Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Biden meets with France’s Macron, calls U.S. ‘clumsy’ in submarine deal

By Jeff Mason and Michel Rose

ROME (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Friday called U.S. government actions “clumsy” during his first meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron since a diplomatic crisis erupted last month over a U.S. security pact with Britain and Australia.

Biden used the meeting at the G20 summit in Rome, Italy, to try to turn the page on a relationship that came under strain over the U.S.-Australia security alliance, known as AUKUS, which also includes the United Kingdom. The pact effectively canceled a 2016 Australian-French submarine deal.

The U.S. decision to secretly negotiate a new agreement drew outrage from Paris. France temporarily recalled its ambassador from Washington, canceled a gala in the U.S. capital and officials accused Biden of acting like former President Donald Trump.

“I think what happened was, to use an English phrase, what we did was clumsy. It was not done with a lot of grace,” Biden said. “I was under the impression certain things had happened that hadn’t happened. And – but I want to make it clear: France is an extremely, extremely valued partner – extremely – and a power in and of itself.”

Biden also said the United States does not have an older and more loyal ally than France and that there is no place in the world where the United States cannot cooperate with France.

“I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the deal was not going through. I, honest to God, did not know you had not been,” Biden told Macron.

Macron said his meeting with Biden was “important” and that it was essential to “look to the future” as his country and the United States work to mend fences.

“What really matters now is what we will do together in the coming weeks, the coming months, the coming years,” Macron said.

Since the rift erupted, Washington has taken several steps to fix the relationship.

Biden and Macron spoke to each other last week. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Paris, where he acknowledged the United States could have “communicated better.” Vice President Kamala Harris also announced that she would travel to Paris in November and meet with Macron.

Biden and Macron met at the Villa Bonaparte, the French embassy to the Vatican, which a French diplomat said was a significant mark of goodwill from Biden.

“It’s an important gesture,” the French diplomat said, adding that the United States recognized that it underestimated the impact of its actions.

France now wants to see if Biden follows his words with actions. “Trust is being rebuilt. This is one step. Tokens of goodwill were given, we’ll see whether they follow through over the long term,” the diplomat said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Michel Rose in Rome, Writing by Nandita Bose and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul, Heather Timmons, David Gregorio and Marguerita Choy)

As vaccination mandate looms, New York City prepares for shortage of cops, others

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City officials on Friday were preparing for shortages of firefighters, police officers and other first responders as a showdown looms between the city and its unvaccinated uniformed workforce, who face a 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) deadline to be immunized.

Leaders of unions representing firefighters and police officers have said more than one-third of their members could be sent home on unpaid leave when enforcement of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate takes effect on Monday.

“If you’re going to take a third of the ambulances off-line, if you’re going to take a third of the engine companies off-line, you’ll without question increase response times and increase the rate of death,” Uniformed Firefighters Association Andrew Ansbro told NY1 TV on Friday.

But Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced the mandate nine days ago, said officials were prepared to manage any staffing gaps with overtime and schedule changes and by enlisting private ambulance companies to cover for the city’s paramedics.

Discussing those moves with reporters on Thursday, the mayor pointed out that the city also faced staffing shortages last year when many first responders were infected with the coronavirus.

The dispute in the United States’ most populous city was the latest chapter in a series of clashes across the country over public and private vaccination mandates.

New York City uniformed workers, including sanitation workers, have staged several protests this week, including one on Thursday at the mayor’s official residence. Many have said consideration should be given for the so-called natural immunity of those who have had COVID, which the firefighters’ union says includes 70% of its members.

City health officials have said that while research has yet to determine the degree of immunity that previous COVID infections yield, it is widely agreed that vaccines increase protection – even for those who have been infected.

De Blasio said only 76% of the uniformed workers facing the mandate deadline have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, as compared with 86% of city workers overall. Within that group, he said the lowest rate was among Fire Department employees at 64%, while nearly three-quarters of police employees have complied.

He stressed, however, that he expects those rates to rise significantly by Monday.

The mayor pointed to earlier mandate deadlines for other New York state and city workers that prompted a rush for last-minute vaccinations by healthcare and education workers as the reality set in that their paychecks were about to stop coming.

“And then suddenly it becomes really clear what they have to do,” de Blasio told reporters on Thursday.

By the time a vaccination requirement for state healthcare workers kicked in on Sept. 27, Governor Kathy Hochul reported that 92% of hospital employees had gotten at least one dose and 85% were fully vaccinated, up from 77% a month earlier.

Thousands of city teachers and other school employees also waited until the final days before an Oct. 1 deadline, de Blasio said, with 96% of the them currently vaccinated.

Police and fire unions have filed lawsuits against the mandate. The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, which represents 24,000 police officers, lost a bid earlier this week for a court order to halt the deadline, but has taken its request to a state appeals court where it is still pending.

The courts have generally not been sympathetic to efforts to block vaccine mandates.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor rejected a request by four teachers and teaching assistants to block the city’s Oct. 1 mandate for school workers. And Justice Amy Coney Barrett in August denied a bid by Indiana University students to block that school’s vaccine mandate.

In Chicago, a federal judge was expected to rule on Friday on a request by a group of firefighters and other city workers for a court order to halt vaccine mandates ordered by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, both Democrats.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. successfully tests hypersonic booster motor in Utah

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon successfully tested a booster rocket motor on Thursday designed to power a launch vehicle carrying a hypersonic weapon aloft, the Navy said.

The United States and its global rivals have intensified their drive to build hypersonic weapons – the next generation of arms that rob adversaries of reaction time and traditional defeat mechanisms. Defense contractors hope to capitalize as they make the weapons and develop new detection and defeat mechanisms.

This week, the top U.S. military officer confirmed a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses.

“We are on schedule for the upcoming flight test of the full common hypersonic missile,” said Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe Jr, Director, Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, lead designer on the program. That flight test, of the combined boost rocket and hypersonic weapon, is slated to happen before Autumn 2022.

Last week in Kodiak, Alaska, the U.S. failed a hypersonic weapon test when the booster failed.

U.S. military services will use the common hypersonic missile as a base to develop individual weapon systems and launchers tailored for launch from sea or land.

The common hypersonic missile will consist of the first stage solid rocket motor as part of a new missile booster combined with the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (CHGB).

This static fire test marked the first time the first stage solid rocket motor included a thrust vector control system, the Navy said. Thrust vector control systems allow the rocket motors to be maneuverable in flight.

The U.S. Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs conducted two prior tests of the solid rocket motor used in the development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) offensive hypersonic strike capability and the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).

Arms makers Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Technologies Corp all touted their hypersonic weapons programs at the top of their quarterly earnings calls this week as world focus shifted to the new arms race for an emerging class of weapon.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio and Marguerita Choy)

U.S. urges Sudan military to refrain from violence against planned protests -official

By Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Friday urged Sudan’s military coup leaders to refrain from violence against peaceful protesters ahead of planned demonstrations on Saturday opposing the takeover, saying how the army reacts will be a litmus test.

“Tomorrow is going to be a real indication of what the military intentions are,” said a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“We call on the security forces to refrain from any and all violence against protesters and to fully respect the citizens’ right to demonstrate peacefully,” the official said.

Washington was relieved to see that ousted Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok had been allowed to return home, the official said, adding that it was not good enough because Hamdok was still under house arrest and unable to resume his work.

Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan dissolved Hamdok’s Cabinet, and soldiers rounded up government ministers on Monday, prompting Western countries to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in desperately needed aid to the North African country.

Opponents of the coup have called for mass protests on Saturday under the slogan “Leave!” At least 11 protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces this week, and residents say they fear a full-blown crackdown.

The coup has derailed a transition meant to steer Sudan to democracy, with elections in 2023, after long-serving ruler Omar al-Bashir was toppled two years ago.

‘FACE OF BETRAYAL’

The U.S. official called Burhan “the face of turning the clock back in Sudan” and said Washington understood the skepticism of Sudan’s civilian leaders to work with him and the military but added that a full exclusion of the army was not realistic.

“He’s the face of the betrayal of the aspirations of the Sudanese people, a face of the high-jacking of the civilian institutions,” the U.S. official said, adding that the civilian leaders would be looking for assurances before bringing themselves to work with him — something he said they should do nevertheless.

“Our civilian partners won’t like to hear me say this — but it’s not realistic to think that you’re going to be able to succeed in the transition if you’ve completely excluded the military from the process,” the official said.

Burhan on Friday said a technocratic prime minister could be announced in a week and left the door open for Hamdok to return and form the new government.

The U.S. official said Washington knew that there were problems with the transition but Sudanese military leaders never hinted at a takeover in their dealings last weekend with the U.S. delegation.

Jeffrey Feltman, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa, flew into Khartoum two days before Monday’s coup, as concerns mounted that the transition was running into trouble due to tension between the generals and civilians.

Reuters reported that Feltman warned Burhan not to take any steps against the civilian administration that was overseeing a democratic transition but the army ignored his advice.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis)

U.S. asks transit agencies to conduct inspections after Washington subway derailment

y David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) said Friday it had asked U.S. transit agencies to conduct inspections of wheel gauges on rail cars following the Oct. 12 derailment of a Washington subway train.

FTA said it was requiring state safety agencies to report out-of-tolerance wheel gauges discovered since October 2020 and advised them to require fleet-wide inspections of wheel gauges in public transportation systems. The Washington subway system said on Thursday it expected to operate sharply reduced service through at least Nov. 15.

FTA says operators must disclose how often they inspect wheel gauges and the number that failed inspections.

On Oct. 17, the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission ordered the subway system to indefinitely remove about 60% of its railcars following inspections after the derailment.

The National Transportation Safety said the train had derailed at least three times on Oct. 12.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), known as the Metro, serves the U.S. capital and parts of Maryland and Virginia. It has urged commuters to take buses or use other transit modes as train service has been cut back.

Average Metrorail weekday ridership has fallen by about 25%, WMATA said this week.

The commission ordered WMATA’s 748 7000-Series trains removed from service after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) “identified safety concerns related to the spacing of wheels on 7000-Series railcar axles”.

The NTSB said WMATA had been aware of wheel assembly issues since 2017. It was a 7000-Series train that was involved in the Oct. 12 derailment outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia.

WMATA said on Tuesday it had completed inspections on its 748 7000-Series trains and 20 axles were found to be out of alignment.

The derailment did not injure any of the 187 passengers onboard, but NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said the incident could have been “catastrophic.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

G20 wants 70% of world vaccinated by mid-2022, sets up pandemic task force

By Jan Strupczewski and Andrea Shalal

ROME (Reuters) -Finance and health ministers from the world’s 20 biggest economies (G20) said on Friday they would take steps to ensure 70% of the world’s population is vaccinated against COVID-19 by mid-2022 and created a task force to fight future pandemics.

They could not reach agreement on a separate financing facility proposed by the United States and Indonesia, but said the task force would explore options for mobilizing funds to boost pandemic preparedness, prevention and response.

“To help advance toward the global goals of vaccinating at least 40 percent of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by mid-2022 … we will take steps to help boost the supply of vaccines and essential medical products and inputs in developing countries and remove relevant supply and financing constraints,” the G20 ministers said in a statement.

The previous goal had eyed vaccinating 70% of the world’s population by the autumn of 2022.

“We establish a G20 Joint Finance-Health Task Force aimed at enhancing dialogue and global cooperation on issues relating to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, promoting the exchange of experiences and best practices, developing coordination arrangements between Finance and Health Ministries, promoting collective action, assessing and addressing health emergencies with cross-border impact and encouraging effective stewardship of resources,” the statement said.

The ministers said they were setting up the new body because the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed significant shortcomings in the world’s ability to coordinate its response.

They pledged to support “all collaborative efforts” to provide access to safe, affordable, quality and effective vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and personal protective equipment, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

To reach the vaccination goals, they said they would work to boost the supply of vaccines and essential medical products and inputs in developing countries, while removing constraints on supply and financing, but gave no specific details.

Global Citizen, an international advocacy group, welcomed the earlier target date, but said the world needed “a battle plan” that mapped out how to get there, greater transparency how many doses were being produced where, when and for whom, and a clear understanding of where there were gaps.

“It’s no longer the time for statements of intentions. Now is the time for our leaders to act,” said the group’s vice president, Friederike Roder.

The ministers also called for boosting the resilience of supply chains through voluntary technology transfer hubs, such as newly established mRNA Hubs in South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, and through joint production and processing agreements.

The call for a voluntary mRNA technology transfer means that talks on the idea of a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies – originally proposed by South Africa and India and now championed by the United States – remain stuck at the World Trade Organization.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said the G20 had not discussed patents.

“We have a lot of vaccines available worldwide but the reality is there are still areas in the world where the share of those vaccinated is very low,” Scholz told journalists on the sidelines of the summit.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alistair Bell)

Russia says at least 44,265 people died from COVID-19 in Sept

MOSCOW (Reuters) – At least 44,265 people died in Russia in September due to the coronavirus and related causes, taking the toll to around 462,000 since the pandemic began, state statistics service Rosstat said on Friday.

The figure was down from a peak of 51,044 in July, although infections and fatalities began to surge again in the second half of September and have repeatedly touched record levels this month, leading authorities to reintroduce stricter health restrictions.

The overall COVID-19 death toll reported by Rosstat is almost double the figure of 236,220 published by the Russian coronavirus task force earlier on Friday.

Authorities explain the discrepancy by the fact that the task force reports deaths from COVID-19 on a daily basis that do not need additional confirmation from medical examiners, whereas Rosstat publishes full data on a monthly basis.

Some epidemiologists say that measuring excess mortality is the best way to assess the death toll during a pandemic.

Based on the new data, Reuters calculated that the number of excess deaths in Russia between April 2020 and September 2021 was more than 632,000 in comparison with the average mortality rate in 2015-2019.

Authorities have blamed the latest surge on the more virulent Delta variant and on popular reluctance to take up the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov and Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

‘Just give us our money’: Taliban push to unlock Afghan billions abroad

By John O’Donnell

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban government is pressing for the release of billions of dollars of central bank reserves as the drought-stricken nation faces a cash crunch, mass starvation and a new migration crisis.

Afghanistan parked billions of dollars in assets overseas with the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks in Europe, but that money has been frozen since the Islamist Taliban ousted the Western-backed government in August.

A spokesman for the finance ministry said the government would respect human rights, including the education of women, as he sought fresh funds on top of humanitarian aid that he said offered only “small relief”.

Under Taliban rule from 1996-2001, women were largely shut out of paid employment and education and normally had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.

“The money belongs to the Afghan nation. Just give us our own money,” ministry spokesman Ahmad Wali Haqmal told Reuters. “Freezing this money is unethical and is against all international laws and values.”

One top central bank official called on European countries including Germany to release their share of the reserves to avoid an economic collapse that could trigger mass migration towards Europe.

“The situation is desperate and the amount of cash is dwindling,” Shah Mehrabi, a board member of the Afghan Central Bank, told Reuters. “There is enough right now … to keep Afghanistan going until the end of the year.

“Europe is going to be affected most severely, if Afghanistan does not get access to this money,” said Mehrabi.

“You will have a double whammy of not being able to find bread and not being able to afford it. People will be desperate. They are going to go to Europe,” he said.

The call for assistance comes as Afghanistan faces a collapse of its fragile economy. The departure of U.S.-led forces and many international donors left the country without grants that financed three quarters of public spending.

The finance ministry said it had a daily tax take of roughly 400 million Afghanis ($4.4 million).

Although Western powers want to avert a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, they have refused to officially recognize the Taliban government.

Haqmal said Afghanistan would allow women an education, although not in the same classrooms as men.

Human rights, he said, would be respected but within the framework of Islamic law, which would not include gay rights.

“LGBT… That’s against our Sharia law,” he said.

Mehrabi hopes that while the United States has recently said it will not release its lion’s share of roughly $9 billion of funds, European countries might.

He said Germany held half a billion dollars of Afghan money and that it and other European countries should release those funds.

Mehrabi said that Afghanistan needed $150 million each month to “prevent imminent crisis”, keeping the local currency and prices stable, adding that any transfer could be monitored by an auditor.

“If reserves remain frozen, Afghan importers will not be able to pay for their shipments, banks will start to collapse, food will be become scarce, grocery stores will be empty,” Mehrabi said.

He said that about $431 million of central bank reserves were held with German lender Commerzbank, as well as a further roughly $94 million with Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank.

The Bank for International Settlements, an umbrella group for global central banks in Switzerland, holds a further approximately $660 million. All three declined to comment.

The Taliban took back power in Afghanistan in August after the United States pulled out its troops, almost 20 years after the Islamists were ousted by U.S.-led forces following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

(Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London and James MacKenzie in Islamabad; writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.N. urges Mali to end hereditary slavery

By Nellie Peyton

DAKAR (Reuters) – U.N. human rights experts on Friday called on Mali to crack down on hereditary slavery after a series of violent attacks against people born into servitude.

Slavery was officially abolished in colonial Mali in 1905, but a system persists in which people are still forced to work without pay for families that enslaved their ancestors, the United Nations group of experts said in a statement.

Malian law does not specifically criminalize this form of slavery, so perpetrators are rarely held accountable, they said.

In September, a group of people considered slaves were attacked by other Malians who objected to their celebrating Independence Day, according to the U.N. experts.

The attacks went on for two days, leaving one man dead and at least 12 people injured. It was the eighth such attack this year in the Kayes region, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) northwest of the capital Bamako, the experts said.

“The fact that these attacks occur so often in this area shows that descent-based slavery is still socially accepted by some influential politicians, traditional leaders, law enforcement officials and judicial authorities in Mali,” they said.

“We have condemned this heinous practice many times before – now the Malian government must take action, starting with ending impunity for attacks on ‘slaves’.”

At least 30 people have been arrested from both sides and police have launched an investigation, the U.N. statement added.

Malian authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

Descent-based slavery is also practiced in Mali’s neighbors Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania, which became the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981.

In Mali, prosecutors charge most hereditary slavery cases as misdemeanors, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest Trafficking in Persons report. It recommended a 2012 anti-trafficking law be revised to include hereditary slavery.

(Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Peter Graff)

Mexico to give papers to children, pregnant women in migrant caravan

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico said on Thursday it would give humanitarian visas to children and pregnant women in a migrant caravan moving north from southern Mexico, adopting a softer approach to the task of containing migrant flows than at times taken recently.

Lasting a year, the visas grant migrants access to public services like healthcare, as well as the ability to work.

Thousands of migrants from Central America and the Caribbean last weekend began traveling slowly from the southern border in a bid to reach the United States or Mexico City.

According to a Reuters witness, the majority of the latest caravan members are families with young children.

A major caravan moving through Mexico last month met with often heavy-handed resistance from Mexican authorities, sparking complaints about their tactics and even condemnation from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

As recently as Saturday, some 400 law enforcement officers in anti-riot gear tried to block the caravan’s path at a highway checkpoint in the city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border.

One family, including small children, was knocked to the ground in the struggle.

Still, a Mexican official told Reuters authorities did not want to become embroiled in violent confrontations due to the number of children and pregnant women in the caravan.

The latest caravan comes amid record numbers of apprehensions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and growing criticism of U.S. President Joe Biden from Republicans, who say he has not done enough to curb illegal immigration.

(Reporting by Jake Kincaid; Editing by Dave Graham and Marguerita Choy)