that antibiotics no longer work against them.

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New China committee debuts, warns of ‘existential struggle’

WASHINGTON (AP) — A special House committee dedicated to countering China began its work Tuesday with a prime-time hearing in which the panel’s chairman called on lawmakers to act with urgency and framed the competition between the U.S. and China as “an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century.”

While some critics have expressed concern the hearings could escalate U.S.-Chinese tensions, lawmakers sought to demonstrate unity and the panel’s top Democrat made clear that he doesn’t want a “clash of civilizations” but a durable peace.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been rising for years, with both countries enacting retaliatory tariffs on an array of imports during President Donald Trump’s time in office. China’s opaque response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its aggression toward Taiwan and the recent flight of a possible spy balloon over the U.S. have fueled lawmakers’ desire to do more to counter the Chinese government. The new Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is expected to be at the center of many of their efforts over the next two years.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., opened the hearing with a call for action. Addressing the difficulty of finding common ground on China-focused legislation, he said the Chinese government has found friends on Wall Street and in lobbyists on Washington’s K Street who are ready to oppose the committee’s efforts.

“Time is not on our side. Just because this Congress is divided, we cannot afford to waste the next two years lingering in legislative limbo or pandering for the press,” Gallagher said. “We must act with a sense of urgency.”

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What time is it on moon? Europe pushing for lunar time zone

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — With more lunar missions than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone.

This week, the agency said space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The idea came up during a meeting in the Netherlands late last year, with participants agreeing on the urgent need to establish “a common lunar reference time,” said the space agency’s Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer.

“A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this,” Giordano said in a statement.

For now, a moon mission runs on the time of the country that is operating the spacecraft. European space officials said an internationally accepted lunar time zone would make it easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies aim for the moon and NASA gets set to send astronauts there.

NASA had to grapple with the time question while designing and building the International Space Station, fast approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first piece.