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

US official: Russia adds 7K more troops near Ukraine border

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainians defied pressure from Moscow with a national show of flag-waving unity Wednesday, while the U.S. warned that Russia had added as many as 7,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders despite Kremlin declarations that forces were being pulled back from the region.

While a Russian invasion of Ukraine did not materialize as feared, the United States and its allies maintained that the threat is still strong, with Europe’s security and economic stability in the balance.

Russia has massed more than 150,000 troops east, north and south of Ukraine, according to Western estimates. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he wants a peaceful path out of the crisis, and U.S. President Joe Biden promised that the U.S. would continue to give diplomacy “every chance,” but he struck a skeptical tone about Moscow’s intentions. Biden also insisted that Washington and its allies would not “sacrifice basic principles” respecting Ukraine sovereignty.

Russian Defense Ministry video showed a trainload of armored vehicles moving across a bridge away from Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It also announced that more tank units were being loaded on trains to move back to their permanent bases after training exercises.

But at the same time, Russia continued war games near Ukraine’s borders and across its vast territory.

___

Tensions mount in Ottawa as police warn truckers to leave

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — A showdown appeared to be shaping up in Ottawa’s nearly three-week siege by truckers protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions as police in the capital warned drivers Wednesday to leave immediately or risk arrest.

The big rigs parked outside Parliament represented the movement’s last stronghold after demonstrators abandoned their sole remaining truck blockade along the U.S. border.

With that, all border crossings were open for the first time in more than two weeks of unrest, centering attention on the capital, where drivers defiantly ripped up warnings telling them to go home.

Authorities in yellow “police liaison” vests went from rig to rig, knocking on the doors and handing truckers leaflets informing them they could be prosecuted, lose their licenses and see their vehicles seized under Canada’s Emergencies Act. Police also began ticketing vehicles.

One protester shouted, “I will never go home!” Some threw the warning into a toilet put out on the street. Protesters sat in their trucks and honked their horns in a chorus that echoed loudly downtown.

___

More virus rules fall as CDC hints at better times ahead

The nation’s leading health officials said Wednesday that the U.S. is moving closer to the point that COVID-19 is no longer a “constant crisis” as more cities, businesses and sports venues began lifting pandemic restrictions around the country.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House briefing that the government is contemplating a change to its mask guidance in the coming weeks. Noting recent declines in COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths, she acknowledged “people are so eager” for health officials to ease masking rules and other measures designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

“We all share the same goal – to get to a point where COVID-19 is no longer disrupting our daily lives, a time when it won’t be a constant crisis – rather something we can prevent, protect against, and treat,” Walensky said.

With the omicron variant waning and Americans eager to move beyond the virus, government and business leaders have been out ahead of the CDC in ending virus measures in the last week, including ordering workers back to offices, eliminating mask mandates and no longer requiring proof of vaccine to get into restaurants, bars and sports and entertainment arenas.

The efforts have been gaining more steam each day.

___

Use of rape-kit DNA to probe other crimes shocks prosecutors

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The San Francisco district attorney’s stunning claim that California crime labs are using DNA from sexual assault survivors to investigate unrelated crimes shocked prosecutors nationwide, and advocates said the practice could affect victims’ willingness to come forward.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin said he became aware of the “opaque practice” last week after prosecutors found a report among hundreds of pages of evidence in the case against a woman recently charged with a felony property crime. The papers referred to a DNA sample collected from the woman during a 2016 rape investigation.

Boudin read from the report Tuesday at a news conference and said he could not share it because of privacy concerns, but his office allowed the San Francisco Chronicle to review the documents. The newspaper said the woman was tied to a burglary in late 2021 during “a routine search” of a San Francisco Police Department crime lab database. The match came from DNA gathered from the same laboratory listed in a report on the sexual assault, The Chronicle reported.

Boudin said someone at the crime lab told him the practice was a standard procedure, according to Rachel Marshall, Boudin’s spokeswoman. Crime lab Director Mark Powell did not immediately respond Wednesday to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said his department is investigating. If he finds his department is using victims’ DNA to investigate other crimes, he is committed to ending the practice.

___

Valieva listed 2 legal oxygen boosters on Olympic forms

ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Two legal substances used to improve heart function were listed on an anti-doping control form filled out for Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva before her drug case at the Olympics erupted, according to documents submitted on her behalf.

The World Anti-Doping Agency filed a brief in the Valieva case stating that the mention on the form of L-carnitine and Hypoxen, though both legal, undercuts the argument that a banned substance, trimetazidine, might have entered the skater’s system accidentally.

Hypoxen, a drug designed to increase oxygen flow to the heart, was a substance the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency recently tried, without success, to get placed on the banned list. L-carnitine, another oxygen-boosting performance enhancer, is banned if injected above certain thresholds. The supplement was the focal point of the doping case involving track coach Alberto Salazar.

Combining those with 2.1 nanograms of the heart medicine trimetazidine, the drug found in Valieva’s system after a Dec. 25 test, is “an indication that something more serious is going on,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said.

“You use all of that to increase performance,” he said. “It totally undermines the credibility” of Valieva’s defense.

___

Olympics Live: US curling team wins to keep medal hope alive

BEIJING (AP) — The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:

___

American John Shuster and the defending Olympic curling champions won a last-chance match to qualify for the playoffs at the Beijing Olympics. They beat Denmark 7-5 to keep their hopes of a repeat gold medal alive.

The Americans will play Britain in the semifinals later Thursday night. Reigning silver medalist Sweden will meet Canada, which finished fourth a year ago.

Four years after winning five straight elimination games to take gold — just the second Olympic curling medal in U.S. history — Shuster’s foursome was again in a desperate position.

___

FBI: Defendants in Arbery killing used repeated racial slurs

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Two of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery repeatedly used racial slurs in text messages and social media posts, including some violent comments by Arbery’s shooter about Black people, an FBI witness testified Wednesday in their federal hate crimes trial.

FBI intelligence analyst Amy Vaughan led the jury through more than two dozen conversations that Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan had with others, identified only by their initials, in the months and years before the 25-year-old Black man’s killing. The FBI wasn’t able to access the phone of Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael’s father, because it was encrypted, Vaughan said.

In text and Facebook conversations with friends, Travis McMichael frequently used the N-word to describe Black people. In a Facebook conversation with a friend, he also shared a video of a young Black boy dancing on a TV show with a racist song that included the N-word playing over it. He also said that Black people “ruin everything” and said more than once he was glad he wasn’t a Black person, using a racial slur.

In other social media posts, Travis McMichael mentioned violence against Black people. In December 2018, he commented on a Facebook video of a Black man playing a prank on a white person: “I’d kill that f—-ing n—-r.”

And in June 2017, he shared a TV news story about a violent confrontation between two white women and two Black customers upset about cold food at a Georgia restaurant, using a racial slur to comment that he would beat the Black people “to death if they did that to (name redacted by the FBI) or my mother and sister.” He added that he would have no more remorse than putting down a rabid animal.

___

Businessman close to Maduro was DEA informant, records show

MIAMI (AP) — A businessman described as the main conduit for corruption in Venezuela was secretly signed up by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a source in 2018, revealing information about bribes he paid to top officials in President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government.

As part of his multi-year cooperation, Alex Saab also forfeited millions of dollars in illegal proceeds he admitted to earning from corrupt state contracts, new records in a closely-watched criminal case show. But his contact with U.S. law enforcement ended abruptly after he missed a May 30, 2019 deadline to surrender to or face criminal charges, according to prosecutors.

The stunning revelation was made public following a heated closed door hearing Wednesday in Miami federal court in which an attorney for Saab argued his family in Venezuela could be jailed or physically harmed by Maduro’s government if his interactions with U.S. law enforcement became known.

“They are basically under the thumb of the government,” attorney Neil Schuster argued in the hearing, a transcript of which was later unsealed by Judge Robert Scola. “If the Venezuelan government finds out the extent of what this individual has provided, I have no doubt that there will be retaliation against his wife and his children.”

U.S. officials have presented Saab as a close associate of Maduro, someone who reaped huge windfall profits from dodgy contracts to import food while millions in the South American nation starved. The Maduro government considers him a diplomat who was kidnapped during a refueling stop while on a humanitarian mission to Iran made more urgent by U.S. sanctions.

___

Online harassment, real harm: Fixing the web’s biggest bug

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — It should have been a time of celebration: Brittan Heller would soon graduate from college and head to one of the nation’s top law programs.

But when a classmate with unrequited feelings for Heller wasn’t admitted to that same school, he turned his rage on her. He wrote a manifesto titled “A Stupid B—h to Attend Yale Law School” and posted it on a site popular with anonymous trolls. The man urged them to do their worst.

Soon strangers were making derogatory, sexualized comments and posting her pictures online. They made threats. Posted her personal information. At one point, FBI agents escorted Heller to class for her protection.

“People say, ‘Oh, just log off. Don’t read it. Turn off the computer,’” said Heller, who turned her personal experience from 15 years ago into a legal specialty as a leading expert on online harassment. “This the 21st century, and people have a right to use the internet for work, for pleasure or to express themselves. Telling people not to read the comments is no longer enough. We don’t talk enough about this problem, and we need to.”

Online harassment has become such a familiar part of the internet that it can be hard to imagine the web without it. From teen cyberbullying to authoritarian governments silencing dissent, online toxicity is a fact of life for everyone, with women, teens and religious and racial minorities the most likely to be targeted.

___

CNN probe complete, yet mysteries on Cuomo, Zucker remain

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN’s parent company says it has completed its investigation into circumstances surrounding the firing of anchor Chris Cuomo and ouster of network chief Jeff Zucker. But for a news organization, it has chosen to leave questions unanswered.

The internal report, commissioned in September and prepared by the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, will not be made public, WarnerMedia said on Wednesday.

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar told CNN employees late Tuesday that the report had been finished over the weekend. His memo said that marketing executive Allison Gollust, the woman whose relationship with Zucker led to his downfall, would also be leaving the company.

Kilar said the probe, based on interviews with more than 40 people and a review of over 100,000 texts and emails, “found violations of company policies, including CNN’s news standards and practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust and Chris Cuomo.”

Cuomo, a former CNN prime-time host, was fired by Zucker in December after documents revealed how he had helped his brother, ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, strategize over how to fight charges of sexual misconduct. Zucker was forced to resign earlier this month because he had violated company policy in not revealing that his relationship with Gollust was romantic.