Russian supplier of natural gas hikes prices to Ukraine by 70%

Russian gas giant Gazprom on Thursday urged Ukraine to pay its debt, and announced a 70 per cent rise in the charge for future supplies.

Ukraine relies on Russia for the greater part of its energy consumption. Russia earlier this month cancelled a discount to Ukraine, a few weeks after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country and an interim government stepped in.

Gazprom said in a statement on Thursday that Ukraine "must take urgent steps to clear the debt that has accumulated." Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller met with Oleksiy Kobolev, head of Ukrainian state-owned Naftogaz, in Moscow on Thursday.

Two days ago Gazprom announced a 44 per cent hike in the natural gas price for Ukraine starting from April 1 to $385.5 US per 1,000 cubic metres. This latest rise takes the price to $485 US per 1,000 cubic metres. ​

Miller, who then met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, said that his company is scrapping the remaining discount to Ukraine and will be charging it 70 per cent more starting this month, Russian news agencies reported.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an assertion of same-sex marriage rights, Attorney General Eric Holder is applying a landmark Supreme Court ruling to the Justice Department, announcing Saturday that same-sex spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other, should be eligible to file for bankruptcy jointly and are entitled to the same rights and privileges as federal prison inmates in opposite-sex marriages.

The Justice Department runs a number of benefits programs, and Holder says same-sex couples will qualify for them. They include the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers who suffer catastrophic or fatal injuries in the line of duty.

"In every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States, they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law," Holder said in prepared remarks to the Human Rights Campaign in New York. The advocacy group works on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.

Just as in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the stakes in the current generation over same-sex marriage rights "could not be higher," said Holder.