Ukraine says Russia fires on Ukrainian ships in Black Sea

MOSCOW — The Ukrainian navy said Sunday that Russia’s coast guard opened fire on Ukrainian vessels in the Black Sea following a tense standoff off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula, wounding two crew members.

Russia didn’t immediately comment on the claims. Ukraine’s navy said that two of its vessels were struck and that Russian coast guard crews boarded them and a tugboat and seized them.

There have been growing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has steadily worked to increase its zone of control around the peninsula.

Earlier Sunday, Russia and Ukraine traded accusations over another incident involving the same three vessels, prompting Moscow to block passage through the Kerch Strait.

Migrants march toward U.S. border in show of force

TIJUANA, Mexico — Several hundred Central American migrants on Sunday pushed past a blockade of Mexican police standing guard near the international border crossing between Tijuana and California to pressure the U.S. to hear their asylum claims.

The migrants carried handpainted American and Honduran flags and chanted: “We are not criminals! We are international workers!”

More than 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks via caravan. Many hope to apply for asylum in the U.S., but agents at the San Ysidro entry point are processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day.

Hundreds of flights cancelled as Midwest braces for snowstorm

CHICAGO — A winter storm blanketed much of the central Midwest with snow on Sunday at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, bringing blizzard-like conditions that grounded hundreds of flights and forced the closure of major highways on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

“It’s going to be messy,” said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service who is based in suburban Chicago.

With much of the central plains and Great Lakes region under blizzard or winter storms warnings, roughly 600 flights headed to or from the U.S. had been cancelled as of 2 p.m. Sunday, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Most were supposed to be routed through Chicago or Kansas City — areas forecast to be hit hard by the storm. Strong winds and snow created blizzard conditions across much of Nebraska and parts of Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. The National Weather Service was warning those conditions would make travel difficult in places. By mid-day, the blizzard warning was extended to parts of the eastern Illinois near Chicago, where snow is forecast to fall at a rate of about 2 inches per hour. Other parts of central plains and Great Lakes region were under a winter storm warning, that could see a foot or more of snow dumped in some places by the end of the day.