Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Shipping companies feel the heat as investors shun coal

By Jonathan Saul and Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) – Shipping companies that transport the world’s coal are in the crosshairs of some financial backers who are cleaning up their businesses in the absence of a truly global drive by nations to renounce the dirtiest fossil fuel.

In a sign of investors taking the initiative, six European firms collectively representing over 5% of the estimated annual $16 billion capital financing requirements of the dry bulk industry told Reuters they were either reducing their exposure to vessels that transport coal or were considering doing so.

Such carriers – titanic vessels stretching up to 270 meters (885 ft.) long and able to carry hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo – are the cheapest way to transport coal and other commodities like iron ore and grain in large quantities.

Swiss Re told Reuters that from 2023 it would no longer cover the transport of thermal coal via reinsurance treaties, where it covers a portfolio of insurers’ policies. It exited the direct insurance of coal cargoes in 2018.

“There is much more pressure on the insurance companies in terms of ESG,” said Patrizia Kern-Ferretti, head of marine at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, referring to the sustainable investment sphere. “I hear from brokers they are having difficulty placing coal policies in the insurance market,” she added. “More and more companies are applying direct guidelines.”

Esben Saxbeck Larsen, senior portfolio manager at Denmark’s Danica Pension, said it favored greener shipping firms as they provided the best risk/return characteristics. The fund has “close dialogue” with firms about their ESG strategies.

“If we are uncomfortable with such answers, we will not invest in the company,” he added, without elaborating on the specifics of the methodology.

Such pressures pose new challenges for the shipping industry, which hitherto largely hasn’t been drawn into the center of the coal debate by policymakers and investors focused on production and consumption rather than transport of the fuel.

Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chairman of BW Group, which operates a diverse fleet including oil and gas tankers, offshore vessels and dry bulk carriers, said ESG pressures on investors and banks – capital providers to the industry – were growing.

“How that plays out in terms of outcome is a different question. Sometimes, people shun a sector and the returns only get better as supply moderates,” he added.

“Everyone has to do what they think is right. Sometimes, you can have counter-intuitive effects.”

There’s good money be made from delivering coal, which broadly accounts for about 30% of cargo volumes and has hit record prices amid a shortage of fuel including natural gas to provide the power needed by a global economy recovering from a pandemic.

And demand beckons for decades to come after major consumers including China and India failed to join a pact to phase out coal power at U.N. climate talks being held in Glasgow this week; while Europe and the United States are retiring coal-fired plants, Asian nations are building almost 200 more.

Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping, one of Thailand’s largest dry cargo ship owners, said investors should target the consumers and producers of coal.

“All we do is deliver it from the point of origin to the point of consumption, like a messenger delivering his message,” he added. “Coming after ship owners seems the easy cop-out route as we have no voice.”

CAPESIZE CARGOES

The six firms that spoke to Reuters about their coal concerns collectively own, finance, insure or reinsure more than $1 billion of capital in the dry bulk industry, based on the estimated value of shipping assets.

Leading shipping financiers more broadly currently provide close to $290 billion of lending to the industry annually, with capital requirements for the dry bulk segment accounting for about $16 billion, according to analyst and Reuters estimates.

The investor pullback, part of a wider shift in the financial industry away from fossil fuels, threatens to drive up the cost of finance and insurance for some shipping firms in the dry bulk sector, which carries close to half of global seaborne cargo volumes.

London-based specialist asset manager Marine Capital, which owns and operates shipping assets on behalf of institutional investors, said it anticipated that funders would not support investments in the largest bulk carriers that typically carry coal, known as capesize vessels.

“When it comes to small bulk carriers below panamax size the amount of coal they carry is relatively modest and our experiences suggest that certainly now institutions would take the view that the relationship with coal is, from their perspective, de minimis,” said Marine Capital CEO Tony Foster.

Tufton Investment Management, another prominent investor in shipping, said it had been increasingly limiting its exposure to coal carriage, especially thermal coal, since 2018 by favoring charterers less likely to carry the fuel.

“For example we choose agricultural houses over miners and utilities,” said Paulo Almeida, the chief investment officer.

Separately, at least two major ports are making big shifts; Antwerp has turned its back on coal, for example, while Peel Ports is redeveloping its former Hunterston coal import terminal in Scotland to be able to handle offshore wind, dry docking for ships, aquaculture and the recycling of energy.

‘APPLYING LIPSTICK’

Some bulk shipping players are looking to get ahead of the climate curve by refocusing their businesses away from fossil fuels. Others, who have seen patchy profits in recent years, are loathe to the turn away from the returns on offer from coal.

Monaco-based Eneti is in the former camp, and it has shifted entirely out of dry bulk shipping this year into providing specialist vessels for the offshore wind sector.

“An important consideration when we exited the dry bulk sector was thermal coal,” managing director David Morant told Reuters, saying trying to clean up coal transportation was “only applying lipstick”.

“As a publicly-listed company, renewable energy through offshore wind is higher growth, environmentally responsible and attractive to our investor base.”

Similarly Purus Marine, which has leading U.S. investment company Entrust Global as its founding shareholder, says it is focused on more environmentally friendly ocean industries.

“Our business model is to own vessels and maritime infrastructure involved in offshore renewable energy, seafood, ferries and the climate-aligned sectors of industrial shipping,” said CEO Julian Proctor.

HIGHER SHIPPING PRICES

The impact of higher prices for shipping coal would be felt most in Asia, which consumes 80 percent of global coal supply and is more reliant than elsewhere on coal-fired power.

Even though emissions from burning coal are the single biggest contributor to climate change, the priority for many developing countries is to provide power to a rapidly growing population rather than converting to renewable plants.

An abrupt transition from coal would drive up logistics costs for producers and consumers, said Vuslat Bayoglu, managing director of South African investment firm Menar, which holds stakes in South African thermal coal, anthracite and manganese producers.

“The worst-case scenario is to see countries being plunged into darkness and manufacturing being hit hard, thus heralding a global economic crisis of sort,” he added. “This would be highly irresponsible, as many countries are crawling out of long periods of recession and COVID-induced decline.”

(Additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn in London and Helen Reid in Johannesburg; Editing by Simon Webb, Veronica Brown and Pravin Char)

Israeli ‘wargame’ sees kids suffering vaccine-resistant COVID strain

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and senior aides holed up in a nuclear command bunker on Thursday to simulate an outbreak of a vaccine-resistant COVID-19 variant to which children are vulnerable, describing such an eventuality as “the next war.”

Israel would brief foreign leaders next week on the findings of the drill, he said, citing Britain’s Boris Johnson as among counterparts with whom he is in contact.

Bennett said that, to enhance the challenge of the one-day exercise, he had been kept unaware of specific scenarios of an imagined 10-week crisis that starts over the December holidays.

The script sees a fictitious strain, “Omega,” bypassing the vaccines which Israel rolled out at record pace this year. Omega also sickens children – largely spared by the actual virus – prompting mass hospitalizations and school closures.

“What I’ve learned is if you prepare for the next war and not for the previous war, the next pandemic and not the previous pandemic, that means that you are going to be better prepared,” Bennett told Reuters from the facility in the Jerusalem hills.

“The main lesson is: Move fast, move hard.”

As part of the simulation, Bennett said he had ordered Israeli children – including his own four – confined to their homes while the government sealed off the borders and conferred with the Palestinian Authority, Gaza officials and Jordan.

“Unlike a war-wargame, a pandemic wargame is not secret. Quite the contrary, we want to share the information,” he said.

Israel built the bunker, known as the “National Management Center,” more than a decade ago because of concern about Iran’s nuclear program and missile exchanges with Lebanon and Gaza.

Bennett said he and his aides could manage Israel “indefinitely” from the bunker in any major crisis.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Giles Elgood)

Sudan’s army chief appoints new ruling council, led by himself

By Khalid Abdelaziz

CAIRO (Reuters) -Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Thursday named a new transitional council, headed by himself, to lead the country following the military takeover late last month, shrugging off domestic and international pressure to reverse the coup.

The new 14-member Sovereign Council, for which one member is yet to be confirmed, includes civilians representing Sudan’s regions but none from the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) political coalition that had been sharing power with the military in a democratic transition since 2019.

Burhan’s deputy will remain Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with both men keeping roles they held before the coup.

The move is likely to harden opposition among civilian groups who have pledged to resist the takeover through a campaign of civil disobedience, strikes and mass rallies, the next of which is planned for Saturday.

Sudan’s ousted Information Minister, Hamza Balloul, called the announcement an extension of the coup. He said in a statement that he was “confident that the Sudanese people can defeat the coup and continue the transition.”

The Sudanese Congress Party, part of the FFC, vowed to oppose and resist the coup “at all costs.”

The council also includes representatives of rebel groups that reached a peace deal with the government last year but had rejected the takeover in a statement this week.

The Oct. 25 takeover ended a power-sharing arrangement between the military and civilians set up after the overthrow of former president Omar al-Bashir in 2019 that was meant to lead to elections in late 2023.

Some senior civilians have been detained and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has been under house arrest.

The previous council had served as Sudan’s collective head of state, alongside Hamdok’s government which ran Sudan’s day-to-day affairs. Burhan and Dagalo had been due to hand over its leadership to a civilian in the coming months.

Mediation aimed at securing the release of detainees and a return to power sharing has stalled since the coup as the military moved to consolidate control. Political sources told Reuters on Thursday that there had been no progress in indirect contacts between Hamdok and the army.

Aboulkassem Mohamed Burtum, the newly appointed council member for north Sudan, told Sky News it would apply the constitutional declaration that underlay the democratic transition. “We are civilians, the civilians are not only Hamdok,” he said.

Prior to Thursday’s announcement, Burhan told Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni that he was committed to dialogue with all political forces and the quick formation of a technocratic government, Burhan’s office said. Burhan has denied carrying out a coup and promised elections in 2023.

MEDIC ARRESTED

Earlier on Thursday Sudanese medic Mohamed Nagi Al-Assam, who rose to prominence in the uprising against Bashir and became a vocal critic of the coup, was arrested and taken to an unknown location, a doctors union said.

In a statement on Assam’s arrest, the union said resistance would continue “until the coup is brought down and its leaders are put on trial.”

The union has joined other labor organizations and the FFC in calling for Saturday’s mass rallies.

Much of the international community has called for Burhan to reverse the takeover, with Western powers and the World Bank suspending economic assistance and calling into question a deal to forgive tens of billions of dollars of foreign debt.

The United Nations called Thursday’s developments “very concerning.”

Earlier on Thursday, the European Union expressed “great concern that arbitrary arrests in Khartoum and in the rest of the country are still ongoing and even increasing,” according to a statement from foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

The civil disobedience movement has been hampered by a blackout of mobile internet access across Sudan since Oct. 25.

A judge on Thursday issued a second instruction to telecoms firms Zain and MTN and local providers Sudatel and Canar to restore connections, pending the announcement of any damages to be paid to subscribers.

In a statement to Reuters, Zain said the original order only applied to some accounts and that the company had reconnected them immediately. It said it was working on Thursday’s order to restore all lines. The other companies could not be reached or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In addition to Burhan and Dagalo, three other military members of the previous ruling council were retained in the new council announced on Thursday, along with one civilian representative who had been jointly selected by the military and the FFC.

Four new members representing different regions of the country were also appointed, though the representative for eastern Sudan was still to be confirmed, state media reported.

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, Nafisa Eltahir, Ahmen Hagagy and Mahmoud Mourad; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Peter Graff, Bill Berkrot and Cynthia Osterman)

Working from home may hurt women’s careers, says Bank of England’s Mann

By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) -Women who work mostly from home risk seeing their careers suffer now that significant numbers of workers are returning to the office after the COVID-19 pandemic, Bank of England policymaker Catherine Mann said on Thursday.

Mann, a member of the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee, said online communication was unable to replicate the spontaneous office conversations which were important for recognition and advancement in many workplaces.

“Virtual platforms are way better than they than they were even five years ago. But the extemporaneous, spontaneity – those are hard to replicate in a virtual setting,” she told an event for women in finance hosted by the newspaper Financial News.

Difficulty accessing childcare and COVID-related disruption to schooling meant many women were continuing to work from home, while men returned to the office, Mann said.

“There is the potential for two tracks. There’s the people who are on the virtual track and people who are on a physical track. And I do worry that we will see those two tracks develop, and we will pretty much know who’s going to be on which track, unfortunately,” she said.

Mann was an economics professor and chief economist at Citi and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), before joining the BoE in September.

British finance minister Rishi Sunak warned younger workers in August that they risked missing out on building skills and work relationships if they worked from home.

British businesses last month said 60% of their staff were fully back at their normal place of work, but proportions vary widely by sector. In professional services, 34% of staff are in the office, 24% are fully working from home, and 35% are doing a mix, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Separate ONS data shows a slightly higher percentage of male workers than females worked from home for at least some of the time in late October, although the gap was within the survey’s margin of error.

Previous ONS analysis showed women were more likely than men to say working from home allowed them more time to work, with fewer distractions. But men said working from home helped them come up with new ideas, while women found it a hindrance.

(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg)

North American companies rush to add robots as demand surges

By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) – Companies in North America added a record number of robots in the first nine months of this year as they rushed to speed up assembly lines and struggled to add human workers.

Factories and other industrial users ordered 29,000 robots, 37% more than during the same period last year, valued at $1.48 billion, according to data compiled by the industry group the Association for Advancing Automation. That surpassed the previous peak set in the same time period in 2017, before the global pandemic upended economies.

The rush to add robots is part of a larger upswing in investment as companies seek to keep up with strong demand, which in some cases has contributed to shortages of key goods. At the same time, many firms have struggled to lure back workers displaced by the pandemic and view robots as an alternative to adding human muscle on their assembly lines.

“Businesses just can’t find the people they need – that’s why they’re racing to automate,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, known as A3.

Robots also continue to push into more corners of the economy. Auto companies have long bought most industrial robots. But in 2020, combined sales to other types of businesses surpassed the auto sector for the first time – and that trend continued this year. In the first nine months of the year, auto-related orders for robots grew 20% to 12,544 units, according to A3, while orders by non-automotive companies expanded 53% to 16,355.

“It’s not that automotive is slowing down – auto is up,” said Burnstein. But other sectors – from metals to food manufacturers – are growing even faster.

John Newman’s company is one of them. Athena Manufacturing, which does metal fabrication for other manufacturers in Austin, Texas, now has seven robots, including four installed this year. It bought its first machine in 2016. Newman said robots have helped Athena respond to a surge in demand, including a 50% jump in orders for parts used by semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

The machines also allowed Athena to move to an around-the-clock operation for the first time last year, he said. The company employs 250 but would have struggled, he said, to find workers to fill unpopular overnight shifts.

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Judge overrules Texas governor’s ban on mask mandates in schools

By Kanishka Singh and Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) – A federal judge overruled Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in schools, clearing the path for districts to issue their own rules.

Judge Lee Yeakel of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled the governor’s order violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark 1990 federal law that includes protections for students with special needs. In his ruling, Yeakel said the executive order put children with disabilities at risk.

“The spread of COVID-19 poses an even greater risk for children with special health needs,” the judge said in the order. “Children with certain underlying conditions who contract COVID-19 are more likely to experience severe acute biological effects and to require admission to a hospital and the hospital’s intensive-care unit.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling.

“My agency is considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision,” Paxton said on Twitter.

The issue of mandates to curb the pandemic has become politicized in much of the United States. Supporters of mandates say they are needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and opponents argue they curb individual liberty.

Some school districts in conservative states where governors have forbidden mask mandates are ignoring the bans, but others feel compelled to enforce them. In Texas, numerous districts including those in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, have flouted the ban since it was first announced in May, but others came into compliance amid state pressure including a public list published by Paxton’s office.

In his order, Yeakel said the state could not enforce its ban on mask requirements in school, and also could not levy fines or withhold funds from districts that impose mask-wearing.

The order was challenged by disability rights activists on behalf of several Texas students with special needs.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento; Editing by Tom Hogue and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

U.S. oil refiners bet the farm Biden will back them on biofuels

By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly

(Reuters) – U.S. merchant oil refiners like Monroe Energy and PBF Energy Inc are playing chicken with the White House, taking moves in the biofuels credit market that could force them to close plants and fire union workers unless the Biden administration bails them out by changing the rules on blending biofuels in gasoline.

Merchant refiners have long tried to dismantle a U.S. law requiring them to blend biofuels like ethanol into their fuel or buy credits from competitors who do.

But until very recently, they largely continued to participate in the multibillion-dollar credit market by buying credits to offset their production, a Reuters analysis of earnings releases shows. Now, some of these refiners are building up record short positions in the credits.

They are betting U.S. President Joe Biden will ultimately side with refiners and their union supporters and roll back the law, known as the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), experts interviewed by Reuters said, but this would anger the Farm Belt.

Refiners have leverage right now because rising fuel prices are hurting Biden’s poll ratings.

“This is nothing more than a political shakedown,” Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council, told Reuters. “These refineries are daring the Biden White House to make them lie in the bed they made by intentionally running up massive short positions,” on biofuel credits.

LIABILITIES SKYROCKET

Refiners who had little outstanding biofuel credit liabilities a year ago have let them climb to record highs in the third quarter, according to a review of their latest financial filings.

* Monroe Energy, a subsidiary of Delta Airlines, , has increased its potential biofuel liabilities to a company record of $547 million by the end of the third quarter, up from just $68 million a year prior, the latest filing shows.

* PBF Energy Inc has amassed a $1.3 billion credit liability from halting or slowing purchases, according to its third quarter filing, up from $236 million a year earlier.

* CVR Energy, whose majority owner is billionaire Carl Ichan, has a $442 million credit liability, according to the company’s third quarter filing, up from $83 million a year earlier.

None of the companies responded to requests for comment.

“This whole situation is proof of how broken the RFS program is. … the program is making it more expensive to produce gasoline and diesel in the United States,” Chet Thompson, President of American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers said on Thursday.

In 2017, Carlyle Group-backed Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) stopped buying compliance credits, eventually amassing a $350 million outstanding obligation before it eventually filed bankruptcy. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of the bankruptcy hearings, waived about half of those costs.

The PES refinery eventually shut after a massive explosion in 2019.

“PES taught the market that you can play chicken with the EPA and win. It’s a form of civil disobedience of the law,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

Hirs said shorting the market is clearly a strategic play, but the gambit carries great risk.

“If the administration doesn’t buckle, then these companies will have to pay billions of dollars to comply. That could force Monroe Energy into bankruptcy and we will see if Delta reaches into its pockets to bail out the refinery,” Hirs said.

HISTORIC YEAR FOR CREDITS

Refiners must turn in the compliance credits to the EPA by March for the previous year, giving them plenty of flexibility on when they take these costs. In the past, refiners purchased biofuel credits daily to match their production, even though they could defer buying if they believe the prices are too high or to manage cash flow.

Prices for the compliance credits, known as RINs, have traded erratically in a historic year for the market. After hitting an all-time record in June at $2.00 each, renewable fuel (D6) credits traded at $1.08 on Wednesday. That level is still above where they started the year at about 80 cents.

In September, Reuters reported that the Biden administration was considering big cuts to the blending requirements. Such a move would anger farm-state voters, so a decision has been delayed as Democratic lawmakers try to pass other big-ticket bills.

DISRUPTIVE SHUTDOWN THREATENED

Refiners have argued to the White House that the higher RIN costs have boosted prices for gasoline, which have hit above $3.40 per gallon. They have noted that the plants, including ones in Biden’s home state of Delaware, offer high-paying union jobs.

Now at least one producer is threatening to shut a refinery over outstanding biofuel liabilities the company has run up.

In recent weeks, Monroe Energy has made a presentation to various stakeholders, including local politicians and labor leaders, painting a stark outlook for its refinery outside Philadelphia, according to two sources who have seen the documents.

The company presentation made clear that either the Biden administration intervenes and rolls back U.S. biofuel laws or its around 200,000 barrel-per-day refinery will be forced to shut its doors and lay off hundreds of union workers, the sources said.

If the Biden administration fails to intervene and prices stay at current levels, the Delta refinery would have to go into the market and settle a significant portion of its $547 million liability in upcoming months.

The refinery recorded a $186 million loss in the first three quarters of 2021, filings show.

“They made it clear that this is the hill they are preparing to die on,” said a source who has seen the presentation.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly; Editing by David Gregorio)

Sleep apnea linked to COVID-19 outcomes

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that have yet to be certified by peer review.

Sleep apnea tied to severe COVID-19

The risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is higher in people with obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing problems that cause oxygen levels to drop during sleep, researchers say. They tracked 5,402 adults with these problems and found that roughly a third of them eventually tested posted for the coronavirus. While periodic episodes of not-breathing while asleep – leading to low oxygen levels, or hypoxia – did not increase people’s chances of being infected, sleep-related hypoxia did increase infected patients’ odds of needing to be hospitalized or dying from COVID-19, Drs. Cinthya Pena Orbea and Reena Mehra of the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues reported on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open. It is not clear if treatments that improve sleep apnea, such as CPAP machines that push air into patients’ airways during sleep, would also reduce the risk of severe COVID-19, said Pena Orbea and Mehra.

Body’s coronavirus memory may abort new infections

Healthcare workers who did not test positive for COVID-19, despite heavy exposure to infected patients, had T cells that attacked a part of the virus that lets it make copies of itself, according to a report published Wednesday in Nature. Researchers who studied the 58 healthcare workers found their T cells responded more strongly to a part of the virus, called the RTC, that is very similar on all human and animal coronaviruses, including all variants of SARS-CoV-2. They suspect the T cells recognized the RTC because they had “seen” it on other viruses during other infections. That makes the RTC a potentially good target for vaccines if more research confirms these findings, study leaders Mala Maini and Leo Swadling, both of University College London, said in a joint email to Reuters. These data were collected during the first wave of the pandemic, they added. “We don’t know if this sort of control happens for more infectious variants currently circulating.”

Vaccines induce neutralizing antibodies in breast milk

Infants might benefit from COVID-19 antibodies in breast milk regardless of whether mothers acquired the antibodies from being infected with SARS-CoV-2 or from vaccines, according to new findings reported on Wednesday in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers studied antibodies in breast milk samples from 47 mothers who had been infected with the virus and 30 healthy mothers who had received the vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech. Antibodies from both groups were able to neutralize active SARS-CoV-2 virus, and while antibodies from infection were evident in milk for longer periods, antibody levels from vaccination “were much more uniform,” said study leader Bridget Young of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York. Thus, there is likely benefit to getting vaccinated even after a COVID-19 infection because breast milk would then contain a diverse variety of antibodies, she said. The researchers did not study the effect of the antibodies on the babies who consumed the milk.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Austrian lockdown for the unvaccinated is days away, chancellor says

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria is days away from placing millions of people not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on lockdown, as daily infections are at a record high and intensive-care units are increasingly strained, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Thursday.

Around 65% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the lowest rate of any Western European country apart from tiny Liechtenstein, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data.

Many Austrians are skeptical about vaccinations, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.

Under an incremental government plan agreed in September, once 30% of intensive-care beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, people not vaccinated against the coronavirus will be placed under lockdown, with restrictions on their daily movements. The current level is 20% and rising fast.

“According to the incremental plan we actually have just days until we have to introduce the lockdown for unvaccinated people,” Schallenberg told a news conference in the westernmost province of Vorarlberg, adding that Austria’s vaccination rate is “shamefully low.”

The conservative-led government said on Friday it was banning the unvaccinated from restaurants, theatres, ski lifts and providers of “services close to the body” like hairdressers.

“A lockdown for the unvaccinated means one cannot leave one’s home unless one is going to work, shopping (for essentials), stretching one’s legs – namely exactly what we all had to suffer through in 2020,” Schallenberg said, referring to three national lockdowns last year.

Centrist opposition parties have accused the government of doing too little for months to boost vaccination levels and keep infections in check.

Some conservatives have argued that a lockdown for the unvaccinated would be unenforceable. Schallenberg said the police would conduct spot checks.

The surge in Austria comes at a time when Eastern European states, with the continent’s lowest vaccination rates, are experiencing some of the world’s highest daily death tolls per capita. Dutch experts on Thursday recommended a two-week partial lockdown, which would be Western Europe’s first since vaccines were widely deployed, and other countries are requiring vaccination certificates to enter public spaces.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Peter Graff)

China’s Communist Party passes resolution amplifying President Xi’s authority

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s ruling Communist Party approved a rare resolution on Thursday elevating President Xi Jinping’s status in its history, in a move seen as consolidating his authority and likelihood of securing an unprecedented third leadership term next year.

The resolution on the party’s “achievements and historical experiences” since its founding 100 years ago was passed at the end of a four-day, closed-door meeting of more than 300 top leaders on its Central Committee, state media reported.

It puts Xi on the same pedestal as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, two previous leaders who cemented their position as pre-eminent leader with the only other two such resolutions passed, in 1945 and 1981 respectively.

At this week’s meeting, known as the Sixth Plenum, the party elevated the role of Xi in one of its ideologies by crediting him for the first time in an official document as “the main innovator” behind “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

The party had previously defined this ideology as the product of “the experiences and collective wisdom of the party and the people.”

Experts say “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” might be shortened to simply “Xi Jinping Thought” by the Party Congress in the latter half of next year, when Xi is almost certain to secure a precedent-breaking third term as party leader.

According to the end-of-meeting communique reported by state media, the party decided that a conclusion to draw from its century of his was that it must “resolutely uphold Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position” in the party.

Commenting on the move Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics at Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the messaging around Xi from the party was assuming “cult-like features.”

Party delegates, seated in rows facing Xi, voted the resolution by a show of hand, news footage of the meeting on state television CCTV showed.

“Given the party’s emphasis on discipline and loyalty, the consequences of not supporting the resolution for any party member would be disastrous,” Yang Chaohui, a lecturer of political science at Peking University, told Reuters.

Xi is widely seen as China’s most powerful leader since Mao.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian, Gabriel Crossley and Tony Munroe; Editing by Toby Chopra, Clarence Fernandez and Alex Richardson)