Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Nicholas weakens into tropical storm, battering Texas, Louisiana with rain

By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) -Heavy rains lashed Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday as Hurricane Nicholas weakened into a tropical storm, bringing the threat of widespread floods and power outages as it swept down the U.S. Gulf Coast.

It is the second major storm to threaten the region in recent weeks after Hurricane Ida killed more than two dozen people https://www.reuters.com/world/us/evacuees-urged-not-return-home-after-devastation-storm-ida-2021-09-01 in August and devastated communities in Louisiana near New Orleans.

Nicholas should weaken further and become a depression by Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. It could still cause life-threatening flash floods across the Deep South in the next couple of days, the agency warned.

Nicholas was about 15 miles (25 km) south-southwest of Houston, Texas, by 7 a.m. Central Time (8 a.m. ET), heading north-northeast with maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour (95 km per hour), the NHC said in a bulletin.

President Joe Biden declared an emergency for Louisiana and ordered federal assistance for local responders because of the effects of Nicholas, the White House said.

Nicholas could knock out electricity and hamper restoration efforts after Ida knocked out power in Louisiana.

Early on Tuesday, more than 95,000 customers in Louisiana had lost power, according to the website PowerOutage.us, while in the Houston area alone, more than 415,000 customers faced outages, utility CenterPoint Energy said.

“It will be a very slow-moving storm across the state of Texas that will linger for several days and drop a tremendous amount of rain,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott had said on Monday.

Abbott declared states of emergency in 17 counties and three cities, with boat and helicopter rescue teams being deployed or put on standby.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, citing flood warnings, urged the city’s roughly 2.3 million residents to stay off streets and highways.

FLIGHTS CANCELED

The Houston Independent School District canceled Tuesday’s classes, while dozens of schools across both states were shut on Monday.

Houston suspended light rail and bus services on Monday evening. Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed at airports in Corpus Christi and Houston.

Houston, the fourth most populous U.S. city, was devastated in 2017 when Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane, slammed Texas, dropping up to 40 inches (102 cm) of rain in some areas and killing more than 100 people.

National Weather Service models forecast rainfall totals from Nicholas from 16 inches (41 cm) in coastal parts of Texas to 20 inches (51 cm) in some spots. Its northeast sweep was expected to pummel parts of south-central Louisiana and southern Mississippi with up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain.

The NWS issued storm surge, flood and tropical storm warnings and watches throughout the region, calling it a “life-threatening situation.”

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards warned against flash floods triggered by the heavy rain as drainage systems were still clogged with debris from Ida and other storms.

Royal Dutch Shell began evacuating staff on Monday from an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico as firms battened down against the winds.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston, Liz Hampton in Denver, Marianna Parraga in Houston, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Sarah Morland in Gdansk; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Brendan O’Brien and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Edmund Blair, Bernadette Baum and Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. August budget deficit falls as revenues recover

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Monday posted a $171 billion budget deficit for August, 15% lower than the $200 billion gap a year ago, as recovery-driven tax receipts grew faster than outlays for COVID-19 pandemic relief programs, the Treasury Department said.

The August deficit was $2 billion less than the average forecast by analysts in a Reuters survey. A U.S. Treasury official said the August budget results would not alter the department’s estimates for when Treasury’s extraordinary financing measures to avoid breaching the $28.4 trillion debt limit would be exhausted.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week urged Congress to increase or suspend the debt limit, saying that “cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October,” leaving the government unable to fully pay its obligations.

Receipts in August rose 20% from the year-earlier period to $268 billion while outlays in the month were up 4% to $439 billion. Some $59 billion in August benefits were paid in July because the month started on a non-business day.

For the first 11 months of the 2021 fiscal year, the deficit totaled $2.711 trillion, down 10% from the $3.007 trillion for the same period last year, as revenues improved.

Year-to-date receipts rose 18% from the same period last year to $3.586 trillion, while outlays rose 4% to $6.297 trillion.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Paul Simao)

U.S. SEC fines media firms over $539 million for illegal securities offerings

(Reuters) – Three media companies have agreed to pay more than $539 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charges over illegal offerings of stock and digital assets, the regulator said on Monday.

The SEC charged New York-based GTV Media Group Inc. and Saraca Media Group Inc and Phoenix-based Voice of Guo Media Inc with the illegal unregistered offering of GTV common stock. GTV and Saraca were also charged with the illegal unregistered offering of a digital asset security called G-Coins or G-Dollars.

Attorneys for the companies, which did not admit or deny the SEC’s findings, did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

The firms solicited thousands of individuals to invest in the GTV stock offering from April through June 2020 through the firms’ websites and on social media platforms, according to the SEC. GTV and Saraca also solicited individuals to invest in the digital asset offering. Altogether, the firms raised about $487 million from more than 5,000 investors through the offerings.

To settled the charges, GTV and Saraca agreed to disgorge over $434 million plus prejudgment interest of approximately $16 million, and to each pay a civil penalty of $15 million, the SEC said.

Voice of Guo also agreed to a cease-and-desist order, to pay disgorgement of more than $52 million plus prejudgment interest of nearly $2 million, and to pay a civil penalty of $5 million.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Biden to tap Georgetown law professor for U.S. FTC, sources say

By Diane Bartz and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden is set to nominate Alvaro Bedoya, a Georgetown University law professor and privacy advocate, to serve on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, three sources briefed on the matter said on Monday.

Bedoya, the founding director of Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology, is also a former chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law. The FTC post requires Senate confirmation.

A White House announcement is expected later on Monday. Axios reported the planned nomination earlier.

Bedoya in a lecture at the University of New Mexico in 2019 called privacy “a civil right.”

“At its heart, privacy is about human dignity: Whether the government feels it can invade your dignity, and whether the government feels it has to protect the most sensitive, most intimate facts of your life,” Bedoya said.

Bedoya has been skeptical of widespread, untargeted use of facial recognition technology, calling it in a 2017 newspaper opinion piece something that creates “profound questions about the future of our society.” In the piece, Bedoya also notes that the software often makes mistakes, particularly when searching for the faces of African Americans, women and young people.

Bedoya, if confirmed, would step into a post currently held by Rohit Chopra, who has been nominated by Biden to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – a political lightning rod since it was created following the 2009 financial crisis.

The five-member FTC currently has three Democrats, including Chairwoman Lina Khan, and two Republicans. If Chopra were to be confirmed to the CFPB and step down, the FTC would have two members from each party.

The agency enforces antitrust law and pursues allegations of deceptive advertising.

FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips, a Republican, said on Twitter that Bedoya “would bring a bright and thoughtful voice and a depth of experience working across the aisle on privacy to the FTC.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Nandita Bose and Diane Bartz; Editing by Will Dunham and Aurora Ellis)

Pope, in Slovakia, warns European countries against being self-centred

By Philip Pullella and Robert Muller

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) -Pope Francis warned against too much focus on individual rights and culture wars at the expense of the common good on Monday during a visit to Slovakia amid increased nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment across eastern Europe.

The 84-year-old Francis, looking fit, is making his first trip since undergoing intestinal surgery in July. Asked by a reporter on Monday how he felt, he joked: “Still alive.”

On the first papal visit to Slovakia since 2003, Francis returned to a theme he had touched on during a stopover on Sunday in Hungary on how nations should avoid a selfish, defensive mentality as he recalled the region’s communist past.

“In these lands, until just a few decades ago, a single thought system (communism) stifled freedom. Today another single thought system is emptying freedom of meaning, reducing progress to profit and rights only to individual needs,” Francis said.

Addressing Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, other officials and diplomats in the gardens of the presidential palace, the pope added: “Fraternity is necessary for the increasingly pressing process of (European) integration.”

Slovakia, part of Czechoslovakia during communist times, secured its independence from Prague in 1993. The Slovak and wider eastern European economies have since boomed but their integration into the European Union has also coincided with a nationalist backlash against increased illegal immigration, often involving Muslims from the Middle East and Afghanistan.

EASTERN DISCONTENT

Slovakia’s neighbours, Hungary and Poland, have been at loggerheads with the EU over their hard-line stance on migration as well as over their judicial reforms and curbs on media freedoms.

In September, Brussels told Poland its challenge to the primacy of EU law over national law was holding up the release of 57 billion euros in recovery funds to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Francis specifically mentioned the EU recovery plan on Monday, saying people were “looking forward with hope to an economic upturn” it is meant to underpin.

The pope has often called for European solutions to the migrant crisis and has criticised governments that try, like Hungary’s, to tackle it with unilateral or isolationist actions.

In Budapest on Sunday, in an apparent response to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s stand that Muslim immigration could destroy its heritage, he said preserving a nation’s deeply rooted Christian heritage did not exclude a welcoming, caring attitude for others in need.

“Our Christian way of looking at others refuses to see them as a burden or a problem, but rather as brothers and sisters to be helped and protected,” he said on Monday.

Slovakia is about 65% Catholic.

At a meeting with bishops, priests and nuns, Francis said Catholics also must not be inward-looking, self-absorbed and defensive, in an apparent reference to his conservative critics who are resisting change.

“The Church is not a fortress, a stronghold, a lofty castle, self-sufficient and looking out upon the world below,” he said.

He later visited a memorial on the site of a synagogue demolished by the communists in 1969 and paid tribute to the more than 100,000 Slovak Jews killed in the Holocaust.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)

U.S. awarding $482.3 million in aviation manufacturing assistance

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Transportation Department said it was offering $482.3 million in aviation manufacturing assistance to 313 businesses, including up to $75.5 million to Spirit AeroSystems.

Congress earlier this year created a $3 billion aviation manufacturing payroll subsidy program that will cover up to half of eligible companies’ compensation costs for as long as six months. Ohio-based Parker-Hannifin Corp was offered up to $39.7 million, Connecticut-based Hexcel Corp offered $20.9 million and Astronics Corp $14.7 million.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Of the 313 companies receiving funds, 188 of them — 60% — had fewer than 100 employees at the end of calendar year 2020.

The funds will helping support as many as 22,500 jobs nationwide.

More than 100,000 jobs have been lost in the aerospace industry since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Transportation Department. Before then, the U.S. aerospace industry employed approximately 2.2 million workers, including 1.2 million who worked in various parts of the supply chain nationwide.

The offer requires companies to commit to not conducting furloughs without employee consent or laying off employees covered by subsidies during the six-month period.

Companies eligible include aircraft, engine, propeller or component manufacturers and companies that repair or overhaul airplanes and parts.

The subsidy program cannot cover more than 25% of an employer’s total U.S. workforce as of April 2020 and can only cover employees with total annual compensation of $200,000 or less.

To qualify, a company must have involuntarily furloughed or laid off at least 10% of its total workforce, or have experienced at least a 15% decline in 2020 total operating revenues.

Applications for a second round of funding closed Sept. 1 and additional funding recipients will be announced this fall, the Transportation Department said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter)

Greek experts approve booster COVID-19 shot for those over 60, vulnerable

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece will make a COVID-19 booster vaccine available to vulnerable groups from Tuesday, Health Ministry experts said, hoping to curb a rise in Delta variant infections.

Authorities would start making booster jab appointments available from Tuesday to persons with compromised immune systems and individuals over the age of 60.

“It can be administered 6-8 months after the second dose,” said Maria Theodoridou, chair of the Greek National Vaccination Committee.

“For the immuno-compromised it can be given even 4 weeks after the second dose.”

In August, the medical advisers recommended a booster shot with mRNA vaccines for vulnerable groups with underlying conditions.

The country reported 1,608 new COVID-19 infections and 51 related deaths on Monday, bringing the total number of infections since the pandemic began to 616,765 and the death toll to 14,223.

Greece, with a population of 11 million people, has so far administered more than 11.8 million first shots. About 56% of the population is fully vaccinated. It hopes to increase that figure to up to 70 percent in an attempt to build wide immunity against the virus.

(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Oil rises to near six-week high as U.S. supply concerns dominate

By Scott DiSavino

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices rose to near six-week highs on Monday as U.S. output remains slow to return two weeks after Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast and worries another storm could affect output in Texas this week.

Those gains came even though the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries trimmed its world oil demand forecast for the last quarter of 2021 due to the Delta coronavirus variant.

OPEC said a further recovery would be delayed until next year when consumption will exceed pre-pandemic rates.

Brent futures rose 53 cents, or 0.7%, to $73.45 a barrel by 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 71 cents, or 1.0%, to $70.43.

That puts Brent on track for its highest close since Aug. 3 and WTI on track for its highest close since July 30.

“Hurricane Ida’s impact is lasting more than the market expected and as some oil production capacity remains shut this week, prices are rising on supply not being restored and therefore not reaching refineries that have restarted operations quicker than producers,” Nishant Bhushan, oil markets analyst at Rystad Energy.

Further disruption from bad weather could be around the corner, with the U.S. National Hurricane Center projecting Tropical Storm Nicholas will remain a storm as it scrapes along the South Texas coast on Monday and makes landfall near Corpus Christi later tonight.

In addition to the OPEC forecast, other bearish factors also held back oil price gains on Monday, including persistent worries about coronavirus on global crude demand, potential supply increases from planned releases of oil from strategic reserves in the United States and China, and the possibility Iran could be moving closer to selling oil to the world again.

A city in China’s southeastern province of Fujian has closed cinemas and gyms, sealed off some entries and exits to highways and told residents not to leave town as it battles a local COVID-19 outbreak.

Traders noted China’s planned release of oil from strategic reserves could boost supplies available in the world’s the second biggest oil consumer.

The U.S. government agreed to sell crude oil from the nation’s emergency reserve to eight companies including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Valero, under a scheduled auction to raise money for the federal budget.

Hopes of fresh talks on a wider nuclear deal between Iran and the West were raised after the United Nations atomic watchdog reached an agreement with Iran on Sunday about the overdue servicing of monitoring equipment to keep it running.

(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London and Naveen Thukral and Florence Tan in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Mark Potter)

Man with knives arrested near Democratic HQ -U.S. Capitol Police

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a California man with multiple knives in his truck marked with white supremacist symbols near the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, police said on Monday.

Around midnight, a Capitol Police officer was on patrol when he noticed a pickup truck with a bayonet and a machete inside of it, and a swastika and other white supremacist symbols painted on it, the police department said in a news release.

The truck was parked near the DNC headquarters, which borders the U.S. Capitol complex, the statement said.

Police identified the driver as Donald Craighead, 44, of Oceanside, California. Craighead was arrested for possession of prohibited weapons.

Craighead said he was “on patrol” and began talking about white supremacist ideology, the Capitol Police statement said.

A Saturday rally is planned by supporters of the roughly 600 people charged with taking part in the deadly Jan. 6 riot involving backers of then-President Donald Trump.

Police will reinstall a tall fence around the U.S. Capitol ahead of the rally, two sources familiar with the security planning told Reuters.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe, additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

Donors pledge $1 billion for Afghanistan

By Emma Farge and Michelle Nichols

GENEVA/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Donors have pledged more than a billion dollars to help Afghanistan, where poverty and hunger have spiralled since the Islamist Taliban took power, and foreign aid has dried up, raising the spectre of a mass exodus.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was impossible to say how much of the money had been promised in response to an emergency U.N. appeal for $606 million to meet the most pressing needs of a country in crisis.

After decades of war and suffering, Afghans are facing “perhaps their most perilous hour”, he said in his opening remarks to a donor conference in Geneva.

“The people of Afghanistan are facing the collapse of an entire country — all at once.”

He said food supplies could run out by the end of this month, and the World Food Programme said 14 million people were on the brink of starvation.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their strict interpretation of Islamic law from 1996-2001 and were toppled in an invasion led by the United States, which accused them of sheltering militants behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

They swept back to power last month in a lightning advance as the last U.S.-led NATO troops pulled out and the forces of the Western-backed government melted away.

With billions of dollars of aid flows abruptly ending due to Western antipathy and distrust towards the Taliban, several speakers in Geneva said donors had a “moral obligation” to keep helping Afghans after a 20-year engagement.

Neighbours China and Pakistan https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/west-ponders-aid-afghanistan-china-pakistan-quick-provide-relief-2021-09-12 have already offered help.

HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS

But U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, also in Geneva, underlined the Western misgivings. She accused the Taliban of breaking recent promises by once more ordering women to stay at home rather than go to work, keeping teenage girls out of school, and persecuting former opponents.

Beijing announced last week it would send $31 million worth of food and health supplies. Iran said it had dispatched an air cargo of humanitarian aid.

Pakistan sent supplies such as cooking oil and medicine, and called for the unfreezing of Afghan assets held abroad.

“Past mistakes must not be repeated. The Afghan people must not be abandoned,” said Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, whose country has close relations with the Taliban and would most likely bear the brunt of an exodus of refugees.

The United States pledged nearly $64 million in new humanitarian assistance at the conference, while Norway pledged an extra $11.5 million.

Even before the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul last month, half the population – or 18 million people – depended on aid. That looks set to increase due to drought and shortages.

About a third of the $606 million being sought would be used by the U.N. World Food Programme, which found that 93% of the 1,600 Afghans it surveyed in August and September were not getting enough to eat.

“BRINK OF STARVATION”

WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the conference that 40% of Afghanistan’s wheat crop had been lost, the cost of cooking oil had doubled, and most people anyway had no way of getting cash to buy food.

While Afghanistan’s banks have started reopening, the queues for withdrawals are endless, and more importantly, no one who depended on the government for a salary – from civil servants to police – has been paid since July.

“Fourteen million people, one out of three, are marching to the brink of starvation. They don’t know where their next meal is,” he said.

“If we are not very careful, we could truly, truly enter into the abyss in catastrophic conditions, worse than what we see now.”

The World Health Organization, another U.N. agency that is part of the appeal, is seeking to shore up hundreds of health facilities at risk of closure after donors backed out.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that there could be far greater displacement soon than the estimated half a million who have already sought refuge elsewhere in Afghanistan this year.

“I fear that the collapse of services and of the economy that has already been described as a risk coupled perhaps with increased violence and tension could lead to a much greater displacement – internal and external – and this may happen very soon,” he told the conference from Kabul.

“The physical distance between our nations and Afghanistan shouldn’t mislead us,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added.

“A humanitarian and security crisis in Afghanistan will have direct implications across the globe. We should take collective action now.”

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Rupam Nair in New Delhi; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kevin Liffey, editing by Ed Osmond)