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

Trump warns of ‘severe consequences’ if Putin does not agree to stop war after summit

BERLIN (AP) — President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that there will be “very severe consequences” if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war against Ukraine after the two leaders meet for a summit later this week in Alaska.

Trump made the comment in response to a question from a reporter after announcing this year’s Kennedy Center Honors recipients in Washington. He did not say what the consequences might be.

The remark came soon after Trump consulted with European leaders, who said the president assured them he would make a priority of trying to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine when he speaks with Putin on Friday in Anchorage.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined several of Kyiv’s main allies in the virtual meeting with the U.S. leader, and Zelenskyy told the group that Putin “is bluffing” ahead of the planned summit about Russia’s ability to occupy all of Ukraine and shake off sanctions.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said afterward that “important decisions” could be made in Alaska, but he stressed that “fundamental European and Ukrainian security interests must be protected.”

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The US-Russia summit marks Putin’s first trip to the West since the war in Ukraine began

For most of his quarter-century rule, President Vladimir Putin visited Paris, London, Vienna and New York. Since Moscow invaded Ukraine, however, his destinations have been places like Minsk, Pyongyang, Hanoi and Beijing, as the West sought to turn Russia into a pariah.

Russia has countered Western attempts to isolate it by bolstering its ties with ex-Soviet allies and other developing countries. Putin’s travel also has been limited by an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued in 2023 that has prompted him to avoid visits to places that recognize the court’s authority. The U.S. isn’t a member of the court and thus doesn’t have an obligation to arrest him.

The trip to Alaska will be Putin’s first to the United States since 2015, when he attended the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It’s also his first visit to a Western country since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Here’s a look at some foreign trips Putin has made since the start of the war in February 2022:

June 28-29, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan — Putin’s visit to the two ex-Soviet nations was his first after launching the Ukraine war. In Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Putin attended a summit of the Caspian Sea nations to discuss regional cooperation.

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DC residents protest as White House says federal agents will be on patrol 24/7

WASHINGTON (AP) — Residents in one Washington, D.C., neighborhood lined up Wednesday to protest the increased police presence after the White House said the number of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital would ramp up and federal officers would be the streets around the clock.

After law enforcement set up a vehicle checkpoint along the busy 14th Street Northwest corridor, hecklers shouted, “Go home, fascists” and “Get off our streets.” Some protesters stood at the intersection before the checkpoint and urged drivers to turn away from it.

The action intensified a few days after President Donald Trump’s unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the city’s police department for at least a month.

The city’s Democratic mayor walked a political tightrope, referring to the takeover as an “authoritarian push” at one point and later framing the infusion of officers as boost to public safety, though one with few specific barometers for success. The Republican president has said crime in the city was at emergency levels that only such federal intervention could fix — even as District of Columbia leaders pointed to statistics showing violent crime at a 30-year low after a sharp rise two years ago.

For two days, small groups of federal officers had been visible in scattered areas of the city. But more were present in high-profile locations Wednesday and troops were expected to start doing more missions in Washington on Thursday, according to a National Guard spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the planning process.

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Trump pledged to move homeless people from Washington. What we know and don’t know about his plans

President Donald Trump says homeless people in the nation’s capital will be moved far from the city as part of his federal takeover of policing in the District of Columbia and crackdown on crime.

With his exact plans unclear, there is concern among advocates and others who say there are better ways to address the issue of homelessness than clearing encampments, as the Republican administration has pledged to do.

Washington’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives Trump the opportunity to push his tough-on-crime agenda, though he has not proposed solutions to the root causes of homelessness or crime.

Here’s a look at what we know and what questions remain about how Trump’s actions will affect the city’s homeless population:

It is difficult to obtain accurate counts of homeless populations.

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CDC shooting marks latest in a string of hostility directed at health workers. Many aren’t surprised

ATLANTA (AP) — A barrage of bullets launched at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week by a man authorities say was angry over COVID-19 vaccinations is the latest attack directed at health care workers amid hostility lingering from the pandemic.

Some public health care workers say the shooting that killed a police officer and rattled the CDC campus shouldn’t be surprising in the face of ongoing misinformation and animosity about the safety of immunizations.

“All of us, anybody who stands up for science or vaccines, will at some level get hate mail or a phone call that’s unnerving or a death threat,” said Paul Offit, the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

Just four years ago, while hospitals overflowed with unvaccinated patients, school board members, local leaders and doctors were regularly confronted in public with taunts comparing them to the Taliban, Nazis and leaders of Japanese internment camps. Sometimes the conflicts descended into violence and harassment.

The distrust and anger that grew since then has been amplified by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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Trump names Stallone and Kiss for Kennedy Center Honors and says he’ll host the awards show

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the new chairman of the Kennedy Center, President Donald Trump added a highly personal stamp to this year’s announcement of the recipients of the annual honors, whom he named as country music star George Strait, “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, the rock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford.

Instead of the Kennedy Center revealing the names through a press release as usual, Trump announced the honorees himself during a Wednesday press conference at the site, where he was flanked by American flags and photo stands for each of the entertainers that were initially covered by red drapes. Unlike in his first term, when he didn’t even attend the honors ceremony, he announced that he would be hosting it later this year and that he had been deeply involved with the selection process. He also suggested he might choose himself for a future award.

The spectacle marked a new era for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump has taken over by installing himself as chair and replacing the board of trustees with loyalists. He has even hinted he’d like to see the venue renamed the Trump/Kennedy Center.

Trump has made revamping the Kennedy Center — and what he calls its “woke” agenda — the center of an ongoing push to overhaul such cultural institutions as the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Smithsonian museums.

The Kennedy Center Honors were established in 1978 and have been given to a broad range of artists. Until Trump’s first term, presidents of both major political parties traditionally attended the annual ceremony, even when they disagreed politically with a given recipient.

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New river barriers prevented severe flood damage from a glacial outburst in Alaska, officials say

New sandbag-style barriers installed along a river in Alaska’s capital city held back record levels of flooding and prevented widespread damage after an ice dam at the nearby Mendenhall Glacier released a massive amount of rainwater and snowmelt downstream, officials said Wednesday.

Water pooled on several streets, in some yards and in some homes in Juneau after the Mendenhall River crested earlier in the day. But the water receded and by late afternoon officials had reopened affected areas to residents, many of whom evacuated ahead of peak water levels. There were no damage reports similar to the last two years, when flooding was rampant and some homes washed away.

The barriers have been a point of contention, with some homeowners in the flood zone objecting to their cost and suggesting officials should pursue a longer-term fix. But they “really have protected our community,” Juneau City Manager Katie Koester told a news conference.

“If it weren’t for them, we would have hundreds and hundreds of flooded homes,” she said.

The Mendenhall Glacier is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Juneau, home to 30,000 people in southeast Alaska, and is a popular tourist attraction due to its proximity and easy access on walking trails. Homes on the city’s outskirts are within miles of Mendenhall Lake, which sits below the glacier, and many front the Mendenhall River, into which the glacial outburst flowed.

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Israeli gunfire kills at least 25 in Gaza as Netanyahu says he will allow Palestinians to leave

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli gunfire killed at least 25 people seeking aid in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials and witnesses said, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again called for what he refers to as the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the war-ravaged territory.

Netanyahu wants to realize U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of relocating much of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people through what he refers to as “voluntary migration” — and what critics have warned could be ethnic cleansing.

“Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the strip if they want,” Netanyahu said in an interview aired Tuesday with Israeli TV station i24 to discuss the planned offensive in areas that include Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people shelter. “We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave.”

Witnesses and staff at Nasser and Awda hospitals, which received the bodies, said people were shot on their way to aid distribution sites or while awaiting convoys entering Gaza.

Efforts to revive ceasefire talks have resumed after apparently breaking down last month. Hamas and Egyptian officials met Wednesday in Cairo, according to Hamas official Taher al-Nounou.

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Mother, father and child killed by fallen tree in Tennessee heavy rains and flooding

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A mother, father and child were killed when a tree fell on their car during heavy rain and flooding in Tennessee, where submerged roads also led to dramatic rescues of people trapped in their cars, authorities said Wednesday.

The three were killed when saturated ground caused a large tree to fall in the Chattanooga suburb of East Ridge just after midnight, Hamilton County Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Amy Maxwell said.

Additionally, authorities found a body Wednesday while searching for a man who was swept away when he ran past firefighters and a barricade blocking a flooded road Tuesday, according to the Chattanooga Fire Department. The local police and medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

The flooding prompted rescues of people stuck in homes and swamped vehicles.

At a news conference Wednesday, officials said they didn’t expect so much rain and flooding to hit so quickly.

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Venus Williams gets a US Open wild card at age 45 and will be the oldest in singles since 1981

NEW YORK (AP) — Venus Williams will make her return to Grand Slam tennis at the U.S. Open after a two-year absence, receiving a wild-card invitation on Wednesday to compete in singles at Flushing Meadows at age 45.

The American will be the oldest entrant in singles at the tournament since Renee Richards was 47 in 1981, according to the International Tennis Federation.

Williams already had been given a wild-card entry by the U.S. Tennis Association for next week’s mixed doubles competition. Singles matches begin in New York on Aug. 24.

She is the owner of seven major singles championships — including at the U.S. Open in 2000 and 2001 — along with another 14 in women’s doubles, all won with her younger sister, Serena, plus two in mixed doubles. Serena retired with 23 Slam singles trophies after playing at the 2022 U.S. Open.

The older Williams last participated in a Grand Slam tournament at the 2023 U.S. Open, losing in the first round. She hasn’t won a singles match there since 2019.