Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. Supreme Court again protects police accused of excessive force

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted requests by police officers in separate cases from California and Oklahoma for legal protection under a doctrine called “qualified immunity” from lawsuits accusing them of using excessive force.

The justices overturned a lower court’s decision allowing a trial in a lawsuit against officers Josh Girdner and Brandon Vick over the fatal shooting of a hammer-wielding man in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

They also overturned a lower court’s decision to deny a request by Union City, California police officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas for qualified immunity in a lawsuit accusing him of using excessive force while handcuffing a suspect.

The brief rulings favoring the police in the two cases were unsigned, with no public dissents among the justices. They were issued in cases that were decided without oral arguments.

The qualified immunity defense protects police and other government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances, permitting lawsuits only when an individual’s “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights have been violated.

The decisions on Monday indicate that the justices still think lower courts are denying qualified immunity too frequently in excessive force cases involving police, having previously chided appeals courts on that issue in recent years.

Reuters in 2020 published an investigation that revealed how qualified immunity, with the Supreme Court’s continual refinements, has made it easier for police officers to kill or injure civilians with impunity.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

More than 20 dead after floods hit southern India

By Jose Devasia

KOCHI, India (Reuters) – Leaders in the southern Indian state of Kerala opened near-overflowing dams on Monday after at least 22 people died when heavy rains lashed the region over the weekend.

Rainfall across Kerala triggered flash floods and landslides in several areas, with the Indian army and navy called out to rescue residents.

Opening dams could reduce the risk of potentially catastrophic overflows like those partly blamed for the state’s worst floods in a century in 2018, when at least 400 people were killed and 200,000 displaced. But by releasing water downstream, areas already experiencing floods could suffer more.

Authorities have already opened smaller dams to prevent flooding, Kerala Power Minister K Krishnankutty said in a statement, while the state’s largest, the Idukki dam, will also be opened on Tuesday morning local time.

Sheeba George, the top official in Idukki district, told local media that dozens of families had been evacuated from their homes ahead of the dam openings.

At least 13 people were killed by a landslide in the village of Kuttikkal, officials and witnesses said.

“There were four landslides that happened there yesterday, the hill behind me, which brought water and other items downwards,” a local resident told Reuters partner ANI on Sunday, standing in front of a now-barren hillside.

P.K. Jayasree, the top government official in Kottayam district where the landslide took place, said six of the dead were from a single family.

Kerala will receive further widespread rain, including isolated heavy downpours in many areas, for two to three days from Oct. 20, the state government said on Monday.

(Reporting Jose Devasia in Kochi; Writing by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Peter Graff and Mark Heinrich)

Statins may slightly lower COVID-19 death risk; using a different vaccine as booster may offer more protection

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.

Statins may protect slightly against COVID-19 death

Widely-used statin drugs for lowering cholesterol may be linked to a slightly lower risk of dying from COVID-19, new data suggest. Researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden reviewed the medical records of nearly 1 million residents of Stockholm over the age of 45 between March and November 2020, roughly 18% of whom had been prescribed a statin, such as Pfizer Inc’s Lipitor (atorvastatin) and Merck & Co’s Zocor (simvastatin). The people prescribed statins had more risk factors for poor COVID-19 outcomes: they were older, more often male, had more medical conditions, lower education levels and less disposable income. After taking all that into account, statin users were still 12% less likely to have died of COVID-19 during the study period, according to a report published on Thursday in PLOS Medicine. The researchers did not compare outcomes in people who actually got infected with the virus, however. And they only had data on prescriptions – not on whether patients took the medicine as prescribed. A formal clinical trial would be needed to confirm the findings. Still, they conclude, their data “suggest that statin treatment may have a modest preventive therapeutic effect on COVID-19 mortality.”

Boosting with a different vaccine is safe, may be better

People who got Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as a first shot had a stronger immune response when boosted with vaccines from either Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE or Moderna Inc, according to a study run by the National Institutes of Health. The trial, which included more than 450 adults who received initial shots from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, or J&J, also showed that “mixing and matching” booster shots using different vaccine technology is safe in adults, the researchers reported in a paper posted on medRxiv on Wednesday ahead of peer review. Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines are based on messenger RNA (mRNA) while J&J’s uses viral vector technology. The trial looked at a total of nine combinations of initial shots and boosters. Using different types of shots as boosters generally produced a comparable or higher antibody response than using the same type, the researchers reported. Mixing booster doses “may offer immunological advantages to optimize the breadth and longevity of protection achieved with currently available vaccines,” they said.

Old age alone does not predict COVID-19 mortality risk

Older patients are known to be at higher risk for poor outcomes after infection with the coronavirus, but among those hospitalized with COVID-19, other characteristics help predict who is likely to do poorly, new data suggest. In a review of data on 4,783 people age 65 and older who were hospitalized for COVID-19 early in the pandemic, researchers at Northwell Health hospitals in New York found that age itself did not independently predict whether a patient was more likely to die. Instead, they reported on Thursday in BMC Geriatrics, more important predictors of death for elderly patients were factors such as how independent they were before the infection, how sick they were when they arrived at the hospital, and their pre-existing medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, kidney disease, lung disease and dementia. The researchers noted that in facilities forced to ration care or facing resource shortages, some guidelines use advanced age as a reason to deny care. “Our findings support the American Geriatrics Society position statement indicating age alone should never be used to make decisions regarding resource allocation under conditions of resource scarcity,” the researchers said. “Although age is still an important factor in the overall risk of COVID-19 mortality… a comprehensive approach that accounts for the above factors is essential in preventing ageism.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Texas House votes to ban transgender girls from sports

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – The Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that bans transgender women and girls from participating in school sports after three previous attempts failed, all but assuring Republican Governor Greg Abbott will sign it into law.

Texas is now poised to join seven other states that passed similar laws this year, part of a national campaign in which Republican legislators introduced such bills in 32 states. The bills are aimed at preventing transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams.

Conservatives say they are protecting fair competition, but equal rights activists have criticized the campaign as a discriminatory attack on transgender people, saying there is no evidence that trans women and girls are dominating sports.

Political analysts say the campaign is meant to animate hard-core Republican supporters.

“There’s no evidence that there’s a problem. This is red meat for the base,” said Robert Stein, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

While the Texas Senate passed a companion bill, three previous House versions of the legislation stalled in the public education committee, which has a Democratic chairman. Republicans then created a new version of the bill and sent it through a select committee they control, enabling it to pass the full House late Thursday.

The bill has gone back to the Senate for procedural approval and is expected to reach Abbott’s desk.

Texas Republicans have passed a very conservative agenda this year, including new laws that make it more difficult to vote, all but ban abortion, and do away with the need for a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

“Like a lot of other things in Texas politics right now, this is selling mainly to very ideologically driven voters in the Republican Party. These are the voters that show up for Republican primaries,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and West Virginia have passed similar transgender sports legislation, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has signed an executive order supporting a transgender sports ban. Some of these face legal challenges.

Idaho passed a similar law last year that has been blocked by a federal court, and a federal court in July ruled that an 11-year-old West Virginia trans girl must be allowed to try out for the girls’ track and cross-country teams at her school in defiance of a similar law passed in April.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. Treasury puts crypto industry on notice over rising ransomware attacks

By Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Suspected ransomware payments totaling $590 million were made in the first six months of this year, more than the $416 million reported for the whole of 2020, U.S. authorities said on Friday, as Washington put the cryptocurrency industry on alert about its role in combating ransomware attacks.

The U.S. Treasury Department said the average amount of reported ransomware transactions per month in 2021 was $102.3 million, with REvil/Sodinokibi, Conti, DarkSide, Avaddon, and Phobos the most prevalent ransomware strains reported.

President Joe Biden has made the government’s cybersecurity response a top priority for the most senior levels of his administration following a series of attacks this year that threatened to destabilize U.S. energy and food supplies.

Seeking to stop the use of crypto currencies in the payment of ransomware demands, Treasury told members of the crypto community they are responsible for making sure they do not “directly or indirectly” help facilitate deals prohibited by U.S. sanctions.

Its new guidance said the virtual currency industry plays an increasingly critical role in preventing those blacklisted from exploiting virtual currencies to evade sanctions.

“Treasury is helping to stop ransomware attacks by making it difficult for criminals to profit from their crimes, but we need partners in the private sector to help prevent this illicit activity,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

The new guidance also advised virtual currency exchanges to use geolocation tools to block access from countries under U.S. sanctions.

Hackers use ransomware to take down systems that control everything from hospital billing to manufacturing. They stop only after receiving hefty payments, typically in cryptocurrency.

This year, gangs have hit numerous U.S. companies in large scale hacks. One such attack on pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline led to temporary fuel supply shortages on the U.S. East Coast. Hackers also targeted an Iowa-based agricultural company, sparking fears of disruptions to grain harvesting in the Midwest.

The Biden administration last month unveiled sanctions against cryptocurrency exchange Suex OTC, S.R.O. over its alleged role in enabling illegal payments from ransomware attacks, officials said, in the Treasury’s first such move against a virtual currency exchange over ransomware activity.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders, Chris Bing and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)

Russia says it chased U.S. naval destroyer away from its waters

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said one of its military vessels chased away a U.S. naval destroyer that attempted to violate Russian territorial waters during Russian-Chinese naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Friday.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. side.

The Russian defense ministry said the crew of a Russian anti-submarine vessel, the Admiral Tributs, had radioed a warning to the USS Chafee that it was “in an area closed to navigation due to exercises with artillery fire”.

The U.S. destroyer failed to change course and instead raised flags indicating it was preparing to launch a helicopter from its deck, meaning it could not turn or change speed, the Russian ministry said in a statement.

“Acting within the framework of the international rules of navigation, the Admiral Tributs set a course for ousting the intruder from Russian territorial waters,” it said.

The Chafee eventually changed course when the two vessels were less than 60 meters apart, it said. It said the incident lasted about 50 minutes and took place in Peter the Great Bay in the west of the Sea of Japan.

RIA news agency said the Russian defense ministry summoned the U.S. military attaché, who was told the of the “unprofessional actions” of the destroyer’s crew, which had “rudely violated international laws on the prevention of collisions of vessels at sea”.

It was the second time in four months Russia has said it chased a NATO-member warship from its waters. In June, Russia accused a British destroyer of breaching its territorial waters off Crimea in the Black Sea, and said it had forced it away. Britain rejected Moscow’s account of that incident, saying at the time its ship was operating lawfully in Ukrainian waters.

Earlier on Friday, Russia said it had held joint naval drills with China in the Sea of Japan and practiced how to operate together and destroy floating enemy mines with artillery fire.

Relations between Russia and the United States are at post-Cold War lows, although President Vladimir Putin said this week he had established a solid relationship with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden and saw potential for ties to improve.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Catherine Evans and Peter Graff)

Canada’s healthcare system ‘very fragile’, even as coronavirus recedes – official

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Healthcare systems across Canada are still very fragile from efforts needed to fight COVID-19, even as signs suggest a fourth wave is starting to recede, a top medical official said on Friday.

Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said it was important for health workers to get vaccinated and prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

“Everybody’s exhausted. And if health care workers have to go into quarantine for example, after exposure, the system simply isn’t going to be sustainable,” she told a briefing. “Our health systems are still very fragile.”

Official data show that as of Oct. 8, 81% of Canadians aged 12 and over have received two shots against COVID-19.

That said, COVID-19 is still posing serious problems in the western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, which lifted most restrictions in July only to see cases soar.

“Surveillance data from this week indicates that although the virus continues to surge and present ongoing challenges in several areas … overall we’re observing a decline in COVID-19 disease activity nationally,” Tam said.

She also urged Canadians to get their annual shots against the flu, which is worst in the winter months.

“This is definitely not the year to have influenza wreak havoc,” she said.

Ontario, the most populous of the 10 provinces, on Friday began to allow residents to download proof of vaccination on to their devices as a QR code, as well as an application that will allow businesses to verify it.

While businesses such as restaurants and arenas have been required to ask for proof of vaccination since Sept. 22, this took the form of PDFs, which critics noted were easy to edit.

(Additional reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. Justice Dept. to ask Supreme Court to put Texas abortion law on hold -spokesman

(Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a restrictive Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion after a federal appeals court reinstated the law.

The U.S. Justice Department will request the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to reverse the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to lift a judge’s order blocking the law, while litigation over the dispute continues, a spokesman said.

The Texas measure, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, took effect on Sept. 1. It makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest.

The law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it more difficult to directly sue the state.

Critics of the law have said this provision lets people act as anti-abortion bounty hunters.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Brendan O’Brien; Additional reporting by Sarah Lynch; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

U.S. to lift curbs from Nov. 8 for vaccinated foreign travelers – White House

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Friday announced it will lift travel restrictions for fully vaccinated foreign nationals effective Nov. 8, at land borders and for air travel.

Curbs on non-essential travelers at land borders have been in place since March 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters first reported the announcement earlier on Friday.

Restrictions on non-U.S. citizens were first imposed on air travelers from China in January 2020 by then-President Donald Trump and then extended to dozens of other countries, without any clear metrics for how and when to lift them.

The United States had lagged many other countries in lifting such restrictions, and allies welcomed the move. The U.S. restrictions have barred travelers from most of the world, including tens of thousands of foreign nationals with relatives or business links in the United States.

The White House on Tuesday announced it would lift restrictions at its land borders and ferry crossings with Canada and Mexico for fully vaccinated foreign nationals in early November. They are similar but not identical to requirements announced last month for international air travelers.

Unvaccinated visitors will still be barred from entering the United States from Canada or Mexico at land borders.

Canada on Aug. 9 began allowing fully vaccinated U.S. visitors for non-essential travel.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Reuters last week the United States will accept the use by international visitors of COVID-19 vaccines authorized by U.S. regulators or the World Health Organization.

There are still some remaining questions to be resolved, including how and what exemptions the Biden administration will grant to the vaccine requirements.

The White House announced on Sept. 20 that the United States would lift restrictions on air travelers from 33 countries in early November. It did not disclose the precise date at the time.

Starting Nov. 8, the United States will admit fully vaccinated foreign air travelers from the 26 so-called Schengen countries in Europe, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Greece, as well as Britain, Ireland, China, India, South Africa, Iran and Brazil. The unprecedented U.S. restrictions have barred non-U.S. citizens who were in those countries within the past 14 days.

The United States has allowed foreign air travelers from more than 150 countries throughout the pandemic, a policy that critics said made little sense because some countries with high COVID-19 rates were not on the restricted list, while some on the list had the pandemic more under control.

The White House said last month it would apply vaccine requirements to foreign nationals traveling from all other countries.

Non-U.S. air travelers will need to show proof of vaccination before boarding a flight, and will need to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test. Foreign visitors crossing a land border will not need to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test.

The CDC plans to soon issue new rules on contact tracing for international air travelers.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by John Stonestreet, Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. prepares to resume Trump ‘Remain in Mexico’ asylum policy in November

By Mica Rosenberg

(Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to restart by mid-November a program begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings after a federal court deemed the termination of the program unjustified, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The administration, however, is planning to make another attempt to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly called the “Remain in Mexico” policy, even as it takes steps to comply with the August ruling by Texas-based U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the officials said.

The possible reinstatement of MPP – even on a short-term basis – would add to a confusing mix of U.S. policies in place at the Mexican border, where crossings into the United States have reached 20-year highs in recent months. The administration said it can only move forward if Mexico agrees. Officials from both countries said they are discussing the matter.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it has expressed a “number of concerns” over MPP to U.S. officials, particularly around due process, legal certainty, access to legal aid and the safety of migrants. A senior Mexican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “there is no decision at this point” about the program’s restart.

Trump, a Republican known for hardline immigration policies, created the MPP policy in 2019, arguing that many asylum claims were fraudulent and applicants allowed into the United States might end up staying illegally if they skipped court hearings. Biden, a Democrat, ended the policy soon after taking office in January as part of his pledge to take a more humane approach to border issues.

Immigration advocates have said the program exposed migrants to violence and kidnappings in dangerous border cities where people camped out for months or years in shelters or on the street waiting for U.S. asylum hearings.

Biden in March said that “I make no apology” for ending MPP, a policy he described as sending people to the “edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat.”

After the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri sued Biden over his decision to end the program, Kacsmaryk ruled in August that it must be reinstated. The U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, subsequently let Kacsmaryk’s ruling stand, rejecting a bid by Biden’s administration to block it.

The administration has said it will comply with Kacsmaryk’s ruling “in good faith” while continuing its appeal in the case. The administration also plans to issue a fresh memo to terminate the program in the hopes it will resolve any legal concerns surrounding the previous one, officials said.

“Re-implementation is not something that the administration has wanted to do,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a call with reporters. “But in the interim we are under this obligation of the court.”

In a court filing late on Thursday the administration said that “although MPP is not yet operational,” they are taking all the steps necessary to re-implement it by next month.

Those steps include preparing courts, some housed in tents, near the border where asylum hearings could be held. The administration said in the filing that these facilities will take about 30 days to build, costing approximately $14.1 million to erect and $10.5 million per month to operate.

The filing said the aim is for MPP to span the entire Southwestern border, which the government deemed preferable to it operating only in certain areas.

At the same time, Biden has left in place another policy that Trump implemented in March 2020 early in the COVID-19 pandemic that allows for most migrants caught crossing the border to be rapidly expelled for public health reasons, with no type of asylum screening. One DHS official said that policy will continue.

Mexico has also expressed its concern over this policy, known as Title 42, which the foreign ministry said incentivizes repeat crossings and puts migrants at risk.

In a win for Mexico on a separate front, the United States said this week it will lift restrictions at its legal ports of entry for fully vaccinated foreign nationals in early November, ending curbs on nonessential travelers during the pandemic.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis)