By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Russian warship on Sunday fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the southwestern Black Sea as it made its way northwards, the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month.

In July, Russia halted participation in the Black Sea grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export agricultural produce via the Black Sea. Moscow said that it deemed all ships heading to Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying weapons.

On Sunday, Russia said in a statement that its Vasily Bykov patrol ship had fired automatic weapons on the Palau-flagged Sukru Okan vessel after the ship’s captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection.

Russia said the vessel was making its way toward the Ukrainian port of Izmail. Refinitiv shipping data showed the ship was currently near the coast of Bulgaria and heading toward the Romanian port of Sulina.

“To forcibly stop the vessel, warning fire was opened from automatic weapons,” the Russian defence ministry said.

The Russian military boarded the vessel with the help of a Ka-29 helicopter, the ministry said.

“After the inspection group completed its work on board, the Sukru Okan continued on its way to the port of Izmail,” the defence ministry said.

A Turkish defence ministry official said he had heard an incident had taken place involving a ship heading for Romania, and that Ankara was looking into it.

Reuters could not immediately reach the vessel or its owners for comment.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the incident was a “clear violation of international law of the sea, an act of piracy and a crime against civilian vessels of a third country in the waters of other states.”

The adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, added on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that “Ukraine will draw all the necessary conclusions and choose the best possible response.”

Zelenskiy did not mention the incident in his nightly video address.

Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the southern military command, stressed that the Russian statement had not been confirmed by other official sources. “I believe that attention should be drawn to this and the peculiarities of hybrid warfare should be kept in mind,” she said in televised remarks.

“This statement could be a signal to all civilian vessels in the Black Sea,” she said, and called for all transportation and navigation there to be conducted under international guarantees. Russia, she added, was trying to assert its right to stop a ship or deploy aircraft in the Black Sea and “face no consequences.”

BLACK SEA AT WAR?

Firing on a merchant vessel will ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders about the potential dangers of getting ensnared in the Black Sea – the main route that both Ukraine and Russia use to get their agricultural produce to market.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s top agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets. Russia is also dominant in the fertiliser market.

Since Russia left the Black Sea grain deal, both Moscow and Kyiv have issued warnings and carried out attacks that have sent jitters through global commodity, oil and shipping markets.

Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side. Russia also struck Ukrainian grain facilities on the Danube.

Ukraine responded with a similar threat to ships approaching Russian or Russian-held Ukrainian ports. Ukraine also attacked a Russian oil tanker and a warship at its Novorossiysk naval base, next door to a major grain and oil port.

Ukraine and the West say Russia’s steps amount to a de-facto blockade of Ukrainian ports that threatens to cut off the flow of wheat and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to world markets.

Russia dismisses that interpretation and says the West failed to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara and Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv; Editing by Nick Macfie and Diane Craft)

By Ryan Woo and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) -China on Sunday condemned a brief U.S. visit by Taiwan Vice President William Lai, saying he was a separatist and “troublemaker through and through,” and Beijing would take strong steps to protect its sovereignty, drawing a rebuke from Taipei.

Lai, front-runner to be Taiwan’s next president at elections in January, arrived in New York late on Saturday for what was officially billed as a transit stopover on his way to Paraguay for the inauguration of its president.

China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has repeatedly denounced Lai’s trip, which includes another stopover in San Francisco on Wednesday on his way home.

The United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but is its most important international backer and arms supplier and is required by U.S. law to provide the island with means to defend itself.

Washington walks a fine line in allowing such stopovers by Taiwanese officials, telegraphing support for Taiwan without unduly angering China, which views them as provocative moves toward independence.

China’s foreign ministry in a statement issued shortly after Lai landed in New York said it opposed any form of visit by “Taiwan independence separatists” to the United States.

“Lai stubbornly adheres to the separatist position of Taiwan independence and is a troublemaker through and through,” the ministry said.

Taiwan is the “core of China’s core interests” and facts have shown again and again that the reason for the rise in tensions in the Taiwan Strait is Taiwan trying to “rely on the United States to seek independence,” it said.

“China is closely following developments and will take resolute and vigorous measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it said.

Taiwan’s China-policymaking Mainland Affairs Council said China was the real troublemaker, pointing to its standoff this month with the Philippines in the South China Sea and continued military harassment of Taiwan, among other actions.

“Our government firmly defends national sovereignty and security, guards the lines of defence of democracy and freedom, and will never back down, let alone capitulate,” the council said in a statement.

China especially dislikes Lai, who has previously described himself as a “practical worker for Taiwan independence,” though he has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he is not seeking to change the status quo and that only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

MILITARY DRILLS EXPECTED

Lai, greeted by supporters waving flags as he arrived at his New York hotel, posted on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was “looking forward to seeing friends and attending transit programs in New York.”

Laura Rosenberger, chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), a U.S. government-run non-profit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan, on X said she would meet Lai in San Francisco.

China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using Lai’s U.S. stopovers as a pretext to intimidate voters ahead of next year’s election and make them “fear war,” Taiwanese officials say.

The Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army, which is responsible for the area around Taiwan, on Sunday posted on its WeChat account a short video of fighter jets practicing dog fights at an undisclosed location.

It said its forces had recently been engaged in “high-intensity flight training.”

Lai’s stopovers come as Beijing and Washington are trying to improve relations.

That includes a possible U.S. visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which could pave the way for a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping this year.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei and Jeenah Moon in New York; Editing by William Mallard and Jamie Freed)

By Mike Blake and Marco Garcia

KAHULUI, Hawaii (Reuters) -The death toll from the Maui wildfires in Hawaii reached 93 on Saturday, according to the Maui County website, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, with the total likely to rise as cadaver dogs sift through the ruins of Lahaina.

The scale of the damage came into sharper focus four days after a fast-moving blaze leveled the historic resort town, obliterating buildings and melting cars.

The cost to rebuild Lahaina was estimated at $5.5 billion, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with more than 2,200 structures damaged or destroyed and more than 2,100 acres (850 hectares) burned.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green warned at a press conference on Saturday afternoon the death toll would continue to increase as more victims were discovered. Dogs trained to detect bodies have covered only 3% of the search area, Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier said.

Officials vowed to examine the state’s emergency notification systems after some residents questioned whether more could have been done to warn them before the fire overtook their homes. Some were forced to wade into the Pacific Ocean to escape.

Sirens stationed around the island – intended to warn of impending natural disasters – never sounded, and widespread power and cellular outages hampered other forms of alerts.

The state’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, said she was launching a review of the decision-making before and during the fire, while Green told CNN he had authorized a review of the emergency response.

Officials have described a nightmarish confluence of factors – including communications network failures, wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour (130 kph) from an offshore hurricane and a separate wildfire dozens of miles away – that made it nearly impossible to coordinate in real time with the emergency management agency that would typically issue warnings and evacuation orders.

“Over time, we’ll be able to figure out if we could have better protected people,” said Green. He said the multiple fires and dangerous winds created extraordinarily difficult conditions.

The death toll made the inferno, which erupted on Tuesday, Hawaii’s worst natural disaster, surpassing a tsunami that killed 61 people in 1960, a year after Hawaii became a U.S. state.

The latest figure exceeded the 85 people who perished in a 2018 fire in the town of Paradise, California, and was the highest toll from a wildfire since 1918, when the Cloquet fire in Minnesota and Wisconsin claimed 453 lives.

Officials have secured 1,000 hotel rooms for people who lost their homes and are arranging for rental properties to serve as housing at no cost to families, Green said. More than 1,400 people had been taken in at emergency shelters.

Deanne Criswell, the FEMA director, said the agency had 150 people on the ground and that additional search teams and dogs would be arriving within a day or two.

RAPID ADVANCE

Authorities began allowing residents back into west Maui on Friday, although the fire zone in Lahaina remained barricaded. Officials warned there could be toxic fumes from smoldering areas and said search operations were continuing.

Hundreds of people were still missing, though a precise count was not clear.

At a family assistance center in Kahului, June Lacuesta said he was trying to locate nine relatives who had not been heard from since Tuesday.

“When I see Lahaina town itself, I cannot describe the feelings I get,” said Lacuesta, who was headed to a church shelter next to continue his search.

The disaster began just after midnight on Tuesday when a brush fire was reported in the town of Kula, roughly 35 miles (55 km) from Lahaina.

About five hours later, power was knocked out in Lahaina. In updates posted on Facebook that morning, Maui County said a three-acre (1.2-hectare) brush fire cropped up in Lahaina around 6:30 a.m. but had been contained by 10 a.m.

Subsequent updates were focused on the Kula fire, which had burned hundreds of acres and forced some local evacuations. But at around 3:30 p.m., according to the county’s updates, the Lahaina fire flared up.

Some residents began evacuating while people including hotel guests on the town’s west side were instructed to shelter in place. In the ensuing hours, the county posted a series of evacuation orders on Facebook, though it was not clear whether residents were receiving them as people frantically fled the fast-advancing flames.

Some witnesses said they had little warning, describing their terror as the blaze destroyed the town around them in what seemed to be a matter of minutes.

(Reporting by Mike Blake in Kahului, Hawaii, and Marco Garcia in Honolulu, Hawaii; Additional reporting by David Ljunggren, Jorge Garcia and Sandra Stojanovic; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Raju Gopalakrishnan and William Mallard)

(Note: Strong language in paragraph 4)

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian border guards placed a new sign on Snake Island this weekend, recalling the early hours of Russia’s invasion when a comrade on the strategic Black Sea outcrop used a choice phrase to refuse to surrender to a warship.

“The next border sign will be installed in our Ukrainian Crimea after its liberation by the defence forces of Ukraine,” a uniformed man said, standing before a post painted blue and yellow like the country’s flag, in a video shared on Facebook late on Saturday by the head of the border service, Serhiy Deineko.

Tiny Snake Island became synonymous with Ukrainian resistance in the first hours of the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion, when Russian officers on the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva radioed Ukrainian guards stationed there and ordered them to surrender or die.

One of them radioed back “Russian warship, go [expletive] yourself.”

The phrase became a national slogan, depicted on Ukrainian billboards, T-shirts, and eventually a postage stamp.

The strategic island overlooks sea lanes to Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port.

On April 14, 2022, two Ukrainian missiles struck the Moskva, the biggest warship sunk in combat for 40 years. Russia says one sailor was killed in an accident. Western experts say they believe around half of the crew of about 450 perished at sea.

On June 30, Russia abandoned Snake Island after taking heavy losses trying to defend it. It called its withdrawal another “goodwill gesture.”

Russia still holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, Ukraine is pressing ahead with a counteroffensive in which it claimed further progress on Saturday.

“Historical justice has been restored,” Deineko said in his Facebook post. “Ukraine will definitely win!!!”

(Reporting by Maria Starkova in Kyiv and Elaine Monaghan in Washington; Writing by Elaine Monaghan; Editing by Sandra Maler)

(This Aug. 11 story has been refiled to remove video)

By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prosecutor David Weiss has spent years probing allegations involving President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Now as a U.S. special counsel, he will have a chance to dig deeper while facing intense scrutiny from the president’s opponents.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss, the Delaware U.S. attorney, to the special counsel job on Friday, two weeks after a federal judge held off accepting Weiss’s deal to let Hunter Biden plead guilty to failing to pay taxes and unlawfully owning a firearm while addicted to illegal drugs.

Garland said Weiss asked for the appointment.

After being appointed on Friday, Weiss said in a court filing that plea negotiations had stalled and the case would likely go to trial.

Weiss supervised the Biden investigation from its start in 2019, focusing initially on potential violations of tax and money laundering laws in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, particularly in China, Reuters has reported.

Weiss’s legal career has been built on a string of high-stakes assignments involving political and business figures in the Bidens’ home state of Delaware. Weiss’s firm represented the family of Anne Marie Fahey, a secretary of Delaware’s then-governor who went missing in 1996.

Weiss pressed federal authorities to get involved in the investigation, said Thomas Ostrander, who worked with Weiss at law firm Duane Morris, a move that helped lead to the murder conviction of Delaware’s former deputy attorney general.

Weiss also oversaw the prosecution of Christopher Tigani, a Delaware beer distributor who solicited donations for Joe Biden’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign and was later convicted of campaign finance violations, Politico reported.

Weiss’s office suffered a setback in a high-profile corporate case in 2021 when a federal appeals court overturned the convictions of four former Wilmington Trust executives accused of hiding troubled loans in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Prosecutors later agreed to drop all charges.

A TRUMP APPOINTEE, WEISS A REPUBLICAN TARGET NONE THE LESS

Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2018 named Weiss to his post as the top federal prosecutor in Delaware. Weiss agreed to stay in the job after Biden took office in January 2021 to complete his long-running probe into Hunter Biden’s finances.

Hunter Biden’s legal woes have been amplified by Republican lawmakers who have pressed unproven claims that his father, a Democrat, has benefited from his son’s business ventures.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was among Republican leaders to criticize Weiss after his special counsel appointment, asking how Weiss’s fairness could be trusted after he negotiated what McCarthy called a “sweetheart” plea deal that a judge would not approve.

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called him a “sham special counsel.”

Garland has previously vowed not to interfere in the criminal investigation and answered Republican criticism by emphasizing Weiss’s role leading the probe. Former colleagues described Weiss as an independent-minded prosecutor.

“I don’t think he’s thinking about the politics at all,” Ostrander told Reuters in June. “He’s simply thinking about doing his job and doing what’s appropriate under the circumstances.”

Weiss’s nomination as Delaware’s U.S. attorney was backed by Delaware’s two Democratic U.S. senators. He previously served as the top deputy in the office and was interim U.S. attorney during the early years of the 2009-2017 Obama administration.

Lawmakers credited Weiss with prosecuting corruption, money laundering, drug offenses and helping to secure federal funding to fight illegal drug trafficking in Delaware.

(This story has been refiled to correct date to 2019 from 2018 in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by David Bario and Howard Goller)

(This Aug. 11 story has been refiled to remove video)

By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden may be headed for a criminal trial, U.S. Special Counsel David Weiss said shortly after promotion into that role on Friday, in a sign that courtroom drama could play an outsized role in the 2024 presidential election.

A potential trial raises the possibility of an unprecedented spectacle in U.S. history: The son of a sitting president facing criminal charges while his father campaigns for re-election, likely against Republican Donald Trump, who faces at least three upcoming criminal trials of his own.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are also threatening an impeachment inquiry into unproven claims that President Biden benefited from his 54-year-old son’s business ventures.

Weiss, who has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2019, filed misdemeanor criminal tax and gun charges in June, but a federal judge refused to accept a proposed plea deal.

Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks between the two sides have since broken down. “The Government now believes that the case will not resolve short of a trial,” he wrote.

The filing came moments after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel status, giving him additional authority and independence to pursue the investigation.

Hunter Biden in July pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018 despite owing more than $100,000. He did not enter a plea in a separate case where he is charged with unlawfully owning a firearm while using illegal drugs, which is a felony.

TRUMP APPOINTEE

Weiss was originally appointed to his position as U.S. Attorney for Delaware by Trump and was allowed to stay on during the Biden administration.

As a special counsel, Weiss will be free from day-to-day supervision from the Justice Department and file charges anywhere in the United States. Garland can overrule his proposed actions but must notify Congress if he does so.

Weiss said he might bring different charges against Hunter Biden in Washington or California, where the alleged criminal conduct took place.

A lawyer for Hunter Biden said he expected Weiss not to bend to political pressures.

“Whether in Delaware, Washington, D.C. or anywhere else, we expect a fair resolution not infected by politics and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that,” lawyer Chris Clark said in a statement.

Weiss will produce a report when his work is done, Garland said, and the Justice Department will make as much of it public as is possible.

“The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” Garland told a press conference.

Republicans have accused the elder Biden of profiting from his son’s business ventures in Ukraine and China, though they have yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in July that the chamber might launch an impeachment inquiry in the autumn.

The White House declined to comment. Biden officials have previously dismissed Republican allegations as “insane conspiracy theories” and has said that Biden did not participate in his son’s business affairs.

Hunter Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant and investment banker and has said he has struggled with alcoholism and crack cocaine use.

Republicans said Weiss lacked credibility to continue the investigation. “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a Special Counsel?” McCarthy said.

Weiss is the third special counsel appointed by Garland to investigate politically sensitive matters.

One of those, Jack Smith, has filed criminal charges against Trump in two separate cases, while another, Robert Hur, is probing whether Biden mishandled classified documents after he left office as vice president.

In previous administrations, special counsels have investigated the outing of a CIA agent and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Hunter Biden has been a focus of several Republican congressional committees.

One former associate told the House Oversight Committee that Hunter gave an impression that he emphasized his family ties while he was doing business in Ukraine nearly a decade ago, while his father was vice president. That witness, Devon Archer, said Hunter spoke with his father daily but said the conversations did not involve business dealings.

Trump also has frequently mentioned the younger Biden in an attempt to tar his father as the two gear up for a possible rematch in the 2024 presidential election. His spokesperson Stephen Cheung said Weiss should “quickly conclude” that Biden and his son “should face the required consequences.”

A June Reuters/Ipsos poll found half of Americans, including 75% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats, believed the younger Biden received preferential treatment from Weiss. But most said that would not affect their vote next year.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Jeff Mason, Rami Ayyub, Moira Warburton, Jacqueline Thomsen and David Ljunggren; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)