AFP

Russian energy giant Gazprom on Saturday suspended gas supplies to Latvia, as Ukraine announced it had asked the Red Cross and UN to gain access to its soldiers being held by Russian forces.

The call came a day after a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka was bombed leaving scores dead.

Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Lubinetsk said on national television he had asked the Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission to go to Olenivka.

The ICRC has made a request but has not yet obtained authorisation from the Russians, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday the agreement for the Azovstal fighters to surrender, brokered by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, included safety guarantees.

He called on the two organisations to intervene as guarantors.

Conexus Baltic Grid meanwhile confirmed to Latvia’s LETA news agency that Gazprom had informed it of the suspension of deliveries, but said other suppliers were continuing them.

“Today, Gazprom suspended its gas supplies to Latvia… due to violations of the conditions” of purchase, the company said on Telegram.

“Latvia was not counting on natural gas flows from Russia,” Economy Minister Ilze Indriksone told LETA.

Gazprom drastically cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20 percent of its capacity. It had reduced gas flows to Europe twice in June.

The Russian state-run company had earlier announced it would choke supply to 33 million cubic metres a day — half the amount it has been delivering since service resumed last week after 10 days of maintenance work.

European Union states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine.

Gazprom cited the halted operation of one of the last two operating turbines for the pipeline due to the “technical condition of the engine”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has blamed EU sanctions for the limited supply.

The European Union this week agreed a plan to reduce gas consumption in solidarity with Germany, where the Nord Stream pipeline runs to, warning of Russian “blackmail”.

– ‘Egregious provocation’ –

Russian strikes continued to rain down on Ukrainian towns and cities on Saturday.

They came a day after Russia’s defence ministry accused Kyiv of striking a prison in Russian-held territory with US-supplied long-range missiles, in an “egregious provocation” designed to stop captured soldiers from surrendering. 

It said Saturday that the dead included Ukrainian forces who had surrendered after weeks of fighting off Russia’s brutal bombardment of the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in the port city of Mariupol. 

The defence ministry said 50 Ukrainian prisoners were killed and 73 were taken to hospital with serious injuries.

“All political, legal and moral responsibility for this bloody massacre of Ukrainians lies with Zelensky personally, his criminal regime and Washington which backs them,” it said.

Zelensky laid the blame squarely on Russia.

“This was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” he said. “Over 50 are dead.”

Zelensky also urged the international community, especially the United States, to have Russia officially declared a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

Members of the Azov regiment were among those who surrendered at Azovstal.

Azov regiment commander Mykyta Nadtochiy said he considered the attack on the jail in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka to have been “an act of public execution”.

Ukrainian authorities said Russian bombardments targeting the south and east of the country had left one dead in southern Mykolaiv and one dead in eastern Bakhmut.

The death toll from a strike on a Mykolaiv bus stop on Friday climbed to seven after two men died in hospital, he added.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, three Russian S-300 missiles struck a school, mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram, adding that the main building was destroyed.

A Ukrainian spokesman said his country’s forces had set fire to grain fields around Mariupol.

“The Mariupol resistance forces set fire to the fields with grain so that it would not be stolen by the occupiers,” Sergiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odessa regional military administration said.

“The fire can probably spread to the Russian military base… There are Russian fortifications, ammunition warehouses and minefields disposed сlose to the area of the fire.” 

– Grain exports to restart –

Zelensky on Friday visited a port in southern Ukraine to oversee a ship being loaded with grain for export under a UN-backed plan aimed at getting millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain stranded by Russia’s naval blockade to world markets.

Ukraine’s presidency said exports could start in the “coming days”.

In a separate development, S&P Global Ratings on Friday cut Ukraine’s long-term debt grade by three notches, saying a recently announced plan to defer payments means a default is “a virtual certainty”.

A group of Western countries last week gave their green light to Kyiv’s request to postpone interest payments on its debt and called on other creditors to do the same.

Devastating flooding in Kentucky has killed 25 people and the toll is expected to rise, the southern US state’s governor said Saturday as rescuers and residents continued a harrowing search for survivors.

Torrential rain earlier this week caused unprecedented flash flooding in 13 counties in eastern Kentucky.

Many roads and bridges in that mountainous region — an area hard hit by grinding poverty as the coal industry declines — have been damaged or destroyed, and with cell phone service disrupted, finding survivors is difficult.

“I’m worried we are going to be finding bodies for weeks to come,” Governor Andy Beshear said in a midday news briefing, shortly after tweeting that the death toll had risen to 25.

The Democratic governor confirmed that “we are still in the search and rescue phase,” saying, “We will get through this together.”

Beshear said an earlier report that six children were among the dead was inaccurate; two of them had turned out to be adults.

The children, US media reported, were lost in a heart-rending way. Members of a family, clinging to a tree after a fast-rising stream had engulfed their mobile home, saw their children torn from their grip, one after another, by powerfully surging waters.

Beshear said national guard units from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia had made more than 650 air rescues since the flooding began Wednesday evening, while state police and other state personnel had registered some 750 water rescues.

He said the search was “tremendously stressful and difficult” for rescue teams.

Some areas in eastern Kentucky had reported receiving more than eight inches (20 centimeters) of rain in a 24-hour period.

The water level of the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Whitesburg rose to a staggering 20 feet within hours, well above its previous record of 14.7 feet.

– More rain ahead –

The flooding turned many roads into rivers, and some houses in low-lying areas were almost completely submerged, with just their rooftops visible.

Scenes on social media showed houses ripped from their moorings and deposited amid masses of debris along turbid waterways or even atop a bridge.

The weather offered a respite on Saturday, but more rain was expected the following day, with one to two additional inches expected.

Beshear told CNN on Saturday that the impending rain posed a challenge, and “while we don’t think it’ll be historic rain, it’ll be hard.”

He said during the briefing that 15 emergency shelters had been opened in schools, churches and state parks, though at least one had been “overwhelmed.”

Some 18,000 homes remained without power, Beshear said, and thousands were without safe water supplies. 

The governor said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent 18 tractor-trailers of water so far. Other federal workers were arriving to process claims.

President Joe Biden has issued a disaster declaration for the Kentucky flooding, allowing federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

The eastern Kentucky flooding is the latest in a series of extreme weather events that scientists say are an unmistakable sign of climate change.

Nearly 60 people were killed in western Kentucky by a tornado in December 2021 — a disaster that Beshear said offered lessons for current efforts on the other end of the state.

“We learned a lot of lessons in western Kentucky on those devastating tornados about seven months ago, so we are providing as much support as we can and we are moving fast from all over the state to help out,” he said on CNN.

In his briefing, Beshear expressed compassion for hard-hit residents.

“We can’t imagine the grief you’re going through right now,” he said.

Russian energy giant Gazprom Saturday suspended gas supplies to Latvia, a day after a jail holding Ukrainian prisoners of war was bombed leaving scores dead.

“Today, Gazprom suspended its gas supplies to Latvia… due to violations of the conditions” of purchase, the company said on Telegram.

Gazprom drastically cut gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20 percent of its capacity. It had reduced gas flows to Europe twice in June.

The Russian state-run company had earlier announced it would choke supply to 33 million cubic metres a day — half the amount it has been delivering since service resumed last week after 10 days of maintenance work.

European Union states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine.

Gazprom cited the halted operation of one of the last two operating turbines for the pipeline due to the “technical condition of the engine”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has blamed EU sanctions for the limited supply.

The European Union this week agreed a plan to reduce gas consumption in solidarity with Germany, where the Nord Stream pipeline runs to, warning of Russian “blackmail”.

The company Conexus Baltic Grid confirmed to Latvian news agency LETA that Gazprom had informed it of the suspension of deliveries, but said other suppliers were continuing them.

“Latvia was not counting on natural gas flows from Russia,” Economy Minister Ilze Indriksone told LETA.

– ‘Egregious provocation’ –

Russian strikes continued to rain down on Ukrainian towns and cities on Saturday, a day after Russia’s defence ministry accused Kyiv of striking a prison in Russian-held territory with US-supplied long-range missiles, in an “egregious provocation” designed to stop captured soldiers from surrendering. 

It said Saturday that the dead included Ukrainian forces who had surrendered after weeks of fighting off Russia’s brutal bombardment of the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in the port city of Mariupol. 

The defence ministry said 50 Ukrainian prisoners were killed and 73 were taken to hospital with serious injuries, adding: “All political, legal and moral responsibility for this bloody massacre of Ukrainians lies with (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky personally, his criminal regime and Washington which backs them.”

Zelensky laid the blame squarely on Russia.

“This was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” he said. “Over 50 are dead.”

Zelensky said an agreement for the Azovstal fighters to lay down their arms, brokered by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, included guarantees for their health and safety and called on those two organisations to intervene as guarantors.

Zelensky also urged the international community, especially the United States, to have Russia officially declared as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

The mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, said one person died and six were injured following Russian shelling in two residential districts overnight Saturday.

The death toll from a strike on a Mykolaiv bus stop on Friday climbed to seven after two men died in hospital, he added.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, three Russian S-300 missiles struck a school, mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram, adding that the main building was destroyed.

A Ukrainian spokesman said resistance forces had set fire to grain fields around Mariupol.

“The Mariupol resistance forces set fire to the fields with grain so that it would not be stolen by the occupiers,” Sergiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odessa regional military administration said.

“The fire can probably spread to the Russian military base… There are Russian fortifications, ammunition warehouses and minefields disposed сlose to the area of fire.” 

– Grain exports to restart –

Zelensky on Friday visited a port in southern Ukraine to oversee a ship being loaded with grain for export under a UN-backed plan aimed at getting millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain stranded by Russia’s naval blockade to world markets.

Ukraine’s presidency said exports could start in the “coming days”.

In a separate development, S&P Global Ratings on Friday cut Ukraine’s long-term debt grade by three notches, saying a recently announced plan to defer payments means a default is “a virtual certainty”.

A group of Western countries last week gave their green light to Kyiv’s request to postpone interest payments on its debt and called on other creditors to do so as well.

Devastating flooding in Kentucky killed 25 people and the toll is expected to rise, the southern US state’s governor said Saturday as rescuers continued their search for survivors.

Torrential rain earlier this week caused unprecedented flash flooding in eastern Kentucky, a mountainous region already hard hit by grinding poverty as the coal industry that was the heart of its economy declines.

“We’ve got some tough news to share out of Eastern Kentucky today, where we are still in the search and rescue phase. Our death toll has risen to 25 lost, and that number is likely to increase,” tweeted Governor Andy Beshear.

“To everyone in Eastern Kentucky, we are going to be there for you today and in the weeks, months and years ahead. We will get through this together,” he added.

Beshear previously said hundreds of people had been rescued by boat since the flooding began Wednesday evening, while National Guard helicopters carried out dozens of aerial rescues.

But “there are still so many people unaccounted for, and in this area, it’s going to be a hard task to get a firm number,” he told CNN on Saturday.

Some areas in eastern Kentucky had reported receiving more than eight inches (20 centimeters) of rain in a 24-hour period.

The water level of the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Whitesburg rose to a staggering 20 feet within hours, well above its previous record of 14.7 feet.

– More rain ahead –

The flooding turned many roads into rivers, and some houses in low-lying areas were almost completely submerged, with just their rooftops visible.

The weather offered a respite on Saturday, but more rain was expected the following day.

“As a cold front drags south, the area will remain mainly dry through today. The dry weather is expected to come to an end Sunday afternoon as a boundary lifts north back into the region,” the National Weather Service’s Jackson, Kentucky office tweeted.

Beshear said on CNN that the impending rain posed a challenge, and “while we don’t think it’ll be historic rain, it’ll be hard.”

The eastern Kentucky flooding is the latest in a series of extreme weather events that scientists say are an unmistakable sign of climate change.

Nearly 60 people were killed in western Kentucky by a tornado in December 2021 — a disaster that Beshear said offered lessons for current efforts on the other end of the state.

“We learned a lot of lessons in western Kentucky on those devastating tornados about seven months ago, so we are providing as much support as we can and we are moving fast from all over the state to help out,” he said.

President Joe Biden has issued a disaster declaration for the Kentucky flooding, allowing federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

A lucky US lottery player has won a Mega Millions jackpot worth more than $1.3 billion, one of the highest prizes ever, a US lottery official confirmed Saturday.

The official Mega Millions site said a single ticket holder in the Midwestern state of Illinois — who has yet to be identified — had the six magic numbers and won a jackpot estimated at $1.337 billion.

“We are thrilled to have witnessed one of the biggest jackpot wins in Mega Millions history,” Pat McDonald, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said on the group’s website. “We’re eager to find out who won and look forward to congratulating the winner soon!”

The grand prize had been steadily growing, fueling the dreams of would-be winners across the country, for more than three months. The prize had gone unclaimed in 29 previous drawings.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are one in 303 million — much higher than the one-in-a-million chance of being struck by lightning, according to US government data.

Friday’s total falls short of the world record of $1.586 billion, set in January 2016 by America’s other national lotto, the Powerball, though that sum was split among three winners.

The second-highest prize ever — and the highest won by a single person — was in an October 2018 Mega Millions drawing for $1.5 billion.

The $1.337 billion figure for Friday’s drawing represents the total amount a winner would be entitled to if they accepted the prize split up over a 30-year annuity.

If the lucky person decided instead to take the winnings as a one-time cash payment, the total amount would decrease to $780.5 million, Mega Millions estimates.

Taxes would then gobble up a significant chunk, while still leaving an unimaginably large pot for the winner.

Winners are generally advised to immediately seek assistance from financial advisors, even before claiming the prize money.

Financial planner Robert Pagliarini also recommends that big winners “step outside the craziness of the situation for a moment,” and think hard about what parts of their life they “don’t want to change.” 

Mega Millions is played in 45 US states. The winning numbers Friday: 13-36-45-57-67 and 14.