(Reuters) – The death toll from a violent storm that whipped up tornadoes in the southern and midwestern regions of the United States rose to at least 32 over the weekend, according to officials and media reports.

In Memphis, Tennessee, two children and an adult were found dead on Saturday after the storm’s heavy winds knocked trees onto several houses, according to the Memphis Police Department.

In Tennessee’s McNairy County, officials reported that an additional two people had died, having reported seven deaths earlier on Saturday, according to local media. The Tennessee Department of Health on Sunday reported that there were an additional three weather-related deaths in three more counties, but did not provide more details.

In Owen County, Indiana, the bodies of a couple were found at a campground in McCormick’s Creek State Park, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Another 15 deaths from the storm, which generated tornadoes in several areas, were earlier reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Delaware, Mississippi and Alabama. Scores of people were injured and many buildings damaged or destroyed.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared a “major disaster” in Arkansas on Sunday, ordering federal aid to help with the recovery.

The president said in a statement on Sunday afternoon that he and wife Jill Biden were praying for the people impacted by the weekend storms and ordered relevant federal officials “to help with immediate needs and long-term rebuilding.”

“We know families across America are mourning the loss of loved ones, desperately waiting for news of others fighting for their lives, and sorting through the rubble of their homes and businesses,” he said.

The National Storm Prediction Center warned of severe weather on Sunday in parts of north and northeast Texas around Dallas and Fort Worth, including very large hail, significant wind gusts and a “strong tornado or two.” Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was under a ground-stop order for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon, and flights were delayed as heavy rain, hail and strong winds hit the area.

Similarly severe weather, including thunderstorms, was forecast for later this week in much of the Midwest between Chicago and Little Rock, Arkansas, the center said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis)

By Mark Trevelyan and Felix Light

(Reuters) – Well-known Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed by a bomb blast in a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday in what appeared to be the second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s state Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder investigation. St Petersburg’s governor said that 25 people were wounded and 19 of them were being treated in hospital.

It was not immediately known who was behind the killing. The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Sunday he would “not blame the Kyiv regime” for it.

But another leading Russian official pointed the finger at Ukraine, without providing evidence. A Ukrainian presidential adviser said “domestic terrorism” was breaking out in Russia.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry made no accusations of involvement in the attack, but said silence in Western capitals exposed hypocrisy over expressions of concern for journalists.

Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, had more than 560,000 followers on Telegram and was one of the most prominent of the military bloggers who have championed Russia’s war effort in Ukraine while often criticising the army top brass.

“We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be as we like it,” he was shown saying in a video last September at a Kremlin ceremony in which President Vladimir Putin claimed four partly occupied regions of Ukraine as Russian territory – a move rejected as illegal by most countries.

TASS news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying the bomb was hidden in a miniature statue that was handed to Tatarsky as he addressed a group of people in the cafe.

Mash, a Telegram channel with links to Russian law enforcement, posted a video that appeared to show Tatarsky, microphone in hand, being presented with a statuette of a helmeted soldier. It said the explosion happened minutes later.

Prigozhin said that the cafe previously belonged to him, but he has since given it to “patriotic” activists who have been holding meetings there.

Reuters was not able to independently confirm that.

Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed leader of the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is occupied by Russia, suggested publicly that Ukraine was to blame.

“He was killed vilely. Terrorists cannot do otherwise. The Kyiv regime is a terrorist regime. It needs to be destroyed, there’s no other way to stop it,” he said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the absence of reaction in Washington, London and Paris “speaks for itself given their ostensible concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of expression.

“The reaction in Kyiv is striking where those who receive Western grants are in no way concealing their delight at what has happened,” she wrote on the ministry’s website.

‘RIPE ABSCESS’

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, wrote on Twitter that it had only been a matter of time – “like the bursting of a ripe abscess” – before Russia would be consumed by what he called domestic terrorism.

“The spiders are eating each other in a jar,” he said.

Tatarsky’s death followed the killing last August of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultra-nationalist, in a car-bomb attack near Moscow.

Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukraine’s secret services of carrying out that attack, which Putin called “evil”. Ukraine denied involvement.

Prigozhin said on Sunday that both killings were likely the work of “a group of radicals hardly related to the government,” but not of Ukraine.

Russia’s war bloggers, an assortment of military correspondents and freelance commentators with army backgrounds, have enjoyed broad freedom from the Kremlin to publish hard-hitting views on the war, now in its 14th month. Putin even made one of them a member of his human rights council last year.

They reacted with shock to the news of Tatarsky’s death.

“He was in the hottest spots of the special military operation and he always came out alive. But the war found him in a Petersburg cafe,” said Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the name War Gonzo.

(Additional reporting by Ron Popeski and Jake Cordell; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Stephen Coates)

By Laurie Chen, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Sakura Murakami

BEIJING/TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi met his Chinese counterpart on Sunday and urged Beijing to promptly release a detained Japanese national.

Hayashi’s meeting with Qin Gang was the first visit to Beijing for a Japanese foreign minister in over three years, as the two rival Asian powers seek common ground amid rising regional tension.

An employee of Astellas Pharma Inc was detained in China for unknown reasons, a company spokesperson said a week ago. Five Japanese nationals are currently detained in China, two of whom have already been tried and found guilty, according to Japan’s foreign ministry.

“I made a protest against the recent detention of a Japanese person in Beijing, and made a strong point of our position on the matter, including the early release of this national,” Hayashi told reporters.

Qin responded that China “will handle (the case) according to the law”, according to a readout from the Chinese foreign ministry.

Hayashi said Japan is seeking transparency over the legal process regarding detentions and has asked for China to secure a fair and safe business environment. He did not elaborate on China’s reaction.

“This happened when the Chinese government is trying to promote Japanese investment to China, and we see a discrepancy there,” deputy press secretary of Japan’s Foreign Ministry Yukiko Okano said to reporters on Sunday, adding that this point was raised by Hayashi during his meetings in Beijing.

The Japanese minister also conveyed Tokyo’s grave concerns over an increase of China’s military activity, including its collaboration with Russia and its maritime presence in the East China Sea, he said.

“We both affirmed the importance of continuing to have a dialogue on issues including national security,” Hayashi said.

Hayashi said he spoke to Qin about the “importance of ensuring peace and stability in the Taiwan strait”. Beijing said Qin warned Japan “not to interfere in the Taiwan issue or undermine China’s sovereignty in any form”, stressing that Taiwan is “the core of China’s core interests”.

“Japan’s position has not changed, not with this remark, and not in recent years,” Okano said when asked for comment on Beijing’s account.

Tension has been rising over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. The democratically elected government in Taipei rejects Beijing’s claims and says only its people can decide its future.

Japan also lodged a diplomatic complaint in August after five ballistic missiles launched by the Chinese military fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone, near disputed islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

After Tokyo on Friday announced export restrictions on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, following the U.S., Qin warned his counterpart “not to play accomplice to an evildoer”.

The curbs are aligned with similar measures from the U.S. and the Netherlands, aimed at restricting China’s ability to make advanced chips.

Hayashi told reporters the restrictions “are not aimed at any specific country”.

Despite their differences, China and Japan agreed to restart trilateral talks with South Korea, Hayashi said, calling the agreement “an important achievement” from his meeting with Qin.

“We agreed to continue communicating closely on various levels, including the foreign ministerial and leadership levels,” Hayashi added.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November, the first bilateral summit in almost three years.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, and Laurie Chen in Beijing; Editing by Christopher Cushing and William Mallard)

By Anne Kauranen and Essi Lehto

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s left-wing Prime Minister Sanna Marin conceded defeat on Sunday in the Nordic country’s parliamentary election as the opposition right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) claimed victory in a tightly fought contest.

The pro-business NCP was expected to win 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, narrowly ahead of the nationalist Finns Party with 46 seats and Marin’s Social Democrats on 43 seats, justice ministry election data showed with all ballots counted.

“We got the biggest mandate,” NCP leader Petteri Orpo said in a speech to followers, vowing to “fix Finland” and its economy.

He will get the first chance at forming a coalition to obtain majority in parliament as Marin’s era as prime minister was expected to end.

“We have gained support, we have gained more seats (in parliament). That’s an excellent achievement, even if we did not finish first today,” the prime minister said in a speech to party members.

Marin, 37, the world’s youngest prime minister when she took office in 2019, is considered by fans around the globe as a millennial role model for progressive new leaders, but at home she has faced criticism for her partying and her government’s public spending.

While she remains very popular among many Finns, particularly young moderates, she antagonised some conservatives with lavish spending on pensions and education they see as not frugal enough.

The NCP has led in polls for almost two years although its lead had melted away in recent months. It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70% of GDP since Marin took office in 2019.

Orpo accused Marin of eroding Finland’s economic resilience at a time when Europe’s energy crisis, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, has hit the country hard and the cost of living has increased.

Orpo has said he will negotiate with all groups to obtain a majority in parliament, while Marin has said her Social Democrats may govern with the NCP but will not go into government with the Finns Party.

Marin called the Finns Party “openly racist” during a debate in January – an accusation the nationalist group rejected.

The Finns Party’s main goal is to reduce what leader Riikka Purra has called “harmful” immigration from developing countries outside the European Union. It also calls for austerity policies to curb deficit spending, a stance it shares with the NCP.

Most notable of Marin’s foreign policy actions has been her push, along with President Sauli Niinisto, for the country to make a watershed policy U-turn by seeking NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That process is now almost complete, with Helsinki expected to join within days after all the Western defence alliance’s 30 members approved the accession.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen, Essi Lehto, Terje Solsvik and Attila Cser in Helsinki; Editing by Justyna Pawlak, Frances Kerry, Philippa Fletcher, David Holmes and Andrew Heavens)