Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was expected on Thursday to announce whether she will retire from Congress or seek another term as party leader, after Republicans were projected to have won majority control of the chamber in last week’s elections.

Pelosi, 82, and two other top leaders have been under pressure the last few years from younger House Democrats to yield power after two decades at the helm.

“The Speaker plans to address her future plans tomorrow to her colleagues. Stay tuned,” Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill said in a post on Twitter late Wednesday.

Her decision may have a bearing on whether outgoing House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, 83, and Democratic Whip James Clyburn, 82, will seek top Democratic positions in the new Congress that convenes on Jan. 3.

Pelosi, the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said late on Wednesday House Democrats “will continue to play a leading role in supporting President Biden’s agenda – with strong leverage over a scant Republican majority.”

She did not specifically address her role going forward but in recent days has noted that the violent assault on her husband Paul by an intruder in their San Francisco home, and other factors, would impact her decision.

Pelosi “has been overwhelmed by calls from colleagues, friends and supporters,” Hammill wrote.

President Joe Biden has also voiced his support for her.

Pelosi was first elected to the House in 1987 and steadily moved up the ranks, securing leadership positions before winning her first term as speaker in 2007.

Along with Biden, who turns 80 this weekend, Democrats’ aging leadership has raised questions about its next generation even as Americans are living longer.

The highest-ranking and most powerful elected woman in U.S. history until Kamala Harris became vice president in January 2021, Pelosi has twice served as leader of the House, first from 2007 to 2011 as Democrats rode opposition to the Iraq War to control of the chamber.

She took the gavel again in 2019 when Democrats rode a wave of opposition to then-President Donald Trump to win control of the House, and was re-elected speaker in November 2021.

House Democrats are set to vote on their leaders on Nov. 30.

On Wednesday, House Republicans offered initial support for Kevin McCarthy to serve as speaker when the next Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

McCarthy currently serves as House Republican leader and will face election by the entire House at the start of the new year. It was not yet clear if he will win enough backing of fellow Republicans to win the speakership.

(This story has been corrected to fix the ages of Reps. Hoyer, Clyburn)

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Workers at more than 100 U.S. company-owned Starbucks locations are striking for one day on Thursday to protest what they say is illegal retaliation against their union organizing.

The walkout comes on the one day each year that Starbucks gives away reusable, red, holiday-themed cups to customers with coffee purchases. In the past, the promotion has driven up traffic, resulting in long lines and stores quickly running out of the cups.

The workers say they are underpaid and don’t have consistent schedules. They are also protesting firings, store closures and other actions they say are illegal retaliation by Starbucks against them for unionizing.

“We’re organizing for a voice on the job and a true seat at the table,” said Michelle Eisen, an employee in Buffalo, New York.

Starbucks has nearly 9,000 corporate-owned U.S. locations.

Starbucks has said it respects employees’ right to organize, that store closings were due to safety concerns and that fired employees violated company policies. The company and union have accused each other of stalling bargaining.

The Seattle-based chain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In August, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Starbucks to rehire some fired baristas who were union activists.

In just over the past year, about 260 U.S. locations have voted to join the union. Dozens of them began bargaining last month.

On Twitter, the union said Thursday’s walkout was its largest coordinated action so far. It posted photos of baristas on a sidewalk in New York’s Queens borough holding up signs saying, “No Contract, No Coffee” and “Full Staffing Now.”

The union handed out its own version of the red cups, but with its Starbucks Workers United design.

The Kremlin on Thursday refused to give any details about a cautionary message delivered by the director of the CIA to Moscow this week about the consequences of any Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine.

Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns warned Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, a White House official said.

It was the first known high-level, face-to-face U.S.-Russian contact since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

“We are not saying anything about the content of the negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the meeting.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said only that the “questions discussed there were of a sensitive nature” and that Washington had requested the meeting. The SVR did not respond to a request for comment.

After the meeting, Burns then visited Kyiv and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy said the CIA director had spent time in a bomb shelter before the two men met amid Russian missile strikes.

Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, was sent to Moscow in November 2021 by President Joe Biden to caution Putin about his troop build-up around Ukraine, which preceded the Russian leader’s invasion four months later.

The invasion has triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Concerns about a nuclear escalation have focused on how Putin would react to a catastrophic defeat of Russian forces in Ukraine and on how Russia might defend Ukrainian territory which it says it has annexed.

Putin has said Russia will defend its territory with all available means, including nuclear weapons, if attacked.

But Russian officials say the West has repeatedly misinterpreted Kremlin statements and that the circumstances in which it might use such weapons are clearly set out in its nuclear doctrine.

Asked if it was possible that Russia would use a nuclear weapon and whether or not it had been discussed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that even the framing of such questions was unacceptable.

“If you have noticed, no one from the Russian side is discussing this topic and has not discussed it,” Peskov said.

He blamed European capitals for discussing the nuclear issue and “thereby escalating tensions in a completely unacceptable, impermissible and potentially dangerous sphere.”

Russia and the United States are by far the biggest nuclear powers, together holding around 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads – enough to destroy the planet many times over.

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French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that a potential deal to produce conventional submarines for Australia was still “on the table” as he visited the Asia Pacific Economic Coordination meeting in Bangkok.

Asked about France’s offer to supply diesel-powered submarines to Australia, Macron said: “It is known, it is still on the table”, adding that talks were ongoing on the modalities of a potential deal.

The deal, which according to media reports could lead to the delivery of four submarines, is seen as a possible consolation prize for France’s defence industry after Canberra walked away from a much larger agreement on more advanced, and more strategically sensitive, nuclear-powered vessels.

Relations between the two Western allies reached a low last year when Australia cancelled the multibillion-dollar deal and opted for nuclear submarines to be built with U.S. and British technology instead as part of a military pact known as AUKUS.

This summer, Macron agreed with newly elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to move on and focus on “new projects”, potentially including strategic partnerships on energy policy and defence cooperation.

Australia’s new Labor-led government in June reached a 555 million euro ($584 million) settlement over the failed nuclear submarine deal.

A Dutch court said on Thursday that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in 2014 by a Russian-made missile fired from a field in eastern Ukraine and that Russia had overall control of separatist forces at the time when the plane was shot down.

The court is reading its ruling in the case of four men with links to Russia accused of mass murder for their alleged roles in the downing of the flight.

The MH17 passenger flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

At the time, the area was the scene of fighting between pro-Russian separatist and Ukrainian forces, the precursor of this year’s conflict.

Victims’ representatives say the ruling will be an important milestone, though the suspects, all of whom face life sentences, remain fugitives. They are all believed to be in Russia, which will not extradite them.

Moscow denies any involvement or responsibility for MH17’s downing and in 2014 it also denied any presence in Ukraine.

Prosecutors say the suspects, three former Russian intelligence officers and a Ukrainian separatist military leader, helped arrange and transport a Russian army BUK missile system into Ukraine that was used to shoot down the plane.

They were charged with shooting down an airplane and with murder in a trial held under Dutch law. They could alternatively be convicted of manslaughter charges if judges at the Hague District Court find the act was not premeditated.

Phone call intercepts that formed a key part of the evidence against the men suggested they believed they were targeting a Ukrainian fighter jet.

Three of the men were tried in absentia and the fourth pleaded not guilty via lawyers he hired to represent him. None attended the trial.

Victims of MH17, which had been en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, came from 10 different countries. More than half were Dutch.

The investigation was led by the Netherlands, with participation from Ukraine, Malaysia, Australia and Belgium.

The suspects are Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, and Oleg Pulatov; and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, showing widespread layoffs remain low, keeping the labor market tight despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes to cool demand in the economy.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended Nov. 12, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Data for the prior week was revised to show 1,000 more applications filed than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week.

There has been an increase in layoffs in the technology sector, with Twitter, Amazon (AMZN.O) and Meta (META.O), the parent of Facebook, announcing thousands of job cuts this month. Companies in interest-rate sensitive sectors like housing and finance are also letting workers go.

The layoffs have so far not been evident in official data, with claims hovering in the middle of their 166,000-261,000 range this year.

Economists say businesses outside the technology and housing sectors are hoarding workers after difficulties finding labor in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With 1.9 job openings for every unemployed person in September, some of the workers being laid off are probably finding new employment quickly. The surge in technology layoffs has raised fears that a recession was imminent.

Economists at Goldman Sachs, however, dismissed this notion in a note this week. They argued that technology job openings remained well above their pre-pandemic level. They also noted technology sector layoffs have not historically been a leading indicator for deterioration in the overall labor market.

“Announced tech job cuts have frequently spiked without a corresponding increase in cuts in other sectors and have otherwise been a coincidental indicator,” they wrote.

The Fed has raised its policy rate by 375 basis points this year from near zero to a 3.75%-4.00% range as it battles high inflation in what has become the fastest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s. So far, the economy is weathering the tighter monetary policy storm, with data on Wednesday showing strong retail sales growth in October.

The claims data covered the week during which the government surveyed business establishments for the nonfarm payrolls component of November’s employment report. Claims rose marginally between the October and November survey periods.

Next week’s data on the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid will shed more light on November’s employment report. The so-called continuing claims, a proxy for hiring, increased 13,000 to 1.507 million in the week ending Nov. 5, the claims report showed.

Russia launched new missile strikes on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022, against Ukrainian power grid and gas infrastructure, causing damage and inflicting casualties in the center of the country, but, according to news reports, failing to penetrate air defenses around the capital, Kyiv.

Missiles fired by Russian bombers flying over the western Rostov region hit power infrastructure servicing the central-eastern city of Dnipro. The midday strikes reportedly took down parts of the power grid and injured 14 people, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in comments to Kyiv reporters. Response teams were on the scene repairing the damage, Dnipro-based news media reported.

According to a Nov. 17  Ukrnafta national gas company statement, Russian missile strikes damaged natural  gas transportation infrastructure “in the east of the country.”

Dnipro’s Yuzhny machine-building factory, where Ukraine reportedly manufactures its own long-range missiles, also was targeted. There was no information about possible damage.

A strike package of four cruise missiles and five Iran-manufactured Shahed drones failed to break through air defenses around the capital and all the weapons were shot down, Kyiv regional defense commander Ivan Kuleba said in a statement. Social media posted by Kyiv residents confirmed  two weapons falling in flames.

Elsewhere in the country on Nov. 17, a single missile struck a “local infrastructure facility” in the southern city of Odesa, according to Maksym Marchenko, Odesa Military Administration head.

Kharkiv governor Oleh Synyehubov stated that Russian missiles hit “critical infrastructure” and injured three people. The Kremlin in the past has used shorter-range S-300 missiles to hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city located 35 kilometers from Russia’s border. Synyehubov did not specify the type of weapons used in the attack.

No major interruptions of power service were reported in Odesa. In Kyiv, power supply likewise appeared uninterrupted by the Thursday attack but rolling blackouts due to power grid damage caused in previous attacks remained in place. Most businesses and residences in the capital have electricity 12-14 hours a day in four-to-five-hour periods.

Russia launched its biggest ever wave of missile strikes against Ukraine on Tuesday, Nov 15. According to Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) claims, of nearly 100 missiles launched, Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, fighter aircraft and gun defenses shot down 77 weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in Thursday comments published by the Bloomberg news agency, thanked western nations for donating missiles and radars to protect Ukraine from Russian air attacks, but, he said, Ukraine’s air defenses at present strength can’t stop every weapon Russia fires.

Also on Nov. 15, according to news reports, two Ukrainain S-300 anti-aircraft missiles fired at incoming Russian cruise missiles landed in Poland, killing two Polish citizens. Zelensky blamed Russia for the incident, arguing that if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine then Ukraine would not be forced to defend its skies.

In contrast to Russia, whose leader, President Vladimir Putin, has announced a war goal of forcing all Ukrainians to live in cold, dark apartments, the AFU has concentrated long-range strikes on mostly military targets.

Ukaine’s Army General Staff reported on Wednesday, Nov. 16, that their campaign was continuing, claiming a strike on  a Russian Federation (RF) command center in the southern town of Melitopol killed or wounded more than 100 RF army officers and staff in a series of explosions. The statement did not specify the weapon or weapons used to make the attack. There was no immediate confirmation in RF-controlled media.

The longest-range weapons received by Ukraine via foreign assistance, the U.S.-manufactured HIMARS precision rocket system, has a maximum range of 70 km. – well short of the range needed for AFU forces to hit Melitopol.

On Monday evening, Nov. 14, explosions hit an RF air base in the RF-occupied Crimea peninsula. On Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16, in Mariupol, according to Ukrainian military sources, an RF vehicle repair base blew up, likewise from a long-range AFU attack. Both attacks took place well outside HIMARS range.

The post Renewed Russian Missile Strikes Hit Power Grid, Big Shoot-Down Over Kyiv appeared first on Kyiv Post.

The Kremlin said Thursday, Nov. 17, that the reason civilians were suffering from blackouts in Ukraine was Kyiv’s refusal to negotiate with Moscow and not missile strikes launched by Russian forces.

“The unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to settle the problem, to start negotiations, its refusal to seek common ground, this is their consequence,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, referring to hardship stemming from blackouts in Ukraine caused by Russian missile attacks.

Ukrainian authorities have warned of “difficult” days ahead as winter sets in.

With the energy infrastructure still reeling from Russian strikes, Kyiv saw its first snow of the season fall on Thursday.

“The special military operation is continuing, it does not depend on weather conditions,” Peskov said.

He said the Russian armed forces targeted “infrastructure directly or indirectly related to the Ukrainian armed forces”.

The largest wave of Russian missiles on cities across Ukraine earlier this week briefly cut power to seven million homes.

The post Civilians Suffering as a “Сonsequence” of Kyiv’s Refusal to Negotiate: Kremlin appeared first on Kyiv Post.

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