HOODOO SKI AREA, Ore. (AP) — Ukrainian war veteran Oleksandr Shvachka lost his left leg to Russian tank fire outside Kyiv. Three years on, the latest step in his physical and mental rehabilitation recently unfolded under a brilliant blue sky on a snow-covered mountain more than 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) away.

As he trudged for days through the scorching jungle with about 20 other people following a nameless smuggler, Ashraf Safi felt a tinge of gratitude.

“There were children with us who had to witness everything we saw,” the father of two said. “Every time we started walking again, I told myself, ‘at least my children are not here — I have to keep moving for them.’”

BELCOURT, N.D. (AP) — More than 50 years after a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation landed him in federal prison, Leonard Peltier remains defiant.

He maintains his innocence in the deaths of two FBI agents in 1975 and sees his newfound freedom — the result of a commutation from former President Joe Biden — as the beginning of a new phase of his activism.