AP News Digest 3:30 am

Here are the AP’s latest coverage plans, top stories and promotable content. All times EST. For up-to-the minute information on AP’s coverage, visit Coverage Plan at https://newsroom.ap.org.

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ONLY ON AP

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AWOL WEAPONS-BROTHERS’ BETRAYAL — An Associated Press investigation has shown how U.S. troops have stolen guns and explosives from the military — and the weapons of war ended up on America’s streets. One insider theft case involves two men who’d forged a deep bond on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Several years later, they were arrested in a scheme to plunder an armory at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After stealing the weapons, they tried to sell them at the Texas-Mexico border. Their story reveals another kind of threat: How determined insiders can take advantage of security weaknesses within the military to make fast money. By James LaPorta and Jason Dearen. SENT: 2,230 words, photos.

THE AP INTERVIEW-NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES — Following a year of professional milestones born of her work on America’s history of slavery, Pulitzer Prize-winning Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said she is clear-eyed about her mission to force a reckoning around the nation’s self-image. Hannah-Jones spoke to The Associated Press about the ongoing controversy over The 1619 Project, a groundbreaking collection of essays on race that first appeared in a special issue of The New York Times Magazine in 2019. Now in book form, the project has become a touchstone for America’s reckoning over slavery and the reverberations for Black Americans. By Aaron Morrison. SENT: 990 words, photo, video.

AP POLL-GENERATIONAL CHANGE — A new poll from MTV and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that millennials and Generation Z Americans say they are more likely to be optimistic about the future and their ability to create change than their older counterparts. By Farnoush Amiri. SENT: 820 words, photos.

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TOP STORIES

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VIRUS-OUTBREAK — The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, as it threatens to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row. Omicron, even if it proves milder on the whole, may disarm some of the life-saving tools available and put immune-compromised and elderly people at particular risk as it begins a rapid assault on the United States. Most likely, experts say, an omicron surge is already under way in the United States as its spread outpaces the nation’s ability to track it. By Laura Ungar and Carla K. Johnson. SENT: 950 words, photos.

MIDWEST TORNADOES-GRIEVING — Several tight-knit communities of the South and Midwest are turning to the somber task of burying their dead after tornadoes killed dozens of people across eight states. The fierce storms tore from Arkansas to Illinois and also through much of Kentucky and parts of Tennessee and other states. In western Kentucky, a funeral home is preparing to welcome mourners who lost loved ones while grieving losses too. By Sean Murphy and Bruce Schreiner. SENT: 800 words, photos, video. Also see KENTUCKY TORNADO-CHURCH below.

AFGHANISTAN-HEALTH CARE — Diesel to run the oxygen production system ran out more than three months ago. The hospital is out of dozens of essential medications. Doctors, nurses and cleaning staff still turn up for work every day despite being unpaid for months and struggling to make ends meet. This is Kabul’s Afghan-Japan hospital for communicable diseases, the only COVID-19 facility for the more than 5 million people living in the Afghan capital, and one now in need of life support itself. By Elena Becatoros. SENT: 1,040 words, photos.

UKRAINE-BATTERED VILLAGE — The seven-year-old conflict in eastern Ukraine has all but emptied the village of Nevelske located near the line of contact between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. Only five people still live in the village. That’s down from a population of 286 in 2014. Shelling last month has damaged or destroyed 16 of the 50 houses there. Small-arms fire frequently is heard during the day. And artillery often booms at night. A Russian troop buildup near Ukraine has stoked fears of renewed large-scale fighting. The situation has rattled the already nervous residents. By Inna Varenytsia and Yuras Karmanau. SENT: 730 words, photos.

CONGRESS-BUDGET — President Joe Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin are sharply divided over Democrats’ huge social and environment bill, with the holdout senator pushing to erase the measure’s improved child tax credit, a person familiar with the talks says as leaders’ hopes of passing the legislation before Christmas appear increasingly dim. By Alan Fram. SENT: 850 words, photos, video.

FEDERAL RESERVE — For months, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell responded to surging inflation by counseling patience and stressing that the Fed wanted to see unemployment return to near-pre-pandemic levels before it would raise interest rates. Powell is now suggesting that his patience has run out. By Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber. SENT: 1,090 words, photos.

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