Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

La Palma volcano’s tremors stop, but eruption may not be at an end

LA PALMA (Reuters) – The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma fell silent as constant tremors stopped late on Monday, though experts cautioned this did not necessarily mean the eruption is nearing an end after 85 days.

Seismic activity on the island all but stopped around 9 pm local time on Monday, The Canary Islands Volcanology Institute, Involcan, said on Tuesday. It’s the longest period without tremors since the eruption began.

“This does not imply the eruption is ending, since on other occasions halts were followed by a renewed increase in activity,” Involcan said on its twitter account.

It added footage of the Cumbre Vieja showing how the almost constant roaring of the volcano had ceased.

The eruption, which has sent rivers of molten lava running down the slopes of Cumbre Vieja for weeks, is the longest running on the Spanish Canary Island since records began in 1500.

The quiet on Monday evening and Tuesday morning followed the emission of dense toxic clouds of sulphur dioxide on Monday morning that prompted the lockdown of about a third of the island’s population.

Since the eruption began on Sep. 19, thousands of people have been evacuated, at least 2,910 buildings have been destroyed, and the main livelihood of the island, banana plantations, have been devastated.

Stavros Meletlidis, a volcanologist with the National Geographic Institute who has been following the eruption since it began, said there were multiple possible explanations and pointed out that pauses had been observed before.

Around a week after the eruption started, seismic activity suddenly dropped off for several hours before restarting with renewed vigor, a pattern that is not uncommon in the early stages of an eruption, he explained.

But after nearly three months of activity, the eruption is in a different phase and could be losing strength, he said.

“The magma needs energy to get to the surface and it seems that it does not have it at the moment,” he said, explaining that could be due to a decline in levels of gases or magma volume as the eruption slowly loses force.

However, it could be the result of a blockage between subterranean magma chambers and the surface vent, in which case pressure would continue to build up until reaching critical mass and causing fresh explosions.

“It’s too early to tell if we’re entering a terminal phase,” he said.

Before declaring the eruption definitively over, scientists will be looking out for a period of at least 48 hours with no seismic activity or surface eruption, he said.

(Reporting by Marco Trujillo, Nathan Allen and Inti Landauro, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Chickens, tractors, grain silos destroyed by deadly U.S. tornadoes

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) -A Deere & Co dealership and a Pilgrim’s Pride Corp chicken hatchery were destroyed when deadly tornadoes swept through Kentucky on Friday, while silos holding millions of bushels of corn suffered damage, the companies and the state’s agriculture commissioner said on Monday.

“We have a 200-mile swath through Kentucky that has pulled-down grain systems, destroyed chicken hatcheries and of course blown-over barns,” said Ryan Quarles, Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner.

The destruction in the Midwest could further raise already high chicken prices and add to supply-chain headaches that have made it difficult for farmers to replace tractor parts.

Poultry is Kentucky’s top agricultural commodity, and at least a dozen chicken barns collapsed, Quarles said. The state is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to properly kill and dispose of chickens housed in barns that were destroyed, he said.

President Joe Biden will visit the state on Wednesday to survey the damage.

One Pilgrim’s Pride chicken hatchery was a total loss, and another is expected to be offline until spring after suffering significant damage, the company said in a statement. It added that other company hatcheries are supplying chickens to farmers near Mayfield, a town of 10,000 that suffered some of the worst damage from the tornadoes.

Pilgrim’s, which is mostly owned by Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA, is evaluating damage to a local feed mill, while a production plant is expected to be fully operational on Wednesday, the statement said.

The loss of the hatchery in Mayfield “automatically triggers a multi-month delay in the processing and raising of chickens because the hatchery simply is not there anymore to supply the farmers,” Quarles said.

Mayfield is in Kentucky’s top county for agricultural sales, accounting for 6% of the state’s total farm business, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, though the state is not a top grain producer. Kentucky held 1.5% of U.S. corn stocks in December 2020, the USDA said.

“Lots of farmer elevators damaged. Some small feed mills have damage with indefinite timelines,” said Andrew Jackson, broker at Producers Hedge, in Lancaster, Kentucky.

Mayfield Grain Company, a crop handler, had roofs ripped off of parts of a storage system that holds 6 million bushels of grain in Mayfield, Quarles said. That’s enough corn to fill two Panamax vessels — each ship the length of two football fields.

Photos on Twitter showed yellow corn visible from the tops of bins that lost their roofs. The company had no immediate comment.

“You have millions of bushels of corn, much of which was just freshly harvested, being exposed to the elements, being damaged,” Quarles said.

“We’re looking for ways to recover spilled grain but also divert the storage and movement of grain to other facilities around the state.”

Quarles said the agriculture department will help farmers find buyers for grain amid reduced demand for feed from livestock and poultry producers who suffered losses.

Hutson Inc, a company that sells Deere equipment, said its flagship store in Mayfield was “destroyed by one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the state.”

Workers “waded through debris and used what equipment they could salvage to assist with rescue efforts at a candle plant located next to us that had mass casualties,” Chief Executive Josh Waggener said in a statement online.

Deere said it is in touch with Waggener and working with Hutson to provide financial assistance to the community.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek, Christopher Walljasper and Mark Weinraub in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. Supreme Court rejects religious challenge to New York vaccine mandate

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected challenges brought by a group of Christian doctors and nurses and an organization that promotes vaccine skepticism to New York’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to the state’s mandate that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Acting in two cases, the justices denied emergency requests for an injunction requiring the state to permit religious exemptions while litigation over the mandate’s legality continues in lower courts. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted the injunction.

The Supreme Court previously rejected other challenges to vaccine mandates including one focusing upon Maine’s lack of a religious exemption for healthcare workers.

The New York challengers said the mandate violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on religious discrimination by the government, or a federal civil rights law requiring employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs. A lower court rejected their bid for an injunction.

New York’s Department of Health on Aug. 26 ordered healthcare professionals who come in contact with patients or other employees to be vaccinated by Sept. 27. That deadline was delayed to Nov. 22.

The state has said that under the policy employers can consider religious accommodation requests and employees can be reassigned to jobs such as remote work.

The state said it allows a narrow medical exemption for the small number of people with a serious allergic reaction to the COVID-19 vaccines. It said longstanding healthcare worker vaccine mandates for measles and rubella also have no religious exemptions.

One lawsuit was brought by a group of 17 doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers, most of whom are Catholic, who sued under pseudonyms, denouncing “medical dictatorship.” Sixteen said they were fired or suspended under the policy, while one nurse agreed to be vaccinated to keep her job.

In a dissent in that case, Gorsuch said the mandate seemed based “on nothing more than fear and anger at those who harbor unpopular religious beliefs.” Joined by Alito, Gorsuch chastised the court for not protecting the challengers, saying that it “is always the failure to defend the Constitution’s promises that leads to this court’s greatest regrets.”

The other case involved a challenge by three Christian nurses, who are members of We the Patriots USA, a Connecticut-based group that is also a plaintiff. The group opposes vaccine mandates and advocates for various causes including what it called “medical freedom.”

In a video on the group’s website, co-founder Brian Festa said, “We were fighting against vaccine mandates. We were fighting to reveal the truth about what’s in these shots, long before COVID was even a thing.”

These plaintiffs are represented by Norman Pattis, a lawyer known for defending conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, founder of the right-wing website Infowars, against defamation lawsuits after he falsely called a 2012 Connecticut school mass shooting a “hoax.”

According to government data, about 84% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 72% are fully vaccinated. A minority of Americans has declined to get the shots.

In legal filings, the New York challengers said that they believe abortion is “evil” and object to any COVID-19 vaccine whose development relied on cell lines from aborted fetuses.

The three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for U.S. use do not contain aborted fetal cells. Laboratory-grown cells that descended from the cells of an aborted fetus obtained decades ago were employed in testing during the vaccine development process. Drug efficacy and safety testing using such cell lines is routine.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. consumers see near-term inflation rising at twice pace of wage gains, survey shows

By Jonnelle Marte

(Reuters) – U.S. consumers’ short-term inflation expectations pushed higher in November and expectations for future earnings growth dropped, suggesting they expect price increases to outpace wage gains at an even faster rate in the near term, according to a survey released on Monday by the New York Federal Reserve.

Prices for food and other goods are rising at the fastest pace since 1982, according to data released by the Labor Department last week. That higher inflation is cementing expectations the Fed will raise interest rates next year.

The price increases are also eroding wage gains, and the survey suggests consumers expect that situation to worsen in the near term. While near-term inflation expectations rose, year-ahead earnings expectations declined in November.

Consumers said they expect inflation to reach a median of 6.0% in one year, up from an expectation of 5.7% in October. Expectations for year-ahead earnings growth dropped to 2.8% in November from 3.0% in the previous month.

That would leave inflation growing 3.2 percentage points faster than earnings in one year, the widest gap since the survey launched in 2013.

Median expectations for what inflation could be in three years, however, dropped to 4.0% from 4.2%, the first decline since June and only the second drop since October 2020. And uncertainty over what future inflation could look like also rose to new highs for the survey.

Expectations for future home price growth declined slightly but consumers are still expecting more robust growth than they did before the coronavirus pandemic. Consumers said they expect home prices to rise by a median of 5% in one year, down from 5.6% in October but well above the 3.1% expected in February 2020.

The monthly survey of consumer expectations is based on a rotating panel of approximately 1,300 households.

(Reporting by Jonnelle Marte; Editing by Paul Simao)

 

Factbox: Five potential flashpoints between Russia and Ukraine

MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) – A Russian troop build-up near Ukraine has led to fears that a war could break out between the former Soviet neighbors. Here are some potential flashpoints.

SEA OF AZOV

Confrontation has periodically flared up in the Sea of Azov, flanked by the Ukrainian and Russian coastlines, since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The sea flows into the Black Sea via the Kerch Strait that Russia now de facto controls. The waters contain two large Ukrainian ports – Mariupol and Berdyansk, where Kyiv is building a naval base. Kyiv says Moscow seeks de facto control of the entire sea and impedes shipping.

Last week Russia accused Ukraine of a dangerous provocation after a Ukrainian naval boat sailed towards the Kerch Strait and did not react to a Russian request to change course. Ukraine said the vessel was an unarmed search and rescue ship and called the complaints disinformation. In 2018, Russia seized two small Ukrainian gunboats and one tugboat and their combined crew of 24 off Crimea. It accused them of illegally entering Russian waters as they headed from the Black Sea via the Kerch Strait.

CRIMEA

Russia has heavily reinforced Crimea with troops and military hardware since the annexation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he will do all he can to return the peninsula. The Kremlin says it views his comments as a direct threat. Most of the world recognizes Crimea and its surrounding waters as Ukrainian. This summer a British warship exercised what London said were internationally recognized freedom of navigation rules in Ukrainian territorial waters near Crimea. Moscow said the ship crossed into Russian waters and that it fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of the vessel.

NORTH CRIMEAN CANAL

The Soviet-era canal that runs for more than 400 km (250 miles) was built in 1961-71 to channel water from the Dnieper river in Ukraine to arid areas of Ukraine’s Kherson region and Crimea. Ukrainian military analysts have said it could be used as a pretext for a Russian military offensive in southern Ukraine.

Following the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine cut off fresh water supply along the canal that had supplied 85% of the peninsula’s needs. Moscow appealed this year to the European Court of Human Rights in part over what it said was Ukraine’s blocking of water supplies. The complaint was dismissed. In July this year, Ukraine’s parliament adopted legislation banning water supplies to “occupied” territories. Kyiv says it cannot supply water because most of it would be used by the Russian army.

Ukraine’s defense minister has said Kyiv would be prepared to supply water to the population in the form of humanitarian aid delivered by the Red Cross if needed, but not via the canal.

DONBASS

Ukraine says some 14,000 people have been killed in fighting between government forces and Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine since 2014. As the West has raised fears over a Russian troop buildup, Moscow has accused Ukraine of building up its own troops and compared the tensions to the run-up to a 2008 war in which Russian forces crushed those of neighboring Georgia.

BELARUS-UKRAINE BORDER

Ties between Ukraine and Belarus have worsened since last year, when Moscow helped Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko weather mass street protests and Lukashenko in turn became more vocal in his support for Moscow against Ukraine. He has since said Crimea is legally Russian territory, a U-turn on his previous stance.

Last month, Ukraine said it should set aside money to build a more than 2,500 km fence on its borders with Belarus. Minsk has since accused a Ukrainian Mi-8 military helicopter of flouting its border during maneuvers and flying 1 km (0.6 miles) into its territory. Belarus has announced plans to hold joint military exercises with Russia on the Ukrainian border.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Natalia Zinets; editing by Mark Trevelyan and Angus MacSwan)

Health costs pushed or worsened poverty for over 500 million

By Manas Mishra

(Reuters) – More than half a billion people globally were pushed or sent further into extreme poverty last year as they paid for health costs out of their own pockets, with the COVID-19 pandemic expected to make things worse, the World Health Organization and the World Bank said on Sunday.

The pandemic disrupted health services globally and triggered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, making it even more difficult for people to pay for healthcare, according to a joint statement from both the organizations.

“All governments must immediately resume and accelerate efforts to ensure every one of their citizens can access health services without fear of the financial consequences,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Tedros urged governments to increase their focus on health care systems and stay on course towards universal health coverage, which the WHO defines as everyone getting access to health services they need without financial hardship.

Healthcare is a major political issue in the United States, one of the few industrialized countries that does not have universal cover for its citizens.

Globally, the pandemic made things worse and immunization coverage dropped for the first time in ten years, with deaths from tuberculosis and malaria increasing.

“Within a constrained fiscal space, governments will have to make tough choices to protect and increase health budgets,” Juan Pablo Uribe, global director for health, nutrition and population at World Bank, said.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

New friends – UAE de facto ruler, Israel’s Bennett in “historic” meeting

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan hosted Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday in the first ever public meeting between the United Arab Emirates’ de facto ruler and an Israeli leader.

Israel’s ambassador to Abu Dhabi said the issue of Iran was on the agenda for their talks, which follow the formalization of Israel-UAE relations last year under a U.S.-led regional initiative.

While shared concern about Iranian activity was among reasons for the diplomatic moves, the UAE has also been trying to improve relations with Tehran.

Releasing photographs of Bennett and Sheikh Mohammed smiling and shaking hands, the Israeli leader’s office described the meeting as “historic.”

Before he flew home later in the day, Bennett’s office said in a statement that Sheikh Mohammed had accepted an invitation to visit Israel. There was no immediate confirmation from UAE officials.

A statement on state news agency WAM said Sheikh Mohammed voiced hope for “stability in the Middle East” and that Bennet’s visit would “advance the relationship of cooperation towards more positive steps in the interests of the people of the two nations and of the region”.

The Palestinians, whose diplomacy with Israel has been stalled since 2014, have deplored the Israeli-Emirati rapprochement.

Israeli Ambassador Amir Hayek declined to elaborate on any discussion of Iran but he told Israel’s Army Radio: “The prime minister did not only come here solely to address the Iranian issue.”

With world powers now trying to renew the Iran nuclear deal, Abu Dhabi last week sent an envoy to Tehran. A U.S. delegation is due in the UAE this week to warn Emirati banks against non-compliance with sanctions on Iran.

Iran is Israel’s arch-foe, but it has not been mentioned publicly by Bennett since he set off on Sunday to the UAE with pledges to promote bilateral commerce and other forms of civilian cooperation.

The Israel Hayom newspaper, quoting unnamed officials, said Bennett was expected to brief Sheikh Mohammed on intelligence regarding Iranian-supplied militias and drones in the region.

Israel last month broached setting up joint defenses against Iran with Gulf Arab states. Hayek said military sales to UAE are in the works, though Israeli industry sources say advanced Israeli air defense systems have yet to be offered.

“Israel is in cooperation with a new friend, with a partner for the long-term, and the considerations will be both considerations of defense and also considerations of how you work with a country which is very, very, very friendly to Israel,” Hayek said.

Bennett said he told his government to step up efforts to reach a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates by the first quarter of 2022.

Israel-UAE bilateral trade in goods alone reached nearly $500 million so far in 2021 – up from $125 million in 2020 – and is expected to continue growing rapidly.

(Writing by Dan Williams and Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Death toll now 74 from weekend tornadoes, expected to rise -Kentucky governor

(Reuters) – The death toll from a string of tornadoes that tore through six states rose to 74 with at least 109 people still missing, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Monday. He said the number of fatalities would likely rise in the coming days.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Chris Reese

 

By Gabriella Borter

MAYFIELD, Ky. (Reuters) – At least 64 people, including six children, lost their lives in Kentucky after a raft of tornadoes tore through six states, with power still out for thousands and strangers welcoming survivors who lost everything into their homes.

While the toll from the deadly twisters was lower than initially feared, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he expects it to increase as searchers continue to sift through a flattened landscape of twisted metal, downed trees and homes reduced to rubble.

“It may be weeks before we have counts on both deaths and levels of destruction,” Beshear told reporters, adding that the victims ranged in age from 5 months to 86 years old, and that 105 people were still unaccounted for.

On Monday, Beshear said officials were working to confirm that eight people had perished when a candle factory in Mayfield, a town of about 10,000 in the southwestern corner of Kentucky, was hit in the storm.

Out of the 110 workers who had been toiling at the Mayfield Consumer Products LLC factory, 94 were believed to have made it out alive, according to the owners of the business, the governor said.

“We feared much, much worse,” he said. “I pray that it is accurate.”

In the hard-hit small town, the tornado destroyed not only the candle factory but also the police and fire stations. Homes were flattened or missing roofs, giant trees uprooted and street signs mangled.

Kentucky’s emergency management director, Michael Dossett also at the briefing, said 28,000 homes and businesses remained without power.

More than 300 National Guard personnel and scores of state workers were distributing supplies and working to clear roads so that mountains of debris can be removed in the aftermath of the disaster, the governor said.

He added that authorities were coordinating an “unprecedented amount of goods and volunteers,” and President Joe Biden was expected to visit the state but no date had been set.

Beshear, at times chocking up, said the search, rescue and recovery process in the swath of destruction has been an emotional roller coaster for all those involved, including him.

“You go from grief to shock to being resolute for a span of 10 minutes and then you go back,” he said.

Biden on Sunday declared a major federal disaster in Kentucky, paving the way for additional federal aid, the White House said.

While Kentucky was hardest hit, six workers were killed at an Amazon.com Inc warehouse in Illinois after the plant buckled under the force of the tornado, including one cargo driver who died in the bathroom, where many workers told Reuters they had been directed to shelter.

A nursing home was struck in Arkansas, causing one of that state’s two deaths. Four were reported dead in Tennessee and two in Missouri.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in Mayfield, Kentucky; Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Maria Caspani; Editing by Robert Birsel and Lisa Shumaker)

As conflict stalks Burkina Faso borderlands, hunger spreads

By Anne Mimault

DORI, Burkina Faso (Reuters) – Suspended from scales in a bucket, nine-month-old Sakinatou Amadou gripped the sides of her makeshift container as a nurse at a small clinic in northern Burkina Faso checked on her recovery from malnutrition.

Sakinatou’s mother is dead and she is being raised in Dori, a trading hub near the Niger border, by her grandmother, whose family of 14 have struggled to support themselves since they fled their village in 2019.

They are among more than 2 million people across Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger who have been forced from their homes by a wave of attacks on rural communities by Islamist groups.

With crop yields further compromised by erratic rainfall, some 5.5 million in the three countries on the edge of the Sahara are facing food shortages, a figure the U.N. estimates could rise to 8.2 million by August, when food is most scarce before the harvest.

“People have lost animals, fields and sometimes crops. They have lost everything,” said doctor Alphonse Gnoumou, who runs the health center in Dori that has helped Sakinatou to gain weight.

The town’s once bustling livestock market has shut down due to the violence. Transporting food in the area is dangerous and prices have skyrocketed, said Kadidiatou Ba, who sells vegetables and dried goods from a roadside shack.

“Everything has gone up. We used to pay 40,000 CFA francs ($68) for a sack of beans, now we’re at 75,000,” she said as she waited for customers.

Meanwhile Dori’s population has nearly tripled in two years to 71,000 and the influx of displaced people threatens to overwhelm meagre local services.

Three or four children cram behind each desk at a local school, which aims to feed each pupil a bowl of rice and beans so they can have at least one square meal per day.

“These were very traumatized kids. When they first came with their parents, we saw an indescribable sadness in them,” said head teacher Bokum Abdalaye, as children played in the schoolyard behind him.

“When they see they have a midday meal that they can share with the others, that helps them settle in.”

($1 = 584.3400 CFA francs)

(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Edward McAllister and John Stonestreet)

U.N. chief urges action on ‘killer robots’ as Geneva talks open

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for new rules covering the use of autonomous weapons as a key meeting on the issue opened in Geneva.

Negotiators at the U.N. talks have for eight years been discussing limits on lethal autonomous weapons, or LAWS, which are fully machine-controlled and rely on new technology such as artificial intelligence and facial recognition.

But pressure has increased in part due to a U.N. panel report in March that said the first autonomous drone attack may have already occurred in Libya.

“I encourage the Review Conference to agree on an ambitious plan for the future to establish restrictions on the use of certain types of autonomous weapons,” Guterres said at the start of the five-day talks.

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has 125 parties including the United States, China and Israel.

Some participating states such as Austria call for a total ban on LAWS while others including Washington have been more reticent and have pointed to potential benefits of such weapons which might be more precise than humans in hitting targets.

Amnesty International and civil society groups are calling for countries to start negotiating an international treaty and will present a petition to negotiators later on Monday.

“The pace of technology is really beginning to outpace the rate of diplomatic talks,” said Clare Conboy of Stop Killer Robots. “(This) is a historic opportunity for states to take steps to safeguard humanity against autonomy in the use of force.”

France’s Disarmament Ambassador Yann Hwang, who is president of the talks, called for “key and vital decisions” to be taken this week. However, diplomats say the body, which requires consensus, is unlikely to reach agreement launching an international treaty, with Russia among others expected to oppose such a step.

“There is not enough support to launch a treaty at this stage but we think some principles could be agreed for national implementation,” said a diplomat involved in the talks.

If no agreement can be reached, countries might move talks to another forum either inside or outside the United Nations.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Giles Elgood)