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

Russia may be in Ukraine to stay after 100 days of war

When Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in late February, the Russian president vowed his forces would not occupy the country. But as the invasion reached its 100th day Friday, Moscow seemed increasingly unwilling to relinquish the territory it has taken in the war.

The ruble is now an official currency in the southern Kherson region, alongside the Ukrainian hryvnia. Residents there and in Russia-controlled parts of the Zaporizhzhia region are being offered expedited Russian passports. The Kremlin-installed administrations in both regions have talked about plans to become part of Russia.

The Moscow-backed leaders of separatist areas in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which is mostly Russian-speaking, have expressed similar intentions. Putin recognized the separatists’ self-proclaimed republics as independent two days before launching the invasion, and fierce fighting has been underway in the east for weeks as Russia seeks to “liberate” all of the Donbas.

The Kremlin has largely kept mum about its plans for the cities, towns and villages it has bombarded, encircled and finally captured. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said it will be up to the people living in seized areas to decide their status.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that enemy forces now control almost 20% of the country’s territory. Before the war, Russia controlled 7%, including the Crimea Peninsula and parts of the Donbas.

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Ex-Trump aide Navarro indicted; Meadows won’t be charged

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been indicted on charges that he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the Justice Department spared two other advisers, including the ex-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from criminal prosecution.

The department’s decision to not prosecute Meadows and Dan Scavino, another adviser to former President Donald Trump, was revealed in a letter sent Friday by a federal prosecutor to a lawyer for the House of Representatives. The move was reported hours after the indictment of Navarro and a subsequent, fiery court appearance in which he vowed to contest the contempt of Congress charges.

The flurry of activity comes just days before the House committee leading the investigation into the riot at the Capitol holds a primetime hearing aimed at presenting the American public with evidence it has collected about how the assault unfolded. The split decisions show how the Justice Department has opted to evaluate on a case-by-case basis contempt referrals it has received from Congress rather than automatically pursue charges against each and every Trump aide who has resisted congressional subpoenas.

The committee’s leaders called the decision to not prosecute Meadows and Scavino “puzzling.” In a statement late Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said: “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. … No one is above the law.”

Though the Justice Department has referred multiple Trump aides for potential prosecution for refusal to cooperate, Navarro is only the second to face criminal charges, following the indictment last fall of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

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McCormick concedes to Oz in Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick conceded the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for U.S. Senate to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, ending his campaign Friday night as he acknowledged an ongoing statewide recount wouldn’t give him enough votes to make up the deficit.

After a bitter campaign that blanketed the airwaves with millions of dollars in attack ads, McCormick issued a gracious concession, vowing to help unite the party behind Oz.

“It’s now clear to me with the recount largely complete that we have a nominee,” McCormick said at a campaign party at a Pittsburgh hotel. “And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory.”

McCormick’s concession cements a general election campaign between Oz, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and Democrat John Fetterman in what is expected to be one of the nation’s premier Senate contests.

Already, the national parties are sponsoring attack ads on TV in a presidential battleground state that is still roiled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election in 2020.

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What did police know as the Uvalde school shooting unfolded?

As investigators dig deeper into the law enforcement response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a host of disturbing questions remain about what officers on the scene knew as the deadly attack was unfolding.

Did any of them know children were trapped in a classroom with the gunman? Was that potentially critical information relayed to the incident commander on the scene? And did officers challenge the commander’s decision not to promptly storm the classroom?

Authorities have not released audio of the 911 calls or radio communications but have confirmed dispatchers received panicked 911 calls from students trapped in the locked classroom with the gunman while officers waited in a hallway outside.

In an apparent breakdown in communications, the commander overseeing police at the scene, school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, was never informed that children were calling 911 from inside the school, Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez said Thursday.

Gutierrez told The Associated Press on Friday that the state agency investigating the shooting determined Arredondo was not carrying a police radio as the massacre unfolded.

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100 speeches in 100 days of war: Zelenskyy rallies Ukraine

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tells it, when Russia invaded 100 days ago, no one expected his country to survive. World leaders advised him to flee.

“But they didn’t know us,” he said in a late-night video address in April when the war hit its 50th day. “And they didn’t know how brave Ukrainians are, how much we value freedom.”

He could have been speaking about himself. No one knew how a 44-year-old man who had catapulted himself from the world of entertainment into the presidency would respond to an invasion by Russia’s giant army.

His response has been forceful — and compellingly public. Zelenskyy has led his country in mounting an unexpectedly fierce resistance. Every night, he rallies Ukrainians to the fight with a video address on social media. There have been 100 so far – one for each day of the war — in nightly reminders that he has not fled, that Ukraine has indeed survived.

His actor-trained voice can be soothing, a deep, confidential almost-whisper as he looks directly into the camera. Or forceful, rising in moral outrage as he condemns the most recent Russian atrocities and insists that those responsible will be punished.

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Deadly secret: Electronic warfare shapes Russia-Ukraine war

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On Ukraine’s battlefields, the simple act of powering up a cellphone can beckon a rain of deathly skyfall. Artillery radar and remote controls for unmanned aerial vehicles may also invite fiery shrapnel showers.

This is electronic warfare, a critical but largely invisible aspect of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Military commanders largely shun discussing it, fearing they’ll jeopardize operations by revealing secrets.

Electronic warfare technology targets communications, navigation and guidance systems to locate, blind and deceive the enemy and direct lethal blows. It is used against artillery, fighter jets, cruise missiles, drones and more. Militaries also use it to protect their forces.

It’s an area where Russia was thought to have a clear advantage going into the war. Yet, for reasons not entirely clear, its much-touted electronic warfare prowess was barely seen in the war’s early stages in the chaotic failure to seize the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

It has become far more of a factor in fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine, where shorter, easier-to-defend supply lines let Russia move electronic warfare gear closer to the battlefield.

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Firm proposes Taser-armed drones to stop school shootings

Taser developer Axon said this week it is working to build drones armed with the electric stunning weapons that could fly in schools and “help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook, or Columbine.” But its own technology advisers quickly panned the idea as a dangerous fantasy.

The publicly traded company, which sells Tasers and police body cameras, floated the idea of a new police drone product last year to its artificial intelligence ethics board, a group of well-respected experts in technology, policing and privacy.

Some of them expressed reservations about weaponizing drones in over-policed communities of color. But they were not expecting Axon’s Thursday announcement that it wants to send those Taser-equipped drones into classrooms to prevent mass shootings by immobilizing an intruding gunman.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith said he felt compelled to make the idea public after the mass shooting at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school, saying he was “catastrophically disappointed” in the response by police who didn’t move in to kill the suspect for more than an hour.

But he stressed Friday that no product had been launched and any potential launch would be down the road. The idea, he felt, needed to be shared now because of the public conversation about effective ways for police to safely confront attackers and how schools can increase safety.

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Sky high: Carbon dioxide levels in air spike past milestone

The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has shot past a key milestone — more than 50% higher than pre-industrial times — and is at levels not seen since millions of years ago when Earth was a hothouse ocean-inundated planet, federal scientists announced Friday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its long-time monitoring station at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, averaged 421 parts per million of carbon dioxide for the month of May, which is when the crucial greenhouse gas hits its yearly high. Before the industrial revolution in the late 19th century carbon dioxide levels were at 280 parts per million, scientists said, so humans have significantly changed the atmosphere. Some activists and scientists want a level of 350 parts per million. Industrial carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Levels of the gas continue to rise, when they need to be falling, scientists say. This year’s carbon dioxide level is nearly 1.9 ppm more than a year ago, a slightly bigger jump than from May 2020 to May 2021.

“The world is trying to reduce emissions, and you just don’t see it. In other words, if you’re measuring the atmosphere, you’re not seeing anything happening right now in terms of change,” said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans, who tracks global greenhouse gas emissions for the agency.

Outside scientists said the numbers show a severe climate change problem.

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Depp-Heard trial: Advocates fear chilling effect on accusers

The call came Thursday, only a day after the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard verdict, to a free legal clinic for domestic violence victims in Athens, Georgia. The woman wanted to pursue her abuse claims, but she was worried.

“The fear was that she’d be seen to be a liar like Amber Heard,” clinic director Christine Scartz said of the woman – the first caller to directly mention the verdict. “People do not want to give the most intimate details of their personal life and then be called a liar.”

Scartz is among advocates and legal experts who fear that the case – unique as it was for its celebrity lineup, sordid revelations, mutual claims of abuse, and relentless misogyny on social media – will have a real-world chilling effect on women coming forward with abuse claims. The jury, with five men and two women, mostly sided with Depp in the dueling defamation case, ordering Heard to pay him $10 million to the $2 million he must give her.

Although jurors were considering civil libel claims and not criminal abuse charges, the verdict largely vindicated Depp’s allegations that Heard lied about abusing her. During testimony, Heard detailed dozens of instances of assault, and Depp emphatically denied ever abusing her. In 2020, a U.K. judge in a civil libel case found that Depp assaulted Heard on a dozen occasions.

For Scartz, who directs the clinic at the University of Georgia’s law school, the concern is about the assumptions some will make that women are lying. She fears abusers may be newly emboldened to paint their accusers as liars in retaliation for them coming forward.

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Rangers beat Lightning 3-2 in Game 2 for 2-0 series lead

NEW YORK (AP) — Mika Zibanejad scored in the third period, Igor Shesterkin stopped 29 shots and the New York Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 on Friday night to take a 2-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference finals.

K’Andre Miller and Kaapo Kakko scored in the first period, and Adam Fox and Chris Kreider each had two assists for the Rangers. New York won its eighth straight home game, extending a franchise playoff record.

Nikita Kucherov had a goal and an assist for Tampa Bay, Nicholas Paul also scored, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves. The Lightning goalie has allowed nine goals in two games against the Rangers after limiting Florida to three in a four-game sweep in the second round.

The Lightning have lost consecutive playoff games for the first time in the last three postseasons. The two-time defending Stanley Cup champions were 17-0 after a loss coming in.

The series shifts to Tampa for Game 3 on Sunday and Game 4 on Tuesday night.