AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST

Booster shots needed against omicron, CDC studies show

NEW YORK (AP) — Three studies released Friday offered more evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are standing up to the omicron variant, at least among people who received booster shots.

They are the first large U.S. studies to look at vaccine protection against omicron, health officials said.

The papers echo previous research — including studies in Germany, South Africa and the U.K. — indicating available vaccines are less effective against omicron than earlier versions of the coronavirus, but also that boosters doses rev up virus-fighting antibodies to increase the chance of avoiding symptomatic infection.

The first study looked at hospitalizations and emergency room and urgent care center visits in 10 states, from August to this month.

It found vaccine effectiveness was best after three doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines in preventing COVID-19-associated emergency department and urgent care visits. Protection dropped from 94% during the delta wave to 82% during the omicron wave. Protection from just two doses was lower, especially if six months had passed since the second dose.

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US, Russia to try more diplomacy amid tensions over Ukraine

GENEVA (AP) — Top U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed Friday to keep talking in the standoff over Ukraine, even though their meeting produced no movement in the crisis that has seen Moscow mass tens of thousands of troops at the border and the West ramp up supplies of weapons to Kyiv.

With fears of an invasion of Ukraine running high and seemingly intractable demands, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for about 90 minutes in Geneva at what the American said was a “critical moment.”

Expectations were low going in, and there was no breakthrough.

Blinken told Lavrov the U.S. would give Russia written responses to Moscow’s proposals next week and suggested the two would likely meet again shortly after that — offering some hope that any invasion would be delayed for at least a few more days.

Blinken said the U.S. and its allies remain resolute in rejecting Russia’s most important demands, which were reiterated Friday. Moscow wants NATO to promise that Ukraine will never be added as a member, that no alliance weapons will be deployed near Russian borders, and that it pull back its forces from Central and Eastern Europe.

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Official: 1 officer killed, 1 seriously hurt in NYC shooting

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York Police Department officer was killed and another gravely injured Friday night after responding to a domestic disturbance call, according to a law enforcement official.

A suspect was also killed in the shooting in Harlem, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.

The official said a call had come in shortly after 5 p.m. of a mother needing help with her son. Three officers responded to the ground floor apartment on 135th Street.

They spoke to the mother in a front room, and then two officers went to a back room where the son was, and shots rang out, the official said.

Police dispatch audio captured some of the chaotic scene, including an officer screaming for assistance and another officer informing the dispatcher that two officers had been shot.

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Giuliani associate gets year in prison in foreign donor case

NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida man who helped Rudy Giuliani seek damaging information against Joe Biden in Ukraine was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $10,000 Friday in an unrelated campaign finance case.

Igor Fruman was told to report to prison March 14. He pleaded guilty in September to a single charge of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national.

As part of the plea, he admitted soliciting a million dollars from a Russian entrepreneur, Andrey Muraviev, to donate to Republicans in Nevada, Florida and other states as part of an effort to launch a recreational marijuana business.

Federal prosecutors in New York had urged Judge J. Paul Oetken to sentence Fruman to between three and four years in prison. Defense lawyers had argued he should face no incarceration because he has otherwise led a law-abiding life.

Oetken said the crime of soliciting foreign money for U.S. political campaigns was serious and deserved incarceration.

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McConnell responds to uproar over comment about Black voters

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back Friday against the uproar over a comment he made about African American voters, calling the criticism directed his way “outrageous.”

McConnell had been accused of racism for saying that “African American” voters cast ballots at similar rates to “Americans.” The comment implied that Black voters are somehow not American and underscored the concerns of voting rights advocates that Republicans in state legislatures across the country are explicitly seeking to disenfranchise Black voters.

Following a speech Friday at an annual conference in Louisville, the Republican leader said he misspoke Wednesday when he made the comment during a Washington news conference.

“I’ve never been accused of this sort of thing before, and it’s hurtful and offensive,” he said. “And I think some of the critics know it’s totally nonsense.”

McConnell on Wednesday had said that “African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.” McConnell explained on Friday that he should have said the word “all” before “Americans.”

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Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West and socially engaged Buddhism in the East, has died. He was 95.

The death was confirmed by a monk at Tu Hieu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam who said that Nhat Hanh, known as Thay to his followers, died at midnight on Saturday. The monk declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to media.

A post on Nhat Hanh’s verified Twitter page attributed to The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism also confirmed the news, saying, “We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts.”

Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace. In 1961 he went to the United States to study, teaching comparative religion for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.

For most of the remainder of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat center he founded in southern France.

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Kansas teen’s death has spotlight on ‘stand your ground’ law

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers were thinking of homeowners facing down burglars and people attacked on the street when they wrote a “stand your ground” law more than a decade ago allowing use of deadly force in self defense. They didn’t envision it applying to police officers, jail guards or government employees.

Now even some Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature who support the idea behind the law want to revisit it. The reason: A prosecutor said this week that it prevented him from criminally charging employees of a juvenile intake center in Wichita in the death of a Black teenager who’d been restrainedon the ground on his stomach, shackled and handcuffed for more than 30 minutes.

Police took 17-year-old Cedric Lofton to the center after a foster care agency said he needed a mental health exam for increasingly erratic behavior.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said any criminal charges were likely to be dismissed by a judge because Bennett concluded that the juvenile center’s employees believed they were acting in self-defense during the Sept. 24 altercation with Lofton. He said that Kansas courts have expanded self-defense rights to the point that, “How could any cop ever be prosecuted, then, for shooting somebody?”

While other legal experts and supporters of the law don’t think Bennett is correct, critics of stand your ground laws in about 30 states say they’re increasingly being used by law enforcement to shield officers who use deadly force.

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Los Angeles weighs phasing out oil and gas drilling

The University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles has a lot in common with urban areas across the U.S.: A dense population with lots of businesses and housing. A cluster of car dealerships. A row of restaurants. Schools and a community center.

But nestled in the predominantly Latino community is something rarely found in urban areas outside California: an oil field.

Pat Diaz, a 65-year old activist and University Park resident who grew up near a busy intersection, has felt the presence of the field since she was a child.

She remembers the basement of her family home that she now owns smelled like tar and her mother used to get spontaneous nosebleeds and persistent headaches.

When Diaz moved back to the neighborhood as an adult in 2009, she says she developed a chronic cough and lost her sense of taste. After comparing notes with neighbors in 2011, she realized such ailments were a widespread problem that residents blame on living near oil fields most recently operated by AllenCo Energy.

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Omicron surge is undermining care for other health problems

Roger Strukhoff was being treated for intestinal bleeding at a hospital outside Chicago this month when he suffered a mild heart attack.

Normally, the 67-year-old would have been sent to the intensive care unit. But Strukhoff said it was overrun with COVID-19 patients, and the staff instead had to wheel a heart monitor into his room and quickly administer nitroglycerin and morphine.

“A doctor I know pretty well said, ‘Roger, we’re going to have to improvise right here,’” said Strukhoff, who lives in DeKalb, Illinois.

The omicron surge this winter has not only swamped U.S. hospitals with record numbers of patients with COVID-19, it has also caused frightening moments and major headaches for people trying to get treatment for other ailments.

Less-urgent procedures have been put on hold around the country, such as cochlear implant surgeries and steroid injections for rheumatoid arthritis. And people with all sorts of medical complaints have had to wait in emergency rooms for hours longer than usual.

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Texas hostages escaped synagogue as FBI SWAT team rushed in

COLLEYVILLE, Texas (AP) — In the final moments of a 10-hour standoff with a gunman at a Texas synagogue, the remaining hostages and officials trying to negotiate their release took “near simultaneous plans of action,” with the hostages escaping as an FBI tactical team moved in, an official said Friday.

“I think we both kind of realized around the same time that: It’s time to go,” Matt DeSarno, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Dallas, said at a news conference.

DeSarno said that just after 9 p.m. on Jan. 15, he authorized his teams to enter the synagogue at the moment the hostages came to “a similar conclusion” to escape.

As agents approached the building, he said, they encountered the three remaining hostages running out and continued moving toward the synagogue to face Malik Faisal Akram, the 44-year-old British citizen who had taken four hostages during morning services at Congregation Beth Israelin the Dallas-area suburb of Colleyville.

Akram had released a hostage shortly after 5 p.m. but those remaining said he became more belligerent and threatening as the night wore on. Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said Friday that while Akram had a drink in his hand, he threw a chair at Akram and he and the two other remaining hostages fled.