Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Mexico inflation quickens faster than expected to 20-year high

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican annual inflation accelerated faster than expected in November to its highest level in over two decades, official data showed on Thursday, reinforcing bets the central bank will raise its benchmark interest rate again when it meets next week.

Figures from national statistics agency INEGI showed inflation in Latin America’s No. 2 economy jumped to 7.37% last month from 6.24% in October. That compared with the consensus forecast of a Reuters poll for 7.22%.

The November figure took inflation to its highest level since January 2001.

The core rate of inflation, which strips out some volatile items, reached 5.67%.

The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) last month raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 5%, the fourth consecutive hike. It also revised up its expectations for Mexican inflation at the close of this year.

Banxico’s final monetary policy meeting for the year is due on Dec. 16. The bank targets inflation of 3%, with a one percentage point tolerance range above and below that.

Earlier this week, Irene Espinosa, a member of the central bank’s board, said Banxico’s monetary policy stance continues to be accommodative and that it should respond forcefully to anchor inflation expectations.

Month-on-month, Mexican consumer prices increased by 1.14% in November, the INEGI data showed. Meanwhile, the core index of prices rose by 0.37% from October.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

New Zealand to ban cigarette sales for future generations

(Reuters) -New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetime in one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to extinguish smoking were taking too long.

People aged 14 and under in 2027 will never be allowed to purchase cigarettes in the Pacific country of five million, part of proposals unveiled on Thursday that will also curb the number of retailers authorized to sell tobacco and cut nicotine levels in all products.

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,” New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said in a statement.

“If nothing changes, it would be decades till Māori smoking rates fall below 5%, and this government is not prepared to leave people behind.”

Currently, 11.6% of all New Zealanders aged over 15 smoke, a proportion that rises to 29% among indigenous Maori adults, according to government figures.

The government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming months before introducing legislation into parliament in June next year, with the aim of making it law by the end of 2022.

The restrictions would then be rolled out in stages from 2024, beginning with a sharp reduction in the number of authorized sellers, followed by reduced nicotine requirements in 2025 and the creation of the “smoke-free” generation from 2027.

The package of measures will make New Zealand’s retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, just behind Bhutan where cigarette sales are banned outright. New Zealand’s neighbor Australia was the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging of cigarettes in 2012.

The New Zealand government said while existing measures like plain packaging and levies on sales had slowed tobacco consumption, the tougher steps were necessary to achieve its goal of fewer than 5% of the population smoking daily by 2025.

The new rules would halve the country’s smoking rates in as few as 10 years from when they take effect, the government said.

Smoking kills about 5,000 people a year in New Zealand, making it one of the country’s top causes of preventable death. Four in five smokers started before age 18, the country’s government said.

Vaping, often seen as a safer alternative to smoking and a useful aid to quitting, is also tightly regulated with sales only allowed to over 18s.

“CRIME WAVE”

Health authorities welcomed the crackdown, while retailers and tobacco companies expressed concern about the impact on their businesses and warned of the emergence of a black market.

“We welcome the New Zealand government’s recognition that excessive excise increases disproportionately impact smokers on lower incomes,” tobacco group Imperial Brands said, adding it was concerned about proposals to reduce nicotine levels and eventually prohibit sales.

“Prohibitions of any kind tend to play into the hands of criminal traders who peddle unregulated illicit products,” it also said.

Dunhill maker British American Tobacco (BAT) and Marlboro maker Philip Morris, which has previously said it would stop sales in the country if required by law, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to brokerage Citi, BAT is the market leader in New Zealand, with a 67% share by volume, while Imperial Brands, which sells JPS, Riverstone and Horizon cigarettes, accounts for 21%, generating about 1-2% of its group earnings before taxes.

The government did not detail how the new rules would be policed or whether they would apply to visitors to the country.

“Cigarette smoking kills 14 New Zealanders every day and two out of three smokers will die as a result of smoking,” said New Zealand Medical Association chair Alistair Humphrey in a statement.

“This action plan offers some hope of realizing our 2025 Smokefree Aotearoa goal, and keeping our tamariki (Maori children) smoke free.”

However, the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobby group for local convenience stores, said while it supported a smoke-free country, the government’s plan would destroy many businesses.

“This is all 100 per cent theory and zero per cent substance,” the group’s chairman, Sunny Kaushal, told Stuff.co.nz. “There’s going to be a crime wave. Gangs and criminals will fill the gap with ciggie houses alongside tinnie houses.”

(Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; editing by Jane Wardell, Kirsten Donovan)

U.N. suspends food distribution in two towns in Ethiopia after looting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The World Food Program (WFP) has suspended food distribution in Ethiopia’s Kombolcha and Dessie towns after looting of supplies that staff were unable to stop due to intimidation, including being held at gunpoint, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said a large quantity of humanitarian food supplies, including nutritional items for malnourished children, were stolen and looted in Kombolcha in the Amhara region.

“The small-scale theft of food escalated into mass looting of warehouses across Kombolcha in recent days, reportedly by elements of the Tigrayan forces and some members of the local population,” Dujarric told reporters.

“Such harassment of humanitarian staff by armed forces is unacceptable. It undermines the ability of the United Nations and all of our humanitarian partners to deliver assistance when it is most needed,” he added.

Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu and military spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The looting and intimidation will worsen malnutrition and prolong food insecurity in northern Ethiopia, where an estimated 9.4 million people across the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions need critical food assistance, Dujarric said.

Three WFP trucks used for humanitarian operations in Amhara were commandeered by military personnel and used for their own purposes this week, Dujarric said. He called for all parties to the conflict to respect and protect humanitarian relief personnel.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Ethiopia remains an “absolute priority” for the United States. Price repeated calls for the parties to engage in negotiations to end the conflict.

“On the one hand we are encouraging, but also on the other hand we do have a set of sticks,” Price said, referring to punitive measures that can be used, like the sanctions imposed on the Eritrean military last month.

The year-long war between the federal government and the leadership of the northern region of Tigray has killed thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee their homes.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Simon Lewis; Additional Reporting by Maggie Fick in Nairobi; Editing by William Maclean, Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool)

U.S. envoy to return to Vienna over weekend for Iran talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley plans to travel to Vienna over the weekend for fresh talks on reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday.

The talks seek to find a way for the United States and Iran to resume compliance with the agreement, under which Iran restricted its nuclear program in return for relief from U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions.

Then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed U.S. sanctions, prompting Iran to start violating the nuclear restrictions about a year later. Iran struck the original deal with six major powers: Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Enrique Mora, the senior European Union official chairing the talks, said on Twitter that they would resume on Thursday.

The talks have effectively been indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States, with diplomats from other nations shuttling between them because Tehran has refused face-to-face meetings with U.S. officials.

Noting the EU statement that talks resume on Thursday, the State Department spokesman told reporters: “We understand that there will be a day of meetings before the heads of delegations need to attend … so Special Envoy Malley and his inter-agency delegation will plan to join the talks over the weekend.”

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Simon Lewis and Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy)

US sends first migrants to Mexico in reboot of Trump-era policy

By Jose Luis Gonzalez

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) -The United States has returned the first two migrants to Mexico since restarting a Trump-era program to remove asylum seekers from U.S. soil, officials said Wednesday, as the Biden administration grapples with pressure to curb immigration.

The United States and Mexico last week agreed to relaunch the controversial scheme known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) that obliges asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration hearings, in keeping with a federal court order.

Mexico made the restart conditional on Washington meeting certain criteria, including offering vaccines to asylum seekers and exempting vulnerable people from expulsion.

The first two migrants returned under the revamped scheme entered Mexico at a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez opposite El Paso, Texas, according to a spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration.

One of the two men, who identified himself as Enrique Manzanares from Nicaragua, said he felt a little sad, but gave thanks to God that he was still alive.

“In the end, nothing was lost,” Manzanares told Reuters. “Some of us make it, others don’t.”

A Mexican official confirmed the restart, saying it would be limited on Wednesday to just the two migrants.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said the Department of Homeland Security began the court-mandated re-implementation of MPP at one location.

“For operational security reasons, DHS is not sharing details such as location of initial returns or number of individuals enrolled,” the CBP spokesperson said.

Once fully operational, MPP returns to Mexico will take place at seven ports of entry in San Diego, Calexico, Nogales, El Paso, Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Brownsville, the CBP said.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled to reverse many hardline immigration policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, and is facing a record number of migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Biden ended MPP soon after his inauguration in January as he sought to pursue what he called a more humane approach to immigration. But a federal judge ruled Biden’s move did not follow proper procedure, and in August ordered MPP reinstated.

Misael Hernandez, a migration expert at Mexican think tank COLEF, said Mexico faced a challenge coping with the new flow of expulsions, with many shelters in the north already struggling to handle increasing numbers of migrant arrivals from the south.

“This is a setback in immigration policy between Mexico and the United States,” he said. “And an example of Trump’s power in Congress and U.S. courts to go against Biden’s promises.”

(Reporting by Jose Luis Gonzalez, Daina Beth Solomon and Lizbeth Diaz; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson and Dave Graham; Editing by William Maclean)

U.S. Supreme Court conservatives lean toward more public dollars for religious schools

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared ready to further expand public funding of religiously based entities, indicating sympathy toward a challenge by two Christian families to a Maine tuition assistance program that excludes private schools that promote religious beliefs.

The court heard nearly two hours of arguments in an appeal by the families of a lower court ruling rejecting their claim that the Maine program singles them out for religious discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution including its First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion.

Expanding religious rights has been a priority in recent years for the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Conservative justices asked questions aimed at exposing potential bias in Maine’s program, indicating their concern that religious schools and parents are being treated differently than their secular counterparts.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the lesson from the court’s prior rulings in this area is that “discriminating against all religions versus secular is itself a kind of discrimination that the court has said is odious to the Constitution, at least in certain contexts.”

Liberal justices emphasized that the program is meant only to provide a public education everywhere in the state and expressed concern over possible strife that funding the promotion of religion could cause in society.

The families sought taxpayer dollars to send their children to two Christian schools that integrate religion into their classrooms and have policies against gay and transgender students and staff. The First Amendment also prohibits government endorsement of any particular religion.

The case comes to the Supreme Court on the heels of its 2020 ruling in a Montana case that paved the way for more taxpayer dollars to flow to religious schools.

The ruling in the Maine case, due by the end of June, could further erode the separation of church and state in the United States.

The Montana ruling prevented states from disqualifying schools from public aid based on their religious status or affiliation. The Maine case goes further, with the possibility looming of requiring states that subsidize private education to also fund religious activities.

Maine is backed in the case by President Joe Biden’s administration, public school boards and teacher unions. The state has said it excludes certain private schools not because they are religious but because they would use public funds to promote religious beliefs.

The families asked the justices to consider overruling a 2004 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Locke v. Davey that upheld a Washington state post-secondary grant program that excluded theology students.

In some sparsely populated areas lacking public secondary schools, Maine lets public funds be used to pay for tuition at certain private schools of a family’s choice. The schools must be “nonsectarian” and are excluded only if they promote a particular religion and present material “through the lens of that faith.”

Two sets of parents – David and Amy Carson, and Troy and Angela Nelson – sued the state in 2018.

The Nelsons would like to use the tuition aid to send their son to a Christian school called Temple Academy in Waterville, but instead use it to send him to a secular private high school. The Carsons paid out-of-pocket to send their daughter to Bangor Christian Schools in Maine’s third-largest city.

The two schools involved describe themselves as seeking to instill a “Biblical worldview” in students, according to court records. They will not admit gay or transgender students, or hire gay teachers. Bangor Christian Schools teaches that a “husband is the leader of the household” and includes a class instructing students to “refute the teachings of the Islamic religion with the truth of God’s Word.”

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the families last year.

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

Groups push to make California a haven for abortion rights

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California must prepare for an influx of women seeking abortions in the liberal state if the U.S. Supreme Court ends the constitutional right to the procedure, dozens of women’s health and rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report by the Future of Abortion Council is aimed at positioning California as place where women from conservative states can get abortions. It comes as the Supreme Court considers overturning or weakening its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized the procedure nationwide.

Last week, the conservative-dominated court signaled a willingness to dramatically curtail abortion rights in America and possibly overturn Roe during oral arguments for a Mississippi case.

“It is imperative that California take the lead, live up to its proclamation as a ‘Reproductive Freedom State,’ and be ready to serve anyone who seeks abortion services,” Democrat Toni Atkins, president pro tem of the state Senate, wrote in a letter introducing the report.

The council made more than 40 recommendations, including a call for the state to fund programs to train additional abortion providers and legal protections for women from states where abortion becomes illegal.

Twenty-six states are certain or likely to ban abortions if the court limits or overturns Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies abortion rights.

More than 40 health care providers, women’s rights groups and Democratic politicians formed the council in September after the Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law that effectively bans abortion at about six weeks and allows people to sue doctors or others who have helped a woman end a pregnancy after fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

The Guttmacher Institute predicted in September that as many as 1.4 million women may drive in to California for abortion services if neighboring states outlaw or severely limit access to the procedure. That estimate doesn’t include women who might fly to the West Coast for abortions.

When the new Texas law took effect in September, Planned Parenthood clinics in California began treating two to three Texans per day, said Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for the clinics.

“We started to see an immediate impact on our health centers in California,” Richards said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and David Gregorio)

Biden says putting U.S. troops on ground in Ukraine is ‘not on the table’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine to deter a potential Russian invasion was “not on the table” and he hoped to announce a meeting with Russia and other NATO countries by Friday.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House, Biden said he had made it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his nearly two-hour virtual meeting on Tuesday that there would be economic consequences like none before if Russia invades Ukraine, and he is confident Putin got the message.

Biden said he hoped that by Friday there would be an announcement of high-level meetings with Russia and at least four major NATO allies to “discuss the future of Russia’s concerns relative to NATO writ large” and whether or not accommodations could be worked out as it related to “bringing down the temperature along the eastern front.”

Biden said the United States had a moral and legal obligation to defend NATO allies if they are attacked, but that obligation did not extend to Ukraine.

“That is not on the table,” Biden said when asked if U.S. troops would be used to stop a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sonya Hepinstall)

Indonesia considers relocations after deadly volcanic eruption

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s volcanology agency is sending a team of researchers to the Mount Semeru volcano to identify areas too dangerous for villagers to stay after it erupted on Saturday, killing dozens of people on the slopes of Java island’s highest mountain.

In the days since the disaster, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the disaster warning system and whether some villages should be moved.

Ediar Usman, an official from the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG), told a media briefing that some areas were potentially no longer safe to inhabit.

“It’s not impossible that a similar disaster could happen in the future,” he said.

Eko Budi Lelono, who heads the geological survey center, told Reuters the team would be sent this week and included experts from Yogyakarta who had studied the Merapi volcano near that city.

An estimated 8.6 million people in Indonesia live within 10 km of an active volcano, well within the range of deadly pyroclastic flows.

The magnitude of Saturday’s eruption caught many villagers off guard, with dozens unable to escape as the volcano projected an ash cloud kilometers into the sky, and sent dangerous pyroclastic flows into villages on the fertile slopes below.

At least 34 people were killed, with another 22 still missing, while thousands have been displaced, according to the disaster mitigation agency.

The eruption almost entirely buried some villages under meters of molten ash, with more than 100,000 homes partially damaged or destroyed.

Surveying the worst affected areas by helicopter on Tuesday, President Joko Widodo said that at least 2,000 homes would have to be rebuilt in different areas.

Semeru is one of more than 100 active volcanoes in Indonesia, which straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area of high seismic activity that rests atop multiple tectonic plates.

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Writing by Kate Lamb; Editing by Robert Birsel)

India armed forces head among 13 dead in helicopter crash

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Sanjeev Miglani

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -The head of India’s armed forces, General Bipin Rawat, was among 13 people killed on Wednesday when the military helicopter they were travelling in crashed, the air force said.

They were en route from an air force base to a hillside military college in the southern state of Tamil Nadu when the Russian-made Mi-17V5 helicopter came down near the town of Coonoor.

Local television footage showed rescuers and army personnel carrying bodies up steep slopes from the mangled wreckage. Only one of the 14 people on board survived and was in hospital with injuries.

“With deep regret, it has now been ascertained that Gen Bipin Rawat, (his wife) Mrs Madhulika Rawat and 11 other persons on board have died,” the Air Force said in a statement.

Rawat, 63, was appointed as India’s first Chief of Defense Staff by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in late 2019. The position was set up with the aim of integrating India’s three military services – the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.

Several of the bodies were badly burnt, two government sources said. “Some bodies were so charred that they could not be immediately identified,” one of the sources said.

Modi said he was deeply saddened by Rawat’s death. “A true patriot, he greatly contributed to modernizing our armed forces and security apparatus,” the prime minister said.

In a tweet, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh called Rawat’s death “an irreparable loss to our armed forces and the country.”

The Indian Air Force ordered an inquiry into the cause of the accident.

India has dozens of Mi-17s in service. They are widely deployed to transport senior army personnel and government ministers.

“This is a safe, proven helicopter, I have travelled on it in difficult situations,” former army chief J.J. Singh said.

An infantryman with over four decades of military service, Rawat served along India’s border with China, the disputed Kashmir region and on a United Nations mission in Africa, before taking charge of the Indian army in late 2016.

In New Delhi, Defense Minister Singh visited Rawat’s official residence and the state broadcaster said Modi had summoned a meeting of the cabinet committee on security on Wednesday evening.

(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Sanjeev Miglani; Additional reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan and Rupam Jain; Editing by Euan Rocha and Tom Hogue and John Stonestreet)