Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Spain’s La Palma lifts lockdown imposed after volcano soured air quality

By Marco Trujillo

LA PALMA, Spain (Reuters) – Authorities in Spain’s La Palma lifted a stay-at-home order on Monday just a few hours after telling people to stay indoors due to poor air quality caused by the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.

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

Around 24,500 residents in Los Llanos de Aridane, El Paso and Tazacorte – a third of La Palma’s inhabitants – were asked to stay indoors due to emissions of sulphur dioxide that had reached “extremely adverse” levels, authorities said.

In affected municipalities, residents were told to stay inside, while students were told to remain in schools and parents not to pick them up until the air quality cleared.

However, a few hours later, emergency services lifted the order thanks to an improvement in air quality data and said students would leave school at the regular time.

“We’re all a bit scared,” said 64-year old Carlos Ramos in Los Llanos de Aridane, explaining that nothing similar had happened with previous eruptions on the island.

“We’ll see how it all ends because I don’t trust it (the volcano) and I’m not totally sure it’s ever going to end.”

Lava flows have damaged or destroyed at least 2,910 buildings, according to the EU satellite monitoring system Copernicus, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes on the island, part of the subtropical Canaries archipelago.

(Reporting by Marco Trujillo and Borja Suárez; writing by Emma Pinedo; editing by Nathan Allen, Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Exclusive-Nicaragua embracing China to insulate against international sanctions – U.S. official

By Matt Spetalnick and Drazen Jorgic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nicaragua’s sudden diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China was part of efforts by President Daniel Ortega’s government to shield itself from recent international sanctions against Managua, a senior U.S. administration official said on Friday.

The United States is also uncertain whether Honduras could follow suit and open diplomatic ties with Beijing, the U.S. official told Reuters, but added that Washington was prepared to “surge” economic aid to the incoming government of Xiomara Castro.

China and Nicaragua re-established diplomatic ties on Friday after the Central American country broke relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, boosting Beijing in a part of the world long considered the United States’ backyard and angering Washington.

Beijing has increased military and political pressure on Taiwan to accept its sovereignty claims, drawing anger from the democratically ruled island, which has repeatedly said it would not be bullied and has the right to international participation.

Nicaragua’s abrupt break with Taiwan followed months of worsening ties between Ortega and U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.

Washington has imposed new targeted sanctions on Nicaraguan officials following the country’s November elections. Biden called the elections a “pantomime” that was neither free nor fair as Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla and Cold War adversary of the United States, won a fourth consecutive term.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cast Nicaragua’s embrace of China as part of Ortega’s effort to consolidate his “authoritarian regime” and also described it as a response to sanctions by Washington and several other countries.

The official said Washington viewed Nicaragua’s diplomatic switch as partly in response to such pressure from the international community.

“They have felt that pressure and perhaps need the PRC support, or think they need the PRC support, for their way forward as they hunker down in a more authoritarian posture,” the official said.

Washington has continued to make the case to Honduras and other countries in the Americas that recognize Taiwan to maintain those ties, and has warned them about China’s intentions and “non-transparent” investment strategy in the region, the official said.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Drazen Jorgic in Mexico City; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Franklin Paul and Daniel Wallis)

U.S. imposes sweeping human rights sanctions on China, Myanmar and N Korea

By Daphne Psaledakis, David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Friday imposed extensive human rights-related sanctions on dozens of people and entities tied to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, and added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group to an investment blacklist.

Canada and the United Kingdom joined the United States in imposing sanctions related to human rights abuses in Myanmar, while Washington also imposed the first new sanctions on North Korea https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-maintain-troop-level-south-korea-minister-2021-12-02 under President Joe Biden’s administration and targeted Myanmar military entities, among others, in action marking Human Rights Day.

“Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

The North Korean mission at the United Nations and China’s, Myanmar’s and Bangladesh’s embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Biden gathered over 100 world leaders at a virtual summit this week and made a plea for bolstering democracies around the world, calling safeguarding rights and freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the “defining challenge” of the current era. The U.S. Treasury Department has taken a series of sanctions actions this week to mark the summit.

The Treasury on Friday added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies,” accusing it of having developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.

As a result the company will fall under an investment ban for U.S. investors. SenseTime is close to selling 1.5 billion shares in an initial public offering (IPO). After news of the Treasury restrictions earlier this week, the company began discussing the fate of the planned $767 million offering with Hong Kong’s stock exchange, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, but the U.S. government and many rights groups say Beijing is carrying out genocide there.

The Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on two Myanmar military entities and an organization that provides reserves for the military. The Directorate of Defense Industries, one of the entities targeted, makes weapons for the military and police that have been used in a brutal crackdown on opponents of the military’s Feb. 1 coup.

The Treasury also targeted four regional chief ministers, including Myo Swe Win, who heads the junta’s administration in the Bago region where the Treasury said at least 82 people were killed in a single day in April.

Canada imposed sanctions against four entities affiliated with the Myanmar military government, while the United Kingdom imposed fresh sanctions against the military.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the military overthrew leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government on Feb. 1, triggering daily protests in towns and cities and fighting in borderlands between the military and ethnic minority insurgents.

Junta forces seeking to crush opposition have killed more than 1,300 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.

The Treasury also blacklisted North Korea’s Central Public Prosecutors Office had been designated, along with the former minister of social security and recently assigned Minister of People’s Armed Forces Ri Yong Gil, as well as a Russian university for facilitating the export of workers from North Korea.

North Korea has long sought a lifting of punishing U.S. and international sanctions imposed over its weapons programs and has denounced U.S. criticism of its human rights record as evidence of a hostile policy against it.

The Biden administration has repeatedly called on North Korea to engage in dialogue over its nuclear and missiles programs, without success.

The U.S. State Department on Friday also barred 12 people from traveling to the United States, including officials in China, Belarus and Sri Lanka.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Simon Lewis, David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick, Alexandra Alper, Tim Ahmann and David Ljunggren; Editing by Chris Sanders, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)

Global shortage of nurses set to grow as pandemic enters third year – group

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The numbers of nurses around the world are falling further just as the Omicron coronavirus spreads, and there is a also an imbalance as Western countries step up recruitment of healthcare workers from African and other poorer countries, the International Council of Nurses said on Friday.

Many nurses are burned out from the COVID-19 pandemic and rates of “intention to leave” within a year have doubled to 20-30%, said Howard Catton, CEO of the Geneva-based group that represent 27 million nurses in 130 national associations.

“I think that we are at a tipping point … if those numbers continue the trend that we are seeing, it could be an exodus of people,” Catton told a news briefing.

“I almost think that governments need to be thinking about the life support package of measures they need to be putting together to invest in their nurses and their health care workers next year,” he said.

At least 115,000 nurses have died from COVID-19, but Catton said this World Health Organization figure from the start of the pandemic through May was conservative and the true figure is probably twice that.

There was already a global shortage of 6 million nurses pre-pandemic and some 4.75 million nurses are due to retire over the next few years, he added.

On average, wealthy countries have nearly 10 times the rate of nurses in terms of their populations compared with poor nations, but many are recruiting overseas to staff their hospitals, he said, noting that the Philippines and India were traditional exporters.

“We have absolutely seen increased recruitment activity by the UK and Germany as examples in Europe, the U.S. and Canada in North America as well,” he said. He added that African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria were seeing their nurses recruited.

The emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant, first detected last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong and now reported in nearly 60 countries, has caused fresh anxiety.

“My sense is that nurses around the world, I think like all of us were perhaps starting to feel that we were starting to see light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but now there is a palpable anxiety that we could be going back close to square one,” Catton said.

(Additional reporting by Cecile Mantovani; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Russia demands rescinding of NATO promise to Ukraine and Georgia

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia demanded on Friday that NATO rescind a 2008 commitment to Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day become members and said the alliance should promise not to deploy weapons in countries bordering Russia that could threaten its security.

The demands were spelt out by the Russian foreign ministry in its fullest statement yet on the security guarantees that President Vladimir Putin says he wants to obtain from the United States and its allies.

“In the fundamental interests of European security, it is necessary to formally disavow the decision of the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit that ‘Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members’,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine is at the center of a crisis in East-West relations as it accuses Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive.

Russia denies planning any attack but accuses Ukraine and the United States of destabilizing behavior, and has said it needs security guarantees for its own protection.

The ministry statement followed a video call between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden this week that was dominated by discussion of Ukraine.

The foreign ministry said Moscow was proposing a series of steps to reduce tensions, including to agree safe distances between Russian and NATO warships and planes, especially in the Baltic and Black Seas.

Moscow called for the renewing of a regular defense dialogue with the United States and NATO and urged Washington to join a moratorium on deploying intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe.

(Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry)

New York governor orders masks indoors for businesses without COVID-19 vaccine requirement

(Reuters) -New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on Friday that starting next week, face coverings must be worn inside all businesses and venues unless they have implemented a vaccine requirement, as cases of COVID-19 rise in the state.

The measure will be in effect from Dec. 13 to Jan. 15 in order to curb the spread of the virus during the holidays when more time is spent indoors shopping and gathering, she said in a statement.

“We shouldn’t have reached the point where we are confronted with a winter surge, especially with the vaccine at our disposal, and I share many New Yorkers’ frustration that we are not past this pandemic yet,” Hochul said.

While 80% of New Yorkers are fully vaccinated, the state has seen a recent surge in the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 46,000 residents.

Since Thanksgiving, the statewide seven-day average case rate has jumped by 43% and hospitalizations have increased by 29%, state data showed.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)

Severe flooding kills one as Storm Barra drenches northern Spain

By Vincent West

PAMPLONA, Spain (Reuters) – Severe flooding in Spain’s Navarre region submerged cars and houses and killed at least one person on Friday as heavy rains from Storm Barra caused rivers to burst their banks.

Police said one person in the small village of Sunbilla died on Friday afternoon after a landslide caved in the roof of an outbuilding at their farmhouse.

In the regional capital of Pamplona people kayaked down a street, gliding past a bank as rescue workers waded into the waist-deep waters with pumps.

In the center of Villava, a small town just outside the city, houses were submerged up to their roofs.

The regional government declared a level 2 flood emergency and said similar conditions were likely on Saturday, with the focus of the flooding heading south toward the town of Peralta.

“The problem isn’t so much in the amount of precipitation but the level of the rivers,” regional interior secretary Amparo Lopez told reporters.

After a cold snap sent temperatures plunging across Spain, Storm Barra has brought torrential rains and thawed snow and ice at higher altitudes, causing rivers to rise rapidly.

(Additional reporting and writing by Nathan Allen; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.S. Supreme Court allows challenge to Texas six-week abortion ban

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed abortion providers to pursue a legal challenge to a ban on most abortions in Texas, with the fate of the Republican-backed measure that allows private citizens to enforce it now hanging in the balance.

The justices, who heard arguments on the case on Nov. 1, lifted a block on lower court proceedings, likely paving the way for a federal judge to formally block the law. The conservative-majority court on Sept. 1 had declined to halt the law. The court in a separate case dismissed a separate challenge brought by President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide another major abortion rights case from Mississippi that could lead to the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court in the Texas case ruled 8-1 that the challenge was allowed under a 1908 Supreme Court ruling that said state laws can be challenged in federal court by suing state government officials. Texas had sought to exploit a loophole in that earlier ruling by saying no state officials could enforce it, but the Supreme Court said the challengers could pursue their case by naming state licensing officials as defendants.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on that part of the ruling, saying he would have dismissed the lawsuit altogether.

The Texas measure is the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. It bans abortions at around six weeks, a point in time when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant, and has no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. It is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed by Republicans at the state level in recent years.

The Texas law enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits under the law. Biden’s administration has called it a “bounty.”

That feature made it more difficult to directly sue the state to challenge the law’s legality, helping shield the measure from being immediately blocked.

Abortion providers and the Biden administration in separate legal challenges argued that the law violates a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy recognized in the Roe v. Wade ruling and is impermissibly designed to evade federal judicial review.

The Mississippi law – blocked by lower courts – bans abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court’s conservative justices during oral arguments in the Mississippi case on Dec. 1 indicated sympathy toward the Mississippi measure and potential support for overturning Roe.

How the conservative justices voted in the Texas case may not guide how they vote on the Mississippi law because the legal issues differed, particularly relating to its unusual enforcement mechanism.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. consumer prices post biggest annual gain in more than 39 years

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices rose further in November amid strong gains in the cost of food and a range of other goods, leading to the largest annual increase in more than 39 years and potentially giving the Federal Reserve ammunition to quickly wind down its bond purchases.

The report from the Labor Department on Friday followed on the heels of a slew of data this month showing a rapidly tightening labor market. With supply bottlenecks showing little sign of easing and companies raising wages as they compete for scarce workers, high inflation could persist well into 2022.

The increased cost of living, the result of shortages caused by the relentless COVID-19 pandemic, is hurting President Joe Biden’s approval rating. High inflation and a strengthening economy have raised the risk of an early Fed interest rate increase.

“The biggest problem for the Fed is the mounting evidence of a strong pick-up in cyclical price pressures,” said Paul Ashworth, chief economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

“Although we think headline inflation has now peaked, it will decline only gradually over the first half of next year and, crucially, because of that building cyclical pressure we expect core inflation to remain above the Fed’s target for a prolonged period.”

The consumer price index rose 0.8% last month after surging 0.9% in October. The broad-based increase was led by gasoline prices, which rose 6.1%, matching October’s gain. With crude oil prices declining recently, gasoline prices have likely peaked.

Food prices rose 0.7%. The cost of food at home increased 0.8%, driven by increases in the price of fruits and vegetables, meat and cereals and bakery products. It also cost more to eat away from home.

In the 12 months through November, the CPI accelerated 6.8%. That was the biggest year-on-year rise since June 1982 and followed a 6.2% advance in October.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that the CPI would climb 0.7% and increase 6.8% on a year-on-year basis.

TIGHTENING LABOR MARKET

The government reported last week that the unemployment rate fell to a 21-month low of 4.2% in November. Tightening labor market conditions were underscored by a report on Thursday showing new applications for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in more than 52 years last week.

Other data this week showed there were 11 million job openings at the end of October and Americans quit jobs at near-record rates.

“With supply shortages likely to stick around until next year and service-sector prices trending higher, inflation is going to get worse before it gets better,” said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said the U.S. central bank should consider speeding up the winding down of its monthly bond purchases at its policy meeting next week. Many economists are expecting an early Fed interest rate increase.

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI rose 0.5% last month after gaining 0.6% in October. The so-called core CPI was supported by rents, with owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence, which is what a homeowner would receive from renting a home, rising a solid 0.4%.

Prices for used cars and trucks increased 2.5% for a second straight month. New motor vehicle prices rose 1.1%, marking the eighth consecutive month of gains. A global semiconductor shortage has undercut motor vehicle production.

Airline fares rebounded 4.7%. But further increases are unlikely following the emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which could make some people hesitant to travel by air. The United States is already experiencing a resurgence in coronavirus infections, driven by the Delta variant.

The so-called core CPI jumped 4.9% on a year-on-year basis, the largest rise since June 1991, after increasing 4.6% in the 12 months through October.

The Fed tracks the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding the volatile food and energy components, for its flexible 2% inflation target. The core PCE price index surged 4.1% in the 12 months through October, the most since January 1991. Data for November will be released later this month.

“A continued trend higher in core inflation creates further hawkish risks for a Fed that has recently become more focused on the inflation side of its mandate, and suggests a rising likelihood of an even earlier first rate hike,” said Veronica Clark, an economist at Citigroup in New York.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)

Most of 54 dead in Mexico truck crash were Guatemalans, Mexico says

By Jacob Garcia

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Most of the victims of Thursday’s truck crash in southern Mexico that killed at least 54 people and injured dozens more were Guatemalan migrants, authorities said on Friday.

People spilled from the truck carrying an estimated 166 people after it flipped over on a curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, causing one of the worst death tolls of migrants in Mexico in the past decade.

The Mexican Attorney General’s office said it would investigate the incident, which state officials in Chiapas said had claimed the lives of 54 people and injured 58 others.

Authorities identified 95 Guatemalans among the people caught up in the accident, as well as three people from the Dominican Republic, a Honduran, a Mexican and an Ecuadorean.

Lists of people being treated in hospital published on social media showed dozens of Guatemalan migrants among the survivors. Local residents said other people fled the scene, apparently to evade arrest after the truck rolled over.

An unidentified Guatemalan man interviewed at the scene said when the trunk driver tried to negotiate the bend, the weight of people inside caused the vehicle flip over.

“The trailer couldn’t handle the weight of people,” he said.

Thousands of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America travel through Mexico each month to reach the U.S. border. They often cram inside large trucks organized by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.

National and international leaders expressed consternation at the death toll, and urged migrants not to try their luck in making the journey north to the United States.

“Human smugglers disregard human life for their own profit. Please don’t risk your lives to migrate irregularly,” Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico said on Twitter.

Many migrants fall prey to criminal gangs en route. In January, 19 people, mostly migrants, were massacred with suspected police involvement in northern Mexico.

Record numbers of people have been arrested on the U.S.-Mexico border this year as migrants seek to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s pledge to pursue more humane immigration policies than his hardline predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk thousands of miles to the U.S. border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Jose Torres; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Alison Williams)