More than one in five people employed – almost 23 per cent – have experienced violence and harassment at work, whether physical, psychological or sexual, according to a new analysis by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Lloyd's Register Foundation (LRF) and Gallup. "The Experiences of Violence and Harassment at Work: A global first survey" assesses the extent of the problem and looks at the factors that may prevent people from talking about what they have gone through, including shame, guilt or a lack of trust in institutions, or because such unacceptable behaviours are seen as "normal." "Violence and harassment at work is difficult to measure. The report found that only half of victims worldwide had disclosed their experiences to another person, and often only after they had suffered repeated incidents," the ILO said. "The most common reasons given for non-disclosure were waste of time and fear for their reputation. Women were more likely to share their experiences than men (60.7 percent compared to 50.1 percent)." Globally, 17.9 percent of employed men and women said they had experienced psychological violence and harassment in their working life, and 8.5 percent had faced physical violence and harassment, with more men than women experiencing this. Of respondents, 6.3 percent reported facing sexual violence and harassment, with women being particularly exposed, the ILO said. Young people, migrant workers, and salaried women and men have been the most exposed to violence, according to the UN labour agency. Young women were twice as likely as young men to have faced sexual violence and harassment, while migrant women were almost twice as likely as non-migrants to report sexual violence and harassment. More than three out of five victims said they had experienced violence and harassment multiple times, and for the majority, the most recent incident took place within the past five years. Read more: Sexual harassment, misconduct went on unchecked at Al Jazeera, staff allege: BBC investigation "It's painful to learn that people face violence and harassment not just once but multiple times in their working lives," Manuela Tomei, ILO assistant director-general for governance, rights and dialogue, said. "Psychological violence and harassment is the most prevalent across countries, and women are particularly exposed to sexual violence and harassment. The report tells us about the enormity of the task ahead to end violence and harassment in the world of work. I hope it will expedite action on the ground and towards the ratification and implementation of ILO Convention 190." The ILO's Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (or 190) and Recommendation (No. 206) are the first international labour standards to provide a common framework to prevent, remedy and eliminate violence and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence and harassment. The Convention includes the specific recognition, for the first time in international law, of the right of everyone to a world of work, free from violence and harassment, and outlines the obligations of signatories towards this end. Read more: 63.51% women in Bangladesh face online harassment: Study  

China is easing some of the world’s most stringent anti-virus controls and authorities say new variants are weaker. But they have yet to say when they might end a “zero-COVID” strategy that confines millions of people to their homes and set off protests and demands for President Xi Jinping to resign. On Monday, commuters in Beijing and at least 16 other cities were allowed to board buses and subways without a virus test in the previous 48 hours for the first time in months. Industrial centers including Guangzhou near Hong Kong have reopened markets and businesses and lifted most curbs on movement while keeping restrictions on neighborhoods with infections. The government announced plans last week to vaccinate millions of people in their 70s and 80s, a condition for ending “zero-COVID” restrictions that keep most visitors out of China and have disrupted manufacturing and global trade. That spurred hopes for a quick end to “zero COVID.” But health experts and economists warn it will be mid-2023 and possibly 2024 before vaccination rates are high enough and hospitals are prepared to handle a possible rash of infections. “China is not ready for a fast reopening yet,” Morgan Stanley economists said in a report Monday. “We expect lingering containment measures. … Restrictions could still tighten dynamically in lower-tier cities should hospitalizations surge.” The changes follow protests demanding an end to “zero COVID” but are in line with Communist Party promises earlier to reduce disruption by easing quarantine and other restrictions. The changes have been highly publicized in a possible effort to mollify public anger, but there is no indication whether any might have been made in response to protests in Shanghai and other cities. China is the only major country still trying to stamp out transmission while the United States and others relax restrictions and try to live with the virus that has killed at least 6.6 million people and infected almost 650 million. The protests began Nov. 25 after at least 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi in the northwest. Authorities denied suggestions firefighters or victims were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. But the disaster became a focus for public frustration. Read: China reports 2 new COVID deaths as some restrictions eased Ahead of the protests, the Communist Party promised to make “zero COVID” less costly and disruptive but said it was sticking to the overall containment strategy. The party earlier announced updates to the strategy to make it more focused. Authorities began suspending access to buildings or neighborhoods with an infection instead of whole cities. But a spike in cases starting in October prompted areas across China to close schools and confine families to cramped apartments for weeks at a time. Authorities say they are “further optimizing” controls and warn the country needs to stay alert. China faces “new situations and tasks” due to the “weakening of the pathogenicity” of the latest omicron variant, a deputy premier in charge of the anti-virus campaign, Sun Chunlan, said last week. She said China has “effective diagnosis and treatment” and has vaccinated more than 90% of its people. The ruling party is trying to balance “epidemic prevention, economic stability and security for development,” Sun said Wednesday in a conference with health officials, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Despite the changes, Beijing and other cities are telling some residents to stay home or enforcing other restrictions on neighborhoods with infections. Travelers at the Chinese capital’s train stations and three airports are required to show a negative virus test within the previous 48 hours. Elsewhere, Guangzhou and other cities said areas deemed at high-risk for infection still face additional curbs. A negative virus test within the past 72 hours still is required to enter public buildings in vast metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a hotspot in the latest infection spike. Dining in restaurants in some parts of Beijing still is prohibited. A newspaper reported last week that some Beijing residents who have mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 cases would be allowed for the first time to isolate themselves at home instead of going to one of China’s sprawling quarantine centers. The government has yet to confirm that. Forecasters say the struggling economy, already under pressure from weak demand for Chinese exports and a government crackdown on debt in the real estate industry, might be contracting this quarter. Regulators have responded by freeing up more money for lending and are trying to encourage private investment in infrastructure projects. They have eased some financial controls on real estate developers to reverse a slump in one of China’s biggest industries. Read: China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent “Policymakers are focusing their efforts on spurring growth,” Eurasia Group analysts said in a report. “However, even if China’s transition away from a strict zero-COVID policy is more decisive and accelerated, meeting public health milestones like increasing elderly vaccination will take months.” On Monday, the government reported 30,014 new cases, including 25,696 without symptoms. That was down from last week’s daily peak above 40,000 but still close to record daily highs for China. Xi’s government has held up “zero COVID” as proof of the superiority of China’s system compared with the United States and Western countries. China’s official death toll stands at 5,235 since the start of the pandemic versus a U.S. count of 1.1 million. China also has suffered a possible rise in fatalities among people with cancer, heart disease and other conditions who struggled to get care while hospitals focused on treating virus cases. Data on those deaths haven’t been reported.

Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, health staff at a children’s hospital in the south started secretly planning how to save the babies. Russians were suspected of seizing orphan children and sending them to Russia, so staff at the children’s regional hospital in Kherson city began fabricating orphans’ medical records to make it appear like they were too ill to move. “We deliberately wrote false information that the children were sick and could not be transported,” said Dr. Olga Pilyarska, head of intensive care. “We were scared that (the Russians) would find out … (but) we decided that we would save the children at any cost.” Throughout the war Russians have been accused of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories to raise them as their own. At least 1,000 children were seized from schools and orphanages in the Kherson region during Russia’s eight-month occupation of the area, say local authorities. Their whereabouts are still unknown. But residents say even more children would have gone missing had it not been for the efforts of some in the community who risked their lives to hide as many children as they could. At the hospital in Kherson, staff invented diseases for 11 abandoned babies under their care, so they wouldn’t have to give them to the orphanage where they knew they’d be given Russian documents and potentially taken away. One baby had “pulmonary bleeding”, another “uncontrollable convulsions” and another needed “artificial ventilation,” said Pilyarska of the fake records. On the outskirts of Kherson in the village of Stepanivka, Volodymyr Sahaidak the director of a center for social and psychological rehabilitation, was also falsifying paperwork to hide 52 orphaned and vulnerable children. The 61-year-old placed some of the children with seven of his staff, others were taken to distant relatives and some of the older ones remained with him, he said. “It seemed that if I did not hide my children they would simply be taken away from me,” he said. Read: Russian oil cap begins, trying to pressure Putin on Ukraine But moving them around wasn’t easy. After Russia occupied Kherson and much of the region in March, they started separating orphans at checkpoints, forcing Sahaidak to get creative about how to transport them. In one instance he faked records saying that a group of kids had received treatment in the hospital and were being taken by their aunt to be reunited with their mother who was nine months pregnant and waiting for them on the other side of the river, he said. While Sahaidak managed to stave off the Russians, not all children were as lucky. In the orphanage in Kherson — where the hospital would have sent the 11 babies — some 50 children were evacuated in October and allegedly taken to Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, a security guard at the institution and neighbors told The Associated Press. “A bus came with the inscription Z (a symbol painted on Russian vehicles) and they were taken away,” said Anastasiia Kovalenko, who lives nearby. At the start of the invasion, a local aid group tried to hide the children in a church but the Russians found them several months later, returned them to the orphanage and then evacuated them, said locals. Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Russia is trying to give thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families for foster care or adoption. The AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, says Russian officials are conducting a deliberate depopulation campaign in occupied parts of Ukraine and deporting children under the guise of medical rehabilitation schemes and adoption programs. Russian authorities have repeatedly said that moving children to Russia is intended to protect them from hostilities. The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected the claims that the country is seizing and deporting the children. It has noted that the authorities are searching for relatives of parentless children left in Ukraine to find opportunities to send them home when possible. Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova personally oversaw moving hundreds of orphans from Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine for adoption by Russian families. She has claimed that some of the children were offered an opportunity to return to Ukraine but refused to do so. Her statement couldn’t be independently verified. Read: Can Ukraine pay for war without wrecking economy? UNICEF’s Europe and Central Asia child protection regional adviser, Aaron Greenberg, said that until the fate of a child’s parents or other close relatives can be verified, each separated child is considered to have living close relatives, and an assessment must be led by authorities in the countries where the children are located. Local and national security and law enforcement are looking for the children who were moved but they still don’t know what happened to them, said Galina Lugova, head of Kherson’s military administration. “We do not know the fate of these children … we do not know where the children from orphanages or from our educational institutions are, and this is a problem,” she said. For now, much of the burden is falling on locals to find and bring them home. In July, the Russians brought 15 children from the front lines in the nearby region of Mykolaiv to Sahaidak’s rehabilitation center and then on to Russia, he said. With the help of foreigners and volunteers, he managed to track them down and get them to Georgia, he said. Sahaidak would not provide further details about the operation for fear of jeopardizing it, but said the children are expected to return to Ukraine in the coming weeks. For some, the threat of Russia deporting children has brought unexpected results. In October when there were signs that the Russians were retreating, Tetiana Pavelko, a nurse at the children’s hospital, worried they’d take the babies with them. Unable to bear children of her own, the 43-year-old rushed to the ward and adopted a 10-month-old girl. Wiping tears of joy from her cheeks, Pavelko said she named the baby Kira after a Christian martyr. “She helped people, healed and performed many miracles,” she said.

Western countries on Monday began imposing a $60-per-barrel price cap and ban on some types of Russian oil, part of new measures aimed at stepping up pressure against Moscow over its war on Ukraine. The European Union, along with Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and the United States agreed to the price cap on Friday. The move has prompted a rejection from Kremlin and also criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose government wants the cap to be half as high. The 27-country European bloc also imposed an embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea. Read more: Russia rejects $60-a-barrel cap on its oil, warns of cutoffs Questions have arisen about just how the Western measures will affect market prices. On Monday, U.S. benchmark crude traded up 90 cents to $80.88. Many other factors, including COVID-19 prevention measures in China that have crimped its manufacturing, are also having an impact on demand for crude and thus prices. They are far down from a peak earlier during the war. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is in charge of energy issues, warned in televised comments on Sunday that Russia won’t sell its oil to countries that would try to use the cap. “We will only sell oil and oil products to the countries that will work with us on market terms, even if we have to reduce output to some extent,” Novak said in televised remarks hours before the price cap came into effect. The Ukrainian government demanded over the weekend a lower price cap, to $30 per barrel, insisting that at the $60 level Russia would still reap annual oil revenues of $100 billion — money that can be used to finance its war machine. Read more: Russia rejects pullout from Ukraine as condition for talks Russia, the world's No.2 oil producer, relies on the sale of oil and gas to underpin its economy, which has already come under sweeping international sanctions over President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russia has been pounding Ukrainian infrastructure — including power plants — with military strikes and keeping an offensive going in the east, notably in and around the town of Bakhmut. Russian forces have also been digging in near the southern city of Kherson, which was recaptured by Ukrainian forces last month after an 8-month occupation. The war that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has displaced millions from their homes, killed and injured an untold number of civilians, and shaken the world economy — notably through the fallout on the prices and availability of foodstuffs, fertilizer and fuel that are key exports from Ukraine and Russia.

A private airplane crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast Saturday night, with two people confirmed dead as authorities searched for a third person believed to have been on the flight, police said. Authorities in Venice, Florida, initiated a search Sunday after 10 a.m. following a Federal Aviation Administration inquiry to the Venice Municipal Airport about an overdue single-engine Piper Cherokee that had not returned to its origin airport in St. Petersburg, Florida. Read more: Plane hits vehicle on runway, catches fire at Lima’s airport Around the same time, recreational boaters found the body of a woman floating about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) west of the Venice shore, city of Venice spokesperson Lorraine Anderson said in a statement. Divers from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office located the wreckage of the rented airplane around 2 p.m. about a third of a mile offshore, directly west of the Venice airport, Anderson said. Rescuers found a deceased girl in the plane’s passenger area. A third person, believed to be a male who was the pilot or a passenger, remained missing Sunday, Anderson said. Read more: Small plane crashes into Tanzania's Lake Victoria, 19 dead The county sheriff’s office, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Sarasota Police Department, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the District 12 Medical Examiner’s Office and the National Transportation Safety Board were involved in the investigation, Anderson said.

Improved weather conditions Monday allowed rescuers to resume evacuation efforts and a search for possible victims after the highest volcano on Indonesia’s most densely populated island erupted, triggered by monsoon rains. Mount Semeru in Lumajang district in East Java province spewed thick columns of ash more than 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet) into the sky Sunday. Villages and nearby towns were blanketed with falling ash, blocking out the sun, but no casualties have been reported. Read more: Strong quake shakes main Indonesia island; no tsunami alert Hundreds of rescuers were deployed Monday in the worst-hit villages of Sumberwuluh and Supiturang, where houses and mosques were buried to their rooftops by tons of volcanic debris. Heavy rains had eroded and finally collapsed the lava dome atop the 3,676-meter (12,060-foot) volcano, causing an avalanche of blistering gas and lava down its slopes toward a nearby river. Searing gas raced down the sides of the mountain, smothering entire villages and destroying a bridge that had just been rebuilt after a powerful eruption last year. Semeru’s last major eruption was in December 2021, when it blew up with a fury that left 51 people dead in villages that were buried in layers of mud. Several hundred others suffered serious burns and the eruption forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. The government moved about 2,970 houses out of the danger zone, including from Sumberwuluh village. Lumajang district chief Thoriqul Haq said villagers who are still haunted by last year's eruption fled on their own when they heard the mountain start to rumble early Sunday, so that “casualties could be avoided.” “They have learned an important lesson on how to avoid the danger of eruption,” he said while inspecting a damaged bridge in Kajar Kuning hamlet. He said nearly 2,000 people escaped to emergency shelters at several schools, but many were returned to their homes Monday to tend their livestock and protect their property. Increased volcanic activity Sunday afternoon prompted authorities to widen the danger zone to 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the crater, and scientists raised the volcano’s alert level to the highest, said Hendra Gunawan, who heads the Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center. People were advised to keep off the southeastern sector along the Besuk Kobokan River, which is in the path of the lava flow. Read more: Death toll from Indonesia earthquake reaches 310 as more bodies found Semeru, also known as Mahameru, has erupted numerous times in the past 200 years. Still, as is the case with many of the 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, tens of thousands of people continue to live on its fertile slopes. Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 270 million people, sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of fault lines, and is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.

Former President Donald Trump faced rebuke Sunday from officials in both parties after calling for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump, who announced last month that he is running again for president, made the claim over the weekend on his Truth Social media platform. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” Incoming House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday described Trump's statement as strange and extreme and said Republicans will have to make a choice whether to continue embracing Trump's anti-democratic views. Read more: Trump probe: Court halts Mar-a-Lago special master review “Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but Trumpism,” Jeffries said. Trump, who is the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021, faces a escalating criminal investigations, including several that could lead to indictments. They include the probe into classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, and ongoing state and federal inquiries related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Asked about Trump's comments Sunday, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently" disagrees and “absolutely” condemns the remarks, saying they should be a factor as Republicans decide who should lead their party in 2024. “There is a political process that has to go forward before anybody is a frontrunner or anybody is even the candidate for the party,” he said. “I believe that people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate.” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., also objected to the remarks, saying it was time to stop focusing on the “grievances of prior elections.” "The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American," Lawler said. "I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.” Trump’s comments came after Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, said he would reveal how Twitter engaged in "free speech suppression” leading up to the 2020 election. But files released Friday, which focused on the tech company's confused response to a story about Biden's son Hunter, do not show Democrats trying to limit the story. Read more: Musk restores Trump’s Twitter account after online poll The White House on Saturday assailed Trump, saying, “You cannot only love America when you win.” “The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country," spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation." Jeffries appeared on ABC's “This Week,” Turner spoke on CBS' “Face the Nation” and Lawler was on CNN's “State of the Union.”

An Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that Iran's government is “paying attention to the people’s real demands,” state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country’s morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down. The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers. Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police “had been closed," the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision. In a report carried by ISNA on Sunday, lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi signaled a less confrontational approach toward the protests. Read more: Iran executes four people accused of working for Israel’s Mossad: State news “Both the administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the people’s demand that is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and confronting the riots,” he said, following a closed meeting with several senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi. Mousavi did not address the reported closure of the morality police. The Associated Press has been unable to confirm the current status of the force, established in 2005 with the task of arresting people who violate the country’s Islamic dress code. Since September, there has been a reported decline in the number of morality police officers across Iranian cities and an increase in women walking in public without headscarves, contrary to Iranian law. Montazeri, the chief prosecutor, provided no further details about the future of the morality police or if its closure was nationwide and permanent. However he added that Iran’s judiciary will ‘‘continue to monitor behavior at the community level.’’ In a report by ISNA on Friday, Montazeri was quoted as saying that the government was reviewing the mandatory hijab law. “We are working fast on the issue of hijab and we are doing our best to come up with a thoughtful solution to deal with this phenomenon that hurts everyone’s heart,” said Montazeri, without offering details. Saturday's announcement could signal an attempt to appease the public and find a way to end the protests in which, according to rights groups, at least 470 people were killed. More than 18,000 people have been arrested in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the demonstrations. Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said Montazeri’s statement about closing the morality police could be an attempt to pacify domestic unrest without making real concessions to protesters. Read more: Iranian general acknowledges over 300 dead in unrest ‘‘The secular middle class loathes the organization (morality police) for restricting personal freedoms," said Alfoneh. On the other hand, the “underprivileged and socially conservative class resents how they conveniently keep away from enforcing the hijab legislation” in wealthier areas of Iran's cities. When asked about Montazeri's statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian gave no direct answer. ‘‘Be sure that in Iran, within the framework of democracy and freedom, which very clearly exists in Iran, everything is going very well,’’ Amirabdollahian said, speaking during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia. The anti-government demonstrations, now in their third month, have shown no sign of stopping despite a violent crackdown. Protesters say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression, including a strict dress code imposed on women. Young women continue to play a leading role in the protests, stripping off the mandatory Islamic headscarf to express their rejection of clerical rule. After the outbreak of the protests, the Iranian government hadn't appeared willing to heed the protesters' demands. It has continued to crack down on protesters, including sentencing at least seven arrested protesters to death. Authorities continue to blame the unrest on hostile foreign powers, without providing evidence. But in recent days, Iranian state media platforms seemed to be adopting a more conciliatory tone, expressing a desire to engage with the problems of the Iranian people.

Two power substations in a North Carolina county were damaged by gunfire in what is being investigated as a criminal act, causing damage that could take days to repair and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, authorities said Sunday. In response to ongoing outages, which began just after 7 p.m. Saturday across Moore County, officials announced a state of emergency that included a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also, county schools will be closed Monday. “An attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on Twitter. Read more: Most Ukrainians left without power after Russian strikes Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motivation. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.” “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they're the ones that done it,” Fields said, adding “we're looking at all avenues.” The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.” “It wasn't random,” Fields said. Fields said law enforcement is providing security at the substations and for businesses overnight. “We will have folks out there tonight around the clock,” Fields said. Roughly 37,000 electric customers in the county were without power on Sunday evening, according to poweroutage.us. With cold temperatures forecast for Sunday night, the county also opened a shelter at a sports complex in Carthage. Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said multiple pieces of equipment were damaged and will have to be replaced. He said while the company is trying to restore power as quickly as possible, he braced customers for the potential of outages lasting days. Read more: Kherson celebrates Russian exit amid no power, no water “We are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multiday restoration for most customers, extending potentially as long as Thursday," Brooks said at the news conference. Dr. Tim Locklear, the county's school superintendent, announced classes will be canceled Monday. “As we move forward, we'll be taking it day by day in making those decisions,” Locklear said. The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road. “A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported. The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour's drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

The Saudi-led OPEC oil cartel and allied producers including Russia did not change their targets for shipping oil to the global economy amid uncertainty about the impact of new Western sanctions against Russia that could take significant amounts of oil off the market. The decision at a meeting of oil ministers Sunday comes a day ahead of the planned start of two measures aimed at hitting Russia’s oil earnings in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Those are: a European Union boycott of most Russian oil and a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian exports imposed by the EU and the Group of Seven democracies. It is not yet clear how much Russian oil the two sanctions measures could take off the global market, which would tighten supply and drive up prices. The world’s No. 2 oil producer has been able to reroute much, but not all, of its former Europe shipments to customers in India, China and Turkey. The impact of the price cap is also up in the air because Russia has said it could simply halt deliveries to countries that observe the limit. But analysts say the country would likely also find ways to evade the cap for some shipments. Read: G-7 and EU agree to cap the price of Russian oil at $60 per barrel On the other side, oil has been trading at lower prices on fears that coronavirus outbreaks and China’s strict zero-COVID restrictions would reduce demand for fuel in one of the world’s major economies. Concerns about recessions in the U.S. and Europe also raise the prospect of lower demand for gasoline and other fuel made from crude. That uncertainty is the reason the OPEC+ alliance gave in October for a slashing production by 2 million barrels per day starting in November, a cut that remains in effect. Analysts say that took less than the full amount off the market because OPEC+ members already can’t meet their full production quotas. An OPEC+ statement Sunday pushed back against criticism of that October decision in view of the recent weakness in oil prices, saying the cut had been “recognized in retrospect by the market participants to have been the necessary and the right course of action towards stabilizing global oil markets.” The White House, which has pressed for more oil supply to keep gasoline costs down for U.S. drivers, at the time called the cut “shortsighted” and said the alliance was “aligning with Russia.” With the global economy slowing, oil prices have been falling since summertime highs, with international benchmark Brent closing Friday at $85.42 per barrel, down from $98 a month ago. That has eased gasoline prices for drivers around the world. Average gas prices have fallen for U.S. drivers in recent days to $3.41 per gallon, according to motoring club federation AAA. While U.S., European and other allies seek to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine, they also want to prevent a sudden loss of Russian crude that could send oil and gasoline prices back up. Read: What’s the effect of Russian oil price cap, ban? That is why the G-7 price cap allows shipping and insurance companies to transport Russian oil to non-Western nations at or below that threshold. Most of the globe’s tanker fleet is covered by insurers in the G-7 or EU. Russia would likely try to evade the cap by organizing its own insurance and using the world’s shadowy fleet of off-the-books tankers, as Iran and Venezuela have done, but that would be costly and cumbersome, analysts say. The cap of $60 a barrel is near the current price of Russian oil, meaning Moscow could continue to sell while rejecting the cap in principle. Oil use also declines in the winter, in part because fewer people are driving. “If Russia ends up taking off more oil than about a million barrels per day, then the world becomes short on oil, and there would need to be an offset somewhere, whether that’s from OPEC or not,” said Jacques Rousseau, managing director at Clearview Energy Partners. “That’s going to be the key factor — is to figure out how much Russian oil is really leaving the market.” The OPEC+ statement set its next meeting for June 4 but said the coalition could meet at any time to address market developments.