Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

From icy Texas to snowy Seattle, frigid weather blankets huge swath of U.S.

(Reuters) – Winter weather battered the United States from coast to coast on Thursday as a series of storms expected to last for days mixed with an arctic air mass to bring snow and freezing rain as far south as Texas where there was a deadly multi-vehicle pileup.

A line of freezing rain stretched from Texas to West Virginia, with some of it accumulating one-quarter to one-half inch, according to meteorologist Marc Chenard at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Among the areas to get a coating of freezing rain during the Thursday morning rush hour was Fort Worth, Texas, where local media reported that at least five people were killed in a massive pileup of some 70 vehicles on an interstate highway.

Video at the scene showed dozens of smashed cars and trucks, some literally piled on top of one another on a wet roadway and under cloudy skies.

The Texas precipitation was part of a system that was bringing rain to several southeastern states and modest amounts of snow to West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, but was winding down, Chenard said.

A separate system will make its presence felt in the mid-Atlantic area on Saturday, he said.

“That may bring potentially significant freezing rain accumulations to portions of Virginia and Maryland,” he added.

Meanwhile, another weather system was making its way into the Pacific Northwest where it was forecast to remain through Saturday and bring as much eight inches (20 cm) of snow to normally rainy Seattle and 12 inches (30 cm) to Portland, Oregon. Seattle averages about 6 inches of snow in an entire winter season.

“An event of this magnitude is rare,” said Chenard.

That weather system is forecast to make its way eastward, bringing significant snowfall to the upper Midwest over the weekend and freezing rain south almost to Gulf Coast of Texas.

“There likely will be winter weather impacts in the East by early next week,” Chenard added.

The storm systems, which normally would have brought rain, have been converted into snow and ice makers by a polar air mass that has descended upon much of the country, bringing frigid temperatures before beginning to recede in the middle of next week, Chenard said.

Recent low temperatures in the upper United States from Montana to Wisconsin have ranged from minus 35 to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 37 to minus 40 degrees Celsius).

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

White House says no specific decisions on domestic air travel under review

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday rejected media reports it is considering any new domestic air travel restrictions.

“To be clear, there have been no decisions made around additional public health measures for domestic travel safety. The administration is continuing to discuss recommendations across the travel space, but no specific decisions are under consideration,” a White House spokesman told Reuters.

Reports that the administration was considering imposing restrictions on travel to Florida brought denunciations from many Republican lawmakers.

The chief executives of major U.S. airlines are scheduled to meet virtually on Friday with the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator to discuss travel-related issues, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The meeting with coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients and other administration officials involved in COVID-19 issues comes as airlines, aviation unions and other industry groups have strongly objected to the possibility of requiring COVID-19 testing before boarding domestic flights.

Southwest Airlines Co Chief Executive Gary Kelly and the leaders of the airline’s unions urged President Joe Biden in a letter not to mandate COVID-19 testing, saying it would put “jobs at risk.”

“Such a mandate would be counterproductive, costly, and have serious unintended consequences,” said the letter, which was dated Tuesday and released on Wednesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month said the Biden administration was “actively looking” at expanding mandatory COVID-19 testing to U.S. domestic flights. The CDC on Jan. 26 began requiring negative COVID-19 tests or evidence of recovery from the disease from nearly all U.S.-bound international passengers age 2 and older.

One idea that has been under review within the Biden administration is for the CDC to issue recommendations advising against travel to areas of the United States with high COVID-19 caseloads, but no decisions have been made and recommendations would not be binding, officials said.

CDC officials have repeatedly urged Americans not to travel unless necessary.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. labor market struggling, but light at the end of tunnel

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week as the labor market continued to tread water, but a drop in new COVID-19 cases has raised cautious optimism that momentum could pick up by the spring.

The weekly unemployment claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also highlighted labor market scarring, with over 20 million people collecting unemployment checks in late January.

“Claims remain stuck at painfully high levels,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Virginia. “But we are seeing hopeful signs that claims will begin meaningful declines in the next month or two.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 793,000 for the week ended Feb. 6. Data for the prior week was revised to show 33,000 more claims received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 757,000 applications for the latest week.

Unadjusted claims decreased 36,534 to 813,145 last week. There were notable jumps in filings in California and Ohio. Including a government-funded program for the self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for the regular state programs, 1.148 million people filed claims last week.

Claims are stuck in the upper end of their 711,000-842,000 band between October and November. They remain above their 665,000 peak during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, though they are below the record 6.867 million reported last March when the pandemic hit the United States.

The labor market recovery has stalled in recent months as the country battled a resurgence in coronavirus infections, which ravaged restaurants and other consumer-facing businesses. The government reported last Friday that the economy created only 49,000 jobs in January after losing 227,000 in December.

Labor market woes strengthen the case for President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion recovery package, which is under consideration in the U.S. Congress. The government provided nearly $900 billion in additional pandemic relief in late December. Republican lawmakers are opposing the planned massive fiscal stimulus due to concerns about the swelling national debt.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mostly lower.

LONG BOUTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

But there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Reported new coronavirus cases in the United States dropped 25% last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic hit the nation. Infections have now fallen for four consecutive weeks, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.

Should the trend continue and the distribution of vaccines broaden out, that, together with additional stimulus, could allow more businesses to reopen. There are signs that businesses are testing the waters. Temporary help jobs, a segment normally considered a harbinger of future hiring, jumped in January.

“Temporary and contract jobs are running slightly ahead of where they were the same time a year ago,” said Richard Wahlquist, chief executive officer at the American Staffing Association.

For now, the slack in the labor market remains immense. The claims report showed that people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell 145,000 to 4.545 million in the week ended Jan. 30. But the decline in the so-called continuing claims was mostly due to people exhausting their eligibility for benefits, limited to 26 weeks in most states.

At least 4.778 million people were on extended benefits during the week ended Jan. 23, up 1.2 million from the prior period. These benefits, which are funded by the government, will expire in mid-March if Congress does not pass the Biden administration’s relief package.

Another 1.653 million were on a state program for those who have exhausted their initial six months of aid. That meant 6.4 million people have been unemployed for more than six months.

“This is by the far the highest we have seen at any point during this crisis,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “Long-term joblessness is happening right now and is a very real challenge for the recovery.”

About 20.435 million people were receiving benefits under all programs during that period, an increase of 2.6 million from mid-January. The surge partly reflected the extension of government-funded benefits in late December, and underscored the widespread nature of unemployment.

“The unemployed are having a difficult time reentering the labor force, and this highlights the need for additional federal aid,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.

The economy has recovered 12.3 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost during the pandemic. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated employment would not return to its pre-pandemic level before 2024.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)

Not perfect, but saves lives, AstraZeneca says as Africa backs COVID-19 shot

By Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwig Burger

(Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is not perfect, but will have a big impact on the pandemic, its chief executive predicted on Thursday, as the drugmaker pledged to double output by April and the African Union gave its backing for the shot.

The two-dose inoculation, developed with Oxford University, has been hailed as a “vaccine for the world” because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals.

But its rapid approval in Europe and elsewhere has been clouded by doubts over its most effective dosage and interval between doses.

Data at the weekend also showed it was less effective against a fast-spreading variant of the virus in South Africa, prompting the country to pause rollout of the shot, and the company has also been embroiled in a row with the European Union over supply delays.

“Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but it’s great. Who else is making 100 million doses in February?” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call about the vaccine.

“We’re going to save thousands of lives and that’s why we come to work everyday.”

The company said it aimed to produce more than 200 million doses per month by April, double this month’s level as the world tries to tame a pandemic that has killed 2.35 million.

Head of operations Pam Cheng said on the call that the group was working to further expand global capacity and productivity.

AstraZeneca has set a target to produce 3 billion doses this year, with India’s Serum Institute making much of that aimed at poorer nations.

On Wednesday, the company enlisted Germany’s IDT Biologika as a contract manufacturer, but the bulk of IDT’s contribution will only come onstream late next year.

AstraZeneca said it expected much-anticipated data from the U.S. trial of the vaccine before the end of March, and that it was confident the shot offered relatively good protection against severe disease and death for the South African variant. Its disappointing results were against milder cases.

However, after rising to become Britain’s most valuable company last summer, the company has now slipped to sixth, in a move some analysts attribute to doubts over the vaccine.

“In a year or two we will look back and everybody will realize we made a big impact,” Soriot said.

POSTER CHILD

AstraZeneca’s shares were up 0.95% in afternoon trade, paring some earlier gains, after the company forecast a pick up in earnings growth this year on strong demand for its cancer and other new therapies.

It has pledged not to make any money from its COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

It has been a tumultuous week for the drugmaker after South Africa put on hold giving the shot to its citizens, choosing one developed by its U.S. rival Johnson & Johnson instead.

That came after the trial data raised concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness on mild symptoms from the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant of the virus dominant in South Africa, which has spread to 41 nations around the world.

Despite that blow, the World Health Organization endorsed the British vaccine on Wednesday and the African Union said it would target its use in countries that have not reported cases of the variant.

Kenya and Morocco are also planning to administer it.

AstraZeneca said it expected 2021 revenues to rise by a low teens percentage and core earnings of $4.75 to $5.00 per share, as it beat expectations for fourth-quarter sales.

The earnings guidance equates to 18-24% growth, after 15% in 2020, but was a little lower than the $5.10 per share analysts were expecting, as the company flagged more spending this year.

The COVID-19 vaccine is not included in the guidance and the company said its sales would be reported separately from the first quarter of 2021.

While public interest is focused on the vaccine, AstraZeneca’s core business of diabetes, heart, kidney, and cancer medicines has been steadily growing, helping the company to turn around years of decline.

“The company is arguably the poster child for big pharma turnarounds,” said Third Bridge senior analyst Sebastian Skeet.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwige Burger. Editing by Josephine Mason and Mark Potter)

Cheap old homes draw millennials escaping pandemic cages

By Daniel Fastenberg

NORWICH, Conn. (Reuters) – American millennials with budget constraints are breaking out of their pandemic coops to find affordable dream homes in far-flung places.

For funeral home director Kate Reinhart, from Utah, that dream is an octagonal Victorian that recalls the macabre Addams Family mansion seen in cartoons, films and a TV series.

It helped that her scientist husband Cameron found his first job near Norwich, Connecticut, a town with one of the largest concentrations of 18th- and early 19th-century houses in New England.

For just $85,000 the couple bought the 1885 house replete with stained glass, artisanal light fixtures and winding banisters. They plan to put some $100,000 into a massive renovation.

“I do feel like we appreciate it more now during the pandemic to have more space to ourselves,” Kate said. “People are more self-conscious about being on top of each other in tiny apartment buildings. In New York City, people are fleeing to here.”

The trend is clear from visits to CheapOldHouses, a website founded by Elizabeth Finkelstein in 2016 to promote the purchase and preservation of historical houses.

Followers of the site’s Instagram account have steadily doubled every week since U.S. pandemic lockdowns began in March, to about 20,000, she said. About 42% are aged 25-34, and about 75% are women.

“The mantra of real estate has always been ‘location, location, location.’ For the first time that’s being flipped a little bit on its head,” Finkelstein said. “We are living in a time when people are willing to kind of take risks, maybe risks that they’ve been wanting to take their whole life.”

Homes on CheapOldHouses.com tend to be in the U.S. Midwest, South and Rust Belt, where many sell for less than $100,000. Houses that cost more in North America, Europe and elsewhere are also listed in Finkelstein’s monthly newsletter.

“We feature homes people can realistically buy, but also use their hands on as opposed to sitting in a cubicle all day long,” she said.

A net 70,000 people left the New York metropolitan region in 2020, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income, estimated Unacast, a location analytics provider.

More millennials may leave big cities even after the pandemic is over, Finkelstein said.

“With so many offices going remote, people have more opportunity to just say, ‘maybe I don’t need to be paying more than half my income in rent. And I can, I can take that leap.'”

(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Richard Chang; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Vaccinated people need not quarantine post COVID-19 exposure, CDC says

(Reuters) – People who have received the full course of COVID-19 vaccines can skip the standard 14-day quarantine after exposure to someone with the infection as long as they remain asymptomatic, U.S. public health officials advised.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday the vaccines have been shown to prevent symptomatic COVID-19, thought to play a greater role in the transmission of the virus than asymptomatic disease.

“Individual and societal benefits of avoiding unnecessary quarantine may outweigh the potential but unknown risk of transmission (among vaccinated individuals),” the CDC said.

The agency has laid down strict criteria for people who would no longer have to quarantine after the vaccinations, including having received both doses of a two-dose vaccine.

People who choose not to quarantine should do so only if they received their last dose within three months, and should only avoid 14 days quarantine after their last shot, the time it takes to develop immunity, CDC said.

Fully vaccinated persons who do not quarantine should still watch for symptoms for 14 days following an exposure.

Two-dose vaccines from Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc have been authorized for emergency use in the United States. Johnson & Johnson applied for a U.S. authorization of its single-dose shot last week.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila)

Rising waters in Indian Himalayas disrupt rescue bid in tunnel after avalanche

By Alasdair Pal and Neha Arora

TAPOVAN, India (Reuters) – Authorities in India warned on Thursday of rising water levels in a Himalayan river valley hit by a major avalanche as they scaled back a search for 35 construction workers trapped in a flooded tunnel.

Rescue workers have found the bodies of 36 people since Sunday’s avalanche that tore through dams and swept away bridges in the Dhauliganga river valley of Uttarakhand state.

Some 171 people remain unaccounted for, most of them workers at the state-run Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric project and at the smaller Rishiganga dam, which was swept away by the avalanche-driven torrent.

An official with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said the number of rescue teams were limited at the tunnel site after river water levels began to surge.

“There was an input from a village that the river upstream was swelling so we sounded an alert. The rescue mission was stopped for about 30 minutes,” Swati Bhadoriya, Chamoli District Magistrate, told Reuters.

Relief workers have been drilling inside a 2.5-km-long tunnel connected to the Tapovan project, where slush and water has been so heavy that soldiers have made only halting progress in four days.

Experts have cautioned there could be still be huge amounts of rock, debris, ice and water that could get released due to changes in temperatures.

“Snow melt or rain could trigger a debris flow at any moment, probably not of the size of the event on Sunday, but critical for anybody and anything close to the river,” said Holger Frey, a senior scientist with the Glaciology and Geomorphodynamics Group (3G) in the geography faculty at the University of Zurich.

RESCUE EFFORTS, DISTRAUGHT FAMILIES

After clearing more than 100 meters of mud, rocks and debris, relief workers on Thursday sent water tankers and generators deep into the tunnel to assist in drilling.

They were searching for signs of life in smaller tunnels and rooms branching off from the main passage, officials said.

Relatives continued to arrive at the site, but five days after the disaster, frustration at the lack of progress mounted.

“They are not telling us anything,” said Praveen Saini, whose nephew, Ajay Kumar Saini, is trapped in the tunnel.

Another man was clinging to hope that his brother had survived after he was able to ring his mobile phone. “If his phone survived, maybe he survived,” Jugal Kishore said.

Originally thought to be a glacier breaking apart in India’s second highest mountain Nanda Devi and crashing into the river, some scientists now say the flood was more likely to have been caused by an avalanche.

“It appears that the event was caused by a very large rockfall from high up the mountainside which picked up lots of snow and ice on the way down and melted these because of the frictional heat created by the rock fall,” said Stephan Harrison, professor of Climate and Environmental Change at the University of Exeter in Britain.

(Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma and Neha Arora; Writing by Neha Arora; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Mark Heinrich)

COVID-19 surge takes toll on Portugal’s undertakers

By Catarina Demony

LISBON (Reuters) – Standing next to the sealed coffin of yet another COVID-19 victim in Portugal, funeral parlor worker Carlos Carneiro wept as the bereaved family played a record of a traditional fado song as a final goodbye.

Carneiro, 37, has been in the undertaking business for two decades helping people cope with loss, but never felt as affected by sorrow and fear as now.

Portugal fared better than others in Europe in the first wave of the pandemic in March-April, but the new year brought a devastating surge in infections and deaths, overwhelming the health service and funeral homes.

More than 14,700 people have died of COVID-19 in Portugal, with cumulative infections since the start of the pandemic at nearly 775,000.

“I have never felt this emotional, with so many consecutive funerals,” Carneiro told Reuters in a quavering voice outside the crematorium where the body of 77-year-old Matilde Firmino was turned into ashes.

“It’s hard on us. We feel it when we get home.”

Due to coronavirus rules in place to reduce the risk of contagion, funeral homes like Carneiro’s Funalcoitao near Lisbon had to quickly adapt.

Workers must wear protective gear from head to toe, bodies are placed inside white plastic bags and then in a coffin, without embalming or makeup.

Families are rarely able to see the deceased before they are buried or cremated, and Firmino’s daughter was at one point worried if it was really her mother inside the coffin.

A priest blessed the coffin in a short service held outside as family and friends sheltered from the pouring rain. “I ask God to free us from this pandemic we are living,” he said.

Carneiro said he always seeks to honor the lives of the dead, but not being able to give families the full closure they seek is taking a toll on his well-being.

“These people are not numbers…People sit on their sofas and worry about (coronavirus) numbers, but we see people and their families. We have to deal with the drama,” Carneiro said.

‘THERE’S FEAR’

His brother Alvaro, 44, said January, when Portugal reported almost half of all its COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic, was the hardest month in his 24 years in the funeral business.

“We are scared of being infected, of infecting our family members at home,” he said at their family-run funeral home, which on Tuesday alone organized six services. “There’s fear.”

Funeral business associations have urged Portuguese authorities to vaccinate the sector’s around 5,000 workers as soon as possible.

“We are on the frontline so we should be considered a priority for vaccination but according to the news we are seeing there are not enough shots for everyone,” Alvaro Carneiro said. “We will have to endure this a little longer.”

A July 2020 article by two public health researchers said high death rates, restrictions, a fear of being infected and worries about their families’ wellbeing could affect funeral workers’ mental health, especially in the longer run after the daily pressure subsides.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwan)

CDC to issue new COVID-19 guidelines for schools on Friday: White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to issue new guidelines for U.S. schools reopening on Friday, White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt said.

Reopening schools is a top priority for the administration of President Joe Biden, who has stressed he wants it done safely and has supported vaccinations for teachers.

The top U.S. health safety agency has been working on a new set of guidelines to meet the challenges that school districts face across the country.

“Tomorrow, the CDC is going to roll out their operating plan to give school districts, local communities, the guidance they need to know to begin to do that and to begin to do that aggressively,” Slavitt said on Thursday.

Pressure to reopen or expand in-person learning for students has been building across the United States in recent weeks as the impact of remote learning on education and family life has become more apparent. The debate over how and when to safely reopen has become heated in many school districts.

Slavitt said he understood why some parents were impatient to reopen and stressed that the CDC was being very thorough in formulating its guidelines on masking, social distancing and other issues.

“I can assure you of one thing: There’s no debate over whether to open schools here. There’s a debate over how,” Slavitt said. “And if it were as simple as ‘open all the schools,’ they’d all be open by now.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Bernadette Baum)

White House says ‘vast majority’ of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border will be turned away

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will turn away most migrants caught at its border with Mexico under a Trump-era policy aimed at limiting the spread of coronavirus and to give the Biden administration time to implement “humane” asylum processing systems, a White House official said on Wednesday.

The White House comments follow reports of the release of some migrant families into the United States and increasing pressure on President Joe Biden to reverse the restrictive policies of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

“Now is not the time to come,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a news briefing. “The vast majority of people will be turned away.”

U.S. officials in Texas last week released hundreds of Central American migrant families from custody amid concerns of overcrowding in Border Patrol facilities after local authorities in Mexico baulked at taking them back.

Biden has left in place a Trump-era COVID order called Title 42 that allows U.S. authorities to rapidly expel to Mexico migrants caught crossing the border illegally.

Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which filed a new lawsuit over the policy on Monday, said it uses a “guise” of public health to undermine legal protections for asylum seekers.

“Our fight for these families continues, until and unless the Biden administration ends this cruel practice once and for all,” Rose said in a statement.

The nascent Biden administration also faces pressure from congressional Democrats for its deportation practices.

A group of 12 Democratic lawmakers led by Representative Mondaire Jones of New York sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday criticizing recent deportations of Haitian immigrants.

The lawmakers said the removals appeared to go against Biden administration enforcement priorities outlined in a Jan. 20 memo and that it appeared immigration officials were “disparately targeting Black asylum-seekers and immigrants.”

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Mimi Dwyer in Los Angeles,; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)