Ukraine shut down a pipeline Wednesday that carries Russian natural gas to homes and industries in Western Europe, while a Kremlin-installed official in a southern region seized by Russian troops said the area will ask Moscow to annex it.

The immediate effect of the energy cutoff is likely to be limited, in part because Russia can divert the gas to another pipeline and because Europe relies on a variety of suppliers. But it marked the first time since the start of the war that Ukraine disrupted the flow westward of one of Moscow’s most lucrative exports.

Meanwhile, the talk of annexation in Kherson — and Russia’s apparent willingness to consider such a request — raised the possibility that the Kremlin will seek to break off another piece of Ukraine as it tries to salvage an invasion gone awry. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“The city of Kherson is Russia,” Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration installed by Moscow, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. He said regional officials want Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Kherson a “proper region” of Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it would be “up to the residents of the Kherson region” to make such a request, and that any move to annex territory would would have to be closely evaluated by experts to make sure its legal basis is “absolutely clear.”

Ukraine is also targeting Russian air defenses and resupply vessels on Snake Island in the Black Sea in an effort to disrupt Moscow’s efforts to expand its control over the coastline, according to the British Ministry of Defense.

The ministry said Russian resupply vessels have minimum protection since the Russian Navy retreated to Crimea following the sinking of the flagship of its Black Sea fleet.

Separately, Ukraine said it shot down a cruise missile targeting the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Wednesday.

The gas cutoff came as Western powers have been looking to ratchet up economic pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s defenders.

Inflation in U.S slowed in April after seven months of relentless gains, a tentative sign that price increases may be peaking while still imposing a financial strain on American households.

Consumer prices jumped 8.3% last month from a year ago, the government said Wednesday. That was below the 8.5% year-over-year surge in March, which was the highest since 1981. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.3% from March to April, the smallest increase in eight months.

However, Wednesday’s report contained some cautionary signs that inflation may be becoming more entrenched. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices jumped twice as much from March to April as they did the previous month. The increases were fueled by spiking prices for airline tickets, hotel rooms and new cars. Apartment rental costs also kept rising.

Those price jumps “make clear that there is still a long way to go before inflation returns to more acceptable levels,” said Eric Winograd, U.S. economist at asset manager AB.

Even if it moderates, inflation will likely remain high well into 2023, economists say, leaving many Americans burdened by price increases that have outpaced pay raises. Especially hurt are lower-income and Black and Hispanic families, who are disproportionately squeezed by costlier food, gas and rent.

For now, a fallback in gas prices in April helped slow overall inflation. Nationally, average prices for a gallon of gas fell to as low as $4.10 in April, according to AAA, after spiking to $4.32 in March. But since then, gas prices have surged to a record $4.40 a gallon.

Grocery prices are still spiking, in part because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened the cost of wheat and other grains. Food prices rose 1% from March to April and nearly 11% from a year ago. That year-over-year increase is the biggest since 1980.

Turmoil overseas could accelerate inflation in the coming months. If the European Union, for example, decides to bar imports of Russian oil, world oil prices could rise. So could U.S. gas prices. And China’s COVID lockdowns could worsen supply chain snarls.

Google said Wednesday that it struck licensing deals with 300 news publishers in Europe in its latest effort to comply with a recently introduced European Union copyright law.

The tech giant signed the agreements with national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland and said discussions with many others are ongoing.

It didn’t disclose how much it’s paying or give names of the news outlets.

European Union countries have been adopting into local law a 2019 EU directive granting publishers additional rights over their content.

The new law allows search engines like Google to link to and use snippets of news content, while giving publishers new rights when extended previews are used online.

It doesn’t, however, specify where the line between the two lies. The agreements are aimed at avoiding costly and lengthy lawsuits over that distinction.

Google last year announced copyright deals with several large German publications and a group of French news publishers.

The company also said it’s rolling out a new tool to offer licensing agreements to thousands of other European publishers, starting in Germany and Hungary.

Business groups and unions were disappointed as Britain’s Conservative government set out its agenda for the next year on Tuesday with sweeping promises to cut crime, improve health care and revive the U.K.’s pandemic-scarred economy — but no new help for millions of Britons struggling to pay their bills as the cost of living soars.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine had caused economic turmoil, but said “no government can realistically shield everyone from the impact.”

The government set out its legislative plans during a ceremony steeped in tradition, but without Queen Elizabeth II, who was absent for the first time in six decades.

The 96-year-old monarch pulled out of reading the Queen’s Speech at the opening of Parliament because of what Buckingham Palace called “episodic mobility issues.” Her son and heir, Prince Charles, stood in, rattling through a short speech laying out 38 bills the government plans to pass.

The speech, which is written by the government, promised Johnson’s administration would “grow and strengthen the economy and help ease the cost of living for families.” There were plans to invest in railways, create a U.K. infrastructure bank and “level up” economic opportunity to poorer regions, as well as bills on education and health care funding.

Johnson said the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had created “huge disruptions to the global economy.” But the speech included no immediate measures to relieve households struggling with soaring prices for domestic energy and food.

“We cannot simply spend our way out of this problem,” Johnson told lawmakers. “We need to grow out of this problem by creating hundreds of thousands of new high-wage, high-skill jobs across the country.”

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer accused the government of being “too out of touch to meet the challenges of the moment.” He called for an emergency budget and a windfall tax on oil and gas producers.