DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — The death toll from the Ukraine war’s deadliest attack on civilians at one location since last spring reached 45 at an apartment building a Russian missile blasted in the southeastern city of Dnipro, officials said Tuesday.

Those killed in the Saturday afternoon strike included six children, with 79 people injured, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. The toll included two dozen people initially listed as missing at the multistory building, which housed about 1,700, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office.

Emergency crews cleared some 9 metric tons (9.9 tons) of rubble during a non-stop search and rescue operation, the Dnipro City Council said. About 400 people lost their homes, with 72 apartments completely ruined and another 236 damaged beyond repair, it added.

People converged at the site Tuesday to lay flowers, light candles and bring plush toys. For a third day in a row, Dnipro resident Oleksandr Pohorielov came to mourn.

“It’s like coming to the cemetery to your family. It’s a memory, to say a proper goodbye. To remain a human after all,” he explained as an intense reek of burning emanated from the building’s ruins.

Volunteers helped Nadiia Yaroshenko’s son escape from their third floor apartment on a makeshift ladder but their white cat Beliash refused to leave. He remains in his favorite place at a window that is now blown out, Yaroshenko said, desperately trying to see him from the courtyard with a flashlight.

“We cannot reach the apartment even with rescuers because the apartment is in an emergency and dangerous condition. Walls could collapse there every minute,” she said.

The latest deadly Russian strike on a civilian target in the almost 11-month wa r triggered outrage. It also prompted the surprise resignation on Tuesday of a Ukrainian presidential adviser who had said the Russian missile exploded and fell after the Ukrainian air defense system shot it down, a version that would take some of the blame off the Kremlin’s forces.

Oleksii Arestovych’s comments in a Saturday interview caused an outcry. He said as he quit that his remarks were “a fundamental mistake.” Ukraine’s air force had stressed that the country’s military did not have a system that could down Russia’s Kh-22 supersonic missiles, the type that hit the apartment building.

Zelenskyy vowed “to ensure that all Russian murderers, everyone who gives and executes orders on missile terror against our people, face legal sentences. And to ensure that they serve their punishment.”

The British Defense Ministry said Tuesday that the weekend barrage of long-range missiles, the first of its kind in two weeks, targeted Ukraine’s power grid.

The Kh-22 was designed during Soviet times to strike enemy ships. It can also be used against ground targets, but with much less precision. Observers have said that Russia has increasingly used older weapons, including those intended for other purposes, to attack targets in Ukraine in what could be a sign of the depletion of Russian stockpiles of modern precision weapons. The U.K. ministry noted that the Kh-22 “is notoriously inaccurate when used against ground targets as its radar guidance system is poor at differentiating targets in urban areas,” suggesting that might have been a factor in the deaths in the Dnipro.

Similar missiles were used in other incidents that caused high civilian casualties, it said, including a strike on a shopping mall in Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk in June that officials said killed more than 20 people.

The deadliest attack involving civilians before Saturday was an April 9 strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk that left at least 52 people dead, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.

In Moscow, a makeshift memorial to the Dnipro attack’s victims appeared in front of an apartment building, an unusual act in Russia, where even a hint of criticism of the government’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is often suppressed. Amid snow, flowers and toy stuffed animals were laid at the monument of prominent Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka, along with a photo of the destroyed building and a sign that read in Russian: “Dnipro. 14.01.2023.”

Attacks on civilians have helped stiffen international support for Ukraine as it battles to fend off the Kremlin’s invasion. The winter has brought a slowdown in fighting, but military analysts say a new push by both sides is likely once the weather improves.

Underscoring Russia’s growing military needs, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the country’s military would increase the number of troops from 1.15 million to 1.5 million in the coming years.

As part of the buildup, the military will form an army corps in the northwestern region of Karelia, near Finland, as well as three new motorized infantry and two airborne divisions. The military will also beef up seven motorized infantry brigades into divisions.

On the side of Ukraine, the top U.S. military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to the Ukraine-Poland border on Tuesday to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart for the first time. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in southeastern Poland. On Monday, Milley visited troops from Ukraine training at a military base in Germany under U.S. commanders.

Aid is also on the way from the Netherlands. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday in Washington that his country plans to “join” the U.S. and Germany’s efforts to train and arm Ukraine with advanced Patriot missile defense systems.

It remains unclear if the Dutch will ultimately send Patriot systems, although Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday that the Netherlands had agreed to send Ukraine a battery of the equipment. “So, there are now three guaranteed batteries. But this is only the beginning. We are working on new solutions to strengthen our air defense,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian troops are at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill Army base learning how to operate and maintain the Patriot, the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has pledged to provide to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks.

Ukraine’s first lady was doing her part Tuesday to help. She pressed world leaders and corporate executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Switzerland to exercise their influence against a Russian invasion she said is leaving children dying and the world struggling with food insecurity.

As the first anniversary of the war nears, Olena Zelenska said parents in Ukraine are in tears watching doctors trying to save their children, farmers are afraid to return to their fields filled with mines and “we cannot allow a new Chernobyl to happen,” referring to the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster.

“What you all have in common is that you are genuinely influential,” Zelenska told attendees. “But there is something that separates you, namely that not all of you use this influence, or sometimes use it in a way that separates you even more.”

Meanwhile, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency is visiting several of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants this week to oversee the establishment of a permanent presence of inspectors at each of them to oversee operations and ensure safety.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday the missions “will make a very real difference through supporting the Ukrainian operators and regulator in fulfilling their national responsibility of ensuring nuclear safety and security.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A former Republican New Mexico House of Representatives candidate — who, police say, claimed election fraud after his defeat — was arrested by an Albuquerque SWAT team Monday in connection with a string of recent shootings that damaged homes of local Democratic elected leaders, city police said.

Solomon Peña, who lost his 2022 run for state House District 14, is accused of paying and conspiring with four men to shoot at the homes of two state legislators and two county commissioners, Albuquerque police said.

“It is believed he is the mastermind” behind the shootings that happened in December and early January, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said in a news conference.

CNN has reached out to Peña’s campaign website for comment and has been unable to identify his attorney.

Before the shootings, Peña in November — after losing the election — had approached one of the legislators and some county commissioners at their homes with paperwork that he said indicated fraud was involved in the elections, police said.

The investigation confirmed “these shootings were indeed politically motivated,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said Monday.

“At the end of the day, this was about a right-wing radical, an election denier who was arrested today and someone who did the worst imaginable thing you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence,” said Keller, a Democrat. “We know we don’t always agree with our elected officials, but that should never, ever lead to violence.”

The stewing of doubt about election veracity, principally among Republicans and usually without proof, has exploded nationwide since then-President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid and began propagating falsehoods the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The claims have stoked anger — and unapologetic threats of violence — against public officials down to the local level.

Peña will face charges related to four shootings: a December 4 incident at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa; a December 8 shooting at the home of incoming state House Speaker Javier Martinez; a December 11 shooting at the home of then-Bernalillo Commissioner Debbie O’Malley; and a January 3 shooting at the home of state Sen. Linda Lopez, police said in a news release.

In the latest shooting, police found evidence “Peña himself went on this shooting and actually pulled the trigger on at least one of the firearms that was used,” Albuquerque police Deputy Cmdr. Kyle Hartsock said. But an AR handgun he tried to use malfunctioned, and more than a dozen rounds were fired by another shooter from a separate handgun, the police statement said.

The department is still investigating whether those suspected of carrying out the shootings were “even aware of who these targets were or if they were just conducting shootings,” Hartsock added.

“Nobody was injured in the shootings, which resulted in damage to four homes,” an Albuquerque police news release said.

5 people tied to conspiracy, police say

During the fall campaign, Peña’s opponent, Democratic state Rep. Miguel Garcia, sued to have Peña removed from the ballot, arguing Peña’s status as an ex-felon should prevent him from being able to run for public office in the state, CNN affiliate KOAT reported. Peña served nearly seven years in prison after a 2008 conviction for stealing a large volume of goods in a “smash and grab scheme,” the KOAT report said.

“You can’t hide from your own history,” Peña told the outlet in September. “I had nothing more than a desire to improve my lot in life.”

A district court judge ruled Peña was allowed to run in the election, according to KOAT. He lost his race to Garcia, 26% to 74%.

“After the election in November, Solomon Peña reached out and contracted someone for an amount of cash money to commit at least two of these shootings. The addresses of the shootings were communicated over phone,” Hartsock said Monday, citing the investigation. “Within hours, in one case, the shooting took place at the lawmaker’s home.”

Firearm evidence, surveillance video, cell phone and electronic records and witnesses in and around the conspiracy aided the investigation and helped officials connect five people to this conspiracy, Hartsock said.

Detectives served search warrants Monday at Peña’s apartment and the home of two men allegedly paid by Peña, police said in the statement, adding Peña did not speak with detectives.

Officers arrested Peña on suspicion of “helping orchestrate and participate in these four shootings, either at his request or he conducted them personally, himself,” Hartsock added.

Police last week announced they had a suspect in custody and had obtained a firearm connected to one of the shootings at homes of elected officials. A car driven at one of the shooting scenes was registered to Peña, the department said.

“Detectives no longer believe the shootings are connected to reports of shots fired near a campaign office of the Attorney General, nor the law office of a state senator,” the news release states.

‘Processing this attack (is) incredibly heavy’

“I am very relieved — and so is my family. I’m very appreciative of the work the police did,” O’Malley told CNN on Monday evening. O’Malley and her husband had been sleeping on December 11 when more than a dozen shots were fired at her home in Albuquerque, she said.

Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa discovered the gunshots at her home after returning from Christmas shopping, she said.

“It was terrifying. My house had four shots through the front door and windows, where just hours before my grandbaby and I were playing in the living room,” Barboa said in a statement. “Processing this attack continues to be incredibly heavy, especially knowing that other women and people of color elected officials, with children and grandbabies, were targeted.”

State House Speaker Javier Martinez, whose home also was shot at, is grateful a suspect is in custody, he told CNN in a statement. “We have seen far too much political violence lately and all of these events are powerful reminders that stirring up fear, heightening tensions, and stoking hatred can have devastating consequences,” he said.

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In a statement Monday, the White House said the president will visit with first responders, state and local officials, and communities impacted by the recent extreme weather; survey recovery efforts; and assess what additional federal aid is needed.

California has been hit by nine atmospheric rivers since Christmas. Across the state, the storms have killed at least 20 people and caused at least $1 billion in damage.

Biden on Saturday declared that a major disaster exists in California and ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by severe winter storms, flooding, landslides and mudslides beginning on Dec. 27 and continuing.

Funding is now available to residents of Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Merced counties.

In a separate statement, the White House said assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs to help people and businesses recover from the effects of the disaster.

Check back for updates.

House Republicans have been demanding that the White House turn over all information related to misplaced classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president, including any visitors logs to Biden’s private residence and who might have had access to his private office in Washington, DC, where the first batch of documents were discovered in early November.

“Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the counsel’s office said in a statement Monday morning. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the agency also does not independently maintain visitor logs for Biden’s home in Wilmington. The agency provides security for the property, and screens visitors before they arrive to Biden’s home, but does not maintain records of those visitors. Biden and his staff determine who is permitted onto the property.

Guglielmi said the Secret Service does not independently maintain visitor logs at the Wilmington home because it is a “private residence.”

The announcement on Saturday was the third time in less than a week that the White House was forced to acknowledge a batch of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been found at a personal property — first an office space in Washington, DC, and then in the Wilmington home.

CNN previously reported that the classified material found in Biden’s private office included some top secret files with the “sensitive compartmentalized information” designation, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources. Those documents included US intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The White House announced over the weekend that it had discovered five additional pages of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington home on Thursday. The White House counsel’s office said it would be referring all future questions to the special counsel’s office.

In a letter addressed to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, asked for more documents and communications related to the searches of Biden’s homes and other locations by the president’s aides for classified documents, as well as visitors logs of the president’s Wilmington home from January 20, 2021 to present.

“It is troubling that classified documents have been improperly stored at the home of President Biden for at least six years, raising questions about who may have reviewed or had access to classified information,” Comer wrote in the letter. “As Chief of Staff, you are head of the Executive Office of the President and bear responsibility to be transparent with the American people on these important issues related to the White House’s handling of this matter.”

The White House labeled the Republican investigations as “shamelessly hypocritical” compared to their approach to former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in his post-White House years.

“House Republicans have no credibility. Their demands should be met with skepticism and they should face questions themselves about why they are politicizing this issue and admitting they actually do not care about the underlying classified material,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said.

More searches for documents possible at locations connected to Biden, sources tell CNN

Additional searches of other locations connected to Biden could be undertaken for presidential records and any classified material from his time as vice president that need to be returned to the federal government, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Biden’s team has searched a private office in Washington, DC, and his two Delaware homes — three locations where the White House said files may have been shipped during his 2017 transition out of office — turning up about 20 classified documents.

Sources say more searches are possible, but it’s unclear who would conduct them or where they would take place. While sources did not provide other potential locations, Biden has used other office spaces, and his family had rented another home in northern Virginia.

So far, Biden’s private attorneys and White House special counsel Richard Sauber, who has a security clearance, have handled the searches. Justice Department officials also accompanied Sauber last week to take possession of five more pages marked classified that were discovered at the Wilmington house after an initial search.

But the pace of searches by Biden’s team became a source of consternation for the US attorney’s office in Chicago that originally looked into the matter, a source close to the investigation tells CNN.

John Lausch, the US attorney there, was tapped by Attorney General Merrick Garland less than two weeks after Biden’s personal attorneys discovered the first batch of documents. Lausch did not request searches of additional locations after that discovery, according to the source, nor did he conduct his own searches or use a grand jury during his review. Instead, Biden’s lawyers decided on their own to search Biden’s Delaware homes, the source said.

When that process took several weeks, Lausch did not wait for Biden’s team to complete its search of the Delaware residences before recommending that Garland appoint a special counsel to take over the investigation. Lausch briefed the attorney general multiple times before officially recommending a special counsel on January 5. Garland appointed Robert Hur to that role last week.

Many of those details in the timeline of recent events were released by the Justice Department. Sources tell CNN that Justice officials decided to provide the information after the White House released information in dribs and drabs, creating confusion and mistrust.

While some Republicans are crying foul, saying Trump was treated differently because FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago last August, that step followed months of Trump’s team stonewalling and failing to turn over documents sought by the National Archives.

Moreover, the Trump investigation is looking at potential obstruction, in part because after the former president’s lawyers attested that all classified documents had been returned, investigators obtained evidence indicating that wasn’t the case and surveillance video of boxes being moved from a storage room the Trump team had promised to secure.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

A once-in-a-generation political battle is heating up in California as candidates begin to spar over Dianne Feinstein’s coveted Senate seat, promising reverberations that will shake up everything from our representation in the U.S. House to our local Bay Area elections.

It’s exceedingly rare — like snow in San Jose rare — for one of California’s two U.S. Senate seats to hit the ballot without an incumbent running. But that’s exactly what may happen in 2024 when many expect Feinstein, who is almost 90 and reportedly facing cognitive decline, to retire.

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, an Orange County Democrat, made waves this past week when she became the first to officially declare her candidacy for Feinstein’s seat. And several of the Golden State’s representatives in the U.S. House, including locals Barbara Lee from the East Bay and Ro Khanna from Silicon Valley, and Adam Schiff from Southern California, have shown interest in the seat Feinstein has held since 1992.

Others, including Rep. Eric Swalwell from the East Bay — who was 12 when Feinstein took office — also have been mentioned as contenders. If they run, the scramble could open the door for a new generation of ambitious Democrats to slip into those vacated House seats, providing a chance for termed-out local mayors, county supervisors and city councilmembers to move up the political ladder without facing off against an entrenched opponent.

“There are a lot of people who will be looking at this as an opportunity,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.

The election is still nearly two years away. And what’s more, Feinstein — who has been adamant she won’t leave office until she’s good and ready — hasn’t even hinted that she won’t seek reelection in 2024. But the fact that the feeding frenzy already has begun shows it’s going to be a crowded, dramatic and expensive race.

“It could be a cast of thousands,” joked Larry Gerston, professor emeritus of politics at San Jose State University. “These things don’t come up very often. It’s a gem of a position to have, that’s for sure.”

Landing a seat in the U.S. Senate is scoring one of the “ultimate” jobs in politics, Gerston said. It’s an exclusive club with just 100 members, and it can serve as a springboard to the presidency.

Porter got some blowback for the timing of her announcement — in the midst of damaging storms and flooding that have resulted in multiple deaths across the state. But she put pressure on other prospective candidates to make a move, McCuan said. Timing is important, he said, and no one wants to be last.

The next day, Lee told colleagues during a closed-door meeting that she plans to run — though she hasn’t formally announced her intentions, a source close to Lee confirmed to this news organization. Meanwhile, Khanna has said he’s considering a Senate run. There’s even speculation that Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is thought to have his eye ultimately on the presidency, might throw his hat in the ring — though he has publicly promised to serve all four years of his brand-new term as governor.

Feinstein, the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history, is a political legend in California and throughout the country. She has deep Bay Area roots, serving as a San Francisco supervisor and then mayor before joining the Senate. But her advanced age and recent questions over her ability to do her job have opened the floodgates to rivals eager to replace her.

“I think if she chooses to run she’s still hard to beat,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor. “She’s not unbeatable. She’s no longer the single most popular politician in the state, as she once was.”

All that jostling for Feinstein’s seat will spur some interesting down-ticket races. With Porter no longer in the mix, it’s not unlikely that her battleground Southern California district will go to a Republican — potentially helping the GOP hold onto their control of the House.

Lee’s vacated House seat, on the other hand, would undoubtedly go to a Democrat — maybe someone like former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf or Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who recently lost her bid for Alameda County supervisor, Gerston said.

Amelia Ashley-Ward, publisher of the Sun-Reporter — a historic San Francisco newspaper serving the Black community — wants Feinstein to step down early and Newsom to appoint Lee to take her place. The Black community felt “robbed” when Newsom did not replace then-Sen. Kamala Harris — the only Black woman in the Senate when she became vice president — with another Black woman, Ashley-Ward said (though she loves Sen. Alex Padilla, who ultimately took that seat). Newsom has since promised to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein steps down.

“We’re underrepresented and we need to have our voices heard there,” Ashley-Ward said. “I think that it’s really, really needed.”

The hot-button race is also a fight for geographic representation, pitting Northern California candidates (Lee, Khanna and Swalwell) against SoCal ones (Porter and Schiff). Until Harris vacated her spot for the vice presidency, Northern Californians had occupied both of the Golden State’s Senate seats since Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, from Marin County, were elected together three decades ago.

But no matter who wins, they are likely to vote very similarly on key issues, Kousser said.

“It’s going to be a fight for different flavors of progressive Democrats,” he said.

Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer running for chair of the Republican National Committee, thinks while the candidates mentioned so far might garner votes in big, liberal cities, their left-leaning politics are too “extreme” to win fans statewide.

“These are not likable, crossover, appealing-to-moderates candidates in my opinion,” she said.

The race hasn’t drawn any Republican challengers yet, but Gerston is sure it will — though they will face a “steep hill to climb” in liberal California, he said.

With so much time to go until the race, there are sure to be plenty of shake-ups and surprise candidates. In addition to the big names, we also might see someone who is new to politics but is wealthy enough to finance their own campaign.

“There are enough people in this state,” Gerston said, “with lots of zeros behind their name, who if they want to run, could.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for President Joe Biden found more classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged Saturday.

White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there.

The latest disclosure is in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, from his time as vice president. The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records from the Obama administration is under investigation by a former U.S. attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed as a special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Sauber said in a statement Saturday that Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Department of Justice.

“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

Sauber has previously said that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”

Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of classified records. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office.

On Thursday, asked whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.”

Sauber reiterated Saturday that the White House would cooperate with Hur’s investigation.

Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, said his legal team has “attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

The Justice Department historically imposes a high legal bar before bringing criminal charges in cases involving the mishandling of classified information, with a requirement that someone intended to break the law as opposed to being merely careless or negligent in doing so. The primary statute governing the illegal removal and retention of classified documents makes it a crime to “knowingly” remove classified documents and store them in an unauthorized way.

The circumstances involving Biden, at least as so far known, differ from a separate investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

In Trump’s case, special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether anyone sought to obstruct their investigation into the retention of classified records at the Palm Beach estate. Justice Department officials have said Trump’s representatives failed to fully comply with a subpoena that sought the return of classified records, prompting agents to return to the home with a search warrant so they could collect additional materials.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time.

Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential, including those for Social Security and debt instruments.

“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” she said. “Indeed, in the past, even threats that the U.S. government might fail to meet its obligations have caused real harms, including the only credit rating downgrade in the history of our nation in 2011.”

Yellen said that while Treasury can’t estimate how long the extraordinary measures will allow the U.S. to continue to pay the government’s obligations, “it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”

Treasury first used these measures in 1985 and has used them at least 16 times since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog. But the extraordinary measures only work for so long, and would probably run out — and put the U.S. at risk of default.

Yellen said it is “critical that Congress act in a timely manner” to increase or suspend the debt limit.

The debate over raising the debt ceiling will almost certainly result in a political showdown between newly empowered GOP lawmakers who now control the House and President Joe Biden and Democrats, who had enjoyed one-party control of Washington for the past two years.

In an interview this week on Fox News Channel, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stopped short of saying House Republicans would go so far as to refuse to pass the annual spending bills needed to fund the government, as happened more than a decade ago during an earlier debt ceiling showdown in Congress.

“We’re going to look at every single dollar spent,” he said.

Past forecasts suggest a default could instantly bury the country in a deep recession, right at a moment of slowing global growth as the U.S. and much of the world face high inflation because of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska  — After tidal surges and high winds from the remnants of a rare typhoon caused extensive damage to homes along Alaska’s western coast in September, the U.S. government stepped in to help residents — largely Alaska Natives — repair property damage.

Residents who opened Federal Emergency Management Agency paperwork expecting to find instructions on how to file for aid in Alaska Native languages like Yup’ik or Inupiaq instead were reading bizarre phrases.

“Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing,” read one passage. The translator randomly added the word “Alaska” in the middle of the sentence.

“Your husband is a polar bear, skinny,” another said.

Yet another was written entirely in Inuktitut, an Indigenous language spoken in northern Canada, far from Alaska.

FEMA fired the California company hired to translate the documents once the errors became known, but the incident was an ugly reminder for Alaska Natives of the suppression of their culture and languages from decades past.

FEMA immediately took responsibility for the translation errors and corrected them, and the agency is working to make sure it doesn’t happen again, spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg said. No one was denied aid because of the errors.

That’s not good enough for one Alaska Native leader.

For Tara Sweeney, an Inupiaq who served as an assistant secretary of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Interior Department during the Trump administration, this was another painful reminder of steps taken to prevent Alaska Native children from speaking Indigenous languages.

“When my mother was beaten for speaking her language in school, like so many hundreds, thousands of Alaska Natives, to then have the federal government distributing literature representing that it is an Alaska Native language, I can’t even describe the emotion behind that sort of symbolism,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney called for a congressional oversight hearing to uncover how long and widespread the practice has been used throughout government.

“These government contracting translators have certainly taken advantage of the system, and they have had a profound impact, in my opinion, on vulnerable communities,” said Sweeney, whose great-grandfather, Roy Ahmaogak, invented the Inupiaq alphabet more than a half-century ago.

She said his intention was to create the characters so “our people would learn to read and write to transition from an oral history to a more tangible written history.”

U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik and last year became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, said it was disappointing FEMA missed the mark with these translations but didn’t call for hearings.

“I am confident FEMA will continue to make the necessary changes to be ready the next time they are called to serve our citizens,” the Democrat said.

About 1,300 people have been approved for FEMA assistance after the remnants of Typhoon Merbok created havoc as it traveled about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) north through the Bering Strait, potentially affecting 21,000 residents. FEMA has paid out about $6.5 million, Rothenberg said.

Preliminary estimates put overall damage at just over $28 million, but the total is likely to rise after more assessment work is done after the spring thaw, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The poorly translated documents, which did not create delays or problems, were a small part of efforts to help people register for FEMA assistance in person, online and by phone, Zidek said.

Another factor is that while English may not be the preferred language for some residents, many are bilingual and can struggle through an English version, said Gary Holton, a University of Hawaii at Manoa linguistics professor and a former director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Central Alaskan Yup’ik is the largest of the Alaska Native languages, with about 10,000 speakers in 68 villages across southwest Alaska. Children learn Yup’ik as their first language in 17 of those villages. There are about 3,000 Inupiaq speakers across northern Alaska, according to the language center.

It appears the words and phrases used in the translated documents were taken from Nikolai Vakhtin’s 2011 edition of “Yupik Eskimo Texts from the 1940s,” said John DiCandeloro, the language center’s archivist.

The book is the written record of field notes collected on Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska in the 1940s by Ekaterina Rubtsova, who interviewed residents about their daily life and culture for a historical account.

The works were later translated and made available on the language center’s website, which Holton used to investigate the origin of the mistranslated texts.

Many of the languages from the area are related but with differences, just as English is related to French or German but is not the same language, Holton said.

Holton, who has about three decades experience in Alaska Native language documentation and revitalization, searched the online archive and found “hit after hit,” words pulled right out of the Russian work and randomly placed into FEMA documents.

“They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense,” he said, calling the final product a “word salad.”

“These are people’s grandparents and great-grandparents that are knowledge-keepers, are elders, and their words which they put down, expecting people to learn from, expecting people to appreciate, have just been bastardized,” Holton said.

KYUK Public Media in Bethel first reported the mistranslations.

“We make no excuses for erroneous translations, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused to the local community,” Caroline Lee, the CEO of Accent on Languages, the Berkeley, California-based company that produced the mistranslated documents, said in a statement.

She said the company will refund FEMA the $5,116 it received for the work and conduct an internal review to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Lee did not respond to follow-up questions, including how the mistaken translations occurred.

The controversy erupting from mere talk of banning gas stoves has sparked a culture war that’s about more than politics— it’s about food. And it boils down to one question: Which cooks better, gas or electric?

For most home chefs forced to choose between gas ranges that heat quickly or electric-coil stoves that are inefficient and ugly, the answer is simple: gas. But there’s a third option: induction stoves, which heat with a tightly controlled magnetic field rather than a flame.

On this, even professional chefs are divided. California chef Andrew Gruel, who owns American Gravy Restaurant Group, says induction stoves are “just less efficient” than gas ranges. But Chef Rachelle Boucher, of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, says: “I can boil water or sear a steak or cook something twice as fast on induction.”

What they can agree on is that cooking is an emotional topic.

“When it comes to cultural topics that are close to our hearts and stomachs — mine are one and the same — people have some pretty big opinions,” Gruel said.

The issue raises some genuine cultural questions, too. For instance: Can authentic Chinese food be cooked without a flame or a wok? Can an electric stove produce the quick sear essential to certain cuisines?

Chef and and sustainable cooking consultant Christopher Galarza, who traces his ancestry to a tribe in the Amazon rainforest, says cooking his family’s recipes is a way of connecting with that heritage. “When folks say, ‘You’re trying to change how I cook,’ they think you’re trying to come after my heritage, my past.” But Galarza, who’s opened the country’s first all-electric campus kitchen, argues that traditional cooking doesn’t have to be done in traditional ways, such as over coals or wood.

The debate is front and center after a member of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission said this week that the government could  prohibit gas stoves to curb indoor air pollution. Blowback from lawmakers was so severe that the agency’s head walked back the idea days later.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of documents with classified markings found at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington.

The announcement followed Biden’s acknowledgement Thursday morning that a document with classified markings from his time as vice president was found in his personal library, along with other documents found in his garage. Garland said Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department Thursday morning of the discovery of a classified document at Biden’s home, after FBI agents first retrieved other documents from his garage in December. It was disclosed on Monday that sensitive documents were found at the office of his former institute in Washington.

Robert Hur, the former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Maryland, will lead the investigation, taking over from the top Justice Department prosecutor in Chicago, John Lausch, who was earlier assigned by the department to investigate the matter. Hur is to begin his work soon.

The appointment of yet another special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents is a remarkable turn of events, legally and politically, for a Justice Department that has spent months looking into the retention by Donald Trump of more than 300 documents with classification markings found at the former president’s Florida estate.

Though the situations are factually and legally different, the discovery of classified documents at two separate locations tied to Biden — as well as the appointment of a new special counsel — would almost certainly complicate any prosecution that the department might bring against Trump.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he was “cooperating fully and completely” with a Justice Department investigation into how classified information and government records were stored. He did not say when the latest series of documents were found, only that his lawyers’ review of potential storage locations was completed Wednesday night. Lawyers found the first in a locked closet in the offices of the Biden Penn Center in Washington on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, but publicly revealed that development only on Monday.

Richard Sauber, a special counsel to the president, said that after Biden’s personal lawyers found the initial documents, they examined other locations where records might have been shipped after Biden left the vice presidency in 2017.

Sauber said a “small number” with classified markings were found in a storage space in Biden’s garage in Wilmington, with one document being located in an adjacent room. Biden later revealed that the other location was his personal library.

Biden said the Department of Justice was “immediately notified” after the documents were located and that department lawyers took custody of the records. The first batch of documents had been turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

Hur was a close ally of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and contacts between then-candidate Trump’s associates and Russian officials. He also worked as an adviser to FBI Director Christopher Wray in the Justice Department.

New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said of the latest news: “I think Congress has to investigate this.”

“Here’s an individual that sat on ’60 Minutes’ that was so concerned about President Trump’s documents locked in behind, and now we find that this is a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations.”

Contradicting several fellow Republicans, he said, “We don’t think there needs to be a special prosecutor.”

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has requested that intelligence agencies conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents. Ohio Rep. Mike Turner on Thursday also requested briefings from Attorney General Merrick Garland and the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, on their reviews by Jan. 26.

“The presence of classified information at these separate locations could implicate the President in the mishandling, potential misuse, and exposure of classified information,” Turner wrote the officials.

The revelation that additional classified documents were uncovered by Biden’s team came hours after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged questions about Biden’s handling of classified information and the West Wing’s management of the discovery.

She had said Wednesday that the White House was committed to handling the matter in the “right way,” pointing to Biden’s personal attorneys’ immediate notification of the National Archives.

Biden has said he was “surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken there to that office” but his lawyers “did what they should have done” when they immediately called the National Archives.

Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.