Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Fed says shortages of materials, hiring problems holding back recovery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Shortages of materials and “difficulties in hiring” are holding back the U.S. economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and have driven a “transitory” bout of inflation, the Federal Reserve said on Friday.

“Progress on vaccinations has led to a reopening of the economy and strong economic growth,” the U.S. central bank said in its semiannual report to Congress on the state of the economy. However, “shortages of material inputs and difficulties in hiring have held down activity in a number of industries.”

The report will be the subject of hearings in Congress next week, including testimony from Fed Chair Jerome Powell about the outlook for the economy, inflation, and the transition of monetary policy as the impact of the pandemic recedes.

The report released by the Fed on Friday is largely backward-looking, but it documents the central bank’s view that the recovery remains on track as firms and families navigate a complicated economic reopening.

Prices have risen faster than expected, for example, and while the supply bottlenecks and other factors driving the price hikes are expected to ease over time, “upside risks to the inflation outlook in the near term have increased,” the Fed said.

Hiring has also slowed for an unexpected reason: Companies want to bring on more employees, but not enough workers are ready to take those jobs as they cope with ongoing health and family concerns and can rely on continued federal unemployment benefits to help pay the bills.

“Many of these factors should have a diminishing effect on participation in the coming months,” the Fed said, though the speed and strength of that labor market recovery also remains uncertain.

The central bank, however, said available data suggest “a further robust increase in demand” occurred from April through June.

“Against a backdrop of elevated household savings, accommodative financial conditions, ongoing fiscal support, and the reopening of the economy, the strength in household spending has persisted,” while the financial system remains “resilient,” the Fed said.

(Reporting by Howard SchneiderEditing by Paul Simao)

Russia allows U.N. Syria aid access from Turkey for 12 months

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The U.N. Security Council agreed on Friday to extend a cross-border aid operation into Syria from Turkey after Russia agreed to a compromise in last minute talks with the United States that ensures U.N. aid access to millions of Syrians for 12 months.

“Parents can sleep tonight knowing that for the next 12 months their children will be fed. The humanitarian agreement we’ve reached here will literally save lives,” said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The council mandate for the long-running aid operation was due to expire on Saturday. After not engaging in weeks of discussion on a resolution drafted by Ireland and Norway, Syrian ally Russia on Thursday proposed a six month renewal.

Following negotiations between Thomas-Greenfield and Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia on Friday morning, the 15-member council unanimously adopted a compromise resolution that asks for a U.N. report on Syria aid access in six months, but that diplomats said does not require another vote in January to again extend the cross-border operation.

Nebenzia described the vote on the resolution, presented by both the United States and Russia, as a “historical moment” that he hoped could “become a turning point that not only Syria will win from … but the Middle Eastern region as a whole.”

U.S. President Joe Biden had raised the importance of the cross-border aid operation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June. The Biden administration warned at the time that any future cooperation with Russia over Syria would be at risk if the cross-border aid deliveries were shut down.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the Security Council to renew the cross-border aid operation for another year, warning that a failure to do so would be devastating for millions of people.

The council first authorized a cross-border aid operation into Syria in 2014 at four points. Last year, it whittled that down to one point from Turkey into a rebel-held area in Syria due to Russian and Chinese opposition over renewing all four.

Russia has said the aid operation is outdated and violates Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In a swipe at the United States and others, Russia and China have also blamed unilateral sanctions for some of Syria’s plight.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Editing by William Maclean)

CDC recommends masking indoors for unvaccinated students, teachers in U.S. schools

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday updated its guidance to help reopen schools in the fall, including recommending masking indoors for everyone who is not fully vaccinated and three feet of distance within classrooms.

The CDC in its latest guidance said all kindergarten through grade 12 schools in the United States should continue to mandate wearing masks indoors by all individuals who are not fully vaccinated.

The agency said that if localities decide to remove prevention strategies in schools based on local conditions, they should remove them one at a time. Schools should monitor closely for increases in COVID-19 cases before removing the next prevention strategy.

“Because of the importance of in-person learning, schools where not everyone is fully vaccinated should implement physical distancing to the extent possible within their structures, but should not exclude students from in-person learning to keep a minimum distance requirement,” the new guidance said.

A study by the CDC also released on Friday showed that half of unvaccinated adolescents and parents of unvaccinated adolescents reported being uncertain about getting a COVID-19 vaccine, or did not intend to get one at all.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Israeli settlements amount to war crime – U.N. rights expert

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) -Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank amount to a war crime, a U.N. human rights investigator said on Friday, calling on countries to inflict a cost on Israel for its “illegal occupation.”

Michael Lynk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, was addressing a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, boycotted by Israel which does not recognize his mandate or cooperate with him.

“I conclude that the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime,” Lynk said.

He said the settlements violate an absolute ban on an occupying power transferring part of its civilian population into an occupied territory, thereby meeting the definition of a war crime under the Rome Statute founding the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“I submit to you that this finding compels the international community … to make it clear to Israel that its illegal occupation, and its defiance of international law and international opinion, can and will no longer be cost-free,” Lynk told the Geneva rights forum.

Many countries consider the settlements a breach of international law. Israel disputes this and cites Biblical and historical connections to the land, as well as security needs.

In a separate statement, Lynk said Israeli settlements were “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation.” There are now close to 300 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, with more than 680,000 Israeli settlers, he said.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally which has observer status at the council, was not on the speakers’ list for the debate.

Lotte Knudsen, the European Union’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said the settlements were illegal under international law, echoing the position of most countries.

“Such actions as forced transfers, evictions, demolitions, and confiscation of homes will only escalate an already tense environment.”

Palestinian Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi said Israel detained 5,000 Palestinians, some of them for more than 20 years.

Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital, but the issue of Jewish settlements on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war has long been a stumbling block in the peace process. The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mark Heinrich and Giles Elgood)

Ex-Colombian military, Haitian Americans suspected in killing of Haiti president

By Andre Paultre and Robenson Sanon

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – A heavily armed commando unit that assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moise this week comprised 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, authorities said on Thursday, as the hunt went on for the masterminds of the brazen killing.

Moise, 53, was fatally shot early on Wednesday at his home by what officials said was a group of foreign, trained killers, pitching the poorest country in the Americas deeper into turmoil amid political divisions, hunger and widespread gang violence.

Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano said initial findings indicated that Colombians suspected of taking part in the assassination were retired members of his country’s armed forces, and pledged to support the investigations in Haiti.

Police tracked the suspected assassins on Wednesday to a house near the scene of the crime in Petionville, a northern, hillside suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

A firefight lasted late into the night and authorities detained a number of suspects on Thursday.

Police Chief Leon Charles paraded 17 men before journalists at a news conference late on Thursday, showing a number of Colombian passports, plus assault rifles, machetes, walkie-talkies and materials including bolt cutters and hammers.

“Foreigners came to our country to kill the president,” Charles said, noting there were 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans.

He revealed that 15 of the Colombians were captured, as were the Haitian Americans. Three of the assailants were killed and eight were still on the run, Charles said.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia’s national police, said he had received information requests from Haiti on six suspects, two of whom had apparently been killed in an exchange with Haitian police. The other four were under arrest.

The foreign ministry in Taiwan, which maintains formal diplomatic ties with Haiti, said 11 of the suspects were captured at its embassy after they broke in.

Haiti’s minister of elections and interparty relations, Mathias Pierre, identified the Haitian-American suspects as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55.

A State Department spokesman could not confirm if any U.S. citizens were among those detained, but U.S. authorities were in contact with Haitian officials, including investigators, to discuss how the United States could assist.

Officials in the mostly French- and Creole-speaking Caribbean nation said on Wednesday the assassins appeared to have spoken in English and Spanish.

“It was a full, well-equipped commando (raid), with more than six cars and a lot of equipment,” Pierre said.

Officials have not yet given a motive for the killing. Since taking office in 2017, Moise had faced mass protests against his rule – first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

An angry crowd gathered on Thursday morning to watch the police operation unfold, with some setting fire to the suspects’ cars and to the house where they had hunkered down. Bullet casings were strewn in the street.

“Burn them!” shouted some of the hundreds of people outside the police station where the suspects were being held.

POWER VACUUM

Charles said the public had helped police find the suspects, but he implored residents of the sprawling seafront city of 1 million people not to take justice into their own hands.

A 15-day state of emergency was declared on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers.

Still, interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said on Thursday it was time for the economy to reopen and that he had given instructions for the airport to restart operations.

Moise’s death has generated confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

Haiti has struggled to achieve stability since the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, grappling with a series of coups and foreign interventions.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission – meant to restore order after a rebellion toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 – ended in 2019 with the country still in disarray.

“I can picture a scenario under which there are issues regarding to whom the armed forces and national police are loyal, in the case there are rival claims to being placeholder president of the country,” said Ryan Berg, an analyst with the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Haiti’s 1987 constitution stipulates the head of the Supreme Court should take over. But amendments that are not unanimously recognized state that it be the prime minister, or, in the last year of a president’s mandate – the case with Moise – that parliament should elect a president.

The head of the Supreme Court died last month due to COVID-19 amid a surge in infections in one of the few countries yet to start a vaccination campaign.

There is no sitting parliament as legislative elections scheduled for late 2019 were postponed amid political unrest.

Moise just this week appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to take over from Joseph, although he had yet to be sworn in when the president was killed.

Joseph appeared on Wednesday to take charge of the situation, running the government response to the assassination, appealing to Washington for support and declaring a state of emergency.

Henry – considered more favorably by the opposition – told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste that he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister and he should revert to the role of foreign minister.

“I think we need to speak. Claude was supposed to stay in the government I was going to have,” Henry was quoted as saying.

(Reporting by Andre Paultre and

Factbox: Healthcare, financial services, agriculture targeted in Biden order

(Reuters) – In an executive order on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden aims to remove barriers to competition in such industries as healthcare, financial services and agriculture while boosting wages and lowering prices, the White House said.

The order:

* Encourages the leading antitrust agencies to focus enforcement efforts on problems in key markets and coordinates other agencies’ ongoing response to corporate consolidation.

* Calls on the leading antitrust agencies, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to enforce the antitrust laws vigorously and recognizes that the law allows them to challenge bad mergers that past administrations did not previously challenge.

* Announces a policy that enforcement should focus in particular on labor markets, agricultural markets, healthcare markets (which includes prescription drugs, hospital consolidation and insurance), and the tech sector.

* Establishes a White House Competition Council, led by the Director of the National Economic Council, to monitor progress on finalizing the initiatives in the order and to coordinate the federal government’s response to the rising power of large corporations in the economy.

LABOR MARKETS

* Encourages the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements.

* Encourages the FTC to ban unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions that impede economic mobility.

* Encourages the FTC and DOJ to strengthen antitrust guidance to prevent employers from collaborating to suppress wages or reduce benefits by sharing wage and benefit information with one another.

HEALTHCARE

* Directs the Food and Drug Administration to work with states and tribes to safely import prescription drugs from Canada, pursuant to the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

* Directs the Health and Human Services Administration (HHS) to increase support for generic and biosimilar drugs, which provide low-cost options for patients.

* Directs HHS to issue a comprehensive plan within 45 days to combat high prescription drug prices and price gouging.

* Encourages the FTC to ban “pay for delay” and similar agreements by rule.

Hearing Aids

* Directs HHS to consider issuing proposed rules within 120 days for allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter.

Hospitals

* Underscores that hospital mergers can be harmful to patients and encourages the Justice Department and FTC to review and revise their merger guidelines to ensure patients are not harmed by such mergers.

* Directs HHS to support existing hospital price transparency rules and to finish implementing bipartisan federal legislation to address surprise hospital billing.

Health Insurance

* Directs HHS to standardize plan options in the National Health Insurance Marketplace so people can comparison shop more easily.

TRANSPORTATION

Airlines

* Directs the Department of Transportation (DOT) to consider issuing clear rules requiring the refund of fees when baggage is delayed or when service isn’t actually provided, such as when a plane’s WiFi or in-flight entertainment system is broken.

* Directs the DOT to consider issuing rules that require baggage, change and cancellation fees to be clearly disclosed to the customer.

Rail

* Encourages the Surface Transportation Board to require railroad track owners to provide rights of way to passenger rail and to strengthen their obligations to treat other freight companies fairly.

Shipping

* Encourages the Federal Maritime Commission to ensure vigorous enforcement against shippers charging American exporters exorbitant charges.

AGRICULTURE

* Directs U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to consider issuing new rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act making it easier for farmers to bring and win claims, stopping chicken processors from exploiting and underpaying chicken farmers, and adopting anti-retaliation protections for farmers who speak out about bad practices.

* Directs USDA to consider issuing new rules defining when meat can bear “Product of USA” labels, so that consumers have accurate, transparent labels that enable them to choose products made in the United States.

* Directs USDA to develop a plan to increase opportunities for farmers to access markets and receive a fair return, including supporting alternative food distribution systems like farmers’ markets and developing standards and labels so that consumers can choose to buy products that treat farmers fairly.

* Encourages the FTC to limit powerful equipment manufacturers from restricting others’ ability to use independent repair shops or do DIY repairs, such as when tractor companies block farmers from repairing their own tractors.

INTERNET SERVICE

* Encourages the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prevent ISPs from making deals with landlords that limit tenants’ choices.

* Encourages the FCC to revive the “Broadband Nutrition Label” and require providers to report prices and subscription rates to the FCC.

* Encourages the FCC to limit excessive early termination fees.

* Encourages the FCC to restore Net Neutrality rules undone by the prior administration.

TECHNOLOGY

* Announces an administration policy of greater scrutiny of mergers, especially by dominant internet platforms, with particular attention to the acquisition of nascent competitors, serial mergers, the accumulation of data, competition by “free” products, and the effect on user privacy.

* Encourages the FTC to establish rules on surveillance and the accumulation of data.

* Encourages the FTC to establish rules barring unfair methods of competition on internet marketplaces.

* Encourages the FTC to issue rules against anticompetitive restrictions on using independent repair shops or doing DIY repairs of one’s own devices and equipment.

BANKING AND CONSUMER FINANCE

* Encourages DOJ and the agencies responsible for banking (the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) to update guidelines on banking mergers to provide more robust scrutiny of mergers.

* Encourages the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to issue rules allowing customers to download their banking data and take it with them.

(Editing by Howard Goller)

Lithuania toughens Belarus border with razor wire to bar migrants

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Lithuania began building a 550-km (320-mile) razor wire barrier on its border with Belarus on Friday after accusing Belarusian authorities of flying in migrants from abroad to send illegally into the European Union.

The government said the military-style wire coil would cost 4.9 million euros ($5.81 million) to put up and run along most of the frontier, which passes over sparsely populated areas and large stretches of forest and marsh.

At a later date the barrier will be reinforced with a two meter (6.5 ft) high border fence topped by razor wire, costing an additional 41 million euros, the interior ministry said.

Hundreds of migrants have crossed from Belarus in recent days, most of them Iraqi citizens, Lithuania has said.

Belarus in May decided to allow migrants to enter Lithuania in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the bloc after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land on its soil and arrested a dissident blogger who was on board.

“If someone thinks we will close our border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and will become a holding site for those running from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunis and further down Africa – if someone thinks so, he is misguided, to say the least,” Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday.

Belarus is guarding the border now only as much as it is “profitable” to it, and as much as it can financially, the president said.

Lithuania responded on Wednesday by announcing it would put up the frontier barrier and deploy troops to prevent migrants crossing illegally into its territory.

In a related move, Lithuania’s parliament will meet on Tuesday to urgently pass legislation streamlining asylum application reviews, including shortening their initial review to no more than 10 days, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said.

All people who crossed the border illegally would be kept locked up, the draft law says, meaning an end to occasional short trips outside detention that are currently permitted.

Just over 1,500 people crossed the frontier illegally from Belarus this year, with 900 of them coming over in the first nine days of July.

The first stretch of the new barrier, to be completed on Friday, will run 500 meters (1,640 feet) in length and measure 1.8 meters (six feet) in height, the army defense chief’s spokeswoman Ruta Montvile told Reuters.

Simonyte told the national broadcaster she did not expect the migrant flow from Belarus to subside on its own.

“As the Belarus regime is making money from these people for visa charges and, I think, gets other income from them as well – it would be difficult to expect any positive trend without additional means of impact”, she said.

Simonyte said on Wednesday Belarus had been offering migrants flights to Minsk, citing documents found on at least one migrant who had reached Lithuania. She said the main airport from where people flew into Belarus was Baghdad, and her foreign minister said people also came Turkey.

The Lithuanian-Belarus border is 679-km (420-mile) long. About 78 km (48 miles) was fenced in preceding years, and about 258 km (160 miles) are monitored electronically, according to the interior ministry.

($1 = 0.8433 euros)

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Mark Heinrich, William Maclean)

Taliban say they control 85% of Afghanistan, humanitarian concerns mount

KABUL/ MOSCOW (Reuters) -Taliban officials said on Friday the Sunni Muslim insurgent group had taken control of 85% of territory in Afghanistan, and international concern mounted over problems getting medicines and supplies into the country.

Afghan government officials dismissed the assertion that the Taliban controlled most of the country as part of a propaganda campaign launched as foreign forces, including the United States, withdraw after almost 20 years of fighting.

But local Afghan officials said Taliban fighters, emboldened by the withdrawal, had captured an important district in Herat province, home to tens of thousands of minority Shi’ite Hazaras.

Torghundi, a northern town on the border with Turkmenistan, had also been captured by the Taliban overnight, Afghan and Taliban officials said.

Hundreds of Afghan security personnel and refugees continued to flee across the border into neighboring Iran and Tajikistan, causing concern in Moscow and other foreign capitals that radical Islamists could infiltrate Central Asia.

Three visiting Taliban officials sought to address those concerns during a visit to Moscow.

“We will take all measures so that Islamic State will not operate on Afghan territory… and our territory will never be used against our neighbors,” one of the Taliban officials, Shahabuddin Delawar, told a news conference.

He said “you and the entire world community have probably recently learned that 85% of the territory of Afghanistan has come under the control” of the Taliban.

The same delegation said a day earlier that the group would not attack the Tajik-Afghan border, the fate of which is in focus in Russia and Central Asia.

Asked about how much territory the Taliban held, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declined direct comment.

“Claiming territory or claiming ground doesn’t mean you can sustain that or keep it over time” he said in an interview with CNN. “And so I think it’s really time for the Afghan forces to get into the field – and they are in the field – and to defend their country, their people.”

“They’ve got the capacity, they’ve got the capability. Now it’s time to have that will,” he said.

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS

As fighting continued, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said health workers were struggling to get medicines and supplies into Afghanistan, and that some staff had fled after facilities came under attack.

The WHO’s regional emergencies director, Rick Brennan, said at least 18.4 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 3.1 million children at risk of acute malnutrition.

“We are concerned about our lack of access to be able to provide essential medicines and supplies and we are concerned about attacks on health care,” Brennan, speaking via video link from Cairo, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

Some aid will arrive by next week including 3.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses and oxygen concentrators, he said. They included doses of Johnson & Johnson’s shot donated by the United States and AstraZeneca doses through the COVAX facility.

A U.S. donation of more than 1.4 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrived on Friday, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said.

In Afghanistan, a prominent anti-Taliban commander said he would support efforts by Afghan forces to claw back control of parts of western Afghanistan, including a border crossing with Iran.

Mohammad Ismail Khan, widely known as the Lion of Herat, urged civilians to join the fight. He said hundreds of armed civilians from Ghor, Badghis, Nimroz, Farah, Helmand and Kandahar provinces had come to his house and were ready to fill the security void created by foreign force withdrawal.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday the Afghan people must decide their own future and that he would not consign another generation of Americans to the two-decade-old war.

Biden set a target date of Aug. 31 for the final withdrawal of U.S. forces, minus about 650 troops to provide security for the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

Biden said Washington had long ago achieved its original rationale for invading the country in 2001: to root out al-Qaeda militants and prevent another attack on the United States like the one launched on Sept. 11, 2001.

The mastermind of that attack, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a U.S. military team in neighboring Pakistan in 2011.

(Reporting by Kabul, Moscow, Geneva and Washignton bureau, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

15 more U.S. states reach settlement in OxyContin maker Purdue bankruptcy

By Mike Spector

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Fifteen more states reached an agreement with Purdue Pharma LP and members of its wealthy Sackler family owners that moved the OxyContin maker a step closer to resolving widespread opioid litigation and exiting bankruptcy protection.

All but a handful of states nationwide now support Purdue’s bankruptcy plan, with the latest agreement emerging after weeks of mediation.

The deal, outlined in bankruptcy court papers filed late on Wednesday, was reached after Sackler family members agreed to contribute another $50 million toward a proposed litigation settlement and to release tens of millions of additional internal documents for public inspection.

Another $175 million would come from relinquishing control of family charitable institutions. The Sackler family members have also agreed to a prohibition with regard to naming rights associated with charitable contributions until litigation settlement funds are fully paid, the documents said.

In all, the Sackler contributions toward Purdue’s bankruptcy-exit plan now total roughly $4.5 billion.

The plan aims to resolve some 3,000 lawsuits brought by U.S. communities alleging Purdue and its family owners contributed to an opioid crisis that has claimed the lives of roughly 500,000 people since 1999, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based company and family members have denied the allegations in the litigation.

Purdue said that the latest agreement built on support from other creditors in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings and that it hoped to reach additional consensus on its plan to move billions of dollars of value into trusts for addressing the U.S. opioid crisis. Sackler family members called the deal an “important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need.”

The agreement, supported by longstanding holdouts including Massachusetts and New York, sets the stage for Purdue to gain court approval in coming weeks for its bankruptcy plan, which the company values at more than $10 billion. That value is contingent in part on future donations of overdose reversal and addiction treatment medications the company has under development.

The plan would dissolve the company and shift assets to trusts run on behalf of plaintiffs that alleged the company and its owners aggressively marketed the painkiller OxyContin while playing down its abuse and overdose risks.

“While I know this resolution does not bring back loved ones or undo the evil of what the Sacklers did, forcing them to turn over their secrets by providing all the documents, forcing them to repay billions, forcing the Sacklers out of the opioid business, and shutting down Purdue will help stop anything like this from ever happening again,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the first attorney general to sue Sackler family members, said in a statement.

If approved by the court, the bankruptcy plan would include legal releases shielding the Sacklers from future litigation. A bankruptcy judge halted lawsuits against both the company and the Sacklers after Purdue filed for Chapter 11 court protection in 2019.

“It is upsetting that the Sackler family never declared bankruptcy yet were still granted all the same protections of bankruptcy as their company,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said during a news conference with Healey and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Thursday.

“There is no perfect solution here,” James added. “But we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. This deal gets one of the nation’s most harmful drug dealers out of the opioid business.”

Healey, who said she spoke to opioid victims earlier on Thursday, urged reform in aspects of the U.S. legal system that allowed the Sacklers to obtain relief from a federal bankruptcy court. But she welcomed the additional deposition transcripts, emails and other evidence that will eventually “be online forever, searchable and free to the public.”

Purdue in November separately pleaded guilty to three felonies arising from its marketing of prescription opioid painkillers, part of a separate settlement eclipsing $8 billion to resolve U.S. Justice Department criminal and civil investigations.

Sackler family members have not been criminally charged. They previously agreed to pay $225 million to resolve separate civil allegations with the Justice Department. The family members have denied those allegations.

(Reporting by Mike Spector; Editing by Howard Goller)

Portugal orders COVID test, vaccination proof at hotel check-in

y Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee

LISBON (Reuters) -Holidaymakers in Portugal will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery to stay in hotels or other holiday accommodation, the government announced on Thursday, as infections continue to rise.

Portugal’s new daily case numbers have been rising steadily in recent weeks, returning to levels last seen in February when the country was under a strict lockdown. Nearly 90% of cases are of the more infectious Delta variant.

As the Delta variant spreads, the country is struggling to salvage the usually busy summer season.

Negative tests, vaccination certificates or proof of recovery will also be required to eat indoors at restaurants in 60 high-risk municipalities, including Lisbon and the city of Porto, on Friday evenings and at the weekend.

“For a long time, the only measure we had to our disposal was limiting economic activity,” said Cabinet Minister Mariana Vieira da Silva. “With the digital certificate, and the more frequent availability of tests, we have other ways of guaranteeing security.”

Holidaymakers and restaurant customers can use the EU digital COVID-19 certificate. Rapid antigen tests will also be valid, the minister said, and can be provided by hotels at check-in. The new rules come into force on Saturday.

Children under 12 accompanied by a parent or guardian are exempt.

Portugal’s restaurant association said “there were already too many rules and restrictions” which risk driving customers away.

“This could destroy the ray of hope for many business people,” it said.

Customers and businesses who break the rules risk being fined, up to 500 and 10,000 euros respectively.

The measure will allow restaurants to reopen for dinner on Saturday and Sunday in high-risk areas, where they were forced to shut earlier for the two previous weekends.

A night-time curfew, already in place 45 municipalities, will be extended to a further 15 municipalities, including Faro, the main city in the popular southern Algarve.

Portugal, population 10 million, reported more than 3,000 daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 899,295.

Cases started to gradually increase after Portugal opened to visitors from the EU and Britain in mid-May. But daily deaths remain well below February levels with new cases primarily reported among younger, unvaccinated people.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony, Victoria Waldersee and Sergio Goncalves; Additional reporting by Patricia Vicente Rua; Editing by Victoria Waldersee and Giles Elgood)