KIEV (AFP) – Ukraine on Tuesday cut off electricity to the insurgent-run area of its eastern Lugansk province over unpaid bills in a step likely to bind the rebel territory closer to Moscow.
The region's Kremlin-backed leaders said the measure had little-to-no impact because they immediately resorted to power supplies from Russia.
Kiev accuses Lugansk authorities of running up an electricity debt of 2.6 billion hryvnias ($97.6 million/90 million euros).
"This past night, we completely halted energy supplies to the temporarily uncontrolled portions of the Lugansk region," Ukrenergo state power distribution company chief Vsevolod Kovalchuk wrote on Facebook.
Portions of Lugansk and its larger neighboring province of Donetsk were overrun in 2014 by what the West believes were Russian fighters and locally-allied gunmen.
Ukraine launched a campaign to win back the territories in a conflict that has claimed more than 10,000 lives and damaged Moscow's relations with the West.
Lugansk's self-proclaimed emergencies minister Sergei Ivanushkin said the power outage in the region's biggest cities lasted for less than 40 minutes because "we switched to our own resources".



CAIRO (Press TV) – A court in Egypt has upheld death sentences for 20 people over their alleged roles in the Kerdasa massacre four years ago, which left over a dozen people dead.  
On August 14, 2013, a few hours after Egyptian security forces mounted a deadly crackdown on two sit-in camps of protesters in the capital Cairo, some 50 gunmen besieged the main police station of the town of Kerdasa, located near the northern city of Giza, for several hours, before some of them struck the complex with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG).  
The assailants then stormed the station and killed 11 people officers, including the chief of the police station, and three civilians. The next month, Egyptian security forces launched a full-scale operation on the city and arrested dozens of suspects after a gun battle. The number of detained suspects in the Kerdasa case later increased to nearly 200 people.
In late 2014, an Egyptian court issued death sentences to 188 suspects, which sparked an international outcry against the controversial verdicts. In 2015, the death penalties were reduced to 149 cases by another court, and in February 2016, the Court of Cassation accepted an appeal on the death verdicts and ordered a retrial for the defendants.

 
MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to discuss a contract for buying the advanced S-400 long-range air missile system during an upcoming meeting with his Russian counterpart, Turkey’s defense minister says.
Defense Minister Fikri Isik said on Monday that President Erdogan would discuss the deal during a planned meeting with Putin on May 3.
"I suppose after Erdogan’s talks with Putin a joint decision will be made on further steps for purchasing Russia’s missile system," Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the minister as saying.
Isik had already told a press conference on Friday that Turkey had reached the "final stage" of talks with Russia to purchase the missile system.
Back in February, Isik announced that talks with Russian officials over the purchase had "progressed significantly," but sealing the deal was not expected in the near future.
Russia’s S-400 system is designed for high-efficiency defense against airstrikes utilizing various kinds of ballistic missile attacks. It is capable of striking dynamic targets in the air at a distance of around 400 kilometers moving at a speed of almost five kilometers per second at various altitudes.


WASHINGTON (The Hill) – Former President Barack Obama has agreed to speak at a Wall Street conference for $400,000, according to a new report.
Obama will appear at Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s healthcare conference in September, Fox Business Network first reported Monday.
Fox Business said it confirmed Obama’s appearance with senior people at Cantor, a financial services firm.
Obama will serve as the keynote speaker for one day at the company's event, sources there told Fox Business.
The network's sources said Obama has signed a contract for the speech with the mid-size investment bank in New York.
Cantor is waiting to coordinate with Obama before making a formal announcement, it continued.
Obama can reportedly back out of the arrangement if scheduling conflicts or other concerns arise, it added.
The former president’s reported speaking fee is nearly twice the price commanded by Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
Obama reappeared on the public stage Monday, making his first public remarks since leaving the White House at the future site of his presidential library.
The former president did not mention President Trump or political commentary during his appearance at the University of Chicago.