TASHKENT: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Moscow would soon propose a time for a call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which Blinken has said he wants to discuss an exchange of prisoners held in Russian and US jails. Blinken said on Wednesday that Washington had made a “substantial offer” to obtain the release of US basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, both detained in Russia. A source said that Washington was willing to exchange convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout, jailed in the United States, as part of such a deal. Blinken and Biden have not spoken since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Families of the US detainees have been increasing pressure on President Joe Biden, most recently in the case of two-time Olympic gold medallist Griner, who was arrested on drugs charges at a Moscow airport on Feb. 17. Lavrov told a news conference that talks on prisoner exchanges had been taking place since a summit in Geneva last year where presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden had agreed to nominate officials to look into the issue. He said his ministry was not involved in that, but “nevertheless, I will listen to what he (Blinken) has to say.” Speaking during a trip to Uzbekistan, Lavrov said he would talk to Blinken when he returned to his office. “It’s clear this is unlikely to work out today. But in the coming days we will offer our American colleagues a convenient date,” he said. 

KYIV: Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine claimed that at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war captured during the fighting for Mariupol have been killed by Ukrainian shelling. Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesman for the Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region, said that at least 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed and 130 were injured Friday when Ukrainian shelling hit a prison in the town of Olenivka. There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian authorities to the report. The Ukrainian troops were taken prisoner after the fierce fighting for Ukraine’s Azov Sea port of Mariupol, where they holed up at the giant Azovstal steel mill for months. The Azov Regiment and other Ukrainian units defended the steel mill for nearly three months, clinging to its underground maze of tunnels. They surrendered in May under relentless Russian attacks from the ground, sea and air. Scores of Ukrainian soldiers were then taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas such as the Donetsk region, a breakaway area in eastern Ukraine which is run by Russia-backed separatist authorities. In other developments, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. City mayor Ihor Terekhov said a central part of the northeastern city was hit, including a two-story building and a higher education institution. Terekhov said the strike occurred just after 4 a.m. on Friday. “The State Emergency Service is already working — they are sorting out the rubble, looking for people under them,” Terekhov said in a Telegram update.

MOSCOW: Eight people died in a blaze in a 15-story building in Moscow overnight, after a fire alarm malfunctioned, officials said Friday. The fire erupted in the building in a southeastern district, an agency investigating criminal acts said, adding that four people were hospitalized. Emergency services said the blaze broke out on the ground floor of the building, adding that the flames were doused soon after midnight and that more than 200 people were evacuated. A senior emergency official told TASS news agency that a fire alarm in a hostel malfunctioned and that the people inside were trapped as all the windows had metal bars. A criminal negligence case has been opened. Russian buildings are regularly struck by fires and gas leaks blamed on poor maintenance, infrastructure or negligence.

MANILA: The Philippines has detected its first case of monkeypox in a person with a history of overseas travel, officials said Friday. The announcement comes within a week of the World Health Organization declaring the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency. Philippine officials did not identify the gender of the person, only saying they were 31 years old and tested positive on Thursday after an RT-PCR test. “The case had prior travel to countries with documented monkeypox cases,” said Beverly Ho, an acting undersecretary for the Department of Health. “Ten close contacts were recorded, of which three are from the same household. All have been advised to quarantine and are being monitored by the department.” A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that more than 18,000 cases have now been reported to the organization from 78 countries, with 70 percent of them in Europe and 25 percent in the Americas. Five deaths have been reported in the outbreak since May, he said. The Philippines sought to head off potential panic, saying monkeypox was not like Covid-19. “This is not like Covid that can be spread by air very easily and could possibly be fatal,” said Trixie Cruz-Angeles, press secretary for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “This is not particularly fatal.” Ho said the Philippines was working with the United States to secure monkeypox vaccines.

MEXICO CITY: Authorities in Mexico said Thursday that at least 94 migrants had to bash their way out of a suffocating freight trailer abandoned on a highway in the steamy Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Carlos Enrique Escalante, the head of the state migrant attention office, said migrants had to break holes in the freight container to get out, some apparently through the roof. Some were injured when they leapt from the roof of the trailer, but their injuries did not include any broken bones and were not considered life-threatening. Escalante said local residents near the town of Acayucan heard the noise, and helped open the freight container. A much larger number of migrants were believed to have been aboard and fled after escaping. But the 94 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were turned over to immigration authorities. The discovery of the trailer Wednesday recalled the tragedy in San Antonio, Texas on June 27, when 53 migrants died because they had been left in a sweltering freight truck. In the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, yet another group of migrants continued demanding temporary visas they would permit them to travel across Mexico. They were still in the town of Huixtla on Thursday after leaving Tapachula earlier this week, saying they can’t wait months for slow immigration paperwork in Tapachula.

WASHINGTON: The District of Columbia has requested National Guard assistance to help stem a “growing humanitarian crisis” prompted by thousands of migrants that have been sent to Washington by a pair of southern states. Mayor Muriel Bowser formally asked the White House last week for an open-ended deployment of 150 National Guard members per day as well as “suitable federal location” for a mass housing and processing center, mentioning the D.C. Armory as a logical candidate. She met on July 21 with Liz Sherwood-Randall, assistant to the president for homeland security, and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. The crisis began in spring when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to send busloads of migrants to Washington, D.C., in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to lift a pandemic-era emergency health order that restricted migrant entry numbers. Since then the city estimates that nearly 200 buses have arrived, delivering more than 4,000 migrants to Union Station, often with no resources and no clue what to do next. A coalition of local charitable groups has been working to feed and shelter the migrants, aided by a $1 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But organizers have been warning that both their resources and personnel were nearing exhaustion. “This reliance on NGOs is not working and is unsustainable — they are overwhelmed and underfunded,” Bowser said in her letter. She has repeatedly stated that the influx was stressing her government’s ability to care for its own homeless residents and required intervention from Biden’s government. “We know we have a federal issue that demands a federal response,” Bowser said at a July 18 press conference. In her letter, Bowser harshly criticizes Abbott and Ducey, accusing them of “cruel political gamesmanship” and saying the pair had “decided to use desperate people to score political points.” Bowser does not have the authority to personally order a National Guard deployment, an issue that has become emotionally charged in recent years as a symbol of the district’s entrenched status as less than a state. Her limited authority played a role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol building by supporters of former President Donald Trump. When it became clear that the US Capitol Police were overmatched by the crowds, Bowser couldn’t immediately deploy the district guard. Instead, crucial time was lost while the request was considered inside the Pentagon, and protesters rampaged through the building.