Austria says Russia's Gazprom will cut off natural gas supply this weekend

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Austria says Russia's Gazprom will cut off natural gas supply this weekend

2024-11-16 04:42 Last Updated At：04:50

VIENNA (AP) — Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom will cut off supplies to Austria’s OMV utility early Saturday, Austria’s chancellor said, adding that his country’s underground gas storage was full and that it had alternative, non-Russia supplies.

The cutoff follows OMV’s announcement that it would stop paying for Gazprom gas to its Austrian arm to offset a 230 million-euro ($242 million) arbitration award it won over an earlier cutoff of gas to its German subsidiary.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Friday that Austria has a secure supply of alternative fuel and that “no one will freeze this winter, no home will be cold.”

“Our gas storage facilities are full and we have sufficient capacity to obtain gas from other regions," Nehammer said in a hastily called appearance at the chancellery. “We cannot be blackmailed.”

OMV gave notice of the cutoff in a trading statement on the Central European Gas Hub website. An OMV spokesperson couldn't be reached for comment. Gazprom had no immediate comment.

Russia cut off most natural gas supplies to Europe in 2022, citing disputes over payment in rubles, a move European leaders described as energy blackmail over their support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion. The cutoff sent gas prices soaring and contributed to a sharp burst of inflation that went into double digits in October 2022, but has since subsided.

European governments had to scramble to line up alternative supplies at higher prices, much of it liquefied natural gas brought by ship from the U.S. and Qatar.

Still, three European countries — Austria, Slovakia and Hungary — have been getting supplies of Russian gas through a pipeline through Ukraine despite the fighting there. Ukraine has said it won't continue gas transit past Jan. 1, leaving those countries looking for other supplies. Austria gets the bulk of its natural gas from Russia, as much as 98% in December 2023, according to Energy Minister Lenore Gewessler.

The European Union has ended most supplies of Russian oil, but hasn't directly sanctioned Russian gas. Instead, it has set a nonbinding goal of 2027 for member countries to stop importing Russian gas. Oil and gas exports and the associated tax revenues are the most important single source of cash for the Kremlin.

In 1968, Austria became the first Western European country to import gas from the Soviet Union, and its dependence on Russian energy increased in the following decades. During a visit by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to Austria in 2018, an agreement for the extension of natural gas supplies to Austria until 2040 was signed by Gazprom head Alexey Miller and Rainer Seele, then chairman of the OMV Executive Board. The contract obligates the Austrian side to pay for the gas whether it takes delivery or not.

Gewessler convened a commission to look into the circumstances under which it was signed and legal possibilities to get out of it.

McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany.

Trial begins for the man accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley

2024-11-16 04:41 Last Updated At：04:50

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — A Venezuelan man "went hunting for females on the University of Georgia’s campus” earlier this year and ended up killing nursing student Laken Riley after a struggle, a prosecutor said Friday. The man's lawyer, though, said the evidence is circumstantial and doesn't prove his client is guilty.

Jose Ibarra, who entered the U.S. illegally, is charged with murder in the February killing, which helped fan the immigration debate during this year's presidential campaign. Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial, meaning his case is being heard and decided by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard.

Prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge that Ibarra encountered Riley Feb. 22 while she was running on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in the city that is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) east of Atlanta.

“When Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly,” Ross said, adding that the evidence would show that Riley “fought for her life, for her dignity.”

As a result of that fight, Ibarra's DNA was left under her fingernails, Ross said. Riley called 911 and, in a struggle over her phone, Ibarra's thumbprint was left on the screen, she said.

That forensic evidence is sufficient to prove Ibarra's guilt, but digital and video evidence also prove that Ibarra killed Riley, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Dustin Kirby called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing, but he said none of it proves that his client killed Riley.

“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered," he said. "The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.”

The killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.

Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death. As he spoke about border security during his State of the Union address weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.

Riley's mother, Allyson Phillips, and other family members packed the courtroom Friday morning but didn't return after lunch. Phillips put her face in her hands and cried frequently, especially when photos of her daughter were shown and during descriptions of what happened to her.

Ibarra, dressed in a plaid shirt and dark slacks and with his feet chained, wore headphones to hear a Spanish-language interpreter. He appeared attentive, sometimes looking up when photos or video were shown and other times looking down at his lap.

During her opening statement, Ross laid out a timeline using doorbell and surveillance camera footage, as well as data from Riley’s phone and watch, to piece together her final moments.

Riley left home at 9:03 a.m. and headed for wooded trails where she often ran. Data from her watch shows that at 9:10 a.m., she was running at a fast pace when something happened that made her “stop dead in her tracks.” She called 911 at 9:11 a.m.

A 911 dispatcher answered but no one responded when she repeatedly sought a response, and then the call was ended by the caller. The dispatcher immediately called back, but no one answered.

“Her encounter with him was long. Her fight with him was fierce,” Ross said, noting that Riley's watch data showed her heart was still beating until 9:28 a.m.

Ross also played security camera video that shows a man she said is Ibarra at 9:44 a.m. in a parking lot at his apartment complex. The man tossed something in a recycling bin and then appeared to throw something in nearby bushes. In the recycling bin, officers found a dark hooded jacket with blood that turned out to be Riley's on it and strands of long dark hair caught on a button. In the bushes, they found black disposable kitchen gloves, one of which had a hole in the tip of the thumb.

Another video from about 35 minutes later shows what appeared to be the same man wearing different clothes and walking toward a trash bin with a bag and then walking back empty-handed. That bin was emptied before police were able to search it.

One of Riley's three roommates testified that she became worried when Riley didn't return from a run. The four friends used a phone app to track each other's whereabouts, and Lilly Steiner testified that she became more worried when she saw that Riley's phone showed her in the same location for a long time.

Riley often talked to her mother by phone when she ran, and her mother also became concerned that morning when her daughter didn't answer her calls.

Steiner and another roommate, Sofia Magana, walked to the trail where the phone app indicated Riley was located. They found what they believed was one of Riley's earbuds on the trail and returned home to call police.

One of the officers who responded found Riley's body partially covered by leaves, 64 feet (nearly 20 meters) off the trail. Although her shirt had been pulled up and her underwear was showing above the lowered waistband of her running tights, Ross said there was no evidence that Riley had been sexually assaulted.

Police arrested Ibarra the day after the killing.

Before Ross played video from the body camera of the officer who found Riley, she warned Riley's family that her dead body would be shown. Riley's mother left the courtroom, but other family members and friends remained, some of them crying or covering their faces during the video.

Ibarra is charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and being a peeping Tom.

Prosecutors say that on the day of Riley’s killing, Ibarra peered into the window of an apartment in a university residential building, which is the basis for the peeping Tom charge.