World

Nearly half of Kyiv residents were still without electricity on Friday as engineers battled to restore services two days after Russian strikes hammered the country’s energy grid.

Systematic and targeted Russian attacks for weeks have brought Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to its knees as the country careens towards a freezing winter, spurring fears of a health crisis and a further exodus, nine months into war.

Municipal workers struggled Friday to reconnect essential services such as heat and water as temperatures in Kyiv approached freezing and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visited to announce a new aid package.

“Half of consumers are still without electricity,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. “A third of houses in Kyiv already have heating and specialists continue to restore it.”

“During the day, energy companies plan to reconnect electricity for all consumers on an alternating basis,” he wrote on Telegram.

Lines of cars queued outside petrol stations in Kyiv on Friday to stock up, AFP journalists said. Mobile networks in some areas were still experiencing disruptions.

Nationwide, repair work was ongoing, said Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of national electricity operator Ukrenergo, but insisted that “the most difficult stage” had passed.

Ukrenergo said that producers were providing more than 70 percent of the need across the country.

– ‘We live like this now’ –

Millions of Ukrainians have endured the cold without power since Russia fired dozens of missiles and launched drone attacks at water and electricity facilities on Wednesday.

“Yes, this is a difficult situation and yes, it can happen again. But Ukraine can cope,” presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on television.

With gas for cooking and heating disconnected in her Kyiv apartment, Albina Bilogub told AFP that she and her children all sleep in the same room to stay warm.

“In our building, very few people have gas, so we go to the woman that I work for — I change her clothes because she is disabled — and we cook there,” she said.

“This is our life. One sweater, a second, a third. We live like this now.”

In northern Kyiv, a vet in blue scrubs and a face mask shone a light over an operating table in a darkened clinic as colleagues operated on an ailing dog late Thursday.

“We were in the middle of an operation and our lights turned off because a rocket fell not far away, so there was a power cut,” said Oleksiy Yankovenko.

“I had to finish the operation under the flashlights,” he added.

– ‘Brutal attacks’ –

Ukraine’s Western allies have denounced the Russian attacks on energy as a “war crime”, coming in the wake of a string of military setbacks for Russia on the frontlines.

Moscow insists it targets only military linked infrastructure and blamed Kyiv for the blackouts, saying Ukraine can end the suffering by agreeing to Russian demands.

Britain’s foreign minister announced new aid for Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv, including ambulances and support for victims of sexual violence by Russian soldiers.

“As winter sets in, Russia is continuing to try and break Ukrainian resolve through its brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and energy infrastructure,” Cleverly said.

“Russia will fail,” he said, vowing UK support “will continue for as long as it takes”.

The attacks on Ukraine’s grid are Russia’s latest strategy designed to force Ukrainian capitulation after Moscow’s forces failed to topple the government and capture Kyiv nine months after launching their invasion.

Although they have captured swathes of territory in the south and east and the Kremlin claimed to annex four regions, Ukrainian troops are clawing back territory.

Russian forces have shelled the southern city of Kherson, from which they retreated earlier this month in their latest setback. The Ukrainian presidency said 11 people were killed and nearly 50 injured in the Kherson region on Thursday.

Nurses across most of Britain will hold the first strikes in their union’s 106-year history next month, joining a host of other workers taking industrial action over pay.

Staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — but not Scotland — will walk out on December 15 and 20, after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union said the government had turned down an offer of negotiations.

It will be the latest industrial action in Britain, where decades-high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis have prompted staff in various sectors to demand pay rises to keep up with spiralling prices.

RCN England director Patricia Marquis on Friday apologised to patients who would have operations or treatments cancelled.

But she said the strikes were about “nurses standing up for themselves but also critically for patients”.

The nurses’ strike will be sandwiched between the first of a series of two-day walkouts by national railway workers, while postal service employees will stage fresh stoppages in the run-up to Christmas.

Numerous other public and private sector staff, from lawyers to airport ground personnel, have also held strikes this year.

The Office for National Statistics said “well over half a million working days” were lost to strikes in August and September — the highest two-month total for more than a decade.

With more strikes expected, there are predictions that days lost to stoppages could reach levels not seen since the 1970s and 1980s.

Ambulance staff in Scotland are due to walk out on Monday.

Other health unions representing midwives, physiotherapists and junior doctors have or are planning to ballot their members.

“Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve,” said RCN head Pat Cullen.

The union, which wants a pay rise significantly above inflation, announced earlier this month that a ballot of its more than 300,000 members had found a majority in favour of strikes.

Cullen said the union would set out details of which services would be exempt from strike action soon.

“What we will continue to provide is life-preserving services,” she told BBC radio adding that some cancer services would be exempt.

– ‘Challenging times ‘ –

UK inflation has surged to reach a 41-year high of 11.1 percent in October on soaring energy and food bills.

NHS bosses said in September that nurses were skipping meals to feed and clothe their children and were struggling to afford rising transport costs.

One in four hospitals had set up foodbanks to support staff, according to NHS Providers, which represents hospital groups in England.

The government says it has accepted independent pay recommendations, and given over one million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 ($1,590) this year. 

That follows on from a three percent increase last year when public sector pay was frozen.

But the RCN says this leaves experienced nurses worse off by 20 percent in real terms due to successive below-inflation awards since 2010.

In Scotland, the union paused announcing strike action after the devolved government in Edinburgh reopened pay talks.

The Scottish government said late Thursday it had made a “best and final offer” to unions of an average 7.5-percent increase, backdated to April if accepted.

UK health minister Steve Barclay said he was “hugely grateful for the hard work and dedication” of nurses and regretted the strikes.

The NHS had “tried and tested plans” to minimise disruption and ensure emergency services continue, he added.

“These are challenging times for everyone and the economic circumstances mean the RCN’s demands, which on current figures are a 19.2 percent pay rise, costing £10 billion a year, are not affordable,” he said.

Barclay said he was prepared to discuss better working conditions for nurses with the RCN — but not pay.

The union has questioned the UK government’s economic rationale, noting it spends billions of pounds on agency staff to plug workforce gaps.

It points to independent research it commissioned indicating that the finance ministry would recoup 81 percent of the initial outlay of a significant pay rise through higher tax receipts and savings on future recruitment and retention costs.

In the last year, 25,000 nursing staff left the Nursing and Midwifery Council register, it said. 

A seven-year-old Indonesian girl who was the subject of a day-long rescue effort after an earthquake killed at least 310 people in West Java has been found dead, rescuers told AFP Friday.

Emergency workers found the body of Ashika Nur Fauziah, also known as Cika, under rubble in the worst-hit district of Cugenang, the epicentre of the quake that triggered landslides, collapsed buildings and buried victims in mounds of earth on Monday.

“The body was immediately handed over to the family,” 28-year-old rescuer Jeksen Kolibu told AFP. “The family… was very sad.”

Dozens of rescuers had spent most of Thursday using digging tools, hammers and their bare hands to clear debris in the delicate mission, which was suspended overnight.

Cika was found under three layers of concrete on Friday morning, said Kolibu. Workers found her face-down, encased by debris, with little space to breathe.

Rescuers covered her face and put her into a bodybag as her father Ahmad watched on, holding his head in despair. He did not utter a word as she was handed over to him.

Cika was buried at a nearby cemetery less than an hour after being found.

At the funeral, a cleric tried to calm a visibly emotional Ahmad.

Cika was then wrapped in a white sheet and lowered into the ground by three men as exhausted volunteers and firefighters watched.

Indonesia’s national disaster mitigation agency chief, Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, raised the toll from the quake to 310 on Friday.

He said at least 24 people remain missing after the quake caused landslides and building collapses in the West Java town of Cianjur.

– ‘Makes me sad’ –

The focus of the search had been the girl’s grandmother’s house, across the road from the family home, where her mother believed she had been playing when the earthquake struck.

“She was playing outside, I was cooking in the kitchen, suddenly the earthquake happened, so fast, only two seconds, my house collapsed,” her mother Imas Masfahitah, 34, told AFP at the scene on Thursday.

“Whatever happens, I will try to accept it,” she added, crying as she held her daughter’s sandals.

Hopes of a happy outcome had been raised following the dramatic rescue of a six-year-old boy, Azka, on Wednesday evening, which was described as a “miracle” after he survived more than two days in the rubble without food or water.

“The mother was very hopeful. Azka survived, while Cika didn’t. That’s what makes me sad,” rescuer Kolibu said.

Before Cika was found, authorities said hammering rain and potentially deadly aftershocks were hampering rescue efforts.

Henri Alfiandi, head of the national search and rescue agency, said 17 bodies were recovered on Friday despite the challenges.

“The problems are the unstable soil, the thickness of the landslide pile aggravated by continuous rain, and the concerns of aftershocks,” he told broadcaster Kompas TV.

He said the emergency period for the search and rescue effort would last a week until Monday and authorities would evaluate if it needed to be extended if all the missing were not found.

Many of those killed in the quake were children, some in classes at school, according to officials.

More than 2,000 people were injured and 56,000 houses were damaged in the quake. 

More than 62,000 people were forced to evacuate to at least 110 shelters around the Cianjur area, Suharyanto said, leaving many homeless without adequate supplies.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

India’s top court decided Friday to proceed with a case weighing legal recognition of same-sex marriages, four years after the same institution struck down a colonial-era ban on gay sex.

The case, brought by a gay couple who informally exchanged vows last year, could pave the way for India to become the second jurisdiction in Asia to recognise same-sex marriage after Taiwan.

Petitioners Abhay Dange and Supriyo Chakraborty told the New Indian Express newspaper after their wedding ceremony that they hoped “to live in a world with no closets”. They are now asking the Supreme Court for the same marital rights as straight couples. 

A bench led by chief justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud asked the government to file its response within a month.

Any court ruling in favour of the couple’s petition would trump opposition from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which has resisted previous attempts to formally recognise same-sex relationships in lower courts.

Last year, the government told the Delhi high court that same-sex marriages would “cause complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country”.

Friday’s Supreme Court decision to allow the case to proceed comes after significant rulings on sexual and family issues in recent years, including the decriminalisation of adultery and extending India’s already broad abortion rights. 

In 2018, the court struck down a statute introduced by the British more than 150 years earlier that criminalised gay sex and threatened participants in consensual same-sex relationships with up to a decade in prison. 

The law was rarely enforced but critics said it was routinely used to harass and intimidate India’s gay community.

Its repeal saw jubilant celebrations by LGBTQ Indians across the country and a raucous atmosphere at the annual Pride march in the capital New Delhi later that year. 

LGBTQ Indians still risk being shunned by their families and harassed by the public, but there have been signs of a shift in attitudes among the country’s urban middle classes. 

Nuanced and complex depictions of LGBTQ characters are a staple of popular media, such as Bollywood actress Kubbra Sait’s acclaimed performance as a transgender femme fatale in the Netflix series “Sacred Games”. 

Several public figures have come out in recent years including star sprinter Dutee Chand, who in 2019 became the first prominent Indian athlete to reveal she was in a same-sex relationship.

“Squid Game” actor O Yeong-su has been indicted on charges of sexual misconduct, South Korea’s prosecutor told AFP Friday.

The 78-year-old in January became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actor in a series for his performance as a seemingly vulnerable old man in the mega-hit Netflix dystopian thriller.

According to local reports, the South Korean prosecution indicted him without detention on Thursday for allegedly improperly touching a woman’s body in 2017.

Everything reported by local media on O “is not factually incorrect,” an official from the Suwon District Prosecutor’s Office told AFP, without giving further details.

Following the news, local reports said Seoul’s culture ministry decided to stop airing a government commercial — about its regulatory innovation — featuring O.

“Squid Game” — which imagines a macabre world in which marginalised people are pitted against one another in traditional children’s games that turn deadly — became Netflix’s most popular series launch ever, drawing 111 million fans in less than four weeks after debuting in 2021.

It is still one of the most popular shows on the platform.

The show’s success has amplified South Korea’s increasingly outsized influence on global popular culture, following global fame won by the likes of K-pop band BTS and the Oscar-winning film “Parasite”.

Multiple figures in South Korea’s film industry — including late filmmaker Kim Ki-duk and actors Cho Jae-hyun and Oh Dal-su — have faced sexual assault allegations.

Six million people were on Friday under Covid lockdown in a Chinese city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, after clashes between police and workers furious over pay.

Authorities have ordered residents of eight districts in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, not to leave the area for the next five days, setting up barriers around “high-risk” apartment buildings and checkpoints to restrict travel.

There have been only a handful of coronavirus cases in the city but under China’s zero-Covid policy even tiny outbreaks can spark gruelling lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing.

The lockdown in Zhengzhou follows protests by hundreds of employees over conditions and pay at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory on the outskirts of the city, with images of fresh rallies emerging Friday.

Footage published on social media and geolocated by AFP showed a large group of people walking down a street in the east of the city, some holding signs.

“So many people,” a man can be heard saying. AFP was unable to verify precisely when the protests took place.

Workers previously told AFP the demonstrations had begun over a dispute over promised bonuses at the factory.

Scores of workers left the plant Thursday with payouts of 10,000 yuan ($1,400) from Foxconn.

On Friday posts on Chinese short-video apps said the Taiwanese tech giant was turning away many of thousands of people who had answered hiring ads from the firm after a raft of departures last month.

Some who arrived to take up newly vacant posts had been sent to quarantine hotels outside the plant despite in the end being refused a job, multiple workers told AFP.

“We are in a quarantine hotel, and have no way of going to the Foxconn campus,” one worker who asked to remain anonymous said.

Another employee said those turned away had been promised 10,000 yuan in compensation for being forced to quarantine, but had received only a fraction of that amount.

“They are not letting us start the job and we cannot return home,” one worker isolated in nearby Ruzhou city told AFP.

He added that there had been multiple small protests in other Henan cities by Foxconn workers made to quarantine and unable to start work.

– ‘Please share this’ –

Other videos posted online on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed angry workers knocking down furniture and swearing at police in the lobby of a hotel in Nanyang city, about 280 kilometres (174 miles) from Zhengzhou.

The workers appeared to have been quarantined in the hotel, with a man heard saying in one clip: “Everyone who’s online, please share this.”

The unrest in Zhengzhou comes against the backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid.

China’s daily caseload stood at 33,000 on Friday — a record for the country of 1.4 billion although small by global standards.

The unrelenting zero-Covid push has sparked sporadic protests and hit productivity in the world’s second-largest economy.

In the southeastern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, millions of people have been ordered not to leave their homes without a negative virus test.

Social media footage published on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed residents of the city’s Haizhu district dismantling barricades and throwing objects at police in hazmat suits.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” one police officer holding a shield can be heard asking as he and his colleagues back away from the projectiles.

Nearly half of Kyiv residents were still without electricity Friday, the Ukrainian capital’s mayor said, two days after Russian strikes battered the country’s already struggling energy grid.

“A third of houses in Kyiv already have heating and specialists continue to restore it. Half of consumers are still without electricity,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

“During the day, energy companies plan to reconnect electricity for all consumers on an alternating basis,” he wrote on Telegram, as temperatures approached freezing.

The head of national electricity operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said repair work was ongoing across the country and that the grid had already “passed the most difficult stage” after the most recent attacks.

Millions of Ukrainians spent Thursday without power, after Russia earlier fired around 70 missiles and launched attack drones at water and electricity facilities across the country.

The systematic Russian attacks have been denounced by Ukraine’s allies as a “war crime” and come in the wake of a string of military setbacks for Russia on the frontlines.

Moscow has said it is only targeting military-linked infrastructure and blamed Kyiv for the impact the blackouts have had on civilians, saying Ukraine can end that suffering by agreeing to Russian demands.