Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

In Ivory Coast, a battle to save cocoa-ravaged forests

By Joe Bavier, Maytaal Angel and Ange Aboa

DJIGBADJI, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -This cocoa-growing settlement was all but destroyed last year by Ivorian forest agents, leaving farmers to rake through their beans amid broken concrete and other remnants.

“They set the whole village on fire,” said Alexis Kouassi Akpoue, describing the day in January 2020 when the agents raided the settlement in Rapides Grah, a protected forest, where he had illicitly planted cocoa with thousands of other farmers. “The next morning at 5 o’clock they sent in the bulldozers.”

Yet when Reuters returned to the village a year later, business was again thriving. Farmers dried and bagged beans among the demolished buildings as buyers hunted for quality cocoa, much of it destined for use in chocolate bars and candies made in Europe.

The government of Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa-growing country, has been cracking down on cultivators after decades of intensive and often illicit farming decimated its tropical forests. Leading chocolate and cocoa companies are meanwhile monitoring their own supply chains for illicitly grown cocoa.

But the conservation efforts are falling short, European Union officials say.

That’s one reason the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, proposed legislation on Wednesday that would compel companies to find and fix environmental and human rights risks in their international supply chains – or face penalties. Companies would be restricted from sourcing beans grown on land deforested after a certain date, which is to be set by the law.

“Voluntary initiatives by companies to stop deforestation have largely failed,” said EU Parliament member Delara Burkhardt. Though not finalized, the legislation is expected to pass in some form as soon as 2023.

Chocolate and cocoa companies say they support the new regulations but dispute that their efforts have failed. They told Reuters their supply chain monitoring systems, including GPS mapping, satellite surveillance and third-party certification, give them assurance that the beans they source do not come from the Rapides Grah forest or other illegal farming operations.

However, the sector’s leading cocoa certification body has acknowledged that thousands of farms in protected areas received its stamp of approval in error.

In addition, purchasing documents and interviews with farmers and farmer cooperatives suggest that co-ops serving some of the chocolate industry’s biggest players – including Nestle, Mars Inc, Cargill Inc and Touton S.A. – source at least a portion of their beans from protected forests.

Reuters did not trace specific shipments of illicitly farmed cocoa to the companies. In separate statements, Cargill, Mars and Nestle said they had not knowingly purchased illegally grown cocoa. Touton did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Tracing the origin of cocoa beans is extremely difficult, in part because co-ops regularly buy from growers who are not members. Ivory Coast’s Ministry of Water and Forests estimates 20% to 30% of the roughly 2 million tonnes of cocoa produced annually is grown illegally and that practically all those beans enter the global supply chain.

“We want that to stop,” said Water and Forests Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi.

The Ivorian government faults locals for the problem but contends multinational corporations continue to profit from deforestation and have a duty to help forests recover.

PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES

In 2017, Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana, the world’s No. 2 cocoa producer, teamed up with dozens of companies under an initiative aimed at eliminating deforestation. A study by the University of Maryland found the two African countries reduced the rate of primary forest loss by over 50% in 2019 compared to the previous year.

Ivory Coast now aims to plant 3 billion trees on government-managed land over the next decade. Meanwhile, state forestry management company SODEFOR estimates some 1.3 million people are living illegally in protected forests, mostly farming cocoa.

Pilot-phase reforestation efforts, which include eliminating illegal settlements in the Rapides Grah forest, point to a tough road ahead for the government and farmers. Most growers are immigrants living below the United Nations poverty line of $1.90 a day.

Over the years, the 10,000 or so residents of Djigbadji – commonly known as Bandikro, or Bandit Town – chopped down the towering canopy. The 315,000-hectare forest is today covered in cocoa plantations, most of them illegal.

The proposed legislation by the EU Commission would prohibit companies that sell products in the EU from sourcing beans grown in officially protected forests like Rapides Grah, no matter when they were cleared.

Separately, under the Ivorian government’s plan to double the country’s forested area, farmers who help with reforestation can stay and maintain existing cocoa plantations for 10 to 15 years, until their trees die off.

“Listen, we have the national interest in mind,” Lt. Olivier Nogbo of SODEFOR, who is in charge of Rapides Grah’s northern half, told Reuters during an armed patrol last year, with his handful of agents dressed in camouflage and carrying AK47s.

“It’s not for 10,000 people that we’re going to allow the environment to be destroyed.”

SIGNS AMID THE RUBBLE

During an initial visit to Bandikro weeks after the January 2020 raid, Reuters scoured the remains of half a dozen demolished co-op purchasing outposts that store cocoa. It found remnants of a thriving buying hub as well as possible indications of who was purchasing the illicit beans.

At one bulldozed outpost, Reuters found a receipt book along with the sign that once hung above the door, both bearing the name of the farmer cooperative SCAES COOP-CA.

SCAES is part of the in-house sustainability programs run by Cargill and Touton, two of the world’s largest agricultural commodities traders. The companies say the programs aim to ensure their practices do not harm people or the planet. Cargill sells SCAES’ cocoa to Nestle, according to Nestle’s supply-chain disclosures on its website.

Jean-Robert Gnanago, a SCAES director and head office employee at the co-op’s headquarters in Meagui, told Reuters the co-op sold cocoa to various industry majors, including around 5,000 tonnes a year to Cargill, but denied it purchased beans inside Rapides Grah.

“If someone used our sign somewhere, that’s possible,” Gnanago said. “But we aren’t aware of it.”

In a statement, the chairman of SCAES’s board of directors, Souleymane Coulibaly, said the co-op does not buy cocoa from protected land and that it stopped sourcing from buyers who operate near high-risk areas in 2015. The statement added that the cocoa purchase receipts Reuters discovered in Bandikro predate SCAES’s move out of high-risk areas.

Cargill and Nestle did not directly address Reuters inquiries about the SCAES receipt book and sign.

Many co-ops that once operated inside Bandikro have since the January 2020 raid simply moved their purchasing outposts just outside the Rapides Grah boundary, Reuters found. But “eighty percent of the product comes from here,” said Bandikro village leader Francis Bogui, referring to the protected forest.

Bandikro’s traditional chief Phillipe Ipou Kouadio told Reuters early this year he had personally sold 120 tonnes of cocoa to a co-op called SOCAGNIPI between October 2020 and January. Several other Bandikro farmers also told Reuters they sold beans to SOCAGNIPI.

SOCAGNIPI is listed as a supplier by U.S. confectionary giant Mars, maker of M&Ms and Snickers. The co-op participates in Mars’ in-house sustainability program.

In its statement to Reuters, Mars did not address questions about SOCAGNIPI. Employees at SOCAGNIPI’S main office, in an Ivory Coast town called Gnipi 2, declined to speak to Reuters.

The co-ops named in this article were audited by independent third parties such as UTZ, a Dutch nonprofit that certifies sustainable agriculture. Auditors’ labels indicate a product has been certified as free from human rights and environmental abuses such as deforestation and child labor.

UTZ used a subcontractor called Bureau Veritas to audit SCAES in 2019. Later that year, UTZ reprimanded Bureau Veritas for poor performance. In a statement to Reuters, Rainforest Alliance, which merged with UTZ in 2018, said the reason for the reprimand is confidential.

Bureau Veritas could not be reached for comment.

After a 2019 review discovered that nearly 5,000 of its certified farms in Ivory Coast were on protected land, UTZ suspended the expansion of its certification programs in Ghana and Ivory Coast, saying it wanted to focus on improving the quality of current certification.

‘GREATER ASSURANCE’

Mars, Nestle and Cargill said they use GPS technology to map farms belonging to cooperatives with which they partner, making sure their boundaries don’t overlap with protected areas. Cargill said it monitors those farms via satellites that alert it in real time to forest loss.

In separate statements, Cargill and Nestle said they source beans from SCAES COOP-CA and that the co-op participates in their in-house sustainability programs. Cargill said audits of the co-op had not found evidence it buys from protected land.

Mars and Cargill both said they have yield estimates for farms belonging to co-ops in their sustainability programs. If yields are high compared to estimates, this can result in supply-chain audits.

Cargill and Nestle said the co-ops with which they partner also tag and bar-code the sacks of beans they get from individual farmers.

This “gives us greater assurance that beans come from known and mapped farms,” Cargill said.

(Reporting by Joe Bavier and Ange Aboa in Djigbadji, Ivory Coast, and Maytaal Angel in London. Editing by Julie Marquis and Alexandra Zavis)

Belgium extends mask use, enforces home working as COVID-19 spikes

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium tightened its coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday, mandating wider use of masks and enforcing work from home, as cases spiked in the country’s fourth COVID-19 wave.

From Saturday, all people in indoor venues such as cafes and restaurants will need to wear a mask unless seated and the rule will apply to those aged 10 or older. The previous age threshold was 12.

Nightclubs may have to test their guests if they want to let them dance mask-free. People wanting to eat in a restaurant or go to the theatre already must present a COVID pass, showing vaccination, a negative test or recent recovery.

Most Belgians will also have to work from home four days a week until mid-December, and for three days after that.

Belgium has one of the highest cases per capita rates in the European Union, behind only the Baltic and former Yugoslav nations and Austria, at around one per hundred people over the past 14 days, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

“The alarm signals are all red,” prime minister Alexander De Croo told a news conference. “We had all hoped to have a winter without coronavirus, but Belgium is not an island.”

The new restrictions are still milder than the lockdown imposed on the unvaccinated in Austria and the shortening of bar and restaurant opening hours in the Netherlands.

De Croo said Belgium planned to give booster jabs, currently limited mostly to the elderly, to the wider population.

Belgium’s infections spike has been sharpest in the northern region Flanders, where vaccination rates are higher, prompting eased restrictions in October.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Giles Elgood)

U.S. plans to invest billions in manufacturing COVID-19 vaccine

By Jeff Mason and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States plans to invest billions of dollars in expanding COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity and make available an additional one billion doses per year, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said on Wednesday.

Activists have pressured President Joe Biden’s administration to increase vaccine supply to poorer countries.

Zients said the government was preparing to offer makers of the mRNA vaccines substantial help to expand infrastructure and capacity, including facilities, equipment, staff or training.

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are the only makers of mRNA vaccines, though Zients said subcontractors of those companies would also be included.

Production will start in the second half of 2022, he said.

The investment in vaccine production is part of a private-public partnership to address vaccine needs at home and around the world and to prepare for future pandemics, he said. It will be paid for with funds from the American Rescue Plan Biden signed into law in March.

In the short term, the program would make a significant amount of COVID-19 vaccine doses available at cost for global use. In the long term, it would help establish sustained domestic manufacturing capacity to rapidly produce vaccines for future threats, Zients said.

Zients said 80% of Americans 12 and older have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, highlighting a milestone in efforts to curb the spread of the deadly virus.

He also said 2.6 million kids aged 5-11 will have received their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Alexandra Alper, Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio)

U.S. drug overdose deaths jump over 28%, top 100,000 in the past year

(Reuters) – Over 100,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses during the 12-month period ending April 2021, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Wednesday.

That marks a 28.5% jump from the previous year, with deaths from opioids such as fentanyl, which can be 100 times more potent than morphine, and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine helping drive the increase, provisional data from the health agency showed.

“As we continue to make strides to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot overlook this epidemic of loss, which has touched families and communities across the country,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Data in July showed that last year’s drug overdoses jumped 30% as pandemic lockdowns made getting treatment difficult and dealers laced more drugs with a powerful synthetic opioid.

The new data showed that deaths from cocaine and prescription pain drugs also increased compared to data from the previous year.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Czechs to bar unvaccinated from public events as COVID cases hit record

By Jan Lopatka

PRAGUE (Reuters) – The Czech Republic will ban people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 from access to public events and services from Monday, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Wednesday, and negative tests will no longer be recognized.

The restrictions, to be approved by cabinet on Thursday, come after a spike in new infections to a record 22,479 on Tuesday.

Many European countries, including Czech neighbors Germany, Austria and Slovakia, have recorded spikes in infections and have started tightening curbs.

Slovakia reported a record number of cases on Wednesday, and Hungary and Poland had the highest numbers in more than six months.

“From that time (Monday) only vaccinations and having recovered from COVID will be recognized when it comes to services and public events,” Babis said.

“People have to finally believe that COVID kills.”

The Czech Republic, with a population of 10.7 million, has had to observe relatively light restrictions in the latest COVID-19 wave, with the government pledging no school closures or lockdowns.

The government has resisted tightening rules while in transition to a new administration, but the worsening situation in hospitals has made it consider restrictions on unvaccinated people.

Hospitals reported 4,425 coronavirus patients on Tuesday, fewer than half the record highs seen in March, and 661 people in intensive care, the Health Ministry said.

The country has recorded a total of 31,709 COVID-19 deaths, with the daily count mostly over 60 in the past days.

The Czech Republic’s vaccination rate has lagged those of other countries, with 57.6% of the population fully vaccinated versus an EU average of 64.9%, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Tom Hogue, Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Nick Macfie)

Canada floods cut rail link to Vancouver port; one dead

By Artur Gajda and Rod Nickel

MERRITT, British Columbia (Reuters) -Floods and landslides that have killed at least one person have cut all rail access to Canada’s largest port in the city of Vancouver, a spokesperson for the port said on Tuesday.

Two days of torrential rain across the Pacific province of British Columbia touched off major flooding and shut rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Rail and Canadian National Railway, Canada’s two biggest rail companies.

“All rail service coming to and from the Port of Vancouver is halted because of flooding in the British Columbia interior,” port spokesperson Matti Polychronis said.

At least one person was killed when a mudslide swept cars off Highway 99 near Pemberton, some 100 miles (160 km) to the northeast of Vancouver.

Two people were missing and search and rescue crews were combing through the rubble, officials said.

Vancouver’s port moves C$550 million ($440 million) worth of cargo a day, ranging from automobiles and finished goods to essential commodities.

The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, during a busy time for trains to haul grain to the port following the harvest.

Drought has sharply reduced the size of Canada’s crops this year, meaning a rail disruption of a few days may not create a significant backlog, a grain industry source told Reuters.

Del Dosdall, senior export manager at grain handler Parrish & Heimbecker, said he expected some rail services could be restored by the weekend. Another industry source said he expected the shutdown to last weeks.

OIL PIPELINES SHUT DOWN

Floods have also hampered pipelines. Enbridge Inc shut a segment of a British Columbia natural gas pipeline as a precaution.

The storms also forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries up to 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta province to the Pacific coast.

Copper and coal miner Teck Resources Limited said the floods had disrupted movement of its commodities to its export terminals, while potash exporter Canpotex Ltd said it was looking for alternatives to move the crop nutrient overseas.

Directly to the south of British Columbia, in the U.S. state of Washington, heavy rain forced evacuations and cut off electricity for more than 150,000 households on Monday.

The U.S. National Weather Service on Tuesday issued a flash flood in Mount Vernon, Washington, “due to the potential for a levee failure.”

Some areas of British Columbia received 8 inches (20 cm) of rain on Sunday, the amount that usually falls in a month.

Authorities in Merritt, some 120 miles (200 km) northeast of Vancouver, ordered all 8,000 citizens to leave on Monday as river waters rose quickly, but some were still trapped in their homes on Tuesday, said city spokesman Greg Lowis.

Snow blanketed the town on Tuesday and some cars could be seen floating in the flood waters up to 4 feet (1.22 m) deep.

The towns of Chilliwack and Abbotsford ordered partial evacuations.

Abbotsford also issued an emergency warning on Tuesday night, asking all residents to evacuate the Sumas Prairie region immediately as deteriorating conditions posed a significant threat to lives.

Rescuers equipped with diggers and body-sniffing dogs started clearing mounds of debris that have choked highways.

The landslides and floods come less than six months after a wildfires gutted an entire town in British Columbia as temperatures soared during a record-breaking heat dome, raising new worries about climate change.

(Reporting by Artur Gajda in Merritt and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Nia Williams in Calgary, Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru, Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; editing by Ed Osmond, Jonathan Oatis, Aurora Ellis and Sandra Maler)

As Port of Los Angeles import backups ease, empty containers pile up

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The number of container ships waiting to enter the busiest U.S. seaport complex hit a new record of 84 on Tuesday, as growing piles of empty containers crowd docks at the Southern California facility that has been racing to remove lingering imports.

The conundrum illustrates the challenge faced by a U.S. government task force charged with tackling supply chain snarls that are contributing to product shortages and inflation.

U.S. ports have been inundated with cargo since the pandemic shifted spending away from restricted entertainment like travel and dining out to physical goods. COVID-19 also reduced labor needed to keep goods flowing smoothly. Aging truckers retired early, while infection control measures have limited dock and warehouse staffing.

There are now roughly 65,000 empty containers on the Port of Los Angeles docks, up about 18% from just a couple of weeks ago, said the port’s executive director, Gene Seroka. He added that “sweeper” ships are inbound to shuttle some of those boxes back to factories in Asia.

Meanwhile, the number of import containers at the Los Angeles port fell 25% to 71,000 since Oct. 24, Seroka said.

Railroads and truckers have made progress moving import containers off docks at the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – prompting executives from to delay imposing a new fee on overstaying imports by one week to Nov. 22.

The new fee would hit imports destined for truck removal after nine days or more on docks, and would start after six days or more for rail-bound cargo. Ports would charge ocean carriers escalating fees for overstaying container – with a $100 charge for the first day, $200 for the second, and so on.

Prior to the pandemic, containers intended for local truck deliveries spent fewer than four days on average on docks, while containers earmarked for trains stayed less than two days, the ports said.

Ocean carriers like AP Moller Maersk said they plan to pass any new fees on to importers – meaning that consumers could ultimately shoulder the extra cost.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Fed officials say high inflation weighing on consumers and needs to be controlled

By Jonnelle Marte

(Reuters) – Federal Reserve officials said on Tuesday they are vigilant of the ways that higher inflation can affect U.S. households and dampen consumer sentiment and want to get it under control.

While wages are rising for some workers, consumer sentiment is down to a “level that you might associate with a recession,” said Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin, citing the consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan.

“I think that’s very much because of the impact that prices have on people,” including those who spend a significant part of their pay on food and gas, Barkin said during a virtual panel organized by the Fed.

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said the central bank aims for low inflation because it doesn’t want households to stress about rising prices. “That’s one of the reasons why, you know, I think you’ve heard from all of us concerns about the higher levels of inflation that we’ve seen recently and the need to get that back under control,” Bostic said.

The Fed this month began to reduce the pace of its monthly asset purchases, the first step in scaling back the support offered to the U.S. economy during the pandemic. Fed officials would like to wind down the bond purchases before they raise interest rates.

Some policymakers say the Fed should be prepared to act in case inflation lasts longer than expected. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, speaking earlier in the day, said the Fed should “tack in a more hawkish direction” over its next couple of meetings to be prepared in case inflation does not ease.

“If inflation happens to go away we are in great shape for that. If inflation doesn’t go away as quickly as many are currently anticipating it is going to be up to the (Federal Open Market Committee) to keep inflation under control,” Bullard said on Bloomberg Television.

(Reporting by Jonnelle Marte and Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. retail sales surge as Americans kick off holiday shopping, brighten economic outlook

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. retail sales surged in October as Americans eagerly started their holiday shopping early to avoid empty shelves amid shortages of some goods because of the ongoing pandemic, giving the economy a lift at the start of the fourth quarter.

The solid report from the Commerce Department on Tuesday suggested high inflation was not yet dampening spending, even as worries about the rising cost of living sent consumer sentiment tumbling to a 10-year low in early November. Rising household wealth, thanks to a strong stock market and house prices, as well as massive savings and wage gains appear to be cushioning consumers against the highest annual inflation in three decades.

“It’s more important to look at what consumers do than what they say,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “They are concerned about higher inflation, but they are still in good shape and are continuing to spend.”

Retail sales jumped 1.7% last month, the largest gain since March, after rising 0.8% in September. It was the third straight monthly advance and topped economists’ expectations for a 1.4% increase. Sales soared 16.3% year-on-year in October and are 21.4% above their pre-pandemic level.

Several of the top U.S. retailers this week have noted an earlier start to holiday shopping. While this could lead to declines in November and December, economists and retailers expect holiday sales this year will be the best in a while.

“Today’s numbers show that consumers are getting a jump on their holiday shopping,” said Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation in Washington. “We continue to urge consumers to shop early and shop safely, and we fully expect this holiday season to be one for the record books.”

Retail sales are mostly made up of goods, with services, including healthcare, education and hotel accommodation, making up the remaining portion of consumer spending. The nearly two-year long COVID-19 pandemic has caused an acute shortage of labor, delaying deliveries of raw materials to factories as well as shipments of finished goods to markets.

October’s broad increase in sales partly reflected higher prices as monthly consumer inflation surged 0.9% in October, which boosted the annual rate to 6.2%.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher on the data and also as Walmart forecast a strong holiday quarter. The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices fell.

BROAD GAINS

Sales were led by motor vehicles, with receipts at auto dealerships advancing 1.8% after gaining 1.2% in September. The rise reflected the first increase in unit sales in six months, as well as higher prices. The tight supply of automobiles because of a global semiconductor shortage is driving up prices.

Sales at service stations increased 3.9%, boosted by more expensive gasoline. Online retail sales rebounded 4.0%. Receipts at building material stores advanced 2.8%. There were also increases in receipts at furniture outlets as well as sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores. Sales at electronics and appliance stores rebounded 3.8%.

But sales at clothing stores fell 0.7%. Sales at restaurants and bars were unchanged despite an ebb in COVID-19 infections, driven by the Delta variant. Restaurants and bars are the only services category in the retail sales report. These sales were up 29.3% from last October.

Economists speculated that either high inflation was forcing consumers to cut back on eating out or that spending had permanently shifted in favor of goods.

“If services spending has largely recovered, strong goods demand increasingly looks to be a structural shift in consumer preferences, rather than a temporary COVID-related outcome,” said Andrew Hollenhorst, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup in New York.

Excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales shot up 1.6% last month after rising 0.5% in September. These so-called core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product. Adjusting for inflation, retail sales are up at a roughly 5% annualized rate from the third-quarter average.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity rose at a tepid 1.7% rate last quarter. Economists at JPMorgan boosted their fourth-quarter GDP growth estimate to a 5% rate from a 4% pace. Goldman Sachs raised its estimate by 0.5 percentage point to a 5.0% rate. The economy grew at a 2% rate in the third quarter.

The economic picture was further brightened by a separate report from the Federal Reserve on Tuesday showing manufacturing output surged 1.2% last month to its highest level since March 2019, after falling 0.7% in September.

“The economy has thrown off whatever lethargy it might have had in the summer, and it is growing quite strongly,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania.

Businesses are also making steady progress replenishing depleted inventories, which should help to keep factories humming and support the economy. Business inventories increased 0.7% in September, a third report from the Commerce Department showed.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Turkey arrests suspect in connection with Haitian president’s murder

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish authorities have arrested a man considered a suspect of “great interest” in the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, Haiti’s Foreign Minister Claude Joseph said late on Monday.

The 53-year-old former businessman Moise, who took office in 2017, was shot dead at his private residence and his wife was wounded in the attack.

A group of Colombian mercenaries emerged as the main suspects though nobody has been charged or convicted in connection with the case.

“I just had a phone conversation with the Turkish Minister, my friend Mevlut Cavusoglu, to thank Turkey for the arrest of Samir Handal, one of the persons of great interest in the investigation into the assassination of the president,” Joseph said on Twitter.

An August report by Haiti’s police said Handal had hosted “meetings of a political character” at his Port-au-Prince home that included the participation of Emmanuel Sanon, a suspected mastermind of the assassination who was arrested in July.

Investigators who searched Sanon’s residence found seven Haitian passports and three Palestinian passports bearing Handal’s name, according to the report.

Sanon, a Haitian-American doctor, told police that Handal had sent four Colombian security guards to protect him while he was in Haiti, the report says.

Reuters was unable to obtain comment from Sanon or Handal.

Turkish media reported on Tuesday that Handal, who was being sought with an Interpol Red Notice, was detained at the Istanbul Airport by authorities as he was flying transit from the United States to Jordan.

Turkey’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Gessika Thomas; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Jonathan Oatis)