Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Mobile air traffic control tower aids in California wildfire fight

By Nathan Frandino

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – Amid a worsening drought emergency and fires already blazing across California, Titus “Stretch” Gall is gearing up for another long wildfire season.

The 72-year-old former air traffic controller is the president of Tower Tech Inc, a mobile air traffic control tower company that helps agencies like the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) and the National Forest Service control the airspace over wildfires.

“They need to come and go as quickly and efficiently as they can,” Gall said, referring to aircraft used to dump flame retardant or water on wildfires.

Five years before retiring, Gall began designing what would become a nearly 14-foot-tall air traffic control tower on a trailer pulled by a truck.

The tower cab is equipped with everything an air traffic controller would require: weather-monitoring sensors, iPads to show air traffic, satellite dishes for the internet, phones and antennae for radios.

The cab is also fitted with special glass and shades so Gall and his colleagues can see clearly out across the tarmac at airfields. Amenities to keep the controllers comfortable can be found in the trailer, such as a refrigerator, toilet and shower.

Gall says his company is the first mobile air traffic control company certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a process he said took more than five years.

As of May, California authorities had documented over 1,000 more wildfires across the state this year than had erupted by the same time last year, Governor Gavin Newsom said last month.

In 2020, the state marked its heaviest wildfire season on record in terms of total acreage burned. More than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) and over 10,000 homes and other structures were laid to waste and at least 33 lives lost.

Gall has seen conditions worsen since moving to California in the early 1980’s.

“The fire season is becoming much longer. The temperatures are getting a little bit warmer,” he said. “So we’re steadily busier and busier.”

Despite the gravity of the mission, Gall enjoys his job.

“Man, it makes me feel great,” he said, describing the thanks he receives from tanker pilots. “You can imagine that that makes you feel good because this is not a game.”

(Reporting by Nathan Frandino; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Transitory or here-to-stay? Investors try to read the inflation clues

By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) – From lumber prices to wages and inventories: Reading the clues around inflation has turned into an investor obsession.

The combination of supply bottlenecks from the reopening of the global economy and the resumption of economic growth sent consumer prices in May up by the largest annual jump in nearly 13 years. Employers are raising wages as they compete for scarce workers while retailers have limited inventories because of shipping and production delays.

As investors assess the risks of rising prices to financial markets, however, some think the biggest gains in inflation are already in the rear-view mirror. That is in line with the Federal Reserve’s notion that inflation will be “transitory.”

The Fed meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, and investors will parse every word of its post-meeting statement.

The Fed has been buying $80 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities monthly, putting downward pressure on longer-term borrowing costs to encourage investment and hiring. Discussions about tapering those purchases are likely at this week’s policy meeting.

“As long as the increase in inflation is modest, stocks could continue to move higher,” said Russ Koesterich, portfolio manager of the $27.6 billion BlackRock Global Allocation Fund.

Koesterich thinks inflation will likely run above trend lines well into 2022 given the bottlenecks in global supply chains. Yet disinflationary forces such as an aging global population and gains in efficiency due to technology will keep a lid on “any 1970’s-style inflation scare,” he said.

Investors who bet on inflation typically move into groups better-positioned to weather price rises, like materials and energy and companies with pricing power. Value stocks, in contrast, benefit from a broad economic recovery that does not become weighed down by steeply rising prices.

Koesterich said his fund has been decreasing its positions in growth stocks like technology and adding to industrials and European banks.

Jeff Mayberry, portfolio manager of the DoubleLine Strategic Commodity fund, thinks May’s inflation numbers will be the highest for the remainder of the year and remains bullish on oil, which hit a multi-year high on Friday. He sees the commodity benefiting from economic growth.

“The market was looking for a reason for inflation to be transitory and they got it,” Mayberry said of May’s inflation number, noting that some of the larger contributors came from short-term factors such as a spike in the price of rental cars.

Ernesto Ramos, chief investment officer at BMO Global Asset Management, also sees price rises as transitory. He cites a drop in lumber prices from May’s high that suggests supply chain bottlenecks will subside and “give us another reason to believe that inflation will remain under control.” Lumber prices are down more than 40% from record highs hit in early May.

REASONS TO WORRY

While the majority of investors believe inflation is transitory, according to a Bank of America fund manager survey, worries remain.

“Inflation has been the most discussed topic with clients for weeks, bordering on obsession,” wrote analysts at Morgan Stanley led by Michael Wilson. Those analysts think the rate of change on inflation is peaking.

Greg Wilensky, head of U.S. Fixed Income at Janus Henderson, said he has been buying more Treasury-Inflation Protected Securities as the break-even rate – a measure of expected inflation in the bond market – has retreated to near its February levels.

While he is not “changing my base case” that high inflation will prove to be transitory, “the risks around the base case continue to skew toward the upside on inflation,” given the persistent difficulties companies are having hiring lower-paid workers, Wilensky said.

The Fed’s statement could give important clues.

“I’m going to watch the Fed on Wednesday and if they treat these numbers with nonchalance it is a green light to bet heavily on the inflation trade,” Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp told CNBC on Monday. He said he would be “really concerned arguing that inflation is transitory” with inventories at a “record low” while demand is “screaming.”

Morgan Stanley Chief Executive James Gorman told CNBC on Monday that “my gut tells me that this economy is recovering faster, inflation is moving quicker and inflation may not be as transitory as we all expect.” He cited the global economic recovery and record levels of fiscal and monetary support.

“Even if investors disagree with the Fed’s often-stated mantra that inflation is just transitory, they have learned to respect the massive influence the world’s most powerful central bank has when possessing such conviction that is not even ‘thinking about thinking’ about easing its foot off the stimulus accelerator,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz. “The resulting comfort with continued ultra-loose financial conditions is supportive in the short run of elevated stock prices and low yields.”

(Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Megan Davies and Dan Grebler)

Biden administration pushes for Boston Marathon bomber death sentence

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite President Joe Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment.

The department in a 48-page brief filed late on Monday argued that a lower court wrongly overturned Tsnarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a new trial to determine what sentence he deserved for carrying out with his older brother the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The filing marked the latest deviation between the policy views of Biden, a Democrat who has said he wants to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and the Justice Department, whose independence he has vowed to promote.

“The jury carefully considered each of respondent’s crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted,” Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the Justice Department’s brief.

David Patton, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, has argued that the U.S. government should allow his client to serve life in prison. Patton did not respond to a request for comment.

In overturning Tsarnaev’s death sentence, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2020 ruled that the trial judge “fell short” in screening jurors for potential bias following pervasive news coverage of the bombing. It ordered a new trial over the sentence he should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes for which he was convicted.

Tsarnaev is a Kyrgyzstan-born U.S. citizen.

The Justice Department under Republican former President Donald Trump initiated the government’s appeal of the 1st Circuit ruling, and the Supreme Court in March agreed to take up the case. It will hear arguments and issue a ruling in its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022.

Tsarnaev, now 27, and his brother, Tamerlan, precipitated five days of panic in Boston when they detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013 – tearing through the packed crowd and causing many people to lose legs – and then tried to flee the city.

In the following days, they also killed a police officer, Sean Collier. Tsarnaev’s brother died after a gunfight with police.

Jurors in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed Martin Richard, 8, and Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23. Restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, was also killed.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

Five U.S. states had coronavirus infections even before first reported cases

By Mrinalika Roy

(Reuters) -At least seven people in five U.S. states were infected with the novel coronavirus weeks before those states reported their first cases, a large new government study showed, pointing to the presence of the virus in the country as early as December 2019.

Participants who reported antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were likely exposed to the virus at least several weeks before their sample was taken, as the antibodies do not appear until about two weeks after a person has been infected, the researchers said.

The positive samples came from Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and were part of a study of more than 24,000 blood samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research program between Jan. 2 and March 18, 2020.

Of the seven samples, three were from Illinois, where the first confirmed coronavirus case was reported on Jan. 24, while the remaining four states had one case each. Samples from participants in Illinois were collected on Jan. 7 and Massachusetts on Jan. 8.

The data suggests that the coronavirus was circulating in U.S. states far from the initial hotspots and areas that were considered the virus’ points of entry into the country, the study noted.

The data also backs a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that suggested the virus may have been circulating in the United States well before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed on Jan. 19, 2020.

“This study allows us to uncover more information about the beginning of the U.S. epidemic,” said Josh Denny, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The United States has so far reported 33.6 million cases, according to a Reuters tally.

The infections were confirmed using two antibody tests, which were granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

U.S. manufacturing output accelerates in May on autos

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Production at U.S. factories increased more than expected in May as motor vehicle output rebounded, but shortages of raw materials and labor continue to cast a shadow over the manufacturing industry.

Manufacturing output accelerated 0.9% last month after dipping 0.1% in April, the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast manufacturing output increasing 0.6% in May. Manufacturing, which accounts for 11.9% of the U.S. economy, is being underpinned by massive fiscal stimulus, low interest rates and continued strong demand for goods even as spending is shifting towards services amid a vastly improved public health situation.

But robust demand is straining the supply chain, with shortages of raw materials and labor across the industry.

The automobile industry has been hit by a global shortage of semiconductors, which has forced some automakers to cut production. Hyundai Motor USA said on Monday it would suspend production at its Montgomery plant in Alabama for a week because of the chip crunch and will “will continue to take necessary measures to optimize production.”

Volkswagen said last week it expected the supply squeeze to ease in the third quarter, though it saw the bottlenecks continuing in the long term.

That suggests the 6.7% increase in production at auto plants last month was likely temporary. Motor vehicle assemblies jumped about 1 million units to an annualized rate of 9.9 million units last month, but remained more than 1 million units below their average level in the second half of 2020.

Excluding autos, manufacturing output rose 0.5% last month.

The rebound in manufacturing output combined with a 1.2% increase in mining and a 0.2% gain in utilities to boost industrial production by 0.8% last month. That followed a 0.1% rise in April.

Capacity utilization for the manufacturing sector, a measure of how fully firms are using their resources, rose 0.7 percentage point to 75.6%. Overall capacity use for the industrial sector was up 0.6 percentage point to 75.2%. It is 4.4 percentage points below its 1972-2020 average.

Officials at the U.S. central bank tend to look at capacity use measures for signals of how much “slack” remains in the economy — how far growth has room to run before it becomes inflationary.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Taiwan reports largest incursion yet by Chinese air force

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Twenty-eight Chinese air force aircraft, including fighters and nuclear-capable bombers, entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Tuesday, the island’s government said, the largest reported incursion to date.

While there was no immediate comment from Beijing, the news comes after the Group of Seven leaders issued a joint statement on Sunday scolding China for a series of issues and underscored the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, comments China condemned as “slander.”

Chinese-claimed Taiwan has complained over the last few months of repeated missions by China’s air force near the self-ruled island, concentrated in the southwestern part of its air defense zone near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.

The latest Chinese mission involved 14 J-16 and six J-11 fighters, as well as four H-6 bombers, which can carry nuclear weapons, and anti-submarine, electronic warfare and early warning aircraft, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.

It was the largest daily incursion since the ministry began regularly reporting Chinese Air Force activities in Taiwan’s ADIZ last year, breaking the previous record of 25 aircraft reported on April 12.

The ministry added that Taiwanese combat aircraft were dispatched to intercept and warn away the Chinese aircraft, while missile systems were also deployed to monitor them.

Not only did the Chinese aircraft fly in an area close to the Pratas Islands, but the bombers and some of the fighters flew around the southern part of Taiwan close to the bottom tip of the island, according to a map the ministry provided.

China’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

China has in the past described such missions as necessary to protect the country’s sovereignty and deal with “collusion” between Taipei and Washington.

The United States, which like most countries has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, has watched with alarm the stepped up tensions with Beijing.

China describes Taiwan as its most sensitive territorial issue and a red line the United States should not cross. It has never renounced the possible use of force to ensure eventual unification.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Quoting Irish poet, Biden ends EU trade war in renewal of transatlantic ties

By Steve Holland, Philip Blenkinsop, Marine Strauss and Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden ended one front in a Trump-era trade war when he met European Union leaders on Tuesday by agreeing a truce in a transatlantic dispute over aircraft subsidies that had dragged on for 17 years.

The EU also lifted its tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum for six months in the hope that the United States will do the same for Europe.

Quoting Irish poet W. B. Yeats at the start of his first EU-U.S. summit as president, Biden also said the world was shifting and that Western democracies needed to come together.

“The world has changed, changed utterly,” Biden, an Irish-American, said, citing from the poem Easter 1916, in remarks that pointed towards the themes of his eight day trip through Europe: China, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Sitting at an oval table in the EU’s headquarters with U.S. cabinet officials, Biden told EU institution leaders that the EU and the United States working together was “the best answer to deal with these changes” that he said brought “great anxiety.”

He earlier told reporters he had very different opinions from his predecessor. Former president Donald Trump also visited the EU institutions, in May 2017, but later imposed tariffs on the EU and promoted Britain’s departure from the bloc.

“I think we have great opportunities to work closely with the EU as well as NATO and we feel quite good about it,” Biden said after walking through the futuristic glass Europa Building, also known as “The Egg”, to the summit meeting room with EU institution leaders.

“It’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the USA to have a great relationship with NATO and the EU,” he said, accompanied by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s chairman Charles Michel, who represents EU governments.

The EU and the United States are the world’s top trading powers, along with China, but Trump sought to sideline the EU.

JOBS PROVIDE DIGNITY

Biden also repeated his mantra: “America is back” and spoke of the need to provide good jobs for European and American workers, particularly after the economic impact of COVID-19. He spoke of his father saying that a job “was more than just a pay-check” because it brought dignity.

He is seeking European support to defend Western liberal democracies in the face of a more assertive Russia and China’s military and economic rise.

Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier met with Belgian King Philippe, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes in Brussels’ royal palace. Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Geneva.

“We’re facing a once in a century global health crisis,” Biden said at NATO, while adding “Russia and China are both seeking to drive a wedge in our transatlantic solidarity.”

NATO leaders for the first time said on Monday China’s military rise presented “systemic challenges”. China’s diplomatic mission to the EU on Tuesday called on NATO to “stop hyping up in any form the so-called China threat,” and accused the alliance of “slandering China’s peaceful development”.

TRADE TRUCE, STEEL DEADLINE

Biden and the EU side agreed to remove tariffs on $11.5 billion of goods from EU wine to U.S. tobacco and spirits for five years. The tariffs were imposed on a tit-for-tat basis over mutual frustration with state subsidies for U.S. plane maker Boeing and European rival Airbus.

Both sides committed to provide financing to their large civil aircraft producers on market terms and not to fund research in a way that would harm one another.

“I am happy to see that after intensive work between the European Commission and the U.S. administration, our transatlantic partnership is on its way to reaching cruising speed,” von der Leyen said.

In a reference to China, Washington and Brussels will “collaborate on addressing non-market practices of third parties that may harm their respective large civil aircraft industries”.

While Airbus and Boeing have factories in China, they accuse Beijing of massive state subsidies to try to develop rival passenger aircrafts, China’s home-built C919 jets.

However, Washington did not commit to ending another row over its punitive tariffs related to steel and aluminum, as the EU has demanded. The EU has now suspended its countermeasures for six months, von der Leyen said, effectively giving Washington a December deadline to remove its Trump-era duties. “Let’s sort out, within this time period, how we can get rid of this nuisance,” von der Leyen told reporters.

Resolving the steel conflict gives both sides more time to focus on concerns over China’s overproduction of metals, diplomats said.

There was no firm new transatlantic pledge on climate at the summit, however, and both sides steered clear of setting a date to stop burning coal.

(Additional reporting by Kate Abnett, Gabriela Baczynska and John Chalmers in Brussels, writing by Robin Emmott; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Israeli nationalists march in East Jerusalem, prompt Palestinian ‘Day of Rage’

By Rami Ayyub

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Far-right Israeli groups will march in and around East Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday in a flag-waving procession that risks igniting tensions with Palestinians in the contested city and rekindling violence between Israel and Gaza militants.

Assailing the march as a “provocation,” Palestinian factions have called for a “Day of Rage” in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas have warned of renewed hostilities if it goes ahead.

“We warn of the dangerous repercussions that may result from the occupying power’s intention to allow extremist Israeli settlers to carry out the Flag March in occupied Jerusalem tomorrow,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Twitter.

An original march was re-routed to avoid the Old City’s Muslim Quarter on May 10 when tensions in Jerusalem led Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas to fire rockets towards the holy city, helping set off 11 days of deadly fighting.

Israeli rightists accused their government of caving into Hamas by changing its route. They rescheduled the procession after a Gaza truce took hold.

Tuesday’s march, due to begin at 6:30 p.m. (1530 GMT), poses an immediate challenge for new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who took office on Sunday and brought veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s record-long rule to an end.

Bennett’s internal security minister approved the march on Monday.

A route change or cancellation of the procession could expose Bennett’s patchwork coalition to accusations from Netanyahu, now in the opposition, and his right-wing allies of giving Hamas veto power over events in Jerusalem.

“The time has come for Israel to threaten Hamas and not for Hamas to threaten Israel,” prominent far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Twitter.

An official route for the march has yet to be announced. Israeli media reported that police will allow participants to congregate outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate but will not let them cross through it to the Muslim Quarter, which has an overwhelmingly Palestinian population.

Tensions are sure to be high whether or not the route is changed. Palestinian protests were planned for 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) across the Gaza Strip, and Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction have called on Palestinians to flock to the Old City to counter the march.

The Israeli military has made preparations for a possible escalation in Gaza over the march, Israeli media reported, and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem prohibited its employees and their families from entering the Old City on Tuesday.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, to be the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in a move that has not won international recognition after capturing the area in a 1967 war, regards the entire city as its capital.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Howard Goller)

Brutal heatwave to descend on U.S. West, prompting fire warnings

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A heatwave already punishing parts of the U.S. Southwest on Monday was expected to move into California this week, prompting the forecasters to warn of health and fire dangers.

A high-pressure ridge that built over southwestern deserts over the past few days is responsible for the unusually blistering heat this early in the year, National Weather Service meteorologist Karleisa Rogacheski said.

“Today last day of seasonable weather in California,” Rogacheski said.

California saw balmy weather on Monday, with temperatures in the upper 80’s and low 90’s Fahrenheit (30-35°C), but forecasts called for warming on Tuesday, spiking into the triple digits by Thursday and lasting several days.

The weather service issued an excessive heat warning for parts of southwest Arizona, including Phoenix, on Monday, predicting “dangerously hot conditions” at least through Saturday.

“Very High Heat Risk. Increase in heat-related illnesses, including heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. Heat stroke can lead to death,” the NWS said in the advisory.

California’s dry winter left forests and brush parched, prompting worries that the heat wave could touch off wildfires.

Wildfires scorched more than 6,500 square miles (17,000 square km) of land in 2020, destroying hundreds of Californian homes during a particularly fierce fire season.

The baking weather could also strain California’s power grid as residents crank up air conditioning units across the state.

Experts say the heatwave forecast for this week, brought on by the early high pressure system, could not be blamed directly on climate change.

“It difficult to tie any one particular event to climate change,” said Eric Schoening, a meteorologist in the Salt Lake City office of the National Weather Service. “But studies show that as the climate changes and it gets warmer, we will see more of these anomalous events over time.”

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

EDF examines gas build-up at Chinese nuclear plant

SINGAPORE/PARIS (Reuters) – French power group EDF has begun examination of a potential issue linked to a build-up of inert gases at its nuclear power station in China, though the company and its Chinese partner said the plant was operating safely.

CNN reported on Monday that the U.S. government had spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at the Taishan power plant in Guangdong province run by a joint venture between EDF and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN).

The U.S. news network reported that Framatome, the EDF business that designed the plant’s reactor and remains involved in its operations, had warned of an “imminent radiological threat.”

EDF said the build-up of noble gases krypton and xenon, which it said had affected the primary circuit of reactor No.1 of the Taishan plant, was a “known phenomenon, studied and provided for in the reactor operating procedures.”

A group spokesman said this could be because of an issue with fuel rods and seals. Measurements of inert gases were below maximum levels authorized in China, the spokesman said, adding that it was too early to say whether the reactor would have to be shut down.

Krypton and xenon do not tend to react with other substances but they do have radioactive qualities and are therefore subject to constant monitoring.

EDF has called for a meeting with CGN to go over the findings, though no date has yet been set.

State-run CGN, the majority owner of the joint venture, said operations at the plant met safety rules and the surrounding environment is safe.

“Regular monitoring data shows the Taishan station and its surrounding environment meet normal parameters,” it said in a statement on its website late on Sunday.

Framatome said it was supporting efforts to resolve the situation.

“According to the data available, the plant is operating within the safety parameters”, the company said in a statement, adding that it was working with experts to assess the situation.

TNPJVC, the joint venture behind the plant, is 70% owned by CGN and 30% by EDF.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. atomic watchdog, said: “At this stage, the agency has no indication that a radiological incident occurred,” and that it was in contact with officials in China about the issue.

France’s nuclear watchdog ASN had no immediate comment. The U.S. State Department and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission referred queries to the Energy Department and the White House did not respond immediately to questions from Reuters.

EPR TECHNOLOGY

The Taishan reactor is the first French-designed Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR) to become operational. The technology is also being deployed in France, Finland and at the Hinkley Point C project in Britain.

Power from the plant serves the Guangzhou and Shenzhen areas, Guangdong province’s major manufacturing hubs, which have faced power shortages in recent weeks due to hot weather and lower than normal hydropower supplies from neighboring Yunnan province.

CNN said the warning by Framatome included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan plant to avoid having to shut it down.

A Reuters call for comment to the National Nuclear Safety Administration went unanswered during a public holiday.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu in Singapore, Benjamin Mallet and Sarah White in Paris and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Jan Harvey, Louise Heavens, David Goodman and Dan Grebler)