Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy cautioned that Russia was “planning new strikes” on his country, urging defence forces and citizens to be prepared to withstand a new week of strain on the power grid amid freezing temperatures.

* “We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know this for a fact,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. “And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down.”

* In Kyiv, snow fell and temperatures hovered around freezing on Sunday as millions in and around the Ukrainian capital struggled with disruptions to electricity supply and central heating caused by the waves of Russian air strikes.

* City authorities said workers were close to completing restoration of power, water and heat, but high consumption levels meant some blackouts had been imposed.

* Zelenskiy criticised Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, saying he had not done enough to help beleaguered residents. Klitschko, a former professional boxer, hit back, saying the criticism was out of place amid Russia’s military campaign.

* The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russian troops had shelled a dozen villages in Donetsk in Ukraine’s east, including the main targets of Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

* Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russian forces had launched several failed attacks on the town of Soledar, near Bakhmut, and had taken heavy losses in a separate push towards Avdiivka.

* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

The head of Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy firm said There were signs that Russian forces might be preparing to leave the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which they seized in March.

* Ukraine has accused the Kremlin of reviving the “genocidal” tactics of Josef Stalin as Kyiv commemorated a Soviet-era famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the winter of 1932-33.

* Exports of Ukraine’s grain will not reach 3 million tonnes in November as Russia tries to limit ship inspections at ports, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said. In October, some 4.2 million tonnes of grain left Ukrainian ports, Kubrakov said on his Facebook page.

* Zelenskiy hosted a summit in Kyiv with allied nations on Saturday to launch a plan to export $150 million worth of grain to countries most vulnerable to famine and drought.

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MEXICO CITY — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Mexico’s capital Sunday in a show of support for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who before assuming the presidency had led some of the country’s biggest protests.

The “people’s march” marked four years in office for the leftist leader and was a response to a large opposition march two weeks ago to protest López Obrador’s proposal to reform the country’s electoral authority.

Read More (from 2018): Mexicans Celebrate Lopez Obrador’s Left-Wing Landslide

The president himself led Sunday’s march through central Mexico City, which was accompanied by mariachi music, singing and a festive atmosphere. Many participants had been bused in from provinces across Mexico in trips organized by the ruling Morena party, unions and social groups.

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Daniel Cardenas—Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesMexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a march with supporters to celebrate his fourth year in office, at Reforma Avenue, in Mexico City, Nov. 27, 2022.

“Effective suffrage, effective democracy, and no to re-election,” he said in a speech after the march in which he repeated his slogans of favoring the poor and fighting the oligarchy.

The opposition insisted that many participants were forced to join the march, but López Obrador said he had not put “a penny” of the federal budget into the march. Demonstrators questioned said they had come voluntarily.

But in many cases the transportation was provided by local governments or politicians who wanted to be well thought of inside the ruling party.

Gaby Contreras, a former Morena mayor, brought a group from Teoloyucan, north of the capital, and was the only one of her group authorized to speak. “We are here to support the president.”

Pedro Sánchez, a bricklayer who came with his wife from the Tehuantepec isthmus in southern Mexico, said his municipality organized everything. Hundreds of buses that had brought participants lined nearby streets.

“I come from Sonora by plane and I paid for my ticket,” said lawyer and López Obrador supporter América Verdugo.

Nelly Muñoz, an administrator from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said “it’s called ‘organization’ and believe it or not, it’s what we’ve been doing since 2006.”

That date was a reference to the year López Obrador came within 0.56% of the vote of winning the presidency and denounced his loss as fraudulent. Many supported him, launching a mass protest movement.

López Obrador was elected to the presidency 12 years later and his Morena party won four of six races for governor in last year’s midterm elections, giving the ruling party control of 22 of Mexico’s 32 states, an important advantage heading into the 2024 presidential elections.

But the government has been criticized for its increased use of the military, laws whose constitutionality has been questioned in the courts, and its support for controversial mega-projects. Some people who supported the president are now are his critics.

Read More: Mexico’s President Declares an End to the Drug War Amid Skepticism

Clara Jusidman, founder of INCIDE Social, an NGO specialized in democracy, development and human rights, said that what is important isn’t the number of participants in the march, but “why they participated.”

She said many Mexicans feel compelled to participate because they receive money transfers from the government, which is its main way of supporting those in need. Others want to be in the good graces of the party ahead of the 2024 local, state and presidential elections. The leading contenders to replace López Obrador as Morena’s presidential candidate in 2024 appeared in the march.

But there was no shortage of fans of Mexico’s president, who maintains a high approval rating.

Alberto Cervantes, who traveled from Los Angeles to join the march, had the president’s face and “AMLO 4T” tattooed on his arm. AMLO is the popular acronym for López Obrador’s name, and 4T refers to the “4th Transformation,” which López Obrador says he is carrying out in Mexico.

Lorena Vaca, who waved a flag of the LGBTQ community, said she came to ask for more attention for women and transgender people.

“There are things we don’t agree with … but that doesn’t mean we don’t support the Fourth Transformation process,” said Aurora Pedroche, a member of a critical sector within Morena who questions the party’s leadership but supports the president.

Mexico’s opposition had called a massive march because they feared López Obrador planned to use his proposed reforms to compromise the electoral institute’s independence and make it more beholden to his party.

López Obrador repeatedly criticized the march and days later said he would call his own march.

“You can’t make a change overnight and Andrés Manuel is not infallible,” Pedroche said. “But we have worked hard and what we don’t want is for this to be reversed.”

South Korea’s government will meet a striking truckers’ union on Monday for the first talks of a five-day nationwide walkout, as supply chain glitches worsen and concrete runs out at building sites.

The government, which estimates daily losses at about 300 billion won ($224 million) as supplies of cement and fuel for gas stations run short, raised its warning of cargo transport disruption to the highest level.

But the union held out little prospect of a breakthrough in the second major strike within less than six months, as thousands of truckers demand better pay and working conditions.

“The transport ministry’s position is already set, and there is no room for negotiations, so this meeting is not a negotiation … the content is a demand for an unconditional return to work,” the union said in a statement on Sunday.

The strike is disrupting industrial activity at a time when Asia’s fourth-largest economy, which is dependent on exports, faces lower-than-expected growth next year, with the central bank having downgraded its 2023 forecast to 1.7% from 2.1%.

“We need to establish a rule of law between labour and management,” President Yoon Suk-yeol Yoon said on Monday, according to the presidential office.

Yoon, who has criticised the strike as taking the nation’s logistics “hostage” in the face of an economic crisis, will hold a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to consider a ‘work force order’ for truckers to return to their jobs, his office said.

The law allows the government to issue such an order during a serious transport disruption, and failure to comply can be punished with up to three years in jail, or a fine of up to 30 million won ($22,550).

Strike organiser the Cargo Truckers Solidarity Union (CTSU) has criticised the government for being unwilling to expand a minimum-pay system beyond a further three years, instead of meeting union demands to make it permanent and widen its scope.

Container traffic at ports was 21% of normal levels by 10 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Monday, the transport ministry said, against Friday’s figure of 49%.

The steel industry, including POSCO (005490.KS) and Hyundai Steel (005490.KS), saw shipments more than halve to 22,000 tonnes on Sunday, down from the usual average of 46,000 tonnes, the transport ministry said.

Some gas stations could run out of gasoline and kerosene as early as this week, especially in large cities, despite supplies secured ahead of the strike.

That is because about 70% to 80% of truckers for major refiners, such as SK Innovation’s (096770.KS) SK Energy and S-Oil Corp (010950.KS), are union members on strike.

Since last week, 259 out of 459 building sites have suspended ready-mix concrete work, the Yonhap news agency said, while the transport ministry said most sites were expected to run out by Tuesday.

The cement industry estimated an accumulated output loss of about 46.4 billion won ($35 million) by Saturday, with shipments down to 9% of usual levels, the Korea Cement Association said.

“Non-union bulk cement truck owners, who are implicitly sympathetic to, or in fear of, the cargo union’s illegal activities, are giving up cement transport,” the lobby group said in a statement.

($1=1,338.4000 won)

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia would surely launch new missile attacks on his country and warned defence forces and citizens to prepare to withstand another week of strain on the power grid as snow fell in Kyiv.

City authorities said workers were close to completing restoration of power, water and heat after days of Russian attacks, but high demand meant some blackouts had been imposed.

“We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know this for a fact,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address late on Sunday. “And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down.”

Zelenskiy said the coming week could be as difficult as the previous one, when attacks on electricity infrastructure subjected Ukrainians to the most acute power cuts since Russian troops invaded in February.

There was no response from Moscow to Zelenskiy’s claims.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Moscow has said it does not target the civilian population. The Kremlin said on Thursday that Kyiv could “end the suffering” of its population by meeting Russia’s demands.

Russia annexed swaths of Ukraine’s east and south in September and President Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s territorial demands are non-negotiable. After the annexation, Zelenskiy said he would not negotiate with Moscow and that Ukraine’s territorial integrity cannot be negotiated.

Sunday was relatively calm with no devastating attacks on Kyiv or other major cities. Ukraine’s central army command said Russian forces launched four missile attacks and fired multiple times on civilian objects in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Intense fighting raged along front lines in various parts of Ukraine, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region, Zelenskiy said.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday that Russian troops had shelled a dozen villages in the eastern region of Donetsk, including the main targets of Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russian forces had launched several failed attacks on the town of Soledar, near Bakhmut, and had taken heavy losses in a separate push towards Avdiivka.

Heavy fighting was also going on in the northeastern Kharkiv region, near areas recaptured by the Ukrainian army in September and October, he said on YouTube.

Moscow has targeted vital infrastructure in recent weeks through waves of air strikes that have sparked widespread power outages and killed civilians.

The attacks have increased as cold weather sets in, boosting energy demand as repair workers race to fix wrecked power facilities.

Fresh strikes last Wednesday caused the worst damage so far in the nine-month conflict, leaving millions of people with no light, water or heat, as temperatures fell below 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).

Zelenskiy said utility and emergency teams were working around the clock to provide power, with the situation “under control” though most regions were subject to scheduled blackouts to help restore the grid.

In Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine abandoned by Russian troops this month, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said 17% of customers now had power. Other districts would be connected in coming days.

Sergey Kovalenko, chief operating officer of YASNO, which provides energy to Kyiv, said on Saturday evening the situation in the city has improved but remained “quite difficult”.

Zelenskiy criticised Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, saying he had not done enough to help beleaguered residents. Klitschko, a former professional boxer, replied that political infighting was “senseless” amid Russia’s military campaign.

The head of Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy firm said on Sunday there were signs that Russian forces might be preparing to leave the vast Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which they seized in March. Repeated shelling around the plant has spurred fears of a nuclear catastrophe.

“One gets the impression they’re packing their bags and stealing everything they can,” Petro Kotin, head of Energoatom, said on national television.

Along with energy, food supplies have also been disrupted by the war, with Ukraine’s grain exports unlikely to reach 3 million tonnes in November compared with 4.2 million tonnes in October as Russia tries to limit ship inspections, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said late on Sunday.

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China reported a fifth straight daily record of 40,347 new COVID-19 infections on Nov. 27, of which 3,822 were symptomatic and 36,525 were asymptomatic, the National Health Commission said on Monday.

That compares with 39,791 new cases a day earlier – 3,709 symptomatic and 36,082 asymptomatic infections, which China counts separately.

Excluding imported infections, China reported 40,052 new local cases, of which 3,748 were symptomatic and 36,304 were asymptomatic, up from 39,506 a day earlier.

There were no deaths, compared with one the previous day, keeping fatalities at 5,233. As of Nov. 27, mainland China had confirmed 311,624 cases with symptoms.

Infections rose as hundreds of demonstrators and police clashed in Shanghai on Sunday night as protests over China’s stringent COVID restrictions spread to several cities.

Mega-cities Guangzhou and Chongqing, with thousands of cases, are still struggling to contain outbreaks while hundreds of infections were recorded in several cities across the country on Sunday.

China’s capital Beijing reported 840 symptomatic and 3,048 asymptomatic cases on Sunday, compared with 747 symptomatic and 3,560 asymptomatic cases the previous day, local government data showed.

Financial hub Shanghai reported 16 symptomatic cases and 128 asymptomatic cases, compared with 11 symptomatic cases and 119 asymptomatic cases a day before, the local health authority reported.

Guangzhou, a city in the south of nearly 19 million people, reported 199 new locally transmitted symptomatic and 7,166 asymptomatic cases, compared with 146 symptomatic and 7,266 asymptomatic cases a day before, local authorities said.

Chongqing reported 238 new symptomatic locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and 9,447 asymptomatic cases, compared with 194 symptomatic and 8,667 asymptomatic cases the previous day, local government authorities said.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia lowered its terrorism threat level on Monday to “possible” from “probable” for the first time in eight years, citing a reduced risk of attacks from extremists.

The level was raised in 2014, spurred by concerns over the number of Australians believed to be fighting overseas with Islamist militant groups and the likelihood of terror attacks by those radicalised in Iraq or Syria.

But spy agency the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said the factors prompting the threat level no longer existed or only persisted to a lesser degree.

“While Australia remains a potential terrorist target, there are fewer extremists with the intention to conduct an attack onshore,” Mike Burgess, its director general of security, told reporters.

The change did not mean all terror threats had been extinguished, Burgess said, however.

“It remains plausible that someone will die at the hands of a terrorist in Australia within the next 12 months – although, of course, (we) will work around the clock to prevent that,” he added.

Last month, the Labor government decided to repatriate four Australian women and their 13 children from a Syrian refugee camp, resuming a controversial programme criticised by the Liberal-National opposition.

Burgess said Monday’s decision took into account the move to repatriate the group, related to dead or jailed fighters from the militant Islamic State group.

The offshore networks, capabilities and allure of radical Islamic groups have been degraded with their support in Australia fading though it has not yet disappeared, Burgess said.

“While ASIO considered all these factors when deciding to lower the terrorism threat level, I can almost guarantee it will need to go up again at some point in the future.”

Rapid advancements in China’s military capabilities pose increasing risks to American supremacy in outer space, the head of the United States military’s space wing said on Monday.

Nina Armagno, director of staff of the U.S. Space Force, said Beijing had made significant progress in developing military space technology, including in areas such as satellite communications and re-useable spacecraft, which allow countries to rapidly scale up their space programs.

“I think it’s entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely,” Armagno said at an event in Sydney run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a research organisation partly funded by the U.S. and Australian governments. “The progress they’ve made has been stunning, stunningly fast.”

Historically lagging in a space race dominated by the United States and Russia, Beijing has made significant advances in recent years that have alarmed Washington and other Western nations.

Ye Peijian, the head of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, has likened the moon and Mars to contested islands in the South China Sea that Beijing is attempting to claim.

China is also developing experimental technology aimed at mining asteroids and minor planets for natural resources.

“[China] is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to achieve that objective,” Armagno said.

Along with Russia, China has also conducted “reckless” missile tests that have created dangerous amounts of space debris in recent years, Armagno said.

“These debris fields threatened all of our systems in space, and these systems are vital to all nations’ security, economic and scientific interests,” she said.

Founded in 2019 in part as an attempt to counter the rising capabilities of China, the Space Force is the fourth branch of the U.S. military, with Armagno serving as its first permanent leader. It is set to launch three astronauts to its new space station on Tuesday.

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TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday brushed aside the chance of adding wage growth as a new monetary policy goal the government and the central bank should pursue to underpin a fragile economy.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda also concurred with Kishida, saying that setting real wage growth as its policy target would be difficult.

“I’m not thinking of reviewing it,” Kishida told parliament, when asked by an opposition lawmaker to change the wording in a joint BOJ-government policy statement agreed upon in 2013.

“The government will prepare policies to prop up wages, working closely with the central bank,” he said.

Under pressure by then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the BOJ signed the 2013 statement with the government that clarified the central bank’s role in achieving its 2% inflation target “at the earliest date possible.”

That statement also required the government to achieve sound fiscal policy and carry out structural reforms to boost Japan’s growth potential.

Some opposition lawmakers and academics have proposed revising the statement’s wording, or create a new statement, as rising inflation and a lack of accompanying wage growth hurt households.

Critics also warn of the rising cost of prolonged monetary easing, as years of ultra-low interest rates and the BOJ’s huge asset buying have hurt financial institutions’ profits and pushed down liquidity in the Japanese government bond (JGB) market.

While inflation has exceeded the BOJ’s 2% target, Kuroda has repeatedly stressed the need to maintain the bank’s massive stimulus until wages rise enough to make up for the rising cost of living.

A small plane crashed into high-voltage electricity lines about 30 miles north of Washington, D.C. on Sunday, causing mass power outages, with rescue services working into the night to rescue people on board the aircraft still entangled in the cables.

The aircraft crashed about 5.30 p.m. local time (2230 GMT) in misty and wet conditions in Montgomery Village, Maryland, according to the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service. It became caught up in live power lines about 100 feet from the ground.

The impact caused power outages to between 85,000 and 90,000 customers, according to Pepco, the Washington-area utility company. Roads were also closed and many traffic lights in the area were out.

Fire officials initially said two people were alive but trapped inside the plane, although the fire chief later refused to confirm the number of occupants.

Scott Goldstein, Montgomery County Fire Chief, said rescue officials were in contact with two occupants, by calling their cell phones at regular intervals. He declined to describe the condition of the plane’s occupants, except to say “we have been in contact with them.”

“There is no other way to determine if it’s safe to access the tower until it is grounded, which means crews have to go up to the wires themselves to put clamps and cables onto the wires” to ensure there is no static electricity or residual power, Goldstein told reporters.

Goldstein said the plane also needs to be secured to the electrical tower before the occupants can be removed. He said an “extraordinarily large crane” provided by a local company was on the scene.

According to the FAA, the Mooney M20J aircraft was flying from Westchester, New York and had been due to land at Montgomery Airpark, close to the crash site.