Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Britain outlaws Palestinian militant group Hamas -interior minister

By Stephen Farrell and Alistair Smout

JERUSALEM/LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s interior minister Priti Patel on Friday said she had banned the Palestinian militant group Hamas in a move that brings the UK’s stance on Gaza’s rulers in line with the United States and the European Union.

“Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities,” Patel said in a statement.

“That is why today I have acted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety.”

The organization would be banned under the Terrorism Act and anyone expressing support for Hamas, flying its flag or arranging meetings for the organization would be in breach of the law, the interior ministry confirmed. Patel is expected to present the change to parliament next week.

Hamas has political and military wings. Founded in 1987, it opposes the existence of Israel and peace talks, instead advocating “armed resistance” against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Until now Britain had banned only its military arm — the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Hamas political official Sami Abu Zuhri said Britain’s move showed “absolute bias toward the Israeli occupation and is a submission to Israeli blackmail and dictations”.

“Resisting occupation by all available means, including armed resistance, is a right granted to people under occupation as stated by the international law,” said Hamas in a separate statement.

The Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom, which represents President Mahmoud Abbas’s Western-backed Palestinian Authority, also condemned the move.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed the decision, saying on Twitter: “Hamas is a terrorist organization, simply put. The ‘political arm’ enables its military activity.”

Hamas and Israel clashed most recently in a deadly 11-day conflict in May. During the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago, Hamas suicide bombers killed hundreds of Israelis, a campaign publicly backed by its political wing.

‘STRENGTHENING TIES’

In 2017 Patel was forced to resign as Britain’s international development secretary after she failed to disclose meetings with senior Israeli officials during a private holiday to the country, including then-opposition leader Yair Lapid.

Lapid, now Israel’s foreign minister, hailed the decision on Hamas as “part of strengthening ties with Britain”.

Hamas is on the U.S. list of designated foreign terrorist organizations. The European Union also deems it a terrorist movement.

Based in Gaza, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, defeating its nationalist rival Fatah. It seized military control of Gaza the following year.

(Reporting by Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem and Aistair Smout in London; Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Jury acquits U.S. teen shooter Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges

By Nathan Layne

KENOSHA, Wis. (Reuters) -A jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday on all charges relating to his fatal shooting of two men and wounding of a third with a semi-automatic rifle during chaotic 2020 racial justice protests in Wisconsin, determining that the teenager acted in self-defense.

A 12-member jury found Rittenhouse, 18, not guilty on two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide and two counts of recklessly endangering safety during street protests marred by arson, rioting and looting on Aug. 25, 2020 in the working-class city of Kenosha.

Rittenhouse broke down sobbing after the verdict, which came shortly after the judge warned the courtroom to remain silent or be removed.

The teenager’s trial polarized America, highlighting gaping divisions in U.S. society around contentious issues like gun rights.

Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and fired a bullet that tore a chunk off the arm of Gaige Grosskreutz, 28.

In reaching their verdicts after more than three days of deliberations, the jury contended with dueling narratives from the defense and prosecution that offered vastly different portrayals of the teenager’s actions on the night of the shootings.

The defense argued that Rittenhouse had been repeatedly attacked and had shot the men in fear for his life. They said he was a civic-minded teenager who had been in Kenosha to protect private property after several nights of unrest in the city south of Milwaukee.

The unrest followed the police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake, who was left paralyzed from the waist down.

The prosecution portrayed Rittenhouse as a reckless vigilante who provoked the violent encounters and showed no remorse for the men he shot with his AR-15-style rifle.

Live-streamed and dissected by cable TV pundits daily, the trial unfolded during a time of social and political polarization in the United States. Gun rights are cherished by many Americans and are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution even as the nation experiences a high rate of gun violence and the easy availability of firearms.

Rittenhouse, who testified that he had no choice but to open fire to protect himself, is viewed as heroic by some conservatives who favor expansive gun rights and consider the shootings justified. Many on the left view Rittenhouse as a vigilante and an embodiment of an out-of-control American gun culture.

Protests against racism and police brutality turned violent in many U.S. cities after the police killing of Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis three months before the Kenosha shootings.

With so much of that night in Kenosha caught on cellphone and surveillance video, few basic facts were in dispute. The trial instead focused on whether Rittenhouse acted reasonably to prevent “imminent death or great bodily harm,” the requirement for using deadly force under Wisconsin law.

The prosecution, led by Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, sought to paint Rittenhouse as the aggressor and noted he was the only one to kill anyone that night.

FULL METAL JACKET

Rittenhouse’s gun was loaded with 30 rounds of full metal jacket bullets, which are designed to penetrate their target. The jury saw a series of graphic videos, including the moments after Rittenhouse fired four rounds into Rosenbaum, who lay motionless, bleeding and groaning. Other video showed Grosskreutz screaming, with blood gushing from his arm.

Rittenhouse testified in his own defense last Wednesday in the trial’s most dramatic moment – a risky decision by his lawyers given his youth and the prospect of tough prosecution cross-examination. Rittenhouse broke down sobbing at one point but emphasized that he fired upon the men only after being attacked.

“I did what I had to do to stop the person who was attacking me,” he said.

Rittenhouse testified that he shot Huber after he had struck him with a skateboard and pulled on his weapon. He said he fired on Grosskreutz after the man pointed the pistol he was carrying at the teenager – an assertion Grosskreutz acknowledged under questioning from the defense. Rittenhouse testified that he shot Rosenbaum after the man chased him and grabbed his gun.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Editing by Ross Colvin, Will Dunham and Alistair Bell)

Poland says Belarus ferries migrants back to border after clearing camps

By Yara Abi Nader and Kacper Pempel

BIELSK PODLASKI, Poland/BRUZGI, Belarus (Reuters) -Poland accused Belarus on Friday of trucking hundreds of migrants back to the border and pushing them to attempt to cross illegally, only hours after clearing camps at a frontier that has become the focus of an escalating East-West crisis.

The accusation by Poland suggests the crisis has not been resolved by an apparent change of tack by Minsk, which on Thursday had cleared the main camps by the border and allowed the first repatriation flight to Iraq in months.

European governments accuse Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to illegally cross the EU border, where several people have died in the freezing woods. Belarus denies fomenting the crisis.

Polish Border Guard spokesperson Anna Michalska said that by Thursday evening, just hours after clearing the camps, Belarus authorities were already trucking hundreds back and forcing them to try to cross in darkness.

“(The Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said. “At the beginning there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”

When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, she told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards sustained minor injuries.

Access to the border on the Polish side is restricted by a state of emergency, making it difficult to verify her account.

‘NIGHTMARE’

In an interview with the BBC, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko repeated denials that he had orchestrated the crisis but, asked if Belarus was helping migrants try and cross into Poland, he said: “I think that’s absolutely possible. We’re Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany. Maybe someone helped them. I won’t even look into this.”

The migrants from the camp on the Belarus side were taken on Thursday to a huge, crowded warehouse and journalists were permitted to film them. Children ran about on Friday morning, and men played cards while one dangled a toddler on his lap.

“This is not a life but this is not permanent, this should be just temporary until they decide our destiny: to take us to Europe or bring us back to our countries,” said 23-year-old electrician Mohammed Noor.

“What I wish for myself, I wish it for others too – to go to Europe and live a stable life.”

Meanwhile in a hospital in Bielsk Podlaski, on the Polish side, two migrants who had been caught after crossing were given treatment before being taken away by Polish border guards.

Before he was taken away, Mansour Nassar, 42, a father-of-six from Aleppo, in Syria, who had travelled to Belarus from Lebanon, described his ordeal during five days in the forest.

“The Belarusian army told us: ‘If you come back, we will kill you’,” he said, in tears in his hospital bed. “We drank from ponds… Our people are always oppressed.”

Kassam Shahadah, a Syrian refugee doctor living in Poland who helps out in another hospital, said patients were terrified of being forcibly returned to Belarus.

“What they have seen, what they have lived through on that side is a nightmare for them,” he said.

EXTREME SUFFERING

Human rights groups say Poland has exacerbated the suffering by sending back those who try to cross. Poland says this is necessary to stop more people from coming.

“I have personally listened to the appalling accounts of extreme suffering from desperate people – among whom many families, children and elderly – who spent weeks or even months in squalid and extreme conditions in the cold and wet woods due to these pushbacks,” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said after a four-day mission to Poland.

“I have witnessed clear signs of their painful ordeal: wounds, frostbite, exposure to extreme cold, exhaustion and stress,” she said. “I have no doubt that returning any of these people to the border will lead to more extreme human suffering and more deaths.”

The Polish border guards have recorded seven deaths at the border. Rights groups say more than 10 people have died.

‘CYNICAL AND INHUMANE’

Europeans have shunned Lukashenko since a disputed election last year, but reached out cautiously this week, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking to Lukashenko twice by phone.

However, on Thursday the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal that Minsk said Lukashenko had made to Merkel, under which EU countries would take in 2,000 migrants, while 5,000 others would be sent back home..

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that the situation on the borders remained deeply concerning.

“Lukashenko’s regime’s use of vulnerable people as a means to put pressure on other countries is cynical and inhumane,” he said. “NATO stands in full solidarity with all affected allies.”

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Pawel Florkiewicz, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Leon Malherbe, Yara Abi Nader, Kacper Pempel, Stephan Schepers, Andrius Sytas; Writing by Joanna Plucinska and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Peter Graff and Alex Richardson)

Harris was briefly first woman to be acting U.S. president as Biden underwent colonoscopy

By Jeff Mason

BETHESDA, Md. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden briefly transferred power to Vice President Kamala Harris Friday as he underwent a colonoscopy, making her the first woman to hold the presidential reins in U.S. history.

Biden, a Democrat, alerted leaders in Congress of the power transfer at 10:10 a.m. EST (1510 GMT) and took back control at 11:35 EST, the White House said.

The president was undergoing a routine physical at the Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Biden spoke to Harris and White House chief of staff Ron Klain after the procedure and was “in good spirits.”

Biden’s power transfer occurred while he was under anesthesia for the colonoscopy. Harris worked from her office in the West Wing of the White House during that time, Psaki said.

Harris is the first woman to serve as vice president of the United States; no woman has ever been president in the country’s nearly 250-year history.

The U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment lays out a process for the president to transfer power when he is unable to discharge his duties.

Presidential power has been transferred to the vice president before, when President George W. Bush had colonoscopies in 2002 and 2007.

Biden, who turns 79 on Saturday, is the oldest person to take office as U.S. president, leading to high interest in his health and well-being. Although speculation has persisted about whether he will run for re-election in 2024, he has said he expects to seek a second four-year term.

Biden has pledged to be more transparent about his health than predecessor Donald Trump. The Republican visited Walter Reed in 2019 for an undisclosed reason that a former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, later revealed was for a colonoscopy.

Trump once had his doctor brief the press about the president’s health after questions were raised about his mental acuity.

Psaki said the White House would release a comprehensive written summary of Biden’s physical later on Friday.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Alexandra Alper and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. warns China after South China Sea standoff with Philippines

(Reuters) – The United States on Friday warned China after a standoff in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines, saying it stood by Manila amid an “escalation that directly threatens regional peace and stability.”

Beijing “should not interfere with lawful Philippine activities in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone,” U.S. State Department Ned Price said in a statement.

On Thursday, the Philippines condemned “in strongest terms” the actions of three Chinese coast guard vessels that it said blocked and used water cannon on resupply boats headed towards a Philippine-occupied atoll in the South China Sea.

“The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms that an armed attack on Philippine public vessels in the South China Sea would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments,” Price said.

“The United States strongly believes that PRC (People’s Republic of China) actions asserting its expansive and unlawful South China Sea maritime claims undermine peace and security in the region,” he added.

The incident came as U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed a range of issues in a three-hour video call.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru and Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Facing new COVID wave, Dutch delay care for cancer, heart patients

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch healthcare officials said on Friday they have begun delaying operations for some cancer and heart patients to free up space in intensive care units during a record wave of COVID-19 infections.

“These are cancer patients that should actually be operated on within six weeks of diagnosis, and that won’t be met in all cases. It’s also heart patients,” said a spokesperson for LCPS, the national organization that allocates hospital resources.

“It’s horrible, of course, for the patients.”

The National Institute for Health (RIVM) reported a record of more than 23,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours on Thursday, compared with the previous daily high of around 13,000 reached in December 2020.

With 85% of the adult population vaccinated, both hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admission rates have so far remained lower than they were at the height of the initial wave in April 2020, although there is a delay between the date of infection and the date of admission to hospital.

With fewer than 200 beds remaining in Dutch ICU as of Thursday, hospitals are scrambling to add more capacity.

The government at the start of November reintroduced mask-wearing in stores, and last weekend it reimposed a partial lockdown, including closing bars and restaurants after 8 p.m.

But the impact of those measures has yet to be seen in the daily case numbers.

Parliament is divided over a plan proposed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government to limit access to indoor public venues to people who have a “corona pass,” which shows they have been vaccinated or already recovered from an infection. Critics say the move would be divisive and discriminatory.

Schools remain open, and virologists on Thursday proposed extending Christmas holidays to slow infections, which are rising most rapidly among children.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. awards nearly $1 billion in infrastructure grants

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Transportation Department said Friday it was awarding nearly $1 billion in infrastructure grants as the Biden administration prepares to dramatically boost funding on the nation’s roads, bridges, rail, transit and other projects.

The grants under the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program are going to 90 projects in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Guam, to rebuild roads and add rail lines — but also create new green space, new trails, bike lanes and safer streets for pedestrians.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the department had received a “a ten-to-one ratio of requests to available dollars” for the grants.

Seattle will receive $20 million to reconstruct a 1.1-mile road segment and will also add a bike lane. Washington County, Oregon will receive $12.2 million for a 15-mile trail.

Charlotte, North Carolina will receive $15 million to construct a new multimodal transit center and New Orleans is getting $18.5 million to improve transit fare collection. Manchester, New Hampshire will receive $25 million to reconnect the city’s South Millyard district to surrounding neighborhoods and downtown.

Atlanta will receive a $900,000 planning grant to advance a project to “cap” the I-75/I-85 Downtown Connector highway, which would create 14 acres of green space and reconnect neighborhoods separated from downtown by the highway.

Republican Representative Garret Graves said the Biden administration was funding green space rather than focusing on eliminating congestion. “This is supposed to be a transportation program. We sit in traffic and they get ‘green space.'”

Under the $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden, the Transportation Department will receive $660 billion over five years, including $210.5 billion to be awarded in competitive grants. Of that $71 billion is for new grant programs.

Department officials are crossing the country to tout infrastructure spending. Buttigieg is in Phoenix to discuss the bill’s impact on transit and airport funding, while Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg is Pennsylvania and other department officials are in California.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Kim Coghill)

U.S. charges Iranians for alleged cyber plot to meddle in 2020 presidential election

By Mark Hosenball and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States announced criminal charges on Thursday against two Iranians it accuses of launching a cyber disinformation campaign to meddle in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that targeted voters as well as elected members of Congress and a U.S. media company.

The U.S. Treasury also announced it was imposing sanctions on six Iranians and one Iranian group for trying to influence the 2020 U.S. election.

Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian 27, are each charged with obtaining confidential U.S. voting information from at least one state election website and conspiring with others to sow disinformation to try to undermine Americans’ confidence in the election’s integrity.

A spokesperson for Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senior U.S. law enforcement officials told reporters on Thursday they had no evidence to suggest that any of the alleged hacking activity had an impact on the election results.

The indictment alleges the Iranian hackers gained access to an unnamed U.S. media company’s computer network in a plot to disseminate false claims about the election, but their plot was foiled through intervention by the FBI and the company, which the indictment did not identify by name.

As part of their alleged conspiracy, they also sent Facebook messages purporting to be a group of volunteers from the far-right Proud Boys group to Republican members of Congress and members of then-President Donald Trump’s campaign, the indictment alleges.

It also alleges they tried to access voter registration data from 11 state websites, and in one case managed to download data from one state website that contained information about 100,000 of its registered voters.

“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

U.S. suspicions about Iranian interference in the 2020 presidential election surfaced in October of last year.

Two weeks before the November election, top intelligence officials in the Trump administration alleged that both Russia and Iran were attempting to interfere in the election, and had gained access to some U.S. voter registration data.

Some voters had reported receiving emails purporting to be from the Proud Boys, a self-proclaimed club of “Western chauvinists” who have since come under scrutiny after some of its members took part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

While the Proud Boys deception was previously known, the details about the hackers’ efforts to break into a media company were not made public until Thursday’s unsealing of the indictment.

According to court documents, the hackers hoped to leverage their access to the media company to spread disinformation about the election. But the FBI had warned the victimized company, helping it to kick out the hackers.

U.S. officials and election security experts have long feared such a cyber attack after a series of similar incidents occurred over the last two years in Eastern Europe.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball and Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Chris Bing;Editing by Bernadette Baum, Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis)

Texas electric grid still not ready for extreme winter weather -NERC

By Tim McLaughlin

(Reuters) – The Texas electric grid could suffer a massive shortfall in generating capacity in a winter deep freeze, potentially triggering outages similar to those in February, according to a report on Thursday by an electric reliability authority.

The assessment by the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC), a nonprofit regulatory authority, comes as Texas lawmakers and regulators continue to investigate ways to bolster the grid to avert a repeat of last winter’s blackouts, which left 4.5 million customers without power in a deep freeze that killed more than 200 people.

In normal winter conditions, the anticipated reserve margin – a cushion of extra capacity versus demand – is comfortable at nearly 42% for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator for about 90% of the state.

But if severe frigid weather hits, it could disrupt pipeline natural gas supplies and power stations, leaving a capacity deficit as high as 37%, NERC said.

The Texas grid is mostly isolated from other U.S. grids, with a limited ability to import electricity when a local shortfall materializes. ERCOT also operates the only major U.S. grid that does not have a capacity market – a system that provides payments to operators to be on standby to supply power during severe weather events.

ERCOT said in a statement that it had made significant progress since last winter. “The electric grid will be able to perform significantly better this coming winter than in the past,” it said.

(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Biden says U.S. considering diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics

By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, President Joe Biden confirmed on Thursday, a move that would be aimed at protesting China’s human rights record, including what Washington says is genocide against minority Muslims.

“Something we’re considering,” Biden said when asked if a diplomatic boycott was under consideration as he sat down for a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A diplomatic boycott would mean that U.S. officials would not attend the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.

A U.S. decision not to send diplomats would be a rebuke of Chinese President Xi Jinping just days after Xi and Biden worked to ease tensions in a virtual summit, their first extensive talks since Biden took office in January.

Activists and members of Congress from both parties have been pressing the Biden administration to diplomatically boycott the event given that the U.S. government accuses China of carrying out a genocide against Muslim ethnic groups in its western Xinjiang region, something that Beijing denies.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told a regular briefing on Thursday that U.S. consideration of a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics was driven by concerns about human rights practices in Xinjiang province.

“There are areas that we do have concerns: human rights abuses,” Psaki told reporters. “We have serious concerns.”

“Certainly there are a range of factors as we look at what our presence would be,” she said, while declining to provide a timeline for a decision.

“I want to leave the president the space to make decisions,” she said.

Sources with knowledge of the administration’s thinking have told Reuters there was a growing consensus within the White House that it should keep U.S. officials away from the Games.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was talking to countries around the world about “how they’re thinking about participation,” but left a deadline for a decision unclear.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators in October proposed an amendment to an annual defense policy bill that would prohibit the U.S. State Department from spending federal funds to “support or facilitate” the attendance of U.S. government employees at the Games.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also called for a diplomatic boycott, saying global leaders who attend would lose their moral authority.

Some Republican lawmakers have been calling for a complete boycott of the Olympics.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas told a news conference on Thursday that a diplomatic boycott of what he called the “genocide Olympics” would be “too little, too late” and said no U.S. athletes, officials, or U.S. corporate sponsors should take part.

Nikki Haley, a Republican former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also had called for a complete boycott, saying attending would send a message that America was willing to turn a blind eye to genocide.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Steve Holland and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Katharine Jackson and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Bill Berkrot)