AP Investigations

Yevgeny. (AP Illustration/Marshall Ritzell)

Russian soldiers who quit Putin’s war get no hero’s welcome abroad as asylum claims surge

Growing numbers of Russian soldiers are trying to get out of the war in Ukraine. Overall asylum claims from Russians have surged in the U.S., France and Germany since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago, but few are getting in.

Oleksii Yukov examines the body of a Russian soldier he collected on the frontline in the Sloviansk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. The 38-year-old martial arts instructor leads a team of volunteer body collectors in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

The true toll of the war in Ukraine is measured in bodies. This man brings them home, one at a time

Protesters raise their hands as they face police officers during a rally in Paterson, N.J., Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019, in reaction to the death of Jameek Lowery. Lowery, 27, who recorded a frantic video at police headquarters, wound up unresponsive after being taken to a hospital in an ambulance with police officers inside. He died two days later. (Danielle Parhizkaran/The Record via AP)

He didn’t trust police but sought their help anyway. Two days later, he was dead

Karen Goodwin holds a photograph of her son, Austin Hunter Turner, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, in Bristol, Tenn. Turner died in 2017, at the age of 23, after an encounter with the Bristol Police Department. Goodwin and her husband and kids had always admired paramedics and police. But in body-camera videos, from the moment police arrived, Hunter was treated as a suspect resisting arrest – not as a patient who was having a seizure. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

For years she thought her son had died of an overdose. The police video changed all that

In this image from Bristol Police Department body-camera video, Austin Hunter Turner, 23, lies restrained face down in an ambulance in Bristol, Tenn., on Aug. 29, 2017. In body-camera videos, from the moment police arrived, Turner was treated as a suspect resisting arrest – not as a patient who was having a seizure. An investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism and FRONTLINE (PBS) has found that, over a decade, more than 1,000 people died after police subdued them through physical holds, stun guns, body blows and other force not intended to be lethal. (Bristol Police Department via AP)

Key findings from AP’s investigation into police force that isn’t supposed to be lethal

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This combination of photos shows, top row from left, Anthony Timpa, Austin Hunter Turner, Carl Grant, Damien Alvarado, Delbert McNiel and Demetrio Jackson; second row from left, Drew Edwards, Evan Terhune, Giovani Berne, Glenn Ybanez, Ivan Gutzalenko and Mario Clark; bottom row from left, Michael Guillory, Robbin McNeely, Seth Lucas, Steven Bradley Beasley, Taylor Ware and Terrell "Al" Clark. Each died after separate encounters with police in which officers used force that is not supposed to be deadly. (AP Photo)

Why did more than 1,000 people die after police subdued them with force that isn’t meant to kill?

Every day, police in the U.S. rely on common use-of-force tactics that, unlike guns, are meant to stop people without killing them.

A worker peels shrimp in a tin-roofed processing shed in the hamlet of Tallarevu, in Kakinada district, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024. Dr. Sushmitha Meda, a dermatologist at a nearby government hospital in the city of Kakinada, said she treats four to five shrimp peelers every day for frostbite and infection. It’s a preventable problem, she said. Cotton gloves covered with latex gloves can protect peelers’ hands, but few can afford a $3 box of gloves. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)

AP finds grueling conditions in Indian shrimp industry that report calls ‘dangerous and abusive’

India is the top supplier of shrimp to the U.S., with Indian shrimp stocked in freezers at most of the nation’s biggest grocery store and restaurant chains.

50-year-old Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, is pictured with her children, daughter-in-law and grandson in their temporary modular house in Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk region on Feb. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)

Russia forces Ukrainians in occupied territories to take its passports – and fight in its army

Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship.

FILE - The exterior of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is shown in Hailey, Idaho, on Sept., 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Jason Dearen, File)

Former Mormon bishop highlighted in AP investigation arrested on felony child sex abuse charges

A former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was featured in an Associated Press investigation into how the church protects itself from allegations of sexual abuse was arrested by police in Virginia this week after being indicted on charges he sexually abused his daughter w

FILE - The interior of the I-Soon office, also known as Anxun in Mandarin, is seen after office hours in Chengdu in southwestern China's Sichuan Province on Feb. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Dake Kang, File)

Behind the doors of a Chinese hacking company, a sordid culture fueled by influence, alcohol and sex

China’s hacking industry, leaked internal documents reveal, is vast in size and scope but also suffers from shady business practices, disgruntlement over pay and work quality, and poor security protocols.

FILE - Manuel Rocha sits in his office at Steel Hector & Davis in Miami in January 2003, joining the firm to help open doors in Latin America. On Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, Rocha, 73, told a judge he would admit to federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, charges that could land him behind bars for several years. (Raul Rubiera/Miami Herald via AP, File)

Red flags, missed clues: How accused US diplomat-turned-Cuban spy avoided scrutiny for decades

Long before career U.S. diplomat Manuel Rocha was arrested on charges of being a secret agent of Cuba for decades, there were plenty of red flags.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds a small copy of his nation's constitution during ceremony marking the start of the judicial year at the Supreme Court in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Exclusive: A secret US program spied on top Venezuelan officials to build drug cases

A secret memo obtained by The Associated Press details a covert operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership – a plan the U.S. acknowledged from the sta

In this 1973 photo, three guards shake down and body search a prisoner and at the Cummins Unit of' Arkansas Department of Corrections in Grady, Ark. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

A hidden web links hundreds of popular food brands to work done by US prisoners

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the closing arguments in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. (Shannon Stapleton/Pool Photo via AP)

Dissolving Trump’s business empire would stand apart in history of NY fraud law

Within days, Donald Trump could potentially have his sprawling real estate business empire ordered “dissolved” for repeated misrepresentations on financial statements to lenders.

This image from video posted by Hamas on Dec. 20, 2023, purports to show Hamas militants using machining equipment to make their own domestic copies of the AM-50 Sayyad, an Iranian-made a sniper rifle that fires a .50- caliber round powerful enough to punch through up to an inch of steel. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press said it would be nearly impossible for Hamas to manufacture a safe and accurate sniper rifle using the rudimentary equipment shown in the video. Watermark at upper left reads “military media.” (Hamas via AP)

Hamas fights with a patchwork of weapons built by Iran, China, Russia and North Korea

Iranian sniper rifles. AK-47s from China and Russia. North Korean-built rocket-propelled grenades. Anti-tank rockets secretly cobbled together in Gaza An Associated Press analysis of more than 150 videos and photos taken in the three months of combat since Hamas launched its Oct. 7 surprise attack o

U.S.-funded infrastructure in Gaza largely unscathed as death toll soars

The United States has spent more than $7 billion on humanitarian aid and building infrastructure in the Palestinian territories in recent decades, while sending more than $3 billion a year to Israel for its military.

Lisa Hohnstreiter holds a smartphone displaying a photograph of her mother, Nancy Harrison, and her brother, Friday, Nov. 24, 2023, in Warren, Mich. Not long after DeAngelo Martin was released from jail, he killed for the second time. On March 19, 2019, the body of Nancy Harrison, 52, was discovered in an abandoned house on Coventry Street. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

A serial killer set Detroit on edge. Police missteps over 15 years allowed him to roam free

DeAngelo Martin killed four women in Detroit and raped two others before he was captured in 2019. The Associated Press has found that Detroit police failed to follow up on leads or take investigative steps that may have averted the killing spree.

Workers bag cocoa beans at a warehouse inside the conservation zone of the Omo Forest Reserve in Nigeria, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023..(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Cocoa grown illegally in a Nigerian rainforest heads to companies that supply major chocolate makers

As the world’s demand for chocolate grows, farmers in Nigeria are moving into protected areas of a forest reserve that’s home to endangered species like African forest elephants.

Rohingya child bride, R, age 16, holds her newborn baby while standing in an apartment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Oct. 4, 2023. R left Bangladesh's refugee camps for Malaysia in 2022 to marry her 27-year-old husband as conditions in the camps deteriorated. R says she wasn't ready to have a baby, but felt lonely and is now glad to have the company. (AP Photo/Victoria Milko)

Young Rohingya girls fleeing violence, starvation find new horrors in arranged marriages in Malaysia

Scores of underage Rohingya girls fleeing violence and starvation in their homeland of Myanmar and in the refugee camps of neighboring Bangladesh are being forced into arranged marriages with older men in Malaysia who frequently abuse them.

Chelsea Goodrich poses for a portrait in Ketchum, Idaho, on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. Goodrich's father, a popular Idaho dentist and former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church, was excommunicated after sharing details about his relationship with her when she was a child during a religious confession. Recordings obtained by The Associated Press show that instead of helping prosecutors, the church used a legal playbook that has helped protect itself from sex abuse claims. Goodrich's father is today a free man, and she says she decided to speak out to protect other children. (AP Photo/Jason Dearen)

Recordings show how the Mormon church protects itself from child sex abuse claims

The recordings chronicle how a church official persuaded a member who claimed she was abused by her father to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

FILE - An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. A former American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested in a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation, accused of secretly serving as an agent of Cuba’s government, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

Former US ambassador arrested in Florida, accused of serving as an agent of Cuba, AP source says

The Associated Press has learned that a former American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested in a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation and is accused of secretly serving as an agent of the Cuban government.

(AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

Intercepted calls from the front lines in Ukraine show a growing number of Russian soldiers want out

In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand. They describe 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded, and 500s to describe people who refuse to fight.

Longtime Florida social worker Connie Going looks at a computer screen with an image of her adopted son Davion in her adoptions office June 12, 2023, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Going said the Family-Match tool gives false hope to waiting parents by failing to deliver successful matches, and ultimately makes her job harder. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Inspired by online dating, AI tool for adoption matchmaking falls short for vulnerable foster kids

Former social worker Thea Ramirez has developed an artificial intelligence-powered tool that she says helps social service agencies find the best adoptive parents for some of the nation’s most vulnerable kids.

This image from video provided by Bolaji John shows the burning Trinity Spirit anchored 15 miles off the coast of Nigeria, which caught fire on Feb. 2, 2022. The ship had no insurance, no flag, and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Five workers were killed and two others left unaccounted for in the blast. (Bolaji John via AP)

Deadly explosion off Nigeria points to threat posed by aging oil ships around the world

An explosion aboard the Trinity Spirit off the coast of Nigeria last year that killed five workers and left two others unaccounted for stands among the deadliest tragedies on an oil ship or platform in recent years.

This image from video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12, 2023 shows a live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip. (Hamas via AP)

Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack weeks before border breach

Less than a month before Hamas fighters blew through Israel’s “Iron Wall” in an attack that would leave more than 1,200 Israelis dead, they practiced in a very public dress rehearsal.

FILE - The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames along Wainee Street on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023, in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. (Matthew Thayer/The Maui News via AP, File)

An old car tire, burnt trees and a utility pole may be key in finding how the Maui wildfire spread

Melted remains of an old car tire. Two burned trees. A stump of an abandoned utility pole. These are among the pieces of evidence investigators are examining as they seek to solve the mystery of last month’s Maui wildfire.

FILE - Marine Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, arrive at Circuit Court, Thursday, March 30, 2023 in Charlottesville, Va. The U.S. government has warned a Virginia judge that allowing Marine Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife to keep an Afghan war orphan risks violating international law and could be viewed around the world as “endorsing an act of international child abduction,” according to secret court records reviewed by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

Secret records: Government says Marine’s adoption of Afghan orphan seen as abduction, must be undone

The U.S. government has warned a Virginia judge that an American Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan was flawed and could be seen as international child abduction.

Utility poles stand in Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawaii, Aug. 16, 2023. When the winds of Hurricane Dora lashed Maui Aug. 8, they struck bare electrical lines the Hawaiian electric utility had left exposed to the elements. (Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Bare electrical wire and leaning poles on Maui were possible cause of deadly fires

In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows -- those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact.

This artist sketch depicts Judge Dipti Pidikiti-Smith of the Fairfax County General District Court, presiding over the assault and battery trial of CIA officer trainee Ashkan Bayatpour, seated left, in Fairfax, Va., Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. Standing in front of the judge are the prosecutor, Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Jenna Sands, left, and Bayatpour's defense lawyer Stuart A. Sears, right. The judge found Bayatpour guilty Wednesday of attacking a fellow CIA trainee with a scarf in the stairwell of CIA headquarters at Langley last year. Seated right is an unidentified defense team member. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

CIA stairwell attack among flood of sexual misconduct complaints at spy agency

A CIA officer trainee has been convicted in Virginia of attacking a female colleague with a scarf and kissing her inside a stairwell at the agency’s headquarters in Langley.

This combination of images from video made by neighbors Shane Treu, left, and Robert Arconado on Aug. 8, 2023 shows fires outside their homes on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Treu used a garden hose to spray water during fires caused by snapped electrical cables falling to the dry grass below and quickly igniting a row of flames. (Shane Treu, Robert Arconado via AP)

Videos put scrutiny on downed power lines as possible cause of deadly Maui wildfires

Videos showing downed power lines apparently sparking some of the early blazes in the Maui wildfires have become key evidence in the search for a cause.

A baby was found in the rubble of a US raid in Afghanistan. But who exactly was killed and why?

A baby found in the rubble of a U.S. raid in Afghanistan was adopted by a Marine. Once-secret documents and AP reporting in the village reveal details that thrust this raid into an ongoing controversy over who the military killed.

FILE - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testifies before a House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 20, 2023. Rising to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic due to his strident opposition to vaccines, Democratic presidential candidate Kennedy Jr. portrays himself as a true Democrat inheriting the mantle of the Kennedy family. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

RFK Jr. says he’s not anti-vaccine. His record shows the opposite. It’s one of many inconsistencies

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenges President Joe Biden, the stories he tells on the campaign trail about himself, his life’s work and what he stands for are often the opposite of what his record shows.

Illustration of detained Ukrainian civilians digging into frozen ground. (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

AP Exclusive

Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it occupies, in centers ranging from brand-new wings in Russian prisons to clammy basements.

FILE - A sheet of uncut $100 bills is inspected during the printing process at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2013. More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large pandemic-relief initiatives, according to a new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs designed to help small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

The Great Grift: How billions in COVID-19 relief aid was stolen or wasted

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent.

This image from video, released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on June 6, 2023, shows what Russia claimed was the destruction of a German-made Leopard tank. But a visual analysis by The Associated Press shows the grainy black-and-white video Russia released to prove it had blown up the tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Russia claims it blew up advanced Ukrainian tank, but video shows its helicopter attacked a tractor

WASHINGTON (AP) — A grainy black-and-white gunsight video Russia released this week to bolster a claim its military blew up some of Ukraine’s most fearsome tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor, according to a visual analysis by The Associated Press.