Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol defy surrender-or-die demand

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian fighters who were holed up in a steel plant in the last known pocket of resistance inside the shattered city of Mariupol ignored a surrender-or-die ultimatum from Russia on Sunday and held out against the capture of the strategically vital port.

The fall of Mariupol, the site of a merciless 7-week-old siege that has reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin, would be Moscow's biggest victory of the war yet and free up troops to take part in a potentially climactic battle for control of Ukraine’s industrial east.

Capturing the southern city would also allow Russia to fully secure a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a major port and its prized industrial assets.

As its missiles and rockets slammed into other parts of the country, Russia estimated that 2,500 Ukrainian troops and about 400 foreign mercenaries were dug in at the sprawling Azovstal steel mill, which covers more than 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is laced with tunnels.

Many Mariupol civilians, including children, are also sheltering at the Azovstal plant, Mikhail Vershinin, head of the city’s patrol police, told Mariupol television on Sunday. He said they are hiding from Russian shelling, and from any occupying Russian soldiers.

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US rocked by 3 mass shootings during Easter weekend; 2 dead

HAMPTON, S.C. (AP) — Authorities in South Carolina are investigating a shooting at a nightclub early Sunday that wounded at least nine people. It was the second mass shooting in the state and the third in the nation during the Easter holiday weekend.

The South Carolina shootings and one in Pittsburgh, in which two minors were killed early Sunday, also left at least 31 people wounded.

South Carolina's State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting at Cara's Lounge in Hampton County. The agency said in an email there were no reported fatalities. No information was immediately available on the severity of the injuries. Hampton County is roughly 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Charleston. A phone call to the nightclub was not answered.

In Pittsburgh, two minors were killed and at least eight people when shots were fired during a party at a short-term rental property. The “vast majority” of the hundreds of people at the party were underage, the city's Police Chief Scott Schubert told reporters.

The two shootings come just a day after gunfire erupted at a busy mall in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of where Sunday's nightclub shooting took place. Nine people were shot and five other people sustained injuries while trying to flee the scene at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said Saturday. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73. None faced life-threatening injuries.

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Tesla stockholders ask judge to silence Musk in fraud case

DETROIT (AP) — A group of Tesla shareholders suing CEO Elon Musk over some 2018 tweets about taking the company private is asking a federal judge to order Musk to stop commenting on the case.

Lawyers for stockholders of the Austin, Texas-based company also say in court documents that the judge in the case has ruled that Musk's tweets about having “funding secured” to take Tesla private were false, and that his comments also violate a 2018 court settlement with U.S. securities regulators in which Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million fines.

Musk, during an interview Thursday at the TED 2022 conference, said he had the funding to take Tesla private in 2018. He called the Securities and Exchange Commission a profane name and said he only settled because bankers told him they would stop providing capital if he didn't, and Tesla would go bankrupt.

The interview and court action came just days after Musk, the world's richest person, made a controversial offer to take over Twitter and turn it into a private company with a $43 billion offer that equals $54.20 per share. Twitter's board on Friday adopted a “poison pill” strategy that would make it prohibitively expensive for Musk to buy the shares.

In court documents filed Friday, lawyers for the Tesla shareholders alleged that Musk is trying to influence potential jurors in the lawsuit. They contend that Musk's 2018 tweets about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share were written to maniuplate the stock price, costing shareholders money.

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Wisconsin Democrats aim to beat Sen. Ron Johnson, but how?

CAMBRIDGE, Wis. (AP) — Among the red barns, bins and tractors of a southern Wisconsin dairy farm, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes sat at a white picnic table painted with black spots to resemble a dairy cow.

It was the latest stop on his “Barnes for Barns" tour through rural Wisconsin aimed at appealing to the voters who more typically fuel Republican victories in this closely divided state.

The discussion at Hinchley's Dairy Farm with an invited group of farmers covered the expected topics — climate change, affordable health care, the alarming rise in farmer suicides and a decline in the small dairy farms that Wisconsin is known for. But it kept circling back to one key question:

How do you beat Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent?

“We show up,” said Barnes, the state's lieutenant governor. “We talk to people directly about the challenges they face and that Ron Johnson has consistently ignored. I think one of the biggest problems is a lot of places outside of Milwaukee and Madison just haven't seen enough Democrats.”

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2 minors dead, 8 wounded in shooting at Pittsburgh party

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Shots fired at a house party in Pittsburgh early Sunday left two minors dead and at least eight more people wounded, police said.

Hundreds of people had gathered at a short-term rental property, the “vast majority" of them underage, Chief Scott Schubert of the Pittsburgh police department told reporters at a midday news conference.

Shortly after some kind of altercation occurred, gunshots were fired at around 12:30 a.m. both inside and outside, “and potentially back and forth," Schubert said. Casings found at the scene indicate handguns and one rifle were used, and police believe there were multiple shooters, Schubert said.

Two male victims died at the hospital, police said, and eight more people were being treated for gunshot wounds. The names of the dead weren’t immediately released.

Others were injured trying to escape, Schubert said. Two who jumped from windows had broken bones, authorities said. One victim was injured after a car was “shot up,” Schubert said.

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Ski resorts cheer as spring storm dumps snow in California

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A spring storm brought several feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada and rain to parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, with more stormy weather expected this week.

The seven-day snow total topped 3 feet (.9 meters) in some mountain areas as of Saturday, UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab reported.

“We’re getting a bit of an abundant April!” the research station in Soda Springs said on Twitter.

Mammoth Mountain in the eastern Sierra reported a foot (30 cm) of fresh snow. The resort has said it would remain open to skiing and snowboarding until Memorial Day.

Lake Tahoe resorts also reported significant snowfall. Drivers heading up to the mountains were urged to use caution because of slippery conditions.

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Clashes erupt again near flashpoint Jerusalem holy site

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Sunday entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City to secure the way for Jewish visitors to the flashpoint holy site, fueling clashes that left 17 Palestinians wounded, according to Palestinian medical workers.

The unrest happened just two days after clashes with Palestinians at the same site. Violence in Jerusalem between Israeli security forces and Palestinian demonstrators a year ago escalated into an 11-day Gaza war.

The hilltop compound housing the mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam, while it is the holiest place for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount. The competing claims to the site have sparked numerous rounds of violence.

This year the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Christian holy week culminating in Easter Sunday and the week-long Jewish Passover are all occurring at the same time, with tens of thousands of visitors flocking to the city after coronavirus restrictions have been mostly lifted.

Israeli police accused Palestinians of “defiling and desecrating” a holy site, while Palestinian officials accused Israel of trying to divide the sensitive holy site. “What happened in Al-Aqsa Mosque is a dangerous escalation, the repercussions of which are to be borne by the Israeli government alone,” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

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'This land is in blood': A Ukraine village digs up the dead

MYKULYCHI, Ukraine (AP) — On a quiet street lined with walnut trees was a cemetery with four bodies that hadn't yet found a home.

All were victims of Russian soldiers in this village outside Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Their temporary caskets were together in a grave. Volunteers dug them up one by one on Sunday — two weeks after the soldiers disappeared.

This spring is a grim season of planting and replanting in towns and villages around Kyiv. Bodies given hurried graves amid the Russian occupation are now being retrieved for investigations into possible war crimes. More than 900 civilian victims have been found so far.

All four bodies here were killed on the same street, on the same day. That’s according to the local man who provided their caskets. He bent and kissed the cemetery’s wrought-iron crosses as he walked to the makeshift grave.

The volunteers tried digging with shovels, then gave up and called an excavator. As they waited, they recounted their work secretly burying bodies during the monthlong Russian occupation, then retrieving them. One young man recalled being discovered by soldiers who pointed guns at him and told him “Don’t look up” as he dug a grave.

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Tax Day laggards: Consider filing for extension if in a rush

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of Americans wait until the last minute to file their taxes and this year is no exception.

Monday is Tax Day — the federal deadline for individual tax filing and payments — and the IRS will receive tens of millions of last-minute filings electronically and through paper forms.

As of April 8, the IRS had received more than 103 million returns for this tax season, and it had issued more than 63 million refunds worth more than $204 billion.

For comparison, last year more than 169 million people completed an income tax return by the end of the year. That probably leaves nearly 40 percent of this year's taxpayers still unaccounted for, with many scrambling to submit their documents by Monday.

Nina Tross at the National Society of Tax Professionals says if people haven’t filed their taxes by now, “they're better off filing an extension.”

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For ‘Fantastic Beasts’ series, a case of diminishing returns

“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” got off to a less than magical start in its first weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters. The third installment in the Harry Potter spinoff opened to $43 million in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It was enough to secure the film the top spot on the box office charts, but it’s also a low for the franchise. The first film had a $74.4 million debut in 2016 and the second, “The Crimes of Grindelwald” opened to $62.2 million in 2018. “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” which Warner Bros. released in 4,208 locations in North America, also carries a $200 million production price tag.

It’s more common than not for sequels and threequels to come in lower than their predecessors, but “Dumbledore” also follows several franchise titles that defied that logic, including “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Venom 2” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.”

Critics were largely not on board with “Dumbledore.” With a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, most came in on the negative side. AP Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote in his review that “the purpose of these movies has never felt like much beyond keeping the Potter train running” and that this iteration is “a bit of a bore.” Audiences, which were 56% female, were a little kinder, giving it four stars on PostTrak and an overall B+ CinemaScore.

The eight Harry Potter films were responsible for over $7.7 billion in box office, while the first two “Fantastic Beasts” films made $1.5 billion total.

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