Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Blinken meets Lopez Obrador to soothe thorny U.S.-Mexico relations

By Simon Lewis

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Mexico on Friday held talks with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, trying to mend fractious ties as the two nations hash out a new security cooperation accord and deal with a jump in migration.

The top U.S. diplomat visits Mexico at a time when the Biden administration is increasingly reliant on its southern neighbor to stem the flow of Latin American migrants heading to the United States.

Blinken’s visit is part of the Biden administration’s first U.S.-Mexico High-Level Security Dialogue, in which the two countries will negotiate a sweeping new agreement on how to tackle everything from drug flows to the United States to the smuggling of U.S.-made guns into Mexico.

Lopez Obrador took Blinken on a mural tour of the National Palace before the two delegations had a working breakfast, where the Mexican leader invited U.S. President Joe Biden to visit.

Blinken said Lopez Obrador’s earlier comments were “exactly in line” with what Biden has in mind for the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

“I’m very inspired by the vision you expressed. The work now we have to do to translate that into reality, into truly a transformational partnership, a shared responsibility,” Blinken said at the start of the breakfast meeting.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accompanied Blinken, who is also meeting with Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.

U.S.-Mexico relations suffered a major blow last October when U.S. anti-narcotics agents arrested Mexican former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos, outraging the Mexican government. Cienfuegos was freed, but the detention strained relations and hurt security cooperation.

U.S. officials are touting the new security accord as broader than the previous agreement, the Merida Initiative, under which the United States channeled about $3.3 billion to help Mexico fight crime.

Launched in 2007, the Merida Initiative initially provided military equipment for Mexican forces and later helped train Mexico’s security forces and the judiciary. But Lopez Obrador has been a vocal critic of the program, saying it was tainted by its association with previous governments and for financing security equipment in the 2000s.

Mexican officials say the new agreement will likely focus on the exchange of information, the root causes of violence, and stemming the flow of U.S.-made guns to Mexico, a key point of concern for Lopez Obrador.

But negotiating a new agreement will be painful. The United States wants a more muscular approach to battling drug cartels while Lopez Obrador prefers softer and less confrontational methods to fighting gangs, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security and foreign policy analyst.

“There is a minimal area of overlap,” said Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The U.S. is in an awkward position here because the Lopez Obrador administration is very comfortable with ending security cooperation.”

What is more, the talks about the new security cooperation may be overshadowed by immigration concerns.

A surge in the number of Haitian and Latin American migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border plunged the Biden administration into another crisis last month and underlined Washington’s reliance on Mexico to help stem the flow.

Mexico’s importance in managing immigration has given the Lopez Obrador administration leverage to pursue more independent policies in other areas, Mexican officials say privately.

During the U.S. presidential transition early this year, Mexico made it tougher for American law enforcement agents to operate in the country. Mexico has also delayed visas for U.S. anti-narcotics officers, the U.S. media has reported.

A senior Mexican security official said there was optimism about the new agreement on the Mexican side and there may be scope to review the restrictions imposed on U.S. agents operating on Mexican soil, but the conditions cannot return to how they were before Cienfuegos’ arrest.

“I think part of the U.S. government knows that that’s not possible,” the Mexican official said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in WashingtonWriting by Drazen JorgicEditing by Leslie Adler and Alistair Bell)

Factbox: Countries respond to heart inflammation risk from mRNA shots

(Reuters) – Some countries have halted altogether or are giving only one dose of COVID shots based on so-called mRNA technology to teens following reports of possible rare cardiovascular side effects.

Europe’s drug regulator said in July it had found a possible link between a very rare inflammatory heart condition and COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

However, the benefits of mRNA shots in preventing COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks, European and U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization have said.

Here are some of the steps some countries are taking:

CANADA

The Public Health Agency of Canada said data suggested that reported cases of rare heart inflammation were higher after Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine compared with the Pfizer/BioNTech shots.

SWEDEN

Sweden paused the use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for younger groups, citing data from a yet unpublished Nordic study.

The Swedish health agency said it would pause using the shot for people born in 1991 and later as data pointed to an increase of myocarditis and pericarditis among youths and young adults that had been vaccinated.

DENMARK

The Danish Health Agency said on Friday that it was continuing to offer Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to under-18s, and that a statement on Wednesday suggesting a suspension had in fact been a miscommunication.

FINLAND

Finland paused the use of Moderna’s vaccines for younger people and instead would give Pfizer’s vaccine to men born in 1991 and later. It offers shots to those aged 12 and over.

HONG KONG

A panel of health experts advising the Hong Kong government has recommended in September children aged 12-17 should get only one dose of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine after reports of heart inflammation as a side effect.

NORWAY

Norway is giving one dose of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to children aged 12-15.

UNITED KINGDOM

Britain has been offering all 12-15-year-olds a first a shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Second doses would not be offered to the age group until at least spring when there may be more data from around the world.

(Compiled by Antonis Triantafyllou; Editing by Anna Pruchnicka and Tomasz Janowski)

Suicide bomber kills 46 at Afghanistan mosque – state news agency

KABUL (Reuters) -A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunduz province on Friday, killing 46 people and wounding more than 140, the state-run Bakhtar news agency said.

Video footage showed bodies surrounded by debris inside the mosque that is used by people from the minority Shi’ite Muslim community.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. The blast follows several attacks, including one at a mosque in Kabul, in recent weeks, some of which have been claimed by the Sunni Muslim militants of Islamic State.

The attacks have underscored security challenges for the Taliban, which took over the country in August and have since carried out operations against Islamic State cells in Kabul.

“This afternoon, an explosion took place in a mosque of our Shiite compatriots … as a result of which a number of our compatriots were martyred and wounded,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

Bakhtar news agency, run by the ministry of information, said 46 people were killed and 143 wounded in the blast.

(Reporting by Kabul and Islamabad newsrooms; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield and Alasdair Pal; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Andrew Heavens)

Migrants’ hopes dashed by surprise deportation to Haiti from U.S. border

By Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Haitian migrant Nikel Norassaint did not know where he was headed when Mexican migration officials put him on a flight last week in the southeastern city of Villahermosa, days after they had detained him near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The sea below was his only clue until the plane touched down in Port-au-Prince a few hours later, his first time in the country in five years.

“I said, ‘Wow, I’m in Haiti,'” Norassaint, 49, recalled. “My heart almost stopped.”

Norassaint, who has lived abroad for two decades, and another Haitian migrant on the flight said they were stunned to be returned to their homeland without warning.

They joined some 7,000 people expelled to Haiti from the United States after more than double that number amassed last month at an encampment in Del Rio, Texas on the Mexican border. Mexico has sent 200 people total back to Haiti as well.

Migrant advocacy groups and even a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti have condemned deportations to the Caribbean country beset by poverty and violence as inhumane, casting doubt on pledges from both the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to aid struggling migrants.

Norassaint said he had been hopeful that Biden, who had advocated for a “humane” immigration policy, had “opened the door” for migrants when he crossed into Del Rio to seek entry to the United States.

But he decamped to Mexico once word began to spread of U.S. deportations. Migration officials detained him in the city of Ciudad Acuna opposite Del Rio and then bused him 930 miles (1,500 km) south to Villahermosa.

The Mexican government’s National Migration Institute (INM) had described the Sept. 29 flight to Port-au-Prince with 70 migrants on board as “voluntary assisted return.”

But for Norassaint, who lived in the Dominican Republic for 16 years before resettling in Chile in 2018, nothing about going back to Haiti was a matter of choice.

“There’s no work, it’s unsafe, there was an earthquake, many people are dead,” he said, noting even President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July.

When asked about Norassaint’s experience, Mexico’s migration institute said it followed legal administrative protocol to return people to Haiti.

MIGRATION POLICY OF ‘EUPHEMISMS’

Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of Human Rights Watch in the Americas, said in an opinion article on Sunday that the group has documented past instances of Mexican officials pressuring migrants to agree to “voluntary” returns, and described the country’s migration policy as “riddled with euphemisms.”

The migration institute sent another 130 migrants back to Haiti by plane on Wednesday; that flight was not labeled “voluntary.” A video of migrants boarding the plane, filmed by a migrant rights activist and posted on social media, showed one man jumping from the stairs and dashing across the tarmac.

Norassaint is now staying with family in the coastal city of Miragoane and asking relatives in the United States to send money because he cannot withdraw funds from his Chilean bank account.

His 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old stepson are still in Mexico with their mother.

Another man on the flight, Alfred, also mourned his surprise deportation to Haiti after he left the country in 2009 to live in the Dominican Republic, and then Chile.

He hoped to reach the United States to escape worsening discrimination in Chile, but hung back in Mexico to avoid deportation.

Officials detained Alfred, who requested anonymity because of Haiti’s precarious security situation, as he was leaving his hotel in Ciudad Acuna to buy food and supplies for his wife, who is two months pregnant.

Alfred had made it to Mexico by following tips in a WhatsApp group while his wife took a plane so she would not need to risk her life crossing the jungle between Colombia and Panama.

During the week in migration detention, he was allowed to make one brief call to his wife, who said she was making her way to the northern border city of Tijuana.

“I’m about to have a heart attack, thinking I left my wife behind,” Alfred said. “We’ve been together for ten years. Look where she is now, and I’m here.”

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Analysis-Judge’s ruling on Texas abortion ban a warning to copycats, for now

By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge’s decision blocking Texas’ near-total abortion ban is a warning to other states considering similar measures, though it too could be overturned by a higher court in the coming weeks.

Texas’ law banning the procedure from six weeks, a point when many women may not even be aware they are pregnant, took effect last month after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a to halt it from taking effect, in a late-night decision that took no stance on the law’s constitutionality.

Rather, the Supreme Court allowed it to stand due to an unusual mechanism that leaves it up to private citizens to enforce the ban through civil lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets” a woman obtaining an abortion – and provides a $10,000 bounty for those who do.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin late Wednesday blasted the law as a “flagrant violation” of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

Pitman, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said he was particularly troubled by how the law named S.B. 8 outsources enforcement to private citizens, calling this an “unprecedented and aggressive scheme” to limit legal challenges.

That, legal experts said, was a clear warning to at least 12 other states contemplating similar action, including Florida, South Carolina and South Dakota, that there is now a route for the U.S. Department of Justice to challenge the structure of the ban.

“We are still at the early stages, and a lot depends on the court and judge assigned to the case,” said David Noll, a professor at Rutgers Law School. “But this is a first cut at the what the DOJ can do in response to this sort of law.”

Since the law went into effect, the four Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinics across Texas have seen patient visits plummet, some staff quit, and recruitment efforts falter. After the decision it said it was making plans to resume abortions up to 18 weeks “as soon as possible.”

DESIGNED TO AVOID CHALLENGE

By deputizing enforcement to private citizens, the law deliberately tried to insulate Texas from legal challenges filed in the federal court system, Pitman said.

“Rather than subjecting its law to judicial review under the Constitution, the State deliberately circumvented the traditional process,” the judge wrote. “It drafted the law with the intent to preclude review by federal courts that have the obligation to safeguard the very rights the statute likely violates.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican defending the law in court, said in a statement that his office disagreed with Pitman’s decision and was appealing to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The sanctity of human life is, and will always be, a top priority for me,” Paxton said.

At a recent court hearing, Paxton’s office argued the law was not designed to evade judicial review, and that offering incentives for private lawsuits is neither unusual nor unlawful.

For now, Pitman’s ruling is “a warning” to anti-abortion lawmakers who want to mimic the Texas approach to enforcing an abortion ban, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Florida Republicans have already introduced a copycat bill with this mechanism, and lawmakers in Georgia, Arizona and West Virginia have said they want to follow Texas’ private enforcement approach.

But Levinson cautioned that Pitman’s ruling could be reversed, either by the Fifth Circuit or eventually the Supreme Court.

“I hope I’m wrong but I just don’t see a long lifespan for Judge Pitman’s ruling,” said Levinson, who called the Fifth Circuit the most conservative of the intermediate federal appeals courts one step below the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, on Dec. 1 hears arguments in a separate case involving a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi has asked the high court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

John Seago, the legislative director for anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, said the organization believes Judge Pitman will be reversed on appeal.

“We believe Senate Bill 8 is going to be upheld,” Seago said, adding that a “typical route” for this sort of case is a federal judge in Western Texas ruling in favor of liberal advocates but then getting reversed on appeal.

Florida State Representative Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando, said Republican lawmakers in her state should take heed from Pitman’s ruling and drop their plans for copying S.B. 8’s approach to enforcement.

“This sends a really strong message to those politicians that this sort of scheme is unlawful,” she said.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

Flash flooding in parts of Alabama kills one, prompts several rescues

(Reuters) -Heavy rain flooded parts of Alabama near Birmingham late on Wednesday, killing at least one person, closing roads and prompting several water rescues after a flash-flood emergency was issued for several counties.

Flash flooding was blamed for the death of a child in Arab, about 65 miles (105 km) north of Birmingham, the Marshall County Coroner’s Office said early on Thursday.

The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) said numerous people had been rescued from vehicles stuck in water and that homes and roads were flooded, with the rains forming and moving into areas already suffering from significant and life-threatening flooding.

The NWS issued a flash flood emergency late Wednesday for Shelby and Jefferson counties in Alabama, where weather stations recorded 5-10 inches (13-25 cm) of rain in a day.

“While heavy rainfall has ended at this time, runoff is resulting in continued significant flooding w/major impacts. Elsewhere, areas of rain continue into the night,” the NWS said in a tweet early Thursday.

Birmingham receives an average of about 3.34 inches of rain in October, according to CNN, which means some areas received around double the precipitation they normally receive in an entire month.

“We’ve had numerous water rescues, people trapped in cars and rescued by fire departments and police departments, and we’ve had damage reports of trees on houses and trees on roadways, and it’s really across the entire Birmingham metro area,” Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Coker told CNN.

(Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich)

‘Containergeddon’: Supply crisis drives Walmart and rivals to hire their own ships

By Lisa Baertlein, Jonathan Saul and Siddharth Cavale

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Flying Buttress once glided across the oceans carrying vital commodities like grain to all corners of the world.

Now it bears a different treasure: Paw Patrol Movie Towers, Batmobile Transformers and Baby Alive Lulu Achoo dolls.

The dry bulk cargo ship has been drafted into the service of retail giant Walmart, which is chartering its own vessels in an effort to beat the global supply chain disruptions that threaten to torpedo the retail industry’s make-or-break holiday season.

“Chartering vessels is just one example of investments we’ve made to move products as quickly as possible,” said Joe Metzger, U.S. executive vice president of supply-chain operations at Walmart, which has hired a number of vessels this year.

The aim is to bypass log-jammed ports and secure scarce ship space at a time when COVID-19, as well as U.S.-China trade ructions, equipment shortages and extreme weather, have exposed the fragility of the globe-spanning supply lines we use for everything from food and fashion to drinks and diapers.

More than 60 container ships carrying clothing, furniture and electronics worth billions of dollars are stuck outside Los Angeles and Long Beach terminals, waiting to unload, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.

Pre-pandemic, it was unusual for more than one ship to be  in the  waiting lane at the No. 1 U.S. port complex, which handles more than half of all American imports.

Other big retail players, such as Target, Home Depot, Costco and Dollar Tree, have said they are chartering ships to deal with the pandemic-driven slowdown of sea networks that handle 90% of the world’s trade.

Or, as Steve Ferreira of shipping consultancy Ocean Audit describes the escalating concern: “Containergeddon.”

U.S. retailers’ traditional lifeline from Asia is freezing up due to a resurgence of COVID-19 in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia plus a power-supply crunch in China. The supply snarls coincide with booming demand as consumers spend more on goods than going out, and the festive shopping frenzy nears.

Burt Flickinger, managing director at retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group, said at least 20-25% of the goods stuck on ships were unlikely  to make it onto shelves in time for the Nov. 26 Black Friday kickoff for the holiday shopping season, a period when retailers make more than a third of their profits.

ROUTE FOR GREAT PROFIT

The biggest chains are taking matters into their own hands.

In a typical year, Walmart would have moved those toys from China to Los Angeles in hundreds of 40-foot (12-metre) cargo boxes stacked like colorful Lego bricks on gigantic container vessels that serve multiple customers.

But 2021 is far from typical. Incoming cargo at the Port of Los Angeles is up 30% from last year’s record levels. Trucks and trains can’t remove it fast enough, leading to logjams, said the port’s Executive Director Gene Seroka, reflecting the surge in consumer demand.

“It’s like taking 10 lanes of freeway traffic and squeezing them into five,” Seroka said.

Chartered ships that offer valuable cargo space and can sidestep the container terminals play a critical role in this second pandemic holiday season, particularly for time-sensitive goods like Christmas sweaters that won’t sell if they arrive too late.

The Flying Buttress, for example, entered Los Angeles waters on Aug. 21. It got stuck in a queue outside the port before it bypassed clogged terminals and unloaded its goods at a separately operated bulk cargo dock nearby on Aug. 31, according to Refinitiv data and shipping records.

During that voyage, Walmart circumvented the shortage of 40-foot containers typically used for global shipping by switching to bigger 53-foot containers that are almost exclusively used to move goods by truck and train within the United States.

Other companies are also playing the shipping game including Home Depot which said it was “creatively working to obtain additional capacity.”

The home improvement retailer dodged the Los Angeles gridlock by sending its Great Profit charter ship nearly 125 miles south to the Port of San Diego.

On Sept. 15, the ship’s onboard cranes hoisted 7-foot Halloween “Spellcasting witches,” Christmas lights and other holiday decor onto docks there, said Ocean Audit CEO Ferreira, who helps shipping customers claw back overpayments.

“This is the home stretch. They’re doing whatever it takes” to win in an overheated market, he said of retailers.

WHY PORT SIZE MATTERS

Yet there is a limit to such workarounds.

Great Profit moored at a terminal that handles everything from sugar to windmill blades but can only accommodate a maximum of 500 containers from one to two ships per month between now and the end of the year, said Greg Borossay, the port’s maritime business development principal.

That’s because San Diego, like many other U.S. seaports, doesn’t have the towering gantry cranes needed to pluck boxes from massive ships. Rail service is equipped for autos and other specialty cargo. And, roads in surrounding commercial and residential areas aren’t set up for the fleets of trucks needed to whisk thousands of containers to other parts of the country.

“We’d have a very unhappy community if we had 3,000 (boxes) coming off a ship,” Borossay added.

Not all retailers will hire ships to support sales, and other factors could be significant in picking out potential winners and losers.

Clothing and accessory retailers have seen their inventories decline even as sales have accelerated, stoking worries about sell-outs, said Jason Miller, associate professor of logistics at Michigan State University’s business college.

General merchandise retailers like Walmart and Target, on the other hand have done a better job of keeping inventory on pace with sales, he added.

PAYING $20,000 PER CONTAINER

The global supply crunch is providing lucrative opportunities for bulk cargo ship operators, though; they are cashing in on a record spike in container shipping rates that has sent freight costs above $20,000 per box on the biggest liner vessels.

Global container shipping players like AP Moller Maersk and Hapag Lloyd, are flush with cash from the soaring rates. Major lines are “putting in every ship we can find”, Hapag Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said.

Several shipping sources said other firms were snapping up second-hand container vessels of all sizes.

Hong Kong-based Taylor Maritime, which according to shipping databases manages the Flying Buttress, did not respond to a request for comment.

Dry bulk transporters have a short window of time to prepare decks to safely secure and carry cargo boxes. They typically transport commodities in below-deck cargo holds.

Genco Shipping & Trading is seeking approval from its ship safety certifier to prepare some of its own dry bulk vessels to carry containers.

Genco isn’t going all-in on container shipping, said CEO John Wobensmith, who called the project “opportunistic.”

Separately, agribusiness giant Cargill said it is looking into using some of the dry bulk ships it charters to instead hold containers, if only as a temporary solution, to “alleviate bottlenecks.”

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Jonathan Saul in London and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by PJ Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Pravin Char)

Volcanic ash buildup shuts airport on La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands

MADRID (Reuters) -A buildup of ash and dust from the erupting Cumbre Vieja volcano on the runway forced authorities in Spain’s La Palma to close the island’s airport on Thursday, air traffic operator AENA said.

Other airports in the Canary Islands’ archipelago off North Africa remained open, however, and an AENA spokesperson said the ash cloud was unlikely to pose any wider risks to air travel for now.

It is the second time that La Palma’s airport has been shut due to ash buildup since the eruption began on Sept. 19.

“The La Palma Airport is inoperative due to ash accumulation. The established protocols are being applied. Safety is the priority,” the operator said in a post on Twitter.

In 2011, sweeping closures of European airspace due to an ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland disrupted travel plans for millions of passengers in Europe and elsewhere, and cost airlines over a billion euros in revenues.

The volcano on La Palma has been blasting out jets of red-hot lava for more than two weeks, laying waste to hundreds of buildings and farms, and forcing the evacuation of thousands.

The airport was closed on Sept. 25 but reopened the following day after workers swept volcanic ash off the runway.

(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, editing by Andrei Khalip and Susan Fenton)

U.S. labor market regaining footing as weekly jobless claims fall sharply

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits dropped by the most in three months last week, suggesting the labor market recovery was regaining momentum after a recent slowdown, as the wave of COVID-19 infections began to subside.

The weekly unemployment claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also showed the number of people on state unemployment rolls plunging to an 18-month low in late September.

Improving labor market conditions bode well for the government’s closely watched employment report for September and also provide ammunition for the Federal Reserve, which signaled last month it could begin reducing is monthly bond buying as soon as November.

“The labor market is back on track after a few weeks of rising claims threw a question mark into the markets’ understanding of just how solid the economic outlook really is,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS in New York. “The Fed has the evidence it needs to start paring back its emergency stimulus purchases when it meets next month.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 38,000 to a seasonally adjusted 326,000 for the week ended Oct. 2. That was the biggest drop since late June. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 348,000 claims for the latest week.

Unadjusted claims, which economists say offer a better read of the labor market, tumbled 41,431 to 258,909 last week. California led the drop in claims last week. There were also decreases in Michigan, Ohio, Washington DC and Missouri. They offset notable increases in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Claims had increased for three straight weeks as California moved people to another program following the expiration of federal government-funded aid on Sept. 6, to allow the recipients to collect one additional week of benefits.

There had also been increases in filings related to the idling of assembly plants in some states by automakers as they managed their supply of semiconductors amid a global shortage.

A resurgence in COVID-19 infections, driven by the Delta variant, also disrupted activity in the high-contact services sector. That suggested some moderation in labor market conditions in the prior weeks, which was confirmed by a separate report on Thursday from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showing job cuts announced by U.S.-based employers increased 14% to 17,895 in September.

Still, layoffs were down 85% compared to September 2020.

In the third quarter, employers announced 52,560 job cuts, the fewest since the second quarter of 1997 and down 23% from the July-September period.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar dipped against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices fell.

SUPPLY WOES

Layoffs last month were led by companies in the healthcare/products sector, with 2,673 announced cuts. Since the Pfizer vaccine received full-FDA approval, many healthcare facilities have implemented vaccine mandates, which have led to the firing of non-compliant workers.

Ongoing strains in the supply chain saw industrial goods manufacturers laying off 2,328 workers in September, while warehousing businesses reported 1,936 job cuts. There were 1,679 job cuts in the services sector.

But the rise in layoffs was dwarfed by an explosion in planned hiring, in part as retailers gear up for the holiday season. The Challenger report showed companies announced plans to hire 939,790 workers compared to only 94,004 in August.

With companies eager to hire, more people are coming off the state unemployment rolls. The claims report showed the number of people continuing to receive benefits after an initial week of aid tumbled 97,000 to 2.714 million in the week ended Sept. 25. That was the lowest level since mid-March 2020.

The total number of people collecting unemployment checks under all programs dropped to 4.172 million during the week ended Sept. 18 from 5.027 million in the prior week. That reflected the end of extended benefits last month, which economists hope will increase the labor pool.

The pandemic forced some people to drop out of work to become caregivers. Others are reluctant to return for fear of contracting the coronavirus, while some have either retired or are seeking career changes. That has left employers desperate to fill a record 10.9 million job openings as of the end of July.

The worker shortages have impacted job growth, though there is optimism that hiring picked up in September. According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 500,000 jobs last month.

Estimates range from as high as 700,000 jobs to as low as 250,000, reflecting the mixed labor market indicators in September. A survey from the Conference Board last week showed consumers’ views of current labor market conditions softened.

While the Institute for Supply Management’s measure of manufacturing employment rebounded last month after contracting in August, its measure of services industry employment slipped.

The economy created 235,000 jobs in August, the fewest in seven months. The unemployment rate is forecast dipping to 5.1% in September from 5.2% in August.

“Going forward, the combination of easing labor supply constraints, strong labor demand and an improving COVID outlook should spur further labor market progress,” said Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

Magnitude 6.1 quake jolts Tokyo, causing blackouts but no tsunami warning

By Elaine Lies and Hideyuki Sano

TOKYO (Reuters) -A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 jolted Tokyo and surrounding areas late on Thursday, stopping train lines and causing sporadic power cuts, but there were no reports of major damage, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said.

The tremor, at 10:41 p.m. (1341 GMT), registered “strong-5” on Japan’s intensity scale, a level that could cause some damage to buildings and power cuts, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The quake had an epicenter in Chiba prefecture, to the east of the capital Tokyo. There was no danger of a tsunami from the quake, according to NHK.

The government set up an emergency response task force.

NHK showed new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rushing back to his office. He told reporters he had instructed the task force to “find out about the latest situation, coordinate with local authorities on rescuing the victims of the disaster,” and to provide information to the public in a speedy manner.

Several minutes earlier Kishida tweeted: “Take actions to protect your lives while confirming the latest information.”

NHK said four people sustained injuries in Chiba and showed a two-story building in neighboring Saitama prefecture on fire. Private broadcaster TBS reported incidents of water pipes bursting in Tokyo. Tokyo Electric Power Corporation reported 250 cases of blackouts in the city.

Several train and subway lines in Tokyo and Chiba which initially halted their trains had since restarted their operations, NHK said.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami. Those events severely damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, triggering the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.

(Reporting by Hideyuki Sano, Tokyo Newsroom; Editing by Mark Heinrich)