Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Biden stands by ‘two-track’ bill process, despite Republican dismay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Democratic Senator Krysten Sinema on the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, the White House said Friday, and reiterated his support for a “two-track” legislation process that includes a second reconciliation bill.

“The President reiterated strong support for both the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill and a reconciliation bill containing the American Families Plan moving forward on a two-track system, as he said yesterday when meeting the press with the bipartisan group of ten Senators,” the White House said in a statement.

After House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said early on Thursday her chamber would not vote on the first infrastructure package unless the second reconciliation bill passed the Senate, Biden publicly seconded the idea.

“I expect that in the coming months this summer, before the fiscal year is over, that we will have voted on this bill, the infrastructure bill, as well as voted on the budget resolution,” Biden told reporters on Thursday. “But if only one comes to me, I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem.”

Some Republicans in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have objected to linking the two bills together, and accused Biden of bad-faith negotiations.

A Republican source familiar with Thursday’s White House meeting said the topic of reconciliation came up only briefly and without administration pressure on either the Republican or Democratic lawmakers present.

Republicans later said they felt blindsided by Biden’s comment that he would not sign the bipartisan legislation alone and that the measure would have to move in tandem with reconciliation.

One Republican aide said lawmakers had expected partisan tactics from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi but that Biden’s open involvement was over the top, after what had appeared to be good faith negotiations.

“You have all heard the president say multiple times publicly that he wanted to move these bills forward in parallel paths, and that’s exactly what’s happening,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “That hasn’t been a secret, he hasn’t said it quietly. He has hasn’t even whispered it. He said it very much aloud.”

“The leaders in the House and the Senate are going to determine the sequencing, the timeline, and he looks forward to signing both pieces of legislation,” she said.

(Reporting by Heather Timmons, David Morgan and Andrea Shalal; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

WHO’s Tedros says victims of Ethiopia air strike denied access to care

GENEVA (Reuters) -WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused authorities in Ethiopia on Friday of blocking ambulances from reaching scores of victims of an air strike this week, a rare case of speaking out in his official capacity about the conflict in his homeland.

Tedros, who is an ethnic Tigrayan and former Ethiopian Cabinet minister, referred in his opening remarks at a WHO briefing to the air strike this week which hit a crowded market in his native region. The federal government has been waging war against fighters loyal to the former regional authorities since last year.

“Ambulances were blocked for more than a day from attending the scene and evacuating the wounded for medical care,” Tedros said.

“WHO is currently providing life-saving trauma and surgical supplies to a hospital that is treating survivors who were able to reach care,” Tedros said. “Attacks on civilians anywhere are completely unacceptable and so is denying them access to immediate care, because we lose lives.”

Tedros has occasionally tweeted about the conflict in Tigray, but has rarely mentioned it while speaking publicly in his official capacity as head of the WHO.

Ethiopia’s government has accused him in the past of supporting its opponents in the Tigray conflict, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which he previously represented as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign minister.

Ethiopia’s military has denied that any civilians were among those killed in the air strike on the town of Togoga near the regional capital Mekelle. A military spokesman said on Thursday that all those struck were combatants, wearing civilian clothes.

Residents and doctors, however, have said that women and children were among the dead and wounded. A health official working on the response to the air strike said on Friday the death toll had risen to 64 killed, with 180 other people wounded.

The incident was one of the deadliest in months in a conflict in which the government had said major fighting largely ended last year.

It happened after residents described an increase in fighting in recent days, and fell on the anniversary of a 1988 air strike by Ethiopia’s then-ruling communists that killed hundreds of civilians, an event widely commemorated in Tigray.

On Friday, Tedros also tweeted a message from medical charity Medecins sans Frontiers, which reported that three of its staff had been killed in Ethiopia.

(Reporting by Peter Graff, Michael Shields and Stephanie NebehayWriting by Peter Graff; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. consumer spending takes breather amid shortages; inflation rises

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer spending paused in May as shortages hurt motor vehicle purchases, but the supply constraints and increased demand for services helped to lift prices, with the Federal Reserve’s main inflation measure rising by the most in 29 years.

There was, however, some good news on inflation. Consumers this month perceived higher inflation to be temporary, a survey showed on Friday, aligning with the views of Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Consumers’ inflation expectations are key as they can influence households’ behavior.

With at least 150 million Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19, which is allowing the economy to reopen and people to travel, dine out and engage in other activities that were restricted during the pandemic, consumer spending is expected to pick up in the coming months. Trillions of dollars in excess savings and rising household wealth due to gains in stock prices and home values are expected to provide a powerful tailwind.

“Spending growth will shift to services from goods, and drive a strong economic recovery throughout the rest of 2021 and all of 2022,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. “The biggest drags are higher prices for some goods and services and shortages due to production bottlenecks.”

The unchanged reading in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, followed an upwardly revised 0.9% jump in April, the Commerce Department said. Consumer spending was previously reported to have increased 0.5% in April. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending would rise 0.4% in May.

Motor vehicles and some household appliances are scarce because of supply bottlenecks stemming from the pandemic. A global shortage of semiconductors is hampering motor vehicle production. Spending is also starting to shift back to the services part of the economy, which accounts for two-thirds of consumer spending, though the pace last month was insufficient to offset the drag from goods.

Spending on services rose 0.7%, led by recreation, restaurants and hotels as well as housing and utilities. Spending on goods fell 1.3%, with outlays of long-lasting goods like motor vehicles tumbling 2.8%. Goods spending surged as the pandemic confined people to their homes.

The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding the volatile food and energy components, increased 0.5% after advancing 0.7% in April. In the 12 months through May, the so-called core PCE price index shot up 3.4%, the largest gain since April 1992. The core PCE price index rose 3.1% on a year-on-year basis in April.

The core PCE price index is the Fed’s preferred inflation measure for its flexible 2% target. Year-on-year inflation is accelerating in part as last spring’s weak readings drop from the calculation.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading largely higher, with the S&P 500 index hitting a record high as investors focused on the moderation in the monthly inflation reading. The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mostly lower.

NO RUNAWAY INFLATION

Though the so-called base effects likely peaked in May, inflation will probably remain high in the near term because of the supply constraints and worker shortages, which are boosting wage growth.

“While we foresee increased inflation stickiness, with core PCE inflation hovering around 3.0% in the second half (of the year), we don’t foresee runaway inflation,” said Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York.

Consumers seem to agree. The University of Michigan consumer survey’s one-year inflation expectation dropped to 4.2% in June from a decade-high 4.6% in May. The survey noted that “consumers also believed that the price surges will mostly be temporary.”

The five-to-10-year inflation expectation fell to 2.8% this month from 3.0% in May. Fed officials put more emphasis on the five-to-10-year series.

Powell acknowledged this week that “inflation has increased notably in recent months,” but told lawmakers that the U.S. central bank “will not raise interest rates preemptively because we fear the possible onset of inflation.”

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending fell 0.4% last month after rising 0.3% in April. Despite May’s drop in the so-called real consumer spending, consumption is running higher than its pace in the first quarter.

Gross domestic product growth estimates for this quarter are around a 9% annualized rate, which would be an acceleration from the 6.4% pace logged in the first quarter. Economists believe the economy could achieve growth of at least 7% this year. That would be the fastest growth since 1984. The economy contracted 3.5% in 2020, its worst performance in 74 years.

In addition to the supply squeeze, the ebbing boost from government stimulus checks likely restrained consumer spending last month. Transfer payments from the government dropped 11.7%. That resulted in personal income falling 2.0% after declining 13.1% in April.

But there is ample fuel to drive spending. Wages gained 0.8% after rising 1.0% in April. The saving rate fell to a still-lofty 12.4% from 14.5% in April. Households accumulated at least $2.5 trillion in excess savings during the pandemic.

From July through December some households will receive income under the expanded Child Tax Credit program, which will soften the blow of an early termination of government-funded unemployment benefits in 26 states.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)

India’s richest state shuts malls, cinemas as new variant spreads

By Rajendra Jadhav and Bhargav Acharya

MUMBAI/BENGALURU (Reuters) – India’s richest state on Friday ordered malls and cinema halls to close as it scrambles to control a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus that has scuppered plans to ease lockdown measures.

At least 20 cases in Maharashtra state have been found linked to the new Delta Plus variant that India designated a variant of concern on Tuesday, according to the health ministry.

While it is not known where the variant originated, Public Health England first reported on Delta Plus in a June 11 bulletin, calling it a sub-lineage of the Delta variant first detected in India last year.

The Delta variant was partly responsible for a ferocious second wave in India that triggered a flood of cases and overwhelmed the health system.

Scientists fear Delta Plus could trigger another wave of infections as India recovers from the second wave. Many states, including Maharashtra, have been easing lockdown rules imposed in April.

“Positivity rate and daily infections were going down consistently until a week ago, but in some regions again cases have started to rise,” a senior government official in Maharashtra told Reuters, declining to be named.

“We don’t know whether this is due to easing restrictions or the new variant, but this is a concern,” the official added.

At least 11 other countries have reported cases of Delta Plus.

New variants are a concern in India, where more than half the population is still not vaccinated. Only about 5.6% of India’s adult population of 950 million has received two doses.

The country has reported 48 cases of Delta Plus, and studies are ongoing to test the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the variant.

“We should have the results in about 7 to 10 days time whether the vaccine is working against the Delta Plus,” said Balram Bhargava, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research.

In Maharashtra, a state of around 126 million people, only around 30 million have received a first dose.

“If citizens start doing business and crowding places without following guidelines, then infections may increase … local authorities should not open businesses in a hurry,” the state’s Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said.

India reported 51,667 new infections and 1,329 deaths on Friday, taking total infections to 30.13 million with 393,310 deaths.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya, Ankur Banerjee and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru, Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Zeba Siddiqui and Giles Elgood)

Delta, Kappa variants surge in Italy to nearly 17% of cases, health institute says

By Reuters Staff

MILAN (Reuters) – The Delta coronavirus variant and its sibling Kappa have surged in Italy in the past month, accounting for nearly 17% of total COVID-19 cases, the national health institute ISS said on Friday.

The Delta variant was becoming dominant, it said.

Both Delta, also known by the designation B.1.617.2 , and Kappa, or B.1.617.1, are sublineages of a variant that was originally detected in India. Delta is considered a “variant of concern” by the WHO.

“Cases of the Kappa and Delta variants…rose from 4.2% in May to 16.8% in June”, based on data extracted on June 21, the institute said.

“Our epidemiological monitoring shows a rapidly evolving picture that confirms that also in our country, as in the rest of Europe, the Delta variant of the virus is becoming dominant,” Anna Teresa Palamara, director of ISS Infectious Diseases Department, said in a statement.

The Alpha coronavirus variant, originally detected in the UK in 2020, remains the most widespread in Italy, representing 74.9% of cases, the institute said.

Italy has registered 127,380 deaths linked to COVID-19 since the virus emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eighth-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.26 million cases to date.

Coronavirus cases have now been steadily falling for weeks. The daily tally of new infections decreased to 927 from 951 on Thursday, the health ministry said, while coronavirus-related deaths were 28 against 30 the day before.

Swelling Ganges opens up India’s riverside graves

By Ritesh Shukla and Saurabh Sharma

PRAYAGRAJ, India (Reuters) – More corpses are washing up on the banks of the Ganges in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, as rains swell the river and expose bodies buried in shallow graves during the peak of the country’s latest wave of coronavirus infections.

Videos and pictures in May of bodies drifting down the river, which Hindus consider holy, shocked the nation and underlined the ferocity of the world’s biggest surge in infections.

Though cases have come down drastically this month, the Uttar Pradesh city of Prayagraj alone has cremated 108 bodies found in the river in the last three weeks, said a senior municipal official.

“These are those dead bodies which were buried very close to the river and have gone into it with the rise in its water levels,” Neeraj Kumar Singh told Reuters.

“The municipal corporation has deployed a team of 25 people who are working day and night on this front.”

Reuters saw more than a dozen riverside pyres burning a few miles from Prayagraj.

India, the world’s second most populous country, saw its health infrastructure crushed in April and May. Hospitals ran out of beds and life-saving oxygen and crematoriums became overwhelmed with the dead.

The government of Uttar Pradesh, home to 240 million people, acknowledged in May that bodies of COVID-19 victims were being dumped into rivers in a practice likely stemming from poverty and families abandoning victims for fear of the disease.

“Instructions have been passed to every district magistrate to cremate the dead bodies with proper respect,” said Uttar Pradesh government spokesperson Navneet Sehgal.

“There are dead bodies buried on the river bank and it is because of a local tradition.”

The state reported 224 COVID-19 infections overnight, taking its total caseload to 1.7 million, while total fatalities are at 22,366.

(Reporting by Ritesh Shukla in Prayagraj, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

At border, U.S. vice president Harris shakes off Republican critics

By Nandita Bose

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) -Vice President Kamala Harris visited a border patrol facility near the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, aiming to counter claims from Republicans she has been slow to visit the region as part of her role addressing the root causes of immigration.

The trip, her first to the border since becoming vice president five months ago, was announced on Wednesday and appeared to have been hastily put together days before a border visit by former President Donald Trump.

A White House official said Harris’s schedule was not dictated by what the Republican Trump does. “I can assure you we don’t take our cues from the former president,” the official said.

“I said back in March I was going to come to the border, so this is not a new plan,” Harris told reporters after landing in Texas. “Coming to the border … is about looking at the effects of what we have seen happening in Central America.”

Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden, her fellow Democrat, for rolling back restrictive Trump-era immigration policies even as migrant detentions at the U.S.-Mexico border have reached 20-year highs in recent months.

Immigration remains a hot-button issue for both parties. Democrats and pro-immigrant activists have pressed Biden to further scale back enforcement and ensure humane treatment of migrant children and families arriving at the border.

White House officials have for months said Harris’s efforts to stem immigration from Central America are focused on diplomacy and are distinct from the security issues at the border.

“The vice president’s trip to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this year was about the root causes, and this border visit is about the effects,” her spokesperson Symone Sanders, told reporters on Thursday. “Both trips will inform the administration’s root causes strategy.”

Harris, who visited the border as a senator and attorney general from California, was assailed by Republicans when she visited Mexico and Guatemala this month as part of her efforts to lower migration from the region into the United States.

During that trip, Harris said she would visit the border in the near future but was focused on “tangible results” and “opposed to grand gestures.”

Nonetheless, Republicans criticized Harris for choosing El Paso rather than the area they point to as a hot spot for increased border crossings.

“While it’s certainly positive that she is taking this step, I am disappointed that she is not going to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) – the very epicenter of this crisis,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf under Trump said in a statement.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank, said many Republicans have embraced Trump’s hardline immigration policies as they gear up for U.S. congressional elections in 2022.

As such, they are unlikely to stop their criticism of Biden’s policies, even if Harris visits the border.

“They believe that is something that can win them seats in 2022, so of course they’re going to play it up,” she said. “They’re going to try to make it an issue.”

Harris was accompanied in El Paso by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin and Democratic Representative from Texas Veronica Escobar, who called the El Paso area the new “Ellis Island,” a reference to the famed area in New York Harbor that processed millions of immigrants as they entered the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Ted Hesson, additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell)

U.S. to sue Georgia over restrictive new state voting law-source

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file a lawsuit on Friday challenging a Georgia election law that imposes new limits on voting, calling it a violation of civil rights, according to a source familiar with the decision.

The Georgia law is one of a wave of new measures passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures this year, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s claims that his November election defeat was the result of widespread fraud.

After a sweeping Democratic-sponsored bill aimed at protecting access to the ballot died on a party-line vote in the Senate this week, President Joe Biden vowed to take other steps to protect voting rights.

The Republican governors of Arizona, Florida and Iowa have also signed new voting restrictions this year, while state legislatures in Pennsylvania and Texas are trying to advance similar measures.

The Georgia law, signed by Governor Brian Kemp on March 25, tightened absentee ballot identification requirements, restricted ballot drop-box use and allowed a Republican-controlled state agency to take over local voting operations. The state was a key battleground in the 2020 presidential election.

President Joe Biden, who became the first Democratic presidential candidate in three decades to win Georgia, has staunchly criticized Georgia’s new law, calling it an “atrocity.”

Trump repeatedly sought to pressure election officials in Georgia after losing the state to Biden. In a phone call to the secretary of state, Trump asked him to “find” the votes that would be needed to overturn his election loss.

He also pressured the Justice Department to oust the U.S. Attorney in the Atlanta region. His actions are now under investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

Rare tornado rips through southern Czech Republic, killing five

By Jason Hovet

HRUSKY, Czech Republic (Reuters) -Emergency workers and residents combed through wreckage in southern Czech Republic on Friday after a tornado ripped roofs off buildings and sent cars flying through the air, killing at least five people and injuring hundreds.

The tornado, which hit towns and villages around Hodonin along the Slovak and Austrian borders on Thursday evening, may have reached windspeeds above 332 kph (206 mph), a Czech Television meteorologist said.

“It was terrible what we went through,” said Lenka Petrasova in Hrusky who recounted taking shelter with her 11-year old-son after spotting the tornado minutes before it hit. “It was unbelievable. I saw a car fly, and dogs flying.”

Firefighters searched the rubble on Friday while the army sent in a team with heavy engineering equipment to deal with the aftermath of the strongest storm in the central European nation’s modern history and its first tornado since 2018.

In the village of Hrusky with a population of 1,600, a deputy mayor estimated that a third of the houses were destroyed and many needed inspections before people could safely return.

“Part of the village is levelled, only the perimeter walls without roofs, without windows remain,” Marek Babisz told news site iDNES.

“The church has no roof, it has no tower, cars were hurled at family houses, people had nowhere to hide. The village from the church down practically ceased to exist,” he said.

South Moravia regional administration chief Jan Grolich said that five people had died in the storm, and regional hospitals treated some 150 injured while others were sent elsewhere.

Emergency crews from neighboring Poland, Austria and Slovakia fanned out across the region, 270 km (167 miles) southeast of Prague, to assist.

Officials said thousands of homes had been destroyed and appealed to people not to drive to the affected areas so rescue services could work, urging them to send donations instead.

More than 100 residents of a home for the elderly in Hodonin had to be evacuated.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis cut short his attendance at the European Council summit in Brussels to visit the area where electricity and water remained shut off in a number of villages.

Speaking on his return, Babis said the government’s priority was to tap the European Union’s solidarity fund in which around 1.3 billion euros are put aside for such situations in member countries.

“The footage I saw is absolutely catastrophic,” said Babis, who also toured damaged homes in Hrusky. “We have offers of help from across Europe and many prime ministers have approached me to offer assistance.”

Czech TV reported as many as seven small towns were “massively” damaged, citing an emergency services spokesperson.

Residents on Friday surveyed the damage.

“There used to be two rooms above this,” Mikulcice resident Pavel Netopilik said pointing to the rubble surrounding his house where the upstairs floors collapsed. “Now they are not here. The ceiling collapsed.”

(Additional reporting by Robert Muller in Prague, Writing by Michael Kahn; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Philippa Fletcher)

Russia warns UK and U.S. not to tempt fate in Black Sea

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia warned Britain and the United States on Friday against “tempting fate” by sending warships to the Black Sea, and said it would defend its borders using all possible means including military force.

In a statement broadcast on state television, the Defense Ministry said it was ill-advised for British and U.S. vessels to approach the coast of Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“We call on the Pentagon and the British navy, which are sending their warships into the Black Sea, not to tempt fate in vain,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, the ministry’s spokesperson, said.

HMS Defender, a British destroyer that sailed through waters off Crimea on Wednesday, was “not more than a target” for the Black Sea fleet’s defenses, he said.

Russia considers Crimea part of its territory, but the peninsula is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.

Russia said on Wednesday it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of a British warship to chase it out of Black Sea waters off the coast of Crimea.

Britain rejected Russia’s account of the incident. It said it believed any shots fired were a pre-announced Russian “gunnery exercise”, and that no bombs had been dropped.

It confirmed HMS Defender had sailed through what it said were waters belonging to Ukraine.

The British embassy in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgian the South Caucasus, wrote on Twitter on Friday that HMS Defender was set to arrive in the port city of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said separately that Washington and London were sowing strife by failing to accept Crimea was part of Russia, and that Russia was ready to defend its borders using all means, including military force.

Moscow warned Britain on Thursday that it would bomb British naval vessels in the Black Sea if what it called provocative actions by the British navy were repeated off the Crimean coast.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said separately on Friday that it was beginning joint navy and air force exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, where Moscow operates an air base on Syria’s coast.

(Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy, Alexander Marrow and Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Editing by Katya Golubkova, Timothy Heritage, William Maclean)