Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine shows promise against Delta variant in lab study

(Reuters) -Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine showed promise against the Delta variant first identified in India in a lab study, with a modest decrease in response compared to the original strain, the drugmaker said on Tuesday.

The study was conducted on blood serum from eight participants obtained one week after they received the second dose of the vaccine, mRNA-1273.

The vaccine provoked an antibody response against all the variants tested, according to Moderna, but one that remained inferior in all cases to the vaccine’s neutralizing activity against the original coronavirus strain first found in China.

The vaccine was far more effective in producing antibodies against the Delta variant than it was against the Beta variant first identified in South Africa, the data showed.

Against three versions of the Beta variant, the vaccine-elicited neutralizing antibodies reduced six-to-eight fold compared to those produced against original strain, while modest 3.2 to 2.1 fold reductions were seen for lineages of the variant first identified in India including Delta and Kappa.

“These new data are encouraging and reinforce our belief that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine should remain protective against newly detected variants,” Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel said.

Earlier in the day, India granted permission to drugmaker Cipla Ltd to import Moderna’s vaccine to the country for restricted use.

The drugmaker’s shares were up 5.5% at $235.39 in mid-day trading.

Moderna has submitted the data as a preprint to the website bioRxiv ahead of peer review.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Sales manager, young artist, devoted couple, among victims of Florida collapse

(Reuters) – With search-and-rescue teams still sifting through the rubble of a collapsed Florida condominium building, authorities by late Monday had confirmed 11 victims of the deadly disaster and their identities, while some 150 people remain missing.

Those recovered from rubble in the oceanside town of Surfside included a young Puerto Rican graphic artist who refused to let a disability dampen his spirits, a devoted couple who had been married for nearly 60 years and a volunteer Little League baseball coach.

Here are brief profiles of nine of them:

MARCUS GUARA

Marcus Guara, 52, had just started a new job in November as regional sales manager at Kassatex New York, a maker of towels, linens and other textiles, according to his social media posts. He had held a series of sales jobs since graduating from the University of Miami in 1990, he reported on Linked In. His Facebook account was dominated by family photos and fundraiser posts for charities, mostly the ALS Association and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Also missing were his wife, Ana Guara, 41, and their daughters, Lucia, 11, and Emma, 4. Last November, he wrote on Facebook that his “pride was overwhelming” when Lucia asked him to mail a letter to St. Jude Hospital stuffed with her piggy bank savings because “they need it more than I do.”

LUIS ANDRES BERMUDEZ AND ANA ORTIZ

Luis Andres Bermudez, a young graphic artist from Puerto Rico, was inspiring example of courage who never let a disability keep him from his dreams or dampen his sunny disposition, his former teacher said. Andres Bermudez, 26, lived with his mother Ana Ortiz, 46, who also was identified as one of the casualties of the collapse.

“Luis Andres is an example of courage and bravery FOR ALL of us,” said Jose J. Ortiz Carlo, a teacher who had Andres Bermudez in a photography class at Robinson School in Puerto Rico, where he graduated in 2014.

Despite being confined to a wheelchair because of muscular dystrophy, Andres Bermudez, known as Luiyo, never missed school and was always smiling, the teacher said on Facebook.

In 2018, he launched Saucy Boyz Clothing, a fashion line of T-shirts and caps with his artwork on them that he called “a dream come true for me” on social media.

The young man’s father, Luis Didi Bermudez, who was separated from his mother and was not in the building when it collapsed, mourned his son, saying in a Facebook post translated from Spanish, “You are and will be the best in my life.”

Alex Garcia, a close friend of Ortiz, told The Miami Herald that she had just recently married his friend, Frankie Kleiman, who was also missing in the wreckage. Ortiz was “a rock star” who was committed to giving her son the best possible life, Garcia said.

LEON OLIWKOWICZ AND CHRISTINA BEATRIZ ELVIRA

A couple identified by police as Leon Oliwkowicz, 80, and his wife, Christina Beatriz Elvira, 74, were both originally from Venezuela and were active in the Ultra Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch community, according to the COLlive.com, a news outlet that covers Chabad Lubavitch communities. In 2019, the couple, donated a Torah scroll to Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu – Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago, a school where their daughter works as a secretary. Venezuelan journalist Shirley Varnagy, a friend of their daughter, said on Instagram that the couple were among six Venezuelans who lived in the building.

ANTONIO LOZANO AND GLADYS LOZANO

Antonio Lozano, 83, and Gladys Lozano, 79, would joke about who would die first because they didn’t want to live without each other, their son Sergio told Miami ABC affiliate WPLG. The couple would have celebrated their 59th anniversary on July 21, said Sergio, who had dinner with them hours before the deadly collapse in the early hours of Thursday. “Both were avid donators to non-profit organizations, especially to cancer since my grandmother lost her mother to the sickness,” the couple’s grandson, Brian, told ABC News in a statement. “Always providing for anyone who’s in need or just to spark a smile on someone’s face. Their souls were truly beautiful and are now blessed.”

MANUEL LAFONT

Manuel LaFont, 54, was with his 10-year-old son on the baseball field almost every day. Those who knew the Little League coach, known as Manny, said he was devoted to helping kids become better players, according to People magazine. The father of two and business consultant was asleep when the building collapsed, his ex-wife, Adriana, told the USA TODAY Network. She confirmed his death on Facebook, writing, “So many memories inside the walls that are no more today, forever engraved experiences in the heart! My manny, who was my partner for so many years, father of my children, who scolds me and loves me at the same time.”

STACIE FANG

Stacie Fang, 54, was the mother of one of the few people known to have survived the collapse. Her son, Jonah Handler, 15, was pulled from the wreckage hours after the building fell.

Fang was vice president at a firm that puts on an annual event for customer relationship management, retail and marketing executives, according to her LinkedIn account. A former resident of New York City’s Staten Island, she was a graduate of New York’s Pace University. “There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Stacie,” her family said in a statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Linda So in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell, Chizu Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)

Inaugurating embassy in UAE, Israel tells region: “We’re here to stay”

By Lisa Barrington

DUBAI (Reuters) -Israel’s new foreign minister inaugurated its embassy in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday and offered an olive branch to other former adversaries, saying: “We’re here to stay.”

Yair Lapid’s two-day visit is the first to the Gulf state by an Israeli cabinet minister since the countries established ties last year. He was due to sign a bilateral agreement on economic cooperation and open an Israeli consulate in Dubai on Wednesday.

The trip is also an opportunity for the two-week-old Israeli government of Naftali Bennett, a nationalist who heads an improbable cross-partisan coalition, to make diplomatic inroads despite long-stymied talks with the Palestinians.

“Israel wants peace with its neighbors – with all its neighbors. We aren’t going anywhere. The Middle East is our home,” Lapid said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Abu Dhabi high-rise office serving as a temporary embassy.

“We’re here to stay. We call on all the countries of the region to recognize that and to come to talk to us,” he said.

Brought together by shared worries about Iran and hopes for commercial boons, the UAE and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel last year under so-called “Abraham Accords” crafted by the administration of then U.S.-President Donald Trump. Sudan and Morocco have since also moved to establish ties with Israel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, welcoming Lapid’s visit, said Washington “will continue to work with Israel and the UAE as we strengthen all aspects of our partnerships and work to create a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous future for all the peoples of the Middle East”, the State Department said.

The regional rapprochement was deplored by the Palestinians, who want their demands for statehood free of Israeli occupation addressed first.

President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the accords as “an illusion” and asserted that colonial powers had “implant(ed) Israel as a foreign body in this region in order to fragment it and keep it weak,” according to a report on Tuesday by the official Palestinian news service WAFA.

Tuesday’s agreement will be the 12th between Israel and the UAE, Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said. Lapid is also set to visit the site of Expo 2020 Dubai, a world fair opening in October where Israel has built a pavilion.

Lapid’s plane transited through Saudi airspace. Riyadh, although not having normalized relations with Israel, last year opened its skies to Israel-UAE flights.

The UAE formally opened its embassy in Israel, temporarily located in the Tel Aviv stock exchange, this month.

Israel’s Abu Dhabi embassy still has only three diplomats and a head of mission, Eitan Na’eh, who has yet to be confirmed as full ambassador. The consulate in Dubai is similarly located in temporary premises.

Lapid was conciliatory toward former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose attempts to organize a trip to the UAE while in office were scotched by COVID-19 restrictions and who has sought to cast his ouster by Bennett as illegitimate.

Thanking Netanyahu as “the architect of the Abraham Accords,” Lapid said: “This moment is his, no less than it is ours.”

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi’Writing by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, John Stonestreet, Nick Macfie, William Maclean)

Tigray forces seize regional capital, say Ethiopian-led troops are on the run

By Giulia Paravicini and Maggie Fick

GONDAR, Ethiopia (Reuters) -Tigrayan forces said they had Ethiopian government troops on the run around the regional capital Mekelle on Tuesday after taking full control of the city in a sharp reversal of eight months of conflict.

People in Mekelle, where communications were cut on Monday, said the incoming Tigrayan fighters were greeted with cheers. There were similar scenes on video footage from the northern town of Shire, where residents said government-allied Eritrean forces had pulled out and Tigrayan forces had entered.

“We are 100% in control of Mekelle,” Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters on Tuesday.

There had been some fighting on the outskirts of the city, but that was now finished, he said, adding that he could not confirm the report from Shire.

“Our forces are still in hot pursuit to south, east, to continue until every square inch of territory is cleared from the enemy.”

The government was reestablishing itself in Mekelle, he said and people could walk about again in the streets. Reuters was unable to verify his comments because phone links to Mekelle and the rest of Tigray were down.

The fighting in Ethiopia’s northern region has killed thousands of people, displaced two million and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine.

UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE?

Ethiopia’s government declared a unilateral ceasefire on Monday and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he hoped a political solution is possible. Diplomats said the U.N. Security Council would discuss Tigray this week.

It was not clear if other parties to the conflict would accept the ceasefire. The Ethiopian military spokesman, Eritrean information minister and Amhara regional spokesperson all said they were unable to comment. Getachew said the ceasefire was a “joke” and hundreds had been killed on Tuesday in fighting near the border with Afar region. Reuters was unable to confirm the fighting independently.

Over the next few days, TPLF forces will go after troops allied to the government from the neighboring Amhara region – in the south and west – and from the neighboring nation of Eritrea in the north and northwest of Tigray, Getachew said, adding they would cross borders in pursuit if necessary.

On Monday evening, when phone links to Mekelle were still open, residents said soldiers had disappeared from the streets and TPLF forces had entered the city. Residents greeted them with flags and songs, witnesses said.

Getachew urged the international community to force the government to allow food and aid into the region, accusing Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of blocking it.

A spokeswoman for Abiy and the head of a government taskforce on Tigray did not return messages seeking comment The government has previously denied blocking food aid and said it provides the majority of food. The U.N. has previously said the government and its allies blocked food from TPLF-controlled areas.

On Tuesday, residents said Eritrean forces could no longer be seen in Shire, a large town at the junction of several main roads.

“There’s not a single Eritrean in town,” one resident of Shire told Reuters. He sent a short video of residents crowded onto vehicles, beeping wildly and waving a large gold and red Tigray flag.

Another resident in Shire told Reuters “overnight there was a massive movement of Eritrean troops from Axum, Shire to Sheraro direction.” Sheraro is close to the Eritrean border.

FAMINE AND RIGHTS ABUSES

Ethiopia is awaiting results of national and regional parliamentary elections held on June 21. Voting was only held in three of the nation’s ten regions due to insecurity and logistical problems.

No voting was held in Tigray where the TPLF, an ethnically based political party that dominated Ethiopia’s national politics for nearly three decades, has been battling the central government since early November. It made major territorial gains in the past week.

The fighting has been punctuated by reports of brutal gang-rapes and mass killings of civilians. At least 12 aid workers have been killed.

At least 350,000 people are facing famine and 5 million others need immediate food aid, the United Nations has said – the worst global food crisis in a decade.

Last week, an Ethiopian military airstrike on a crowded market killed at least 64 people and wounded 180 other people. Doctors said women and children were among the dead and wounded and that Ethiopian troops prevented ambulances from reaching the scene for more than a day. The military said all the victims were combatants.

(Maggie Fick was reporting from Nairobi; additional reporting by Dawit Endeshaw in Addis Ababa; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by Catherine Evans and Philippa Fletcher)

U.S. Supreme Court backs pipeline companies in New Jersey land dispute

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a consortium of energy companies including Enbridge Inc seeking to seize land owned by New Jersey to build a $1 billion natural gas pipeline despite the state’s objections.

The justices in a 5-4 ruling handed a victory to PennEast Pipeline Company LLC, a joint venture seeking to build the 116-mile (187-km) pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. The justices overturned a lower court ruling in favor of New Jersey’s government.

Other companies joining Enbridge in the consortium include South Jersey Industries Inc, New Jersey Resources Corp (NJR), Southern Co and UGI Corp.

The court ruled that a 1938 U.S. law called the Natural Gas Act that lets private energy companies seize “necessary” parcels of land for a project if they have obtained a certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can be applied to state-owned land.

“Specifically, we are asked to decide whether the federal government can constitutionally confer on pipeline companies the authority to condemn necessary rights-of-way in which a state has an interest. We hold that it can,” conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The law effectively gives private companies the power of eminent domain, in which government entities can take property in return for compensation.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Oil firms as demand hopes outweigh rise of COVID-19 variant

By Noah Browning

LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Tuesday as broad hopes for a demand recovery persisted despite new outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus prompting fresh mobility curbs worldwide.

Brent crude futures were up 50 cents, or 0.7%, at $75.18 a barrel by 1400 GMT, having slumped by 2% on Monday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 55 cents, or 0.8%, to $73.46 after a 1.5% retreat on Monday.

“From a global perspective, there are seemingly growing concerns over the increase in the COVID-19 Delta variant,” said StoneX analyst Kevin Solomon.

“The market has grown relatively immune to COVID-19 developments, but if lockdowns occur in larger demand centers in Asia, we may see the market’s nonchalance abate.”

Spain and Portugal, favorite summer holiday destinations for Europeans, imposed new restrictions on unvaccinated Britons on Monday, while Australians also faced tighter curbs owing to flare-ups of the virus across the country.

However, the market still expects the rollout of vaccination programs to brighten the demand outlook, analysts said.

“The narrative of the past few months has not changed: the war against the virus is being gradually won, the global economy and oil demand are recovering,” said PVM Oil analyst Tamas Varga.

“Oil supply is being effectively managed. Therefore dips are probably viewed by ardent bulls as attractive buying opportunities.”

The virus flare-up comes as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and allies, together known as OPEC+, are set to meet on July 1 to discuss easing their supply curbs.

OPEC’s demand forecasts show that in the fourth quarter global oil supply will fall short of demand by 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), giving the producers some room to agree to add output.

Analysts expect OPEC+ to step up supply in August because the market has tightened on strong growth in fuel demand in the United States and China, the world’s two biggest oil consumers.

Investors will be looking to the latest U.S. inventory data for cues on the demand outlook. Crude stocks are likely to have extended their fall for a sixth straight week while gasoline stocks are also expected to have declined, a preliminary Reuters poll showed.

(Additional reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by David Evans and David Goodman)

Pacific Northwest cities grind to a halt in record heat

By Sergio Olmos

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) – Temperatures were expected to shatter records in the Pacific Northwest again on Monday, bringing the city of Portland to a standstill as residents hunkered down in air conditioned homes or cooling centers.

One day after Portland saw temperatures reach 112 degrees F (44.5 degrees Celsius) on Sunday, the hottest recorded there since daily record-keeping began in 1940, the National Weather Service predicted more of the same for Monday.

“To put it in perspective, today will likely go down in history as the hottest day ever recorded for places such as Seattle, WA and Portland, OR,” the weather service said in its forecast for the region.

The heat has been attributed to a dome of atmospheric high pressure over the upper U.S. Northwest and Canada, similar to conditions that punished California and southwestern states earlier this month.

The Canadian city of Vancouver also set an all-time heat record on Sunday and was not expected to cool off until Tuesday.

Portland, known for rainy weather and sparse sunshine, was especially ill-prepared to handle the high temperatures. Stores sold out of air conditioning units and ice was hard to find.

Bars and restaurants closed because kitchen vents could not keep up with the rising temperatures, creating dangerous conditions for cooks.

Multnomah County, which includes Portland, has opened 11 emergency “cooling shelters,” most of them in public libraries, where residents without air conditioning could escape the sweltering heat.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, eased COVID-19 restrictions for theaters, swimming pools and shopping malls and residents flocked to public pools and even fountains to cool off.

Some companies with AC stayed open as informal cooling shelters for employees, said Sarah Shaoul, co-founder of Bricks Need Mortar, a business advocacy and consulting group.

In Seattle, Washington state’s largest city, the mercury climbed on Sunday to an all-time high of 104 degrees F, surpassing a 2009 record of 103 degrees.

The state capital of Olympia likewise set a new benchmark high of 105 degrees, exceeding its 2009 record by 1 degree, according to the Weather Service.

The heat wave was expected to ease somewhat west of the Cascade range by Tuesday but persist through the week to the east of those mountains, it added.

Experts say extreme weather events such as the heatwaves that have descended on parts of the United States this year cannot be linked directly to climate change.

But more unusual weather patterns could become more common amid rising global temperatures, NWS meteorologist Eric Schoening told Reuters in an interview this month.

(Reporting by Sergio Olmos in Portland; Writing and additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Pandemic tied to spike in diabetes in children; type of immune response lasts months after Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Pandemic tied to sharp rise in type 2 diabetes in kids

Hospitalization rates for children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes more than doubled during the pandemic, two hospitals reported at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions, held virtually this year. At Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes accounted for 0.62% of inpatients from March through December 2020, up from 0.27% the year before. Those numbers are low, “but just the fact that this rate has more than doubled over the past year is … significant,” said Dr. Daniel Hsia of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. Children hospitalized in 2020 had more severe diabetes, with higher blood sugar and more dehydration, than children admitted in the prior year, he said. At Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes in children increased 233% from 2019 to 2020 – and the children were sicker than in previous years, a separate team reported. Most of these children at both hospitals had not previously had COVID-19. Social distancing measures may have kept children from having regular physical activity and contributed to weight gain, and also kept parents from taking them for routine medical care, all of which may have contributed to more severe illness, researchers speculated. “Our study reinforces the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for children even under such difficult circumstances” Hsia said in a statement.

Immune cell “factories” work longer after mRNA vaccines

The tiny “factories” in lymph nodes that churn out antibody-producing B cells to fight infections, called germinal centers, were still functioning to hold COVID-19 at bay for months after people received the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech and Pfizer, according to a new study. After most vaccines, germinal centers last only a few weeks. “Germinal centers are the key to a persistent, protective immune response,” said Ali Ellebedy of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who coauthored a report on Monday in Nature. “Germinal centers are where our immune memories are formed. And the longer we have a germinal center, the stronger and more durable our immunity will be because there’s a fierce selection process happening there, and only the best immune cells survive.” Researchers studied cells from germinal centers in armpit lymph nodes of 14 recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Three weeks after the first dose, all 14 had germinal centers that were still generating B cells. B-cell production “expanded greatly” after the second shot and stayed high, they reported. Eight of 10 people biopsied 15 weeks after the first dose, still had functioning germinal centers. “We’re still monitoring the germinal centers, and … in some people, they’re still ongoing,” Ellebedy said. “This is truly remarkable.” The same effect is likely also true for Moderna’s mRNA vaccine, the researchers believe. Ultimately, immune cells called T cells are what sustains the germinal centers’ work after they disappear. The researchers plan next to investigate the magnitude and durability of T cell responses after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Following AstraZeneca with Pfizer shot boosts antibody response

Giving a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine four weeks after an AstraZeneca shot produces better immune responses than a second dose of AstraZeneca’s, Oxford University researchers said on Monday. In a study of 830 older adults, mixed two-dose schedules of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines produced higher concentrations of antibodies against the coronavirus that a full schedule of the AstraZeneca shot. The most effective approach – two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine – produced levels of antibodies about 10 times higher than two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the researchers reported on Friday in a Lancet preprint. However, the AstraZeneca shot followed by a Pfizer jab induced antibody levels about as high as two Pfizer/BioNTech doses. Giving the Pfizer shot first, followed by AstraZeneca’s, was not as successful. That combination yielded antibody levels higher than two AstraZeneca shots but lower than two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. There were no new safety issues uncovered in the study. Matthew Snape, the Oxford professor behind the trial, said the findings could be used to give flexibility to vaccine rollouts but were not significant enough to recommend a broad shift away from clinically approved schedules.

COVID-19, not Pfizer’s vaccine, tied to Bell’s palsy

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has not been linked with a higher risk for the facial nerve paralysis known as Bell’s palsy, but COVID-19 itself does increase the risk, suggest two separate studies published on Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. One study involved 110 people in Israel who received the Pfizer vaccine, including 37 in whom the characteristic facial droop developed on average nine days after the first dose or 14 days after the second. After accounting for underlying risk factors for Bell’s palsy, the researchers concluded the vaccine itself did not increase the risk. Furthermore, they found, rates of Bell’s palsy had not gone up during the vaccine rollout. In the second study, researchers compared Bell’s palsy rates among roughly 348,000 patients with COVID-19 and roughly 63,500 people who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The Bell’s palsy risk was nearly seven times higher in those with COVID-19, they found. “Our data suggest that rates of facial nerve palsy are higher in patients who are positive for COVID-19, and this incidence exceeds the reported incidence of Bell’s Palsy with the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Dr. Akina Tamaki of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, who coauthored that study. “Taken together, it supports that the vaccine is safe from a facial nerve paralysis standpoint.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Megan Brooks, Marilynn Larkin and Alistair Smout; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. consumer watchdog approves new foreclosure protections, but not blanket ban

By Michelle Price

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. consumer watchdog on Monday finalized new protections for homeowners who are struggling to make mortgage payments due to the pandemic, but said foreclosures will be allowed to resume in coming months once those extra protections have been met.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in April proposed, among other measures, a new review process which it said at the time would generally prohibit mortgage servicers from starting a foreclosure until after Dec. 31, 2021.

The agency is trying to prevent a wave of foreclosures as 900,000 homeowners start to exit COVID-19 mortgage holiday or “forbearance” programs in coming months.

Reuters reported last week that the agency was due to proceed with the foreclosure rule but was expected to carve out certain groups of borrowers after industry groups said the proposal was too broad and beyond the CFPB’s legal remit.

On Monday, CFPB Acting Director Dave Uejio told reporters the final rule “takes a different tact” from what was originally proposed. It will require that mortgage servicers temporarily undertake additional pre-foreclosure protections, including making a greater effort to reach out to struggling borrowers, but it will give servicers more flexibility, CFPB staff said.

As of June 14, an estimated 2 million homeowners were in forbearance, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Around 900,000 of those are due to expire later this year, real estate industry data provider Black Knight estimates.

Under the new rule, from Aug. 31, 2021 through Dec. 31, 2021, mortgage servicers may only refer 120-day delinquent accounts for foreclosure provided at least one of three new temporary safeguards has been met: the borrower has been thoroughly evaluated and there are no available options to avoid foreclosure; the property is abandoned; the borrower is unresponsive to servicer outreach.

The rule will also allow mortgage servicers to offer streamlined loan modifications, which cannot increase borrowers payments; it also doesn’t require borrowers to submit full paperwork. That flexibility will allow servicers to get borrowers into affordable mortgage payment plans faster, with less paperwork, the CFPB said.

The new required protections do not apply to non-primary residences, borrowers who were more than 120 days behind on their mortgage before March 1, 2020, and small mortgage services.

Speaking to reporters, CFPB officials said they were focused on preventing a cliff of foreclosures and ensuring an “orderly transition” to a normal housing market, but that in some cases foreclosures would resume once the forbearance programs expired.

(Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Stretched global supply chain means shortages on summer menus

By Lisa Baertlein and Hilary Russ

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the United States, it’s iced green tea. In South Korea, it’s fries.

At least nine fast-food chains and restaurant companies surveyed by Reuters said some of their locations have been grappling with changing lists of brief shortages of key ingredients and products, as supply bottlenecks plague eateries.

The list of hard-to-find items has included summertime staples such as wieners and chicken wings, and non-food items like plastic packing material and paper bags.

On June 14 the web site of South Korea’s No. 1 fast-food chain, Lotteria, alerted customers that its eateries would substitute cheese sticks for its popular french fries, after snarls in ocean shipping and pandemic-related product inspections spawned an outage.

French fry shipments to the burger and fried chicken chain were delayed due to a dearth of shipping containers and longer health-related customs checks, a spokesman for Lotteria operator Lotte GRS told Reuters.

Supply bottlenecks could continue “well into 2022,” St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said on Thursday, with reopenings in the United States followed by Europe and then emerging markets.

The problem is not typically a scarcity of the product itself. Rather, networks of cargo ships, trains and trucks are buckling under the ongoing stress from the pandemic – which also caused facility closures and reduced labor at farms, factories and warehouses and contributed to shortages of everything from meat and cooking oil to plastic and glass packaging.

Similarly, the quick ramp-up of COVID-19 vaccines unleashed a surge in demand for meals at restaurants, ball parks and other venues that caught food producers and suppliers off guard.

If restaurants run short on core products for long enough, they “risk disappointing customers in large numbers, and that licenses them to go somewhere else,” said Barry Friends, a partner at food industry consultant Pentallect.

On Thursday, a Wendy’s franchisee in the southern United States said he received only half of the lettuce he ordered, while a Subway location in New York City was missing roast beef, rotisserie chicken, ketchup and spicy mustard. Some locations of Yum Brands Inc’s KFC have occasionally run out of paper bags, one franchisee source said.

Darden Restaurants Inc, parent of Olive Garden Italian Kitchen, on Thursday cited a “few spot outages… related to warehouse staffing and driver shortages, not product availability.” A spokesperson declined to say what items were temporarily missing but said the outages were at “pockets of restaurants, not our system, and we were able to quickly recover.”

Shortages are temporary and vary by market and store, Starbucks said. A Starbucks in Poughkeepsie, New York, said it had been short many different items for months, most recently iced green tea, cinnamon dolce syrup and spinach, feta and egg white wraps.

“We continue to work closely with our supply chain vendors to restock items as soon as possible,” the company said in a statement. “We recommend customers use the Starbucks app to check item availability.”

A Chipotle location in New Jersey was out of barbacoa and carnitas at lunchtime on Thursday, but another nearby location was not. The company said some spot outages could last a “a few hours” but that its network is not having supply problems.

Suzanne Rajczi, CEO of family-owned Ginsberg’s Foods in upstate New York, scrambled to fill orders for hot dogs, Canadian bacon and other popular menu items as restaurants, cafeterias and other venues reopened or expanded service with easing COVID-19 restrictions.

The upheaval affected almost “every single product we sell,” said Rajczi, who is seeing sporadic shortfalls as suppliers catch up.

In the UK, the pandemic and a crackdown on immigration following Brexit contributed to unpredictable supplies of fruits, vegetables and prepared foods in stores and restaurant chains, said Shane Brennan, chief executive at the Cold Chain Federation.

The return of immigrant workers to their home countries created thousands of unfilled jobs across the supply chain. Restaurant reopenings are amplifying the impact, said Brennan, whose group represents UK companies that move and store refrigerated and frozen goods.

“We’ve coped with the panic-buy phase, we’ve coped with the uncertainties of the lockdown. Now, we’re trying to do the job without the people,” Brennan said.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Joyce Philippe in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)