Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. CDC reports 185,092 deaths from coronavirus

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday said the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus had risen by 1,009 to 185,092 and reported 6,087,403 cases, an increase of 39,711 cases from its previous count.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Sept. 2 versus its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)

U.S. troops to start extended exercises in Lithuania amid tensions over Belarus

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – U.S. troops and tanks will arrive in Lithuania on Friday for a two-month deployment near the Belarus border, but the government said the move was not a message to its Russian-backed neighbor, where protests continue over a disputed election.

In an announcement on Wednesday evening, NATO member Lithuania said U.S. troops will be moved from Poland for pre-planned military exercises. These are “defensive in nature and not directed against any neighbor, including Belarus,” it added.

However, the troops are arriving earlier and staying longer than the government had indicated before the outbreak of protests in Belarus over the Aug. 9 election that returned President Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to power.

Lukashenko has denied accusations by the Belarus opposition and Western countries that the vote was rigged and has resisted protesters’ demands to step down. He has accused NATO of a military buildup near Belarus’ borders, something the alliance denied, and has said he will ask for Russian military help if needed.

The deployment in Lithuania, which will begin on Friday and will last until November, includes 500 American troops and 40 vehicles, such as Abrams tanks and Bradley armored troop carriers, a Lithuanian army spokesman said.

On July 29, Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis told BNS wire the United States would send a battalion-sized troop contingent – between 300 to 1,000 soldiers – in September, for two weeks’ training, beginning in the middle of the month.

He repeated that information on Aug. 4 in an interview with public radio LRT.

“Deployment was aligned with training schedule and training area availability,” defense minister spokeswoman Vita Ramanauskaite told Reuters.

In addition to the U.S. deployment, up to 1,000 troops and military planes from France, Italy, Germany, Poland and others will take part in an annual exercise on Sept. 14-25, the Lithuanian army spokesman said.

The ministry did not state any plans for those troops to stay beyond Sept. 25.

Karoblis said earlier this month that there was a real danger Russia would send forces to Belarus.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas; Editing by Simon Johnson, Steve Orlofsky and Frances Kerry)

Trump encourages supporters to try to vote twice, sparking uproar

By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has urged residents in the critical political battleground of North Carolina to try to vote twice in the Nov. 3 election, once by mail and once in person, causing a furor for appearing to urge a potential act of voter fraud.

“Let them send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said in an interview on Wednesday with WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina. “And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.

Trump has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that mail-in voting – expanded by some states because of the coronavirus pandemic – would increase fraud and disrupt the November election, although experts say voter fraud of any kind is extremely rare in the United States.

Voting more than once in an election is illegal and in some states, including North Carolina, it is a felony not only to vote more than once but also to induce another to do so.

Ballots are due to be mailed in North Carolina on Friday.

The state’s Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter that Trump, a Republican, had “outrageously encouraged” North Carolinians “to break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election.”

Stein wrote: “Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice! I will do everything in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November.”

Trump’s campaign and the White House later denied that he meant to tell people to vote twice.

“The president is not suggesting anyone do anything unlawful,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News Channel on Thursday. “What he said very clearly there is make sure your vote is tabulated and if it is not, then vote.”

In a series of tweets on Thursday morning, Trump again urged his supporters to vote early by mail and then follow up by attempting to vote in person, however.

“On Election Day, or Early Voting go to your Polling Place to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted),” Trump wrote. “If it has you will not be able to Vote & the Mail In System worked properly. If it has not been Counted, VOTE.”

VOTING TWICE ‘A FELONY’

The Democratic National Committee accused Trump of encouraging voter fraud and said the president was undermining confidence in the fairness of the election.

“Let’s be clear: Voting by mail is a safe and secure way for Americans to participate in our democracy — and Trump should be working to make it easier to vote, not harder,” Reyna Walters-Morgan, the DNC’s director of voter protection, said in a statement.

Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for North Carolina’s state Board of Elections, said a person would not be able to cast two ballots, regardless of if they voted by mail or in-person first. The first vote that is received and processed is the one that counts, he said.

“Voting twice in an election is a felony,” Gannon said. “If you put a ballot in the mail, and it hasn’t arrived yet, and then you vote in-person before your absentee ballot has arrived, your in-person vote will count.”

He said if an absentee ballot showed up after a person had voted in-person, it would not be counted.

Many Americans vote by mail because they cannot make it to the polls in person. Nearly one in four voters cast presidential ballots by mail in 2016.

The coronavirus pandemic is expected to result in a record number of mail-in ballots this year as voters seek to avoid the risk of infection. Experts have cautioned the expected surge means a winner may not be clear on election night given the time it will take to count and verify all the ballots.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Michael Martina, Susan Heavey, James Oliphant, Kanishka Singh and Ann Maria Shibu; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Howard Goller and Sonya Hepinstall)

How to prepare for a school year like no other

By Beatrix Lockwood

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Parents, teachers and students nationwide are preparing for a school year like no other. As part of our #AskReuters Twitter chat series, Reuters gathered a group of experts to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed K-12 education.

Below are edited highlights.

How can parents, students and teachers prepare for the coming school year?

“Slow things down! Take your expectations of what’s possible in classrooms and cut them in half. Generally, teachers haven’t been given nearly enough time to reconfigure their teaching practices. Give them some slack. Zoom fatigue is real.”

— Antero Garcia, assistant professor at Stanford University

“Being prepared means being flexible. Schools will likely have to open and close based on transmission rates in their communities and cases in schools.”

— John Bailey, visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

How will learning in 2020-2021 academic year look different, now that we’ve had a few months to plan?

“We hope to see districts adapt and improve quickly. There are a lot of thoughtful and creative reopening plans. Over the next few weeks, we will be highlighting promising approaches to address both health and learning needs, whether in person or remote.”

— Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education

“One of the questions of this school year is: Will remote instruction be improved? District officials say yes, but still many kids don’t have what they need tech-wise and much time this summer was spent working on health and safety, not instruction.”

— Matt Barnum, education policy reporter at Chalkbeat

Are there ways to replicate the social, emotional and non-academic experiences children get in school if they are not physically in the classroom?

“That is the hardest part for both K-12 and higher ed. Youth life is gradually resuming in places where the virus rates are low enough – distanced soccer and the rest. We need to get kids together physically at a distance to do some of these things.”

— Jal Mehta, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Can you talk about the technology gap, and how it is impacting learning? What resources are available to breach the digital divide?

“Far too many students are being left behind from distance learning as they lack internet access at home and a dependable device. Many teachers also lack the connectivity they need to deliver remote instruction and support student learning.”

— National Parent Teachers Association

“From a culturally responsive-sustaining perspective, we see that young people access tech in ways that are not fully clear to those who design education – through video games, cellphones, and other digital devices that could also be used to curate a learning experience.”

— David E. Kirkland, executive director at The NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and The Transformation of Schools

How is the pandemic impacting children with special needs? What advice do you have to help kids with developmental challenges learn now?

“Communication will be key. Parents need to understand what schools are doing to provide their children with the needed interventions, related services and accommodations. And educators will need to check-in with parents to see what’s working.”

— Laura Schifter, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Disruption can lead to transformation. How will education change, post-COVID?

“Frankly, we will have failed our children if this next decade isn’t transformational. We can’t wait any longer to take on the major systemic problems holding kids back. Now is the time to build a world grounded in the real needs and aspirations of all students.”

— Teach For America

“The transformation of education will be shaped by how we perceive the disruption. Education is always evolving and opportune. This is an opportunity to increase attention to inequity in education and the critical social and emotional needs of students ahead.”

— Rebecca Kullback, co-founder of LaunchWell and Metropolitan Counseling Associates

(Editing by Lauren Young and Aurora Ellis)

U.S. weekly jobless claims below one million; but labor market recovery ebbing

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell below 1 million last week for the second time since the COVID-19 pandemic started in the United States, but that does not signal a strong recovery in the labor market.

The drop in initial claims to a five-month low reported by the Labor Department on Thursday largely reflected a change in the methodology it used to address seasonal fluctuations in the data, which economists complained had become less reliable because of the economic shock caused by the coronavirus crisis.

There are growing signs the labor market recovery from the depths of the pandemic in mid-March through April is faltering, with financial support from the government virtually depleted.

“There are new seasonal adjustment factors this week which brings down the joblessness slightly,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “The labor market looks just as bad as it was and it will be a miracle if economic growth can continue at such a fast clip during this recovery if it has to drag along millions and millions of workers without paychecks.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 130,000 to a seasonally adjusted 881,000 for the week ended Aug. 29. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 950,000 applications in the latest week. A staggering 29.2 million people were on unemployment benefits in mid-August.

The Labor Department has switched to using additive factors to more accurately track seasonal fluctuations in the series. The government dropped the multiplicative seasonal adjustment factors it had been using because they could cause systematic over-or under-adjustment of the data in the presence of a large shift in the claims series.

Unadjusted claims rose 7,591 to 833,352 last week. The increase in the raw numbers, which many economists prefer to focus on, added to a raft of data suggesting the labor market recovery was ebbing.

A report on Wednesday from the Federal Reserve based on information collected from the U.S. central bank’s contacts on or before Aug. 24 showed an increase in employment. The Fed, however, noted that “some districts also reported slowing job growth and increased hiring volatility, particularly in service industries, with rising instances of furloughed workers being laid off permanently as demand remained soft.”

Private employers hired fewer workers than expected in August. In addition, data from Kronos, a workforce management software company, and Homebase, a payroll scheduling and tracking company, showed employment growth stagnated last month.

Another report on Thursday showed job cuts elevated in August amid layoffs by airlines. United Airlines said on Wednesday it was preparing to furlough 16,370 workers on Oct. 1.

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

SEVERE DISTRESS

The weak labor market reports raise the risk of a sharper slowdown in job growth in August than is currently anticipated by financial markets. The government is scheduled to publish August’s employment report on Friday.

According to a Reuters survey of economists non-farm payrolls likely rose by 1.4 million jobs last month after increasing by 1.763 million in July. That would leave non-farm payrolls about 11.5 million below their pre-pandemic level.

The claims report also showed the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid dropped 1.238 million to 13.254 million in the week ending Aug. 22. Part of the decrease in so-called continuing claims was likely because of people exhausting eligibility for benefits.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits under all programs jumped 2.2 million to 29.2 million in the week ended Aug. 15.

“While Wall Street hits record highs, much of Main Street remains in severe distress,” said Ron Temple, head of U.S. Equity at Lazard Asset Management in New York. “The pandemic and the federal failure to sustain necessary assistance to households as well as state and local governments are weakening long-term economic growth and social stability.”

Fiscal stimulus boosted economic activity after it nearly ground to a halt following the shuttering of nonessential businesses in mid-March to control the spread of COVID-19. That set up the economy, which plunged into recession in February, for a sharp rebound in the third quarter.

A $600 weekly unemployment supplement expired in July and funding programs for businesses have also lapsed, leaving the outlook for growth uncertain. Also clouding the growth prospects, the trade deficit jumped 18.9% to a 12-year high of $63.6 billion in July, driven by a record surge in imports.

While the rise in imports could be blunted by an increase in inventories, export growth was moderate in July. That could threaten a recent acceleration in manufacturing activity.

A fourth report on Thursday showed growth in the services industry slowed in August. The services sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy, has been hardest hit by the pandemic.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)

Pandemic review panel to ask ‘hard questions’, WHO files open, co-chairs say

By Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – An independent panel reviewing the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic will ask “hard questions” and has been assured of access to the records of the World Health Organization (WHO), its co-chairs said on Thursday.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf named the 11 members they have selected to help prepare a final report for next May.

“This is a strong panel, poised to ask the hard questions,” Johnson Sirleaf told a news conference.

It will examine “actions of WHO and their time lines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic” and the effectiveness of WHO’s International Health Regulations, said Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Co-chair Helen Clark said the WHO had “made clear that their files are open book. Anything we want to see, we see.”

“We will ask with the benefit of hindsight how WHO and national governments could have worked differently,” Clark said. “Are there lessons to be learned in order not to repeat the experience of this pandemic?”

The COVID-19 pandemic has now caused more than 26.11 million infections and 862,963 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has strongly criticized the WHO’s role in the crisis, accusing it of being too close to China and not doing enough to question Beijing’s actions late last year when the virus first emerged.

Tedros has dismissed the suggestions and said his agency has kept the world informed.

The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it will not pay some $80 million it currently owes to the WHO and will instead redirect the money to help pay its United Nations bill in New York.

Members of the new panel include former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo; ex-British foreign secretary David Miliband; Chinese professor Zhong Nanshan; Canada’s Joanne Liu, a former head of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders); and American Mark Dybul and France’s Michel Kazatchkine, who each formerly headed the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

The panel is scheduled to meet for the first time on Sept. 17, the co-chairs said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said when announcing the launch of the panel in July that it would provide an interim report to an annual meeting of health ministers resuming in November and present a “substantive report” next May.

Tedros said that the review was in line with a resolution adopted by its 194 member countries last May calling for an evaluation.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Amazon bucks UK labor market gloom with 7,000 new jobs

LONDON (Reuters) – Amazon brought a little cheer to Britain’s troubled labor market on Thursday, saying it will create a further 7,000 permanent jobs in 2020, taking total new hires this year to 10,000.

Last month the number of people in work in Britain suffered the biggest drop since 2009 and the coronavirus is expected to take a much heavier toll on unemployment when the government winds down its huge job-protection scheme.

The one bright spot however has come from online retail and logistics as orders surged during lockdown. Amazon’s latest recruitment will take its total UK workforce to over 40,000 by the end of the year.

The U.S. internet giant said the 7,000 new roles will be for warehouse workers, as well as engineers, HR and IT professionals and health and safety and finance specialists.

The jobs will be in over 50 sites, including two new distribution centers in the north east and central England and at corporate offices.

It said it needed more staff to meet growing customer demand for its services and to enable small and medium sized enterprises selling on Amazon to scale their businesses.

Amazon has also started recruiting for more than 20,000 seasonal positions across the UK for the festive period.

Last month the Confederation of British Industry said British retailers had cut the most jobs since the depths of the financial crisis and expected the pace of losses to accelerate.

Well-known British retailers Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Debenhams, WH Smith and Dixons Carphone have all announced job cuts in recent weeks, reflecting the rapid shift in demand to online sales.

Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket, said it would create 16,000 permanent roles to meet the surge in home deliveries.

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton)

Unlikely that a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready in October, but not impossible, Fauci says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top U.S. infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said on Thursday it is unlikely a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready by the end of October, but that it is not impossible.

“I think most of the people feel it’s going to be November, December,” Fauci said in a CNN interview when asked about the possibility of an earlier release, adding a clinical trial could prompt drug developers to decide a vaccine works sooner. “It is conceivable that you can have it by October, though I don’t think that that’s likely.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Transportation chief says aid needed by November to avoid big NYC subway and bus cuts

By Axel Threlfall

(Reuters) – New York’s coronavirus-hit Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will have to start implementing a dramatic job and service reduction plan in November if it does not receive billions of dollars in federal aid, the agency’s chairman said on Thursday.

Speaking in a virtual Reuters Newsmaker event, Patrick Foye said the MTA’s upcoming board meeting in November was the cutoff date for pulling the trigger on a plan to lay off 8,400 workers and cut city subway and bus service by up to 40 percent.

“That is the point at which we would have to begin implementing the service reductions and layoffs,” Foye said, adding that the MTA would also shelve a $51.5 billion capital plan to fix and upgrade North America’s biggest transportation system.

“If we are not able to make those investments, there will be a deterioration in service, as occurred in New York City in the 70’s and 80’s, and we don’t want to go back there,” Foye said.

Foye and John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, warned in an opinion article this week in the New York Times that the MTA faced a “five-alarm fire” and called on the U.S. Senate to approve funds to save it.

In July, the MTA unveiled a four-year financial plan that estimated a $16.2 billion deficit by 2024, with more than a third of those losses coming next year, a signal that it does not see ridership, hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, rebounding significantly anytime soon.

The agency, which runs New York City buses and subways and two commuter railroads that connect the city with suburbs, is losing $200 million in revenue a week and estimates it needs another $3.9 billion in federal aid to get through the end of this year and a total of $10.3 billion through 2021.

In addition to the plunge in revenue, the MTA has had to spend more to clean subway cars, stations and buses to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Subway service, which formerly ran for 24 hours, was closed down from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to make that cleaning possible, another hit to ridership.

Even with congressional negotiations on further federal assistance at a standstill, Foye said he still held out hope that the Republican-controlled Senate would approve additional funding for the MTA before the Nov. 3 national election.

“If reason prevails and the national interest is pursued by the Senate, the Republican leadership in the Senate and Washington, the MTA will be financed,” Foye said.

Foye said he was not optimistic there would be any progress this year on congestion pricing, a program that charges vehicles entering Manhattan a fee. The program was supposed to account for $15 billion of the MTA’s capital spending plan, but its rollout has been slowed by the federal government not determining what environmental review is needed.

Foye described the withholding of aid from the MTA and the New York City region as a “punitive” act by Washington, echoing concerns by cities and states run by Democrats that they are being targeted by Republican President Donald Trump.

Foye suggested that the election of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who has been a frequent rider on Amtrak passenger trains and a supporter of public transportation, might lead to better outcomes for the MTA.

“I believe that he’s got a different view of the importance of mass transit and public transit,” Foye said.

(Reporting by Axel Threlfall; additional reporting by Nathan Layne and Tina Bellon; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Exclusive: Vaccine group says 76 rich countries now committed to ‘COVAX’ access plan

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Seventy-six wealthy nations are now committed to joining a global COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to help buy and fairly distribute the shots, the project’s co-lead said on Wednesday.

Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccines alliance, said the plan, known as COVAX, now has Japan, Germany, Norway and more than 70 other nations signed up, agreeing in principle to procure COVID-19 vaccines through the facility for their populations.

“We have, as of right now, 76 upper middle income and high income countries that have submitted confirmations of intent to participate – and we expect that number to go up,” Berkley told Reuters in an interview.

“This is good news. It shows that the COVAX facility is open for business and is attracting the type of interest across the world we had hoped it would.”. COVAX coordinators are in talks with China about whether it might also join, Berkley said.

“We had a discussion yesterday with the (Chinese) government. We don’t have any signed agreement with them yet,” but Beijing had given “a positive signal”.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a briefing on Wednesday that China “supports COVAX and has been in communication with WHO and other parties” about it.

COVAX is co-led by GAVI, the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). It is designed to discourage national governments from hoarding COVID-19 vaccines and to focus on first vaccinating the most high-risk people in every country.

Its backers say this strategy should lead to lower vaccine costs for everyone and a swifter end to the pandemic that has claimed some 860,000 lives globally.

Wealthy countries that join COVAX will finance the vaccine purchases from their national budgets, and will partner with 92 poorer nations supported through voluntary donations to the plan to ensure vaccines are delivered equitably, Berkley said.

Participating wealthy countries are also free to procure vaccines through bilateral deals and other plans.

The United States said on Tuesday it would not join COVAX due to the Trump administration’s objection to WHO involvement, a move described by some critics as “disappointing.” Berkley said he was not surprised by the U.S. decision, but would seek to continue talks with Washington.

In what appeared to be a change of position on Wednesday, the European Union said its member states could buy potential COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX.

COVAX coordinators sought to add flexibility to joining agreements to encourage greater participation, Berkley said.

The WHO describes COVAX as an “invaluable insurance policy” for all countries to secure access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines when they are developed and approved. The plan’s coordinators have set a deadline of Sept. 18 for countries signing up to make binding commitments.

Asked to comment on the U.S. decision not to join COVAX, and on talks with China, a WHO spokesperson said: “Countries have until Sept. 18 to sign binding agreements…, so we’ll have more to say on countries that have joined then.”

COVAX’s objective is to procure and deliver 2 billion doses of approved vaccines by the end of 2021. It currently has nine COVID-19 vaccine candidates in its portfolio employing a range of different technologies and scientific approaches.

A handful are already in late-stage clinical trials and could have data available by year end.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Mark Heinrich)