Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Lava from La Palma volcano burns cement plant, prompting lockdown

LA PALMA, Spain (Reuters) – A stream of red-hot lava gushing from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma engulfed a cement plant on Monday, raising a thick cloud of smoke and prompting authorities to order people in the area into lockdown.

Local emergency service instructed residents in the towns of El Paso and Los Llanos de Aridane to remain indoors, and to shut their windows, shades and air conditioning devices to avoid inhaling toxic fumes from the burning plant as it was being gradually swallowed by the lava.

“Lock down, if possible, in the most inner rooms,” the emergency service said via its Twitter account.

Miguel Angel Morcuende, the technical director of the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan said the fire at the plant had “produced a very dense smoke that sullied the air.”

The area affected by the lava in the eruption that began on Sept. 19 has expanded 10% overnight, reaching nearly 600 hectares, he said.

Following the partial collapse of the volcano’s cone on Saturday, a new river of lava streamed towards the sea, devouring banana and avocado plantations and most of the remaining houses in the town of Todoque.

Torrents of molten rock have destroyed 1,186 buildings in the three weeks since the eruption, the Canary Islands Volcanic Institute said.

About 6,000 people have been evacuated from their homes on La Palma, which has about 83,000 inhabitants.

(Reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Juan Medina, writing by Inti Landauro; editing by Andrei Khalip and Bernadette Baum)

AstraZeneca antibody cocktail study shows success treating COVID-19

By Ludwig Burger, Yadarisa Shabong and Sachin Ravikumar

(Reuters) -AstraZeneca’s antibody cocktail against COVID-19, which has proven to work as a preventative shot in the non-infected, was also shown to save lives and prevent severe disease when given as treatment within a week of first symptoms.

The drug, a combination of two antibodies called AZD7442, reduced the risk of severe COVID-19 or death by 50% in non-hospitalized patients who have had symptoms for seven days or less, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker said on Monday.

The risk reduction was even better in patients who started therapy within just five days of initial symptoms, but AstraZeneca joins an already crowded field of medicines that were shown to prevent deterioration in patients with mild disease when given soon after diagnosis.

AstraZeneca executive Mene Pangalos said in a media call that the treatment results would mainly underscore the potential future use as a non-vaccine prevention.

“If and when this is approved it will be used in the treatment setting as well. But the real differentiator for this antibody is going to be in the prophylactic setting,” he said.

Similar therapies made with a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies are being developed by Regeneron, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline with partner Vir. These therapies are approved for emergency use in the United States for treating mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

Regeneron’s therapy showed 72% protection against symptomatic infection in the first week, and 93% after that.

GSK-Vir’s showed a 79% reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death due to any cause, while Eli Lilly’s therapy showed a 70% reduction in viral load at day seven compared to a placebo.

Merck & Co Inc, in turn, is emphasizing the convenience of use of its anti-COVID-19 tablet, which cut the risk of having to got to hospital or of dying by 50% in a trial of early-stage patients who had at least one risk factor.

Merck, collaborating with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, on Monday applied for U.S. emergency clearance for the oral drug.

AstraZeneca, whose COVID-19 vaccine has been widely used across the globe, asked U.S. regulators last week to grant emergency use authorization for AZD7442 as a preventative shot.

As such, it is designed to protect people who do not have a strong enough immune response to vaccines, primarily those who have received organ transplants or who are in cancer care.

If full market clearance is obtained after any emergency approval the market could widen, for instance, to include crew and passengers of a cruise ship, said Pangalos.

“You can say the same for people who don’t want to be vaccinated but want an antibody,” he added.

AstraZeneca said it is submitting the new treatment data on AZD7442 to global health regulators.

The trial took place across 13 countries and involved more than 900 adult participants, 90% of whom suffered from conditions that made the particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, such as cancer and diabetes. One half receiving AZD7442 and the rest a placebo.

Full trial results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, AstraZeneca said.

AZD7442 contains laboratory-made antibodies designed to linger in the body for months to contain the virus in case of an infection. A vaccine, in contrast, relies on an intact immune system to develop targeted antibodies and infection-fighting cells.

While Monday’s results cover the use of AZD7442 in non-hospitalized patients, a separate trial is also studying its use as a treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Kirsten Donovan and Alexander Smith)

After mass cancellations, Southwest expects flights to normalize this week

(Reuters) -Southwest Airlines Co said on Monday it expects to resume normal service this week after cancelling more than 1,900 scheduled flights over the weekend, blaming unfavorable weather and air traffic issues in Florida.

The airline had canceled 1,124 flights, or 30% of its daily operation, on Sunday and more than 800 trips on Saturday, according to data from flight tracking platform flightaware.com. The website also showed nearly 350 cancellations on Monday.

Southwest, whose shares fell about 4% in early trading, did not give the number of cancellations, but said it was “significant.”

“While we work to stabilize our operations, we anticipate to resume normal service this week,” the airline said in a reply to a tweet from a flier asking about a canceled flight.

Meanwhile, its pilots union has denied speculation on social media that the cancellations were due to their action.

The union said in a statement on Saturday that it was “aware of operational difficulties” but its pilots were “not participating in any official or unofficial job actions.”

It had last week said it would file a temporary restraining order to stop Southwest from complying with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors, which included major airlines.

Alan Kasher, Southwest’s executive vice president of daily operations, told employees on Sunday that while the airline was staffed for the weekend, it did not anticipate the size of the disruptions.

“And as we’ve seen before, an unexpected number of delays ultimately leads to a staffing shortage, and at times, mandatory overtime because of the longer operating day,” he wrote on the company’s intranet.

“Although we’ve made schedule adjustments leading into the fall, our route system has not fully recovered—that will take time.”

The Federal Aviation Authority said no air traffic staffing shortages had been reported since Friday, but that some airlines were experiencing scheduling challenges due to aircraft and crews being out of place.

(Reporting by Sinéad Carew, David Shepardson and Uday Sampath; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Arun Koyyur)

In Mexico, hundreds of U.S.-bound migrants found packed in trucks

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Police in northern Mexico discovered more than 600 Central American migrants hiding in three long cargo trucks headed to the United States late on Thursday, in one of the biggest round-ups of U.S.-bound migrants by Mexican authorities in years.

Video released by police showed officers prying off a lock from a truck’s rear door and opening it only to find migrants in heavy coats and hoods huddled close together on the floor, nearly all of them wearing face masks.

Almost 200 of the 652 migrants found in the non-descript white refrigerated trucks were unaccompanied children and teens, the police said in a statement.

Waves of mostly Central American migrants as well as a recent surge of Haitians seeking entry into the United States have frustrated both U.S. and Mexican leaders determined to reduce the massive human flow fleeing poverty, violence and natural disasters in their home countries.

A security source told Reuters the migrants found in the trucks were almost 90% Guatemalans and had been transported to a nearby migrant center in Tamaulipas where their legal status would be reviewed. Hondurans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and one migrant from Belize were also among those being processed, the source added.

On Friday, the migrants were given COVID-19 tests and at least nine came back positive, though most have only mild symptoms, officials said.

The trucks were pulled over on a highway in the northern Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas, some 220 miles (350 km) south of McAllen, Texas, and near the sites of several gruesome migrant massacres in recent years blamed on drug gangs who fight over lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

Four other individuals were arrested by police, but it was not clear if they were suspected of being the smugglers.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Soldiers, prisoners, displaced people vote early ahead of Iraq election

By John Davison and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Soldiers, prisoners and displaced people voted in special early polls in Iraq on Friday as the country prepared for a Sunday general election where turnout will show how much faith voters have left in a still young democratic system.

Many Iraqis say they will not vote, having watched established parties they do not trust sweep successive elections and bring little improvement to their lives.

Groups drawn from the Shi’ite Muslim majority are expected to remain in the driving seat, as has been the case since Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led government was ousted in 2003.

Iraq is safer than it has been for years and violent sectarianism is less of a feature than ever since Iraq vanquished Islamic State in 2017 with the help of an international military coalition and Iran.

But endemic corruption and mismanagement has meant many people in the country of about 40 million are without work, and lack healthcare, education and electricity.

Friday’s early ballot included voting among the population of more than one million people who are still displaced from the battle against Islamic State.

Some said they were either unable or unwilling to vote.

“I got married in the displacement camp where I live, and neither I nor my husband will vote,” said a 45-year-old woman who gave her name as Umm Amir. She spoke by phone and did not want to disclose her exact location.

“Politicians visited us before the last election (in 2018) and promised to help us return to our towns. That never materialized. We’ve been forgotten.”

Most of Iraq’s displaced live in the majority Sunni north of the country.

The south, the heartlands of the Shi’ite parties, was spared the destruction wrought by Islamic State but infrastructure and services are in a poor state.

2019 PROTESTS

In 2019, mass anti-government protests swept across Baghdad and the south, toppled a government and forced the current government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to hold this election six months early.

The government also introduced a new voting law that it says will bring more independent voices into parliament and can help reform. It has been trying to encourage a greater turnout.

The reality, according to many Iraqis, Western diplomats and analysts, is that the bigger, more established parties will sweep the vote once again.

Dozens of activists who oppose those parties have been threatened and killed since the 2019 protests, scaring many reformists into not participating in the vote. Iraqi officials blame armed groups with links to Iran for the killings, a charge those groups deny.

(Reporting by John Davison, Ahmed Rasheed, Baghdad newsroom; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Texas abortion provider resumes services after judge blocks near-total ban

By Julia Harte and Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – A day after a federal judge blocked Texas’ near-total abortion ban, at least one provider in the state said it had resumed services on Thursday for patients seeking to terminate pregnancies beyond the law’s limit of about six weeks.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, told reporters that since the law went into effect on Sept. 1, the provider with four clinics in Texas had put patients on a waiting list if their pregnancies had advanced beyond the legal limit.

“So those folks were able to come in and we did provide them with abortion care today,” Hagstrom Miller said during a call on with reporters.

She did not say which clinics had resumed services or how many abortions they had provided.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin on Wednesday blocked the state from enforcing the law while litigation over its legality continues. The Republican-backed measure empowers private citizens to enforce the ban, and Texas immediately appealed the ruling to the conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit Appeals Court.

The law has become a flashpoint in a national battle over abortion rights as Republican lawmakers in other states try to pass similar legislation. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Mississippi case testing Roe v. Wade, its landmark 1973 decision that established the nationwide right to abortion access.

Drexel University law professor David Cohen said Texas clinics that resume their previous abortion services while the law is blocked will be in a “very precarious position.” A clause in the law says providers can still be sued if the law goes back into effect after being struck down by a court.

Cohen said that even if Pitman’s injunction against the law were upheld by the Supreme Court on appeal, it could still be dissolved by a subsequent decision overturning Roe v. Wade, because that decision was the basis for Pitman’s ruling.

Hagstrom Miller said the retroactive clause was concerning for many medical professionals.

“Any abortion you provide, even with an injunction, could be seen as criminal a year from now, six months from now – and you could be held accountable for every one of those. It’s pretty daunting to think about that,” she said.

Anti-abortion advocates said that if Pitman’s ruling is reversed on appeal, they will sue providers who have resumed abortion services.

“As this case develops, if there’s an opportunity for lawsuits or for enforcement in the future, that’s something that the pro-life movement is very interested in,” said John Seago, legislative director for anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life.

Other Texas abortion providers acknowledged they were worried about the state’s vow to appeal the injunction to a conservative-leaning appeals court.

“Given the state’s appeal, our health centers may not have the days or even weeks it could take to navigate new patients through Texas’s onerous abortion restrictions,” the leaders of Planned Parenthood South Texas, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and Planned Parenthood Greater Texas said in a joint statement.

Molly Duane, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents several Texas clinics fighting the law, said abortion providers were in a difficult situation.

“There are independent providers across the state that are working to reopen full services and are doing so wary of the fact that the Fifth Circuit may take away this injunction at any moment,” she said.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and David Gregorio)

Milestone global corporate tax deal finally gets agreement

By Leigh Thomas

PARIS (Reuters) – A global deal to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation has been agreed after Ireland, Estonia and Hungary agreed to sign up to the elusive landmark accord.

The agreement aims to end a four-decade-long “race to the bottom” by governments that have sought to attract investment and jobs by taxing multinational companies only lightly and allowing them to shop around for low tax rates.

Negotiations have been going on for four years, moving online during the pandemic, with support for a deal from U.S. President Joe Biden and the costs of COVID-19 giving additional impetus in recent months.

Out of the 140 countries involved, 136 supported the deal with developing countries Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka abstaining for now.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has been leading the talks, said that the deal would cover 90% of the global economy.

“Today we have taken another important step towards more tax justice,” German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“We now have a clear path to a fairer tax system, where large global players pay their fair share wherever they do business,” Scholz’s British counterpart Rishi Sunak said.

The agreement will set a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% and let governments tax a greater share of foreign multinationals’ profits.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen called the deal a victory for American families as well as international business.

“We’ve turned tireless negotiations into decades of increased prosperity – for both America and the world. Today’s agreement represents a once-in-a-generation accomplishment for economic diplomacy,” Yellen said in a statement.

The OECD said that the minimum rate would see countries collect around $150 billion in new revenues annually while taxing rights on more than $125 billion of profit would be shifted to countries where big multinationals earn their income.

The deal aims to prevent big groups from booking profits in low-tax countries like Ireland regardless of where their clients are, an issue that has become ever more pressing with the rise of tech giants that easily do business across borders.

Ireland, Estonia and Hungary, all low tax countries that had held out, dropped their objections this week as a compromise emerged on a deduction from the minimum rate for multinationals with real physical business activities abroad.

But some developing countries seeking a higher minimum tax rate say their interests have been sidelined to accommodate the interests of richer countries like Ireland, which had refused to sign a deal with a minimum tax rate higher than 15%.

Argentine Economy Minister Martin Guzman said on Thursday that proposals on the table forced developing countries to chose between “something bad and something worse”.

The OECD said that the deal would next go to the Group of 20 economic powers to formally endorse at a finance ministers’ meeting in Washington next Wednesday and then on to a G20 leaders summit at the end of the month in Rome for final approval.

However, there remains some question about the U.S. position which depends in part on tough domestic tax reform negotiations going on in Congress.

Countries that back the deal are supposed to bring it onto their law books next year so that it can take effect from 2023, which many officials close to the talks describe as extremely tight.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Additional reporting by Christian Kraemer in Berlin and Elizabeth Piper in London, Editing by Catherine Evans and Alexander Smith)

Russia says at least 49,389 people died from COVID-19 in Aug

MOSCOW (Reuters) – At least 49,389 people died in Russia in August due to the coronavirus and related causes, taking the toll to around 418,000 people since the pandemic began, state statistic service Rosstat said on Friday.

Russian authorities blame the spread of the more contagious Delta variant and a low vaccination rate for the third wave of coronavirus infections, which peaked in July.

In July, Russia saw the highest monthly coronavirus death toll of the pandemic as 51,044 people died from COVID-19 or related causes that month, the figure revised recently after the first publication.

The number reported by Rosstat exceeds the official total death toll of 214,485, published by the Russian coronavirus task force earlier on Friday.

Authorities explained the discrepancy between Rosstat and coronavirus task force data by the fact that the latter 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 August 2021 had reached 575,000 in comparison with the average mortality rate in 2015-2019.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Alison Williams)

Moderna aims to deliver 1 billion more vaccine doses to low-income countries in 2022

(Reuters) -Moderna Inc said on Friday it aims to deliver one billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries in 2022, in addition to the doses it has already committed to the global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX.

These vaccines will be part of the 2-3 billion doses the company had forecast to produce next year.

“To date, more than 250 million people have been vaccinated globally with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. However, we recognize that access to vaccines continues to be a challenge in many parts of the world,” Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said in a letter posted on the company’s website.

Moderna on Thursday announced plans to invest up to $500 million to build a factory in Africa to make up to 500 million doses of mRNA vaccines each year, including its COVID-19 shot.

The company had committed in May to supply up to 500 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the COVAX facility from the fourth quarter of 2021 through 2022.

“We are committed to doubling our manufacturing and expanding supply even further until our vaccine is no longer needed in low-income countries,” Bancel said.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Vinay Dwivedi)

U.S. troops rotating into Taiwan for training -sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Small numbers of U.S. special operations forces have been rotating into Taiwan on a temporary basis to train with Taiwanese forces, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon, which historically has not disclosed details about U.S. training or advising of Taiwan forces, did not specifically comment on or confirm the deployment.

“I don’t have any comments on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would like to highlight that our support for and defense relationship with Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” said Pentagon spokesman John Supple.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry declined to comment, saying only that “all military exchanges are carried out in accordance with annual plans”.

Asked on Friday about reports on the U.S. troops, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the United States should cease military ties and arms sales to Taiwan to avoid damaging bilateral relations.

“The U.S. side should fully recognize the great sensitivity of the Taiwan issue,” he told a regular daily briefing.

“China will take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

China sees Taiwan as a wayward province and has not ruled out taking the island by force. Taiwan says it is an independent country and will defend its democracy and freedom.

The sources declined to say how long the training had been going on but suggested it predated the Biden administration, which came into office in January.

While at least one Asian media outlet has previously reported on such training, any kind of official U.S. confirmation could further aggravate U.S.-China relations at a time when Beijing is carrying out muscular military exercises near Taiwan. The Wall Street Journal published details on the training, citing unidentified U.S. officials, earlier on Thursday.

“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Beijing is aware of this,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, noting a social media post during the Trump administration about training by special operations forces.

“Making this public will compel the Chinese to react, and they will likely do so by stepping up pressure on Taiwan.”

Democratic Representative Ami Bera, who leads the House Foreign Affairs’ subcommittee on Asia, was asked at a defense conference if he had been made aware of the deployment.

“Not particularly this deployment, if I call it a deployment. I think we have special operators and others there, and we have in the past that are there training (Taiwan’s) military, working with them,” Bera said.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the same event he had not been made specifically aware and had only seen public reports, but added: “Actually I would be happier if that number was in the hundreds.”

The United States is Taiwan’s largest supplier of weaponry and has long offered some degree of training on weapons systems, as well as detailed advice on ways to strengthen its military to guard against an invasion by China’s Peoples Liberation Army.

Chinese military aircraft have repeatedly flown in recent days through Taiwan’s expansive air defense identification zone, which extends well outside Taiwan’s airspace.

But China has avoided Taiwanese airspace, no shots have been fired and there have been no known close calls between Chinese and Taiwanese aircraft.

The Taiwanese government has denounced China’s military exercises and says it will defend the island’s freedom and democracy, insisting that only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Editing by Dan Grebler and Kim Coghill)