By BECKY BOHRER and JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — One of the most significant airlifts in Alaskan history is underway by helicopter and military transport plane, moving hundreds of people from coastal villages ravaged by high surf and strong winds from the remnants of Typhoon Halong last weekend.

The storm brought record high water to two low-lying Alaska Native communities and washed away homes, some with people inside. At least one person was killed and two are missing. Makeshift shelters were quickly established and swelled to hold about 1,500 people, an extraordinary number in a sparsely populated region where communities are reachable only by air or water this time of year.

The remoteness and scale of the destruction created challenges for getting resources in place. Damage assessments have been trickling in as responders have shifted from initial search-and-rescue operations to trying to stabilize or restore basic services.

The communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok near the Bering Sea saw water levels more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) above the highest normal tide line. Some 121 homes were destroyed in Kipnuk, a village of about 700 people.

The map above locates towns in western Alaska impacted by floodwaters and storm surge from typhoon Halong. (AP Digital Embed)

Leaders asked the state to evacuate the more than 1,000 residents from those villages, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson with the state emergency management office.

About 300 evacuees were brought to Anchorage on Wednesday, about 500 miles (805 kilometers) east of the battered coastal villages, according to the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. People were being taken to the Alaska Airlines Center, a sports and events complex with capacity for about 400, Zidek said.

Shelter space closer to home — in the southwest Alaska regional hub of Bethel — was at capacity, with the food supply “near depletion,” officials said in a briefing Thursday.

Cell phone service had been restored in Kwigillingok, the report said, and restrooms were again working at the school in Kwigillingok, where about 350 people had sheltered overnight Tuesday, according to a state emergency management statement.

“Damage to many homes is severe, and the community leadership is instructing residents not to reenter homes due to safety concerns,” it said.

Damage was also serious in other villages. Water, sewer and well systems were inoperable in Napaskiak, and the Coast Guard on Thursday was expected to arrive in another village to assess a spill of up to 2,000 gallons (7,600 liters) of waste oil.

In Kwigillingok and Kipnuk, some homes cannot be reoccupied, even with emergency repairs, and others may not be livable by winter, emergency management officials said. Forecasters say rain and snow is possible in the region this weekend, with average temperatures soon below freezing.

Mark Roberts, the commander with the state emergency management agency, said the immediate focus was on “making sure people are safe, warm and cared for while we work with our partners to restore essential services.”

Zidek did not know how long the evacuation would take and said authorities were looking for additional shelters. The aim is to get people from congregate shelters into hotel rooms or dormitories, he said.

The crisis unfolding in southwest Alaska has drawn attention to Trump administration cuts to grants aimed at helping small, mostly Indigenous villages prepare for storms or mitigate disaster risks.

For example, a $20 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to Kipnuk, which was inundated by floodwaters, was terminated by the Trump administration, a move challenged by environmental groups. The grant was intended to protect the boardwalk residents use to get around the community, as well as 1,400 feet (430 meters) of river from erosion, according to a federal website that tracks government spending.

There was limited work on the project before the grant ended. The village had purchased a bulldozer for shipment and briefly hired a bookkeeper, according to Public Rights Project, which represents Kipnuk.

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The group said no single project was likely to prevent the recent flood. But work to remove abandoned fuel tanks and other material to prevent it from falling into the river might have been feasible during the 2025 construction season.

“What’s happening in Kipnuk shows the real cost of pulling back support that was already promised to front line communities,” said Jill Habig, CEO of the Public Rights Project. “These grants were designed to help local governments prepare for and adapt to the growing effects of climate change. When that commitment is broken, it puts people’s safety, homes and futures at risk.”

Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Michael Phillis in Washington contributed.

By ROD McGUIRK

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Former U.S. Marine Corps pilot Daniel Duggan on Thursday appealed his extradition from Australia to the United States over allegations that he illegally trained Chinese military aviators more than a decade ago.

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Duggan is accused of training Chinese military pilots while working as an instructor for the Test Flying Academy of South Africa in 2012. He appeared at the court in Canberra to file the appeal with his attorney after traveling 218 miles from a prison in Wellington, New South Wales state.

Australian Federal Court Justice James Stellios will announce a verdict on a date yet to be set following a one-day hearing in the national capital Canberra.

A 2016 indictment from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., which was unsealed in late 2022, alleges Duggan conspired with others to provide training to Chinese military pilots in 2010 and 2012, and possibly other times, without applying for an appropriate license.

Prosecutors allege Duggan received about nine payments totaling around 88,000 Australian dollars ($61,000) from another conspirator as well as travel to the U.S., South Africa and China for what was sometimes described as “personal development training.”

Duggan has denied the allegations, saying they were political posturing by the U.S., which unfairly singled him out. He has been held in maximum security prisons since he was arrested in 2022 at a supermarket near his family home in New South Wales.

Australia’s then Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus approved the 57-year-old’s extradition in December, but his lawyers argued in court Thursday there had been legal flaws in the extradition process.

Dreyfus was replaced as attorney general in May by Michelle Rowland, who has not reviewed her predecessor’s decision to send Boston-born Duggan back to the U.S.

“The government notes the proceedings in the Federal Court today regarding Mr. Duggan,” Rowland’s office said in a statement, adding that further comment was not appropriate because the case remains in court.

Duggan’s wife and mother of his six children, Saffrine Duggan, told supporters outside the court Thursday that Rowland “could set Dan free at any time.”

FILE -Saffrine Duggan speaks outside Downing Central Court in Sydney, May 24, 2024, where her husband Daniel was scheduled to appear. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)

“He is being used as a pawn in an ideological war between the United States and China and the Australian government agencies have allowed this to happen and are willing participants,” Saffrine Duggan said. “My husband broke no Australian law and he was an Australian citizen when the alleged pilot training occurred.”

Daniel Duggan’s lawyer, Christopher Parkin, told the court it was “extraordinary” that someone could be extradited from Australia, accused of breaking U.S. laws, for an action in South Africa.

Duggan served in the U.S. Marines for 12 years before migrating to Australia in 2002. He gained Australian citizenship in January 2012, giving up his U.S. citizenship in the process.

By JOHN LEICESTER and KANIS LEUNG, Associated Press

OUISTREHAM, France (AP) — The captain of the giant Royal Navy battleship called his officers together to give them a first morsel of one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets: Prepare yourselves, he said, for “an extremely important task.”

“Speculations abound,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day — June 2, 1944. “Some say a second front, some say we are to escort the Soviets, or doing something else around Iceland. No one is allowed ashore.”

The secret was D-Day — the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest-ever sea, land and air armada. It punctured Adolf Hitler’s fearsome “Atlantic Wall” defenses and sped the dictator’s downfall 11 months later.

The diary writer was Lam Ping-yu — a Chinese officer who crossed the world with two dozen comrades-in-arms from China to train and serve with Allied forces in Europe.

An exhibit on display shows members of a Chinese contingent of naval officers who travelled to Europe in World War II to train with British forces, including Lam Ping-yu, who kept a diary and is shown by a blue arrow, in Ouistreham, France, Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

For 32-year-old Lam, watching the landings in Normandy, France, unfold from aboard the battleship HMS Ramillies proved to be momentous.

His meticulously detailed but long-forgotten diary was rescued by urban explorers from a Hong Kong tenement block which was about to be demolished. It is bringing his story back to life and shedding light on the participation of Chinese officers in the multinational invasion.

As survivors of the Battle of Normandy disappear, Lam’s compelling firsthand account adds another vivid voice to the huge library of recollections that the World War II generation is leaving behind, ensuring that its sacrifices for freedom and the international cooperation that defeated Nazism aren’t forgotten.

“Saw the army’s landing craft, as numerous as ants, scattered and wriggling all over the sea, moving southward,” Lam wrote on the evening of June 5, as the invasion fleet steamed across the English Channel.

“Everyone at action stations. We should be able to reach our designated location around 4-5 a.m. tomorrow and initiate bombardment of the French coast,” he wrote.

Breakthroughs

Sleuthing by history enthusiasts Angus Hui and John Mak in Hong Kong pieced together the story of how Lam found himself aboard HMS Ramillies and proved vital in verifying the authenticity of his 80-page diary, written in 13,000 wispy, delicate Chinese characters.

Hui and Mak have curated and are touring an exhibition about Lam, his diary and the other Chinese officers — now on display in the Normandy town of Ouistreham.

One breakthrough was their discovery, confirmed in Hong Kong land records, that the abandoned 9th-floor flat where the diary was found had belonged to one of Lam’s brothers.

Another was Hui’s unearthing in British archives of a 1944 ship’s log from HMS Ramillies. A May 29 entry recorded that two Chinese officers had come aboard. Misspelling Lam’s surname, it reads: “Junior Lieut Le Ping Yu Chinese Navy joined ship.”

A suitcase recovered from an abandoned Hong Kong apartment, where a World War II diary written by Chinese naval officer Lam Ping-yu was also found, is exhibited in Ouistreham, France, Oct. 4, 2025 . (AP Photo/John Leicester)

Lost, found and lost again

Lam’s leather-bound black notebook has had a dramatic life, too.

Lost and then found, it has now gone missing again. Hui and Mak say it appears to have been squirreled away somewhere — possibly taken to the U.S. or the U.K. by people who emigrated from Hong Kong — after the explorers riffled through the apartment, salvaging the diary, other papers, a suitcase, and other curios, before the building was demolished.

But Hui, who lived close by, got to photograph the diary’s pages before it disappeared, preserving Lam’s account.

“I knew, ‘Okay, this is a fascinating story that we need to know more about,’” he says.

“Such a remarkable piece of history … could have remained buried forever,” Mak says.

They shared Lam’s account with his daughter, Sau Ying Lam, who lives in Pittsburgh. She previously knew very little about her father’s wartime experiences. He died in 2000.

“I was flabbergasted,” she says. “It’s a gift of me learning who he was as a young person and understanding him better now, because I didn’t have that opportunity when he was still alive.”

This handout photo provided by Huang Shansong, son of Huang Tingxin, one of the 24 officers sent to Britain, Chinese naval officers pose for a photo in front of a pyramid on Sept. 8, 1943, in Egypt during their journey to Britain for training. (Huang Shansong via AP)

A lucky escape

Lam was part of a group of more than 20 Chinese naval officers sent during World War II for training in the U.K. by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang led a Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949, fighting invasion by Japan and then Mao Zedong’s communists, before fleeing to Taiwan with the remnants of his forces when Mao’s insurgents took power.

On their long journey from China, the officers passed through Egypt — a photo shows them posing in front of the pyramids in their white uniforms — before joining up with British forces.

In his diary, Lam wrote of a narrow brush with death on D-Day aboard HMS Ramillies, as the battleship’s mighty guns were pounding German fortifications with massive 880-kilogram (1,938-pound) shells before Allied troops hit the five invasion beaches.

“Three torpedoes were fired at us,” Lam wrote. “We managed to dodge them.”

FILE – This photograph is believed to show E Company, 16th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, participating in the first wave of assaults during D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. (Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert M. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard via AP, File)

His daughter marvels at the lucky escape.

“If that torpedo had hit the ship, I wouldn’t be alive,” she says.

Through ships’ logs, Hui and Mak say they’ve confirmed that at least 14 Chinese officers participated in Operation Neptune — the 7,000-vessel naval component of the invasion which was code-named Operation Overlord — and other Allied naval operations as the Battle of Normandy raged on after D-Day.

Operation Dragoon

Some of the officers, including Lam, also saw action in the Allied invasion of southern France that followed, in August 1944.

“Action stations at 4 a.m., traces of the moon still visible, although the horizon is unusually dark,” Lam wrote on Aug. 15. “Bombardment of the French coast started at 6, Ramillies didn’t open fire until 7.

“The Germans put up such a feeble resistance, one can call it nonexistent.”

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France awarded its highest honor, the Légion d’honneur, to the Chinese contingent’s last survivor in 2006. Huang Tingxin, then 88, dedicated the award to all those who traveled with him from China to Europe, saying “it was a great honor to join the anti-Nazi war,” China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported at the time.

Lam’s daughter says their story remains inspirational.

“It talks about unity, talks about hard work, about doing good,” she says. “World War II, I think it shows us that we can work together for common good.”

Leung reported from Hong Kong.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia battered Ukraine’s energy facilities with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in its latest heavy bombardment of the country’s power grid, authorities said Thursday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to ask President Donald Trump at a White House meeting for more American-made air defenses and long-range missiles.

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Eight Ukrainian regions experienced blackouts after the barrage, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said. DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported outages in the capital, Kyiv, and said it had to stop its natural gas extraction in the central Poltava region due to the strikes. Natural gas infrastructure was damaged for the sixth time this month, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company, said.

Zelenskyy said Russia fired more than 300 drones and 37 missiles at Ukraine overnight. He accused Russia of using cluster munitions and conducting repeated strikes on the same target to hit emergency crews and engineers working to repair the grid.

“This fall, the Russians are using every single day to strike our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

The Ukrainian power grid been one of Russia’s main targets since its invasion of its neighbor more than three years ago. Attacks increase as the bitterly cold months approach in a Russian strategy that Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing winter.” Russia says it aims only at targets of military value.

Ukraine has hit back by targeting oil refineries and related infrastructure that are crucial for Russia’s economy and war effort. Ukraine’s general staff said Thursday its forces struck Saratov oil refinery, in the Russian region of the same name, for the second time in two months. The facility is located some 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Moscow made no immediate comment on the claim.

Ukraine seeks air defenses and attack missiles

Ukrainian forces have resisted Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army, limiting it to a grinding war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line snaking through eastern and southern regions.

But Ukraine, which is almost the size of Texas, is hard to defend from the air in its entirety, and Kyiv officials are seeking more Western help to fend against aerial attacks and strike back at Russia.

Zelenskyy was expected to arrive in the United States on Thursday, ahead of his Oval Office meeting with Trump on Friday.

Ukraine is seeking cruise missiles, air defense systems and joint drone production agreements from the United States, Kyiv officials say. Zelenskyy also wants tougher international economic sanctions on Moscow.

The visit comes amid signs that Trump is leaning toward stepping up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to break the deadlock in U.S.-led peace efforts.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday in Brussels that if Russia won’t budge from its objections and refuses to negotiate a peace deal, Washington “will take the steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression.”

Also, Trump said Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally assured him that his country would stop buying Russian oil. That would deny Moscow income it needs to keep fighting in Ukraine.

Washington has hesitated over providing Ukraine with long-range missiles, such as Tomahawks, out of concern that such a step could escalate the war and deepen tensions between the United States and Russia.

But Trump has been frustrated by his inability to force an end to the war in Ukraine and has expressed impatience with Putin, whom he increasingly describes as the primary obstacle to a resolution.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment published late Wednesday that sending Tomahawks to Ukraine would not escalate the war and would only “mirror Russia’s own use of … long-range cruise missiles against Ukraine.”

Ukraine engages with American defense companies

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Economy Ministry said Thursday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with U.S. company Bell Textron Inc. to cooperate in aviation technology.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based aerospace and defense company will open an office in Ukraine and establish a center for assembly and testing, while exchanging know-how and training Ukrainians in the United States, according to a ministry statement.

Ukraine, unsure what it can expect from Western allies, is keen to develop its own arms industry.

On Wednesday, a Ukrainian government delegation met during a U.S. visit with prominent American weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

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