Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in eastern Russia and Kazakhstan due to severe flooding, authorities in both countries said on Saturday. The water level in the flood-stricken south-western Russian city of Orenburg rose another 9 centimetres overnight to a record high, the regional head said earlier, while Kazakhstan cancelled a conference, diverting efforts and money to relief. “In the early morning, the Ural River near Orenburg reached the 11.71-metre mark,” Governor Denis Pasler wrote on Telegram. Another 800 houses and 1,800 garden plots were flooded over the last 24 hou…