By Natalia Zinets

(Reuters) -Ukraine said on Sunday that renewed Russian shelling had damaged three radiation sensors and hurt a worker at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, in the second hit in consecutive days on Europe’s largest nuclear facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called Saturday night’s shelling “Russian nuclear terror” that warranted more international sanctions, this time on Moscow’s nuclear sector.

“There is no such nation in the world that could feel safe when a terrorist state fires at a nuclear plant,” Zelenskiy said in a televised address on Sunday.

However, the Russian-installed authority of the area said it was Ukraine that hit the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility.

Reuters could not verify either side’s version.

Events at the Zaporizhzhia site – where Kyiv had previously alleged that Russia hit a power line on Friday – have alarmed the world.

“(It) underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster,” International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday.

Elsewhere, a deal to unblock Ukraine’s food exports and ease global shortages gathered pace as another four ships sailed out of Ukrainian Black Sea ports while the first cargo vessel since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion docked.

The four outgoing ships had almost 170,000 tonnes of corn and other food. They were sailing under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to try to help ease soaring global food prices that have resulted from the war.

Before Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion, which Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports. The disruption since then has threatened famine in some parts of the world.

BATTLE FOR DONBAS

Putin’s troops are trying to gain full control of the Donbas region of east Ukraine where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014.

Russian forces stepped up their attacks north and northwest of Donetsk city in the Donbas on Sunday, Ukraine’s military said. The Russians attacked Ukrainian positions near the heavily fortified settlements of Piski and Avdiivka, as well as shelling other locations in the Donetsk region, it said.

In addition to tightening its grip over the Donbas, Russia is entrenching its position in southern Ukraine, where it has gathered troops in a bid to prevent a potential counter-offensive near Kherson, Kyiv has said.

As the fighting rages, Russians installed in the wake of Moscow’s invasion have toyed with the idea of joining Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia. Last month, a senior pro-Russian official said a referendum on such a move was likely “towards next year.”

In his video address, Zelenskiy said that any “pseudo-referendums” on occupied areas of his country joining Russia would eliminate the possibility of talks between Moscow and its Ukrainian counterparts or their allies.

“They will close for themselves any change of talks with Ukraine and the free world which the Russian side will clearly need at some point,” Zelenskiy said.

Also Sunday, Ukraine’s chief war crimes prosecutor said almost 26,000 suspected war crimes committed since the invasion were being investigated, with 135 people charged, of whom 15 were in custody. Russia denies targeting civilians.

Shelling and missile strikes were reported overnight in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and around military sites in the western region of Vinnitsya, among other places, Ukrainian authorities said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Beyond Ukraine, a proxy battle played out at the International Chess Federation where former Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich won a second term as president, defeating Ukraine’s Andrii Baryshpolets.

And after days of controversy, Amnesty International apologised for “distress and anger” caused by a report accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians. That had infuriated Zelenskiy and prompted the head of the rights group’s Ukraine office to resign.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Raphael Satter; Editing by John Stonestreet, Frances Kerry, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)

By Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA -Cuba appeared to make progress on Sunday bringing under control a fire at its main oil storage facility that has killed one firefighter, drawing on help from Mexico and Venezuela to fight the raging flames.

A lightning strike on Friday ignited one of eight storage tanks at the Matanzas super tanker port 60 miles east of Havana. A second tank caught fire on Saturday, catching firefighters and others at the scene by surprise. Sixteen people were missing.

Susely Morfa Gonzalez, head of the Communist Party in Matanzas, told local reporters “there are no flames at this time, only white smoke” coming from the first tank hit by lightning.

She said a second tank was still burning, sending up a huge column of black smoke, while a third, which on Saturday night officials feared would explode “is being cooled with water at intervals, in order to maintain an adequate temperature that prevents combustion.”

A secondary fire feeding off oil leaking from the area was also extinguished. No oil had contaminated the Matanzas Bay, officials said.

The second explosion on Saturday injured more than 100 people, many first responders, and 24 remain hospitalized, five of those in critical condition.

“We are facing a fire of such magnitude that it is very difficult to control in Cuba, where there are not all the means that are required,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told reporters.

On Sunday, 82 Mexican and 35 Venezuelan personnel experienced in combating fuel blazes joined the effort, bringing four planeloads of fire-fighting chemicals.

“The help is important, I would say that it is vital and it is going to be decisive,” Diaz-Canel said. Cuba had been using water and helicopters to battle the flames.

Jorge Pinon, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Latin America and Caribbean Energy and Environment Program, said each tank at the facility could store 300,000 barrels and provided fuel to electric plants.

Cuba has been suffering daily blackouts and fuel shortages. The loss of fuel and storage capacity is likely to aggravate the situation, which has spurred small local protests in the last few months.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Daniel Wallis)

(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that if Russia proceeded with referendums in occupied areas of his country on joining Russia, there could be no talks with Ukraine or its international allies.

Russian forces and their separatist allies now hold large swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and in southern areas after launching what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” into its neighbour’s territory. Officials in both areas have raised the possibility of holding referendums.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Kyiv was holding fast to its position of yielding no territory to Russia.

“Our country’s position remains what it always has been. We will give up nothing of what is ours,” Zelenskiy said.

“If the occupiers proceed along the path of pseudo-referendums they will close for themselves any chance of talks with Ukraine and the free world, which the Russian side will clearly need at some point.”

Russian and Ukrainian officials held several sessions of talks soon after Russian forces launched their invasion of Ukraine in February.

But little progress was made and no meetings have been held since late March, with each side blaming the other for the halt to contacts.

Russian forces hold most of Kherson region in southern Ukraine and officials in charge have suggested a referendum on joining Russia could be held within the coming weeks or months.

In Donbas, Russian proxies seized chunks of territory in 2014, held independence referendums and proclaimed “people’s republics” in Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The Kremlin recognised the republics on the eve of the February invasion.

The governor of Luhansk region — almost entirely under Russian control for several weeks — suggested over the weekend that Russia was preparing for a new referendum in newly captured areas and was offering residents benefits for taking part.

(Reporting by Ronald Popeski; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Lisa Shumaker)

RIO DE JANEIRO – A German diplomat in Rio de Janeiro, Uwe Herbert Hahn, was arrested on Saturday night in connection with the death of his Belgian husband, police said.

Hahn said that his husband, Walter Biot, had died on Friday when he fell from their apartment in the Ipanema neighborhood after suffering a sudden illness.

But police arrested him on suspicion of murder after their forensics found bloodstains in the apartment and the autopsy of Biot’s body showed multiple wounds. Television images showed police taking Hahn away in a police car.

“The circumstances of the death are evident. We realized there was a violent death from the traces of injury in different parts of the body,” police investigator Camila Lourenco told reporters.

The foreign ministry in Berlin said its embassy in Brazilia and consulate in Rio de Janeiro were in close contact with the Brazilian authorities investigating the case. It declined to give any further details due to ongoing investigations and to protect individuals’ privacy.

According to Brazilian news portal G1, the couple had been together for 23 years. Biot was 52.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Reporting by Rodrigo Viga; Writing by Marcela Ayres; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

By Jeff Mason

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. -U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 for a second consecutive day on Sunday and ended his isolation at the White House with a trip to his vacation home in Delaware and a reunion with his wife, first lady Jill Biden.

Biden has been holed up at the White House for more than two weeks with COVID, leading to canceled trips and events even as his symptoms stayed mild.

The president tested negative on Saturday but waited until a second negative test on Sunday before ending his isolation.

“He will safely return to public engagement and presidential travel,” Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a memo.

Biden flew to Delaware on Sunday morning.

“I’m feeling good,” Biden, 79, told reporters outside the White House as he was departing for Rehoboth Beach.

Biden first emerged from isolation at the White House on July 27 after testing positive for COVID-19 for the first time on July 21. He tested positive again on July 30 in what O’Connor described as a rebound case seen in a small percentage of people who take the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

Biden plans to travel to Kentucky on Monday. His return to COVID-negative status will allow him to participate in bill signings at the White House this week to celebrate recent legislative victories on semiconductor manufacturing, veterans’ health, and potentially a climate and healthcare bill that was making its way through the Senate on Sunday.

Biden suffered mild symptoms, including body aches and cough, during his initial bout with COVID-19. The president is vaccinated and boosted against the disease.

During his illness, Biden has made a point of following or exceeding guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for people with COVID cases. He worked from the White House residence and enjoyed the company of his dog while the first lady stayed away to avoid infection.

Biden and his wife had not seen each other in person since he first tested positive for COVID-19.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Rami Ayyub Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Chizu Nomiyama)

By Brent Lang

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – “Bullet Train,” a John Wick-ian romp with Brad Pitt in the aisle seat, arrived in theaters with a $30.1 million opening weekend. That’s enough to top the domestic box office chart, but it’s only a so-so result given “Bullet Train’s” $90 million price tag and Pitt’s star power. The Sony Pictures release will need to maintain its momentum in the coming weeks as it tries to break even or turn a profit.

“Bullet Train” is trying to prove that an action flick that isn’t based on a comic book or a toy-line can defy the odds and resonate with audiences. But part of the issue for the film is that critics weren’t on board. “Bullet Train” landed a mediocre 41% approval rating on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviewers faulting the movie for being overly derivative of the work of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge was mixed on “Bullet Train,” writing that “neither the characters nor the film they inhabit are particularly deep.”

“Bullet Train” was directed by David Leitch, who once served as a stunt double for Pitt before moving on to oversee the likes of “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2.” It centers on a hapless hitman whose mission to nab a suitcase full of cash on high-speed train in Japan, devolves into double crosses and brutal fights with an army of competing killers, thieves and social deviants.

Universal and Amblin’s “Easter Sunday,” the weekend’s other major release, stumbled in its opening frame, earning a meagre $5.3 million for an eighth place finish on domestic charts. “Easter Sunday” stars stand-up comic Jo Koy as an actor who attends his dysfunctional Filipino American family’s Easter Sunday celebration. The good news for Universal and Amblin is “Easter Sunday” was a modest bet, carrying a price tag of $17 million.

“DC League of Super-Pets,” an animated offering from Warner Bros., nabbed second place with $11.2 million. After two weeks, “Super-Pets” boasts a domestic gross of $45.1 million, a disappointing result given its $90 million production budget. Under its new corporate owner, Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to shake up its cinematic universe of DC Comics characters, a change of course that resulted in the company’s controversial decision this week to scrap “Batgirl” after the movie had been completed. Instead of debuting on HBO Max as originally planned or being retro-fitted for a theatrical run, the film will now become a tax write-down.

Universal’s “Nope” came in third with $8.5 million. That brings the twisty UFO thriller from Jordan Peele to $97.9 million at the domestic box office, an impressive result for a movie that, like “Bullet Train,” wasn’t derived from some preexisting piece of IP. Disney and Marvel’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” and Universal and Illumination’s “Minions: Rise of Gru” rounded out the top five, earning $7.6 million and $7.1 million, respectively. That brings the Thor sequel’s stateside total to $316.1 million, while the “Despicable Me” spinoff has now earned $334.6 million domestically.

In limited release, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” grossed $226,526 on 6 screens in New York and Los Angeles, which came out to a $37,754 per-screen average. The A24 horror film follows a group of rich 20-somethings at a hurricane party at a remote family mansion that becomes the locus of a lot of blood-letting. The ensemble cast features former “SNL” star Pete Davidson, “The Hate U Give’s” Amandla Stenberg and “Borat 2” breakout Maria Bakalova.

On the milestone front, Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” supplanted “Titanic” as the seventh-biggest film ever at the domestic box office, earning $662 million in ticket sales. The sequel, now in its eleventh week of release, added $7 million to its total.

The domestic box office has experienced an impressive rebound in recent months; it’s a resurgence fueled by hits such as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World: Dominion.” The bad news for theaters is that “Bullet Train” is the last big-budget, major studio film this summer and there’s about the be a veritable desert when it comes to populist fare. Studio executives and theater owners privately say that there won’t be another blockbuster until “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” opens on Nov. 11. That’s a long time to wait, particularly for an exhibition industry that’s still trying to shake off the lingering impact of COVID closures and diminished attendance.

By Natalia Zinets and Daren Butler

KYIV/ISTANBUL – Four more ships carrying almost 170,000 tonnes of corn and other foodstuffs sailed from Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Sunday under a deal to unblock the country’s exports after Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian and Turkish officials said.

The United Nations and Turkey brokered the agreement last month after warnings that the halt in grain shipments caused by the conflict could lead to severe food shortages and even outbreaks of famine in parts of the world.

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said there were plans to step up shipments still further.

“We are gradually moving on to larger volumes of work. We plan to ensure the ability of the ports to handle at least 100 vessels per month in the near future,” he added.

Ukraine would soon also start exporting grain from its Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, an expansion that would let it send out a total of at least 3 million tonnes of goods a month, the minister said on Facebook.

Before Russia started what it calls its “special military operation”, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports. In peacetime, Ukraine exported up to 6 million tonnes of grain from its Black and Azov seaports every month.

The resumption of grain exports is being overseen by a Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul where Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. personnel are working.

The first cargo ship left Ukraine under the agreement on Monday last week, and another three followed on Friday.

The JCC said late on Saturday it had authorised five new vessels to pass through the Black Sea corridor: four vessels outbound from Ukraine’s Chornomorsk and Odesa ports, carrying 161,084 metric tonnes of foodstuffs, and one heading into Ukraine to pick up grain.

CORN, MEAL, SUNFLOWER OIL

The ships that left Ukrainian ports included Glory, with a cargo of 66,000 tonnes of corn bound for Istanbul, and Riva Wind, loaded with 44,000 tonnes of corn, heading for Turkey’s Iskenderun, the Turkish defence ministry said.

It said the other two vessels that left Ukraine were Star Helena, with a cargo of 45,000 tonnes of meal heading to China, and Mustafa Necati, carrying 6,000 tonnes of sunflower oil and heading for Italy.

Later on Sunday, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry said the bulk carrier Fulmar S, which had reached the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk on Saturday – the first foreign-flagged ship to arrive in Ukraine since the conflict – was ready for loading.

The JCC said it had nearly finished drafting procedures to implement the grain deal and they would be published in days.

It added that it had also authorized the movement, pending inspection, of Osprey S, inbound for Chornomorsk. That ship is currently at anchorage northwest of Istanbul.

The Turkish Defence Ministry said the JCC had completed inspections of the ship Rojen carrying 13,000 tonnes of corn to Britain, Polarnet which is taking 12,000 tonnes of corn to a Turkish port and Osprey S, which is heading to Ukraine.

On Saturday, the JCC completed its inspection of Navistar, the other one of three vessels that left Ukrainian ports on Friday.

The first ship to leave a Ukrainian port under the deal will not arrive in Lebanon on Sunday as planned, the Ukrainian embassy in Lebanon said. The Razoni left Odesa on Monday carrying 26,527 tonnes of corn.

The embassy told Reuters the ship was “having a delay” and “not arriving today,” with no details on a new arrival date or the cause of the delay. Refinitiv Eikon data showed the Razoni off the Turkish coast on Sunday morning.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Frances Kerry, Susan Fenton and Andrew Heavens)

PARIS – France on Sunday braced for a fourth heatwave this summer as its worst drought on record left parched villages without safe drinking water and farmers warned of a looming milk shortage in the winter.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s office has set up a crisis team to tackle a drought that has forced scores of villages to rely on water deliveries by truck, prompted state-run utility EDF to curb nuclear power output and stressed crops.

Temperatures were expected to hit 37 Celsius in the southwest on Sunday before the baking hot air spreads north early in the week.

“This new heatwave is likely to set in,” La Chaine Meteo, similar to the U.S. cable service The Weather Channel, said.

National weather agency Meteo France said it was the worst drought since records began in 1958 and that the drought was expected to worsen until at least the middle of the month. On average, less than 1cm of rain fell across France in July.

The corn harvest is expected to be 18.5% lower this year compared with 2021, the agriculture ministry has said, just as Europeans contend with higher food prices as a result of lower-than-normal grain exports from Russia and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a shortage of fodder because of the drought meant there could be a shortage of milk in the months ahead, the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions said.

Nuclear operator EDF last week reduced its power output at a plant in southwestern France due to high river temperatures on the Garonne, and it has issued rolling warnings for reactors along the Rhone river.

The hot weather has compounded the utility’s problems, with corrosion problems and extended maintenance at half of its 56 reactors reducing capacity as Europe faces an energy crunch.

Water restrictions are in place across almost all of mainland France to conserve water, including in many places hosepipe and irrigation bans.

(Reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

KYIV – Ukraine is investigating almost 26,000 suspected war crime cases committed since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion and has charged 135 people, its chief war crimes prosecutor told Reuters.

Of those charged, around 15 are in Ukrainian custody and the remaining 120 remain at large, Yuriy Bilousov, head of the war crimes department of the Prosecutor General’s office ,said in an interview in the capital Kyiv.

Thirteen cases have been submitted to courts and seven verdicts have been issued, he said.

In May, a 21-year-old captured Russian soldier became the first person to be convicted in a war crimes trial in Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing an unarmed civilian.

“Sometimes we’ve been asked why we prosecute such…low-ranked officers. It’s just because they are physically here… If generals were here physically and we were able to capture (them), we would definitely prosecute generals,” Bilousov said.

(Reporting by Sergiy Karazy; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Mark Heinrich)

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – Flash flooding triggered by a near-record downpour on Friday over one of the hottest, driest spots on Earth has stranded nearly 1,000 people inside California’s Death Valley National Park and forced its temporary closure, park officials said.

About 60 cars belonging to park visitors and staff were buried in several feet of debris at the Inn at Death Valley, an historic luxury hotel near the park headquarters in Furnace Creek, site of a spring-fed oasis near the Nevada border, the park said in a statement.

Floodwaters also pushed trash dumpsters into parked cars, shoving vehicles into each other, and swamped many facilities, some hotel rooms and business offices, it said.

No injuries were reported. But about 500 visitors and 500 park staff were unable to leave the park because all roads into and out of Death Valley were closed, according to the statement.

A water treatment system that serves the Cow Creek area for park residents and offices was knocked out of service.

The flooding was unleashed by a torrential shower that dumped 1.46 inches (3.7 cm) of rain at Furnace Creek, nearly matching the previous daily record there of 1.47 inches measured from a downpour in 1988, park spokesperson Amy Wines said.

By comparison, the park averages 2.2 inches of rainfall per year, making it the driest place in North America. Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees C), Wines said.

Flash floods from monsoonal rains are a natural part of Death Valley’s ecology and occur somewhere in the park almost every year, constantly carving and reshaping its dramatic canyon landscape.

But flooding of a scale seen Friday last struck Death Valley in August 2004, forcing a 10-day closure of all its roads and killing two people whose vehicle was swept away, according to Wines.

The U.S. Park Service said no further monsoonal rain was expected imminently, but additional showers were forecast in the days ahead. It was not immediately clear how soon the park would reopen to road traffic.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Kim Coghill)

By Natalia Zinets

KYIV -Ukraine accused Russia on Sunday of again shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia, and called for new international sanctions on Moscow for “nuclear terror”.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power firm said Russian forces damaged three radiation sensors at the facility in renewed shelling on Saturday night, wounding a worker with shrapnel.

“Russian nuclear terror requires a stronger response from the international community – sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry and nuclear fuel,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.

The plant, in Russian-controlled territory, was also shelled on Friday. Moscow blames Ukrainian forces for the strikes.

Ukrainian nuclear company Energoatom said the latest Russian rocket attacks hit the plant’s dry storage facility, where 174 containers with spent nuclear fuel were stored in the open air.

“Consequently, timely detection and response in the event of a deterioration in the radiation situation or leakage of radiation from containers of spent nuclear fuel are not yet possible,” it said.

In a statement carried by Interfax news agency, the Russian-installed administration of occupied Enerhodar, where the plant’s employees live, said Ukraine had struck using a 220-mm Uragan multiple rocket launcher system.

“The administrative buildings and the adjacent territory of the storage facility were damaged,” it said

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said Friday’s shelling showed the risk of a nuclear disaster. Those shells hit a high-voltage power line, prompting the plant’s operators to disconnect a reactor despite no radioactive leak being detected.

The Zaporizhzhia plant was captured by Russian forces in early March in the opening stage of the war but is still run by Ukrainian technicians.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Frances Kerry and Andrew Cawthorne)