Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Two top vaccine regulators to leave U.S. FDA

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulators plan to leave the agency in the next several months, the FDA said on Tuesday.

The FDA is “confident in the expertise and ability of our staff to continue our critical public health work, including evaluating COVID-19 vaccines,” spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo said in an emailed statement.

Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), plans to retire on Oct. 31, according to a memo from Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). OVRR is part of CBER.

Gruber had been with the FDA for 32 years.

Gruber’s deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, also plans to leave the FDA in November, according to Marks.

Marks said he will serve as the acting director of the vaccines group while the FDA searches for its next director. The search process will begin immediately, he said.

The memo did not give a reason for Gruber’s or Krause’s departures.

The departures were first reported by BioCentury earlier on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Greek PM sacks public order minister after wildfires

By Angeliki Koutantou and George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS (Reuters) -Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis replaced his public order and tourism ministers on Tuesday and created a new civil protection post following sharp criticism of the government’s response to a spate of summer wildfires.

More than a quarter of a million hectares of pine forests were destroyed in August by blazes that burned for several days across Greece, with flames reaching the outskirts of Athens. Homes and businesses were destroyed, two people were killed and thousands were forced to evacuate.

Mitsotakis, whose conservative government took office in July 2019, has apologized publicly for delays and breakdowns in the official response to the fires, and promised to rectify mistakes.

On Tuesday, he replaced Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis with Takis Theodorikakos, a political analyst and former interior minister.

He switched Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias, who last year oversaw Greece’s successful containment of the first wave of COVID-19 infections, to the country’s key tourism post in place of Harry Theoharis.

Mitsotakis’ spokesperson also announced the creation of a civil protection ministry to be headed by Evangelos Apostolakis, a retired admiral and former defense minister.

But Apostolakis, who served as defense minister under a previous Syriza leftist government, did not accept the post on grounds that an interparty consensus regarding his appointment had not been reached.

The prime minister’s office confirmed the rejection by Apostolakis and plans to look for a replacement for the post.

The prime minister set up a natural disaster recovery committee in mid-August in the wildfires’ aftermath.

The reshuffle, in which Finance Minister Christos Staikouras and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias were retained in their posts, comes less than two weeks before Mitsotakis is due to outline his 2022 economic policy in a keynote speech in Thessaloniki.

Greece’s economy relies strongly on tourism and is seen bouncing back by 3.6% this year as tourist arrivals pick up sharply following a dismal 2020, when coronavirus travel curbs were in force and it slumped 8.2%.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Edmund Blair, John Stonestreet and Philippa Fletcher)

Taliban hail victory with gunfire after last U.S. troops leave Afghanistan

(Reuters) – Celebratory gunfire resounded across the Afghan capital on Tuesday as the Taliban took control of the airport following the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops, marking the end of a 20-year war that left the Islamist group stronger than it was in 2001.

Shaky video footage distributed by the Taliban showed fighters entering the airport after the last U.S. troops flew out on a C-17 aircraft a minute before midnight, ending a hasty and humiliating exit for Washington and its NATO allies.

“It is a historical day and a historical moment,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference at the airport after the departure. “We are proud of these moments, that we liberated our country from a great power.”

An image from the Pentagon taken with night-vision optics showed the last U.S. soldier to step aboard the final evacuation flight out of Kabul – Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

America’s longest war took the lives of nearly 2,500 U.S. troops and an estimated 240,000 Afghans, and cost some $2 trillion.

Although it succeeded in driving the Taliban from power and stopped Afghanistan being used by al Qaeda as a base to attack the United States, it ended with the hardline militants controlling more territory than when they last ruled.

The Taliban brutally enforced their strict interpretation of Islamic law from 1996 to 2001, not least by oppressing women, and the world is watching now to see if the movement will form a more moderate and inclusive government in the months ahead.

Long lines formed in Kabul on Tuesday outside banks shuttered since the fall of the capital as people tried to get money to pay for increasingly expensive food.

There was a mixture of triumph and elation on the one side as the Taliban celebrated their victory, and fear on the other.

“I had to go to the bank with my mother but when I went, the Taliban (were) beating women with sticks,” said a 22-year-old woman who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety.

She said the attack occurred among a crowd outside a branch of the Azizi Bank next to the Kabul Star Hotel in the center of the capital.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen something like that and it really frightened me.”

Thousands of Afghans have already fled the country, fearing Taliban reprisals.

More than 123,000 people were evacuated from Kabul in a massive but chaotic airlift by the United States and its allies over the past two weeks, but many of those who helped Western nations during the war were left behind.

A contingent of Americans, estimated by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at fewer than 200, and possibly closer to 100, wanted to leave but were unable to get on the last flights.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab put the number of UK nationals in Afghanistan in the low hundreds, following the evacuation of some 5,000.

‘LOT OF HEARTBREAK’

General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon briefing that the chief U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, was on the last C-17 flight out.

“There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,” McKenzie told reporters. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out.”

The departing U.S. troops destroyed more than 70 aircraft and dozens of armored vehicles. They also disabled air defenses that had thwarted an attempted Islamic State rocket attack on the eve of their departure.

As the Taliban watched U.S. troops leave Kabul on Monday night, at least seven of their fighters were killed in clashes in the Panjshir valley north of the capital, two members of the main anti-Taliban opposition group said.

Several thousand anti-Taliban fighters, from local militias as well as remnants of army and special forces units, have gathered in the valley under the command of regional leader Ahmad Massoud.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. military was not concerned with images of Taliban members walking through Kabul airport holding weapons and sizing up U.S. helicopters.

“They can inspect all they want,” he told CNN. “They can look at them. They can walk around. They can’t fly. They can’t operate them…”

But he said that “the threat environment” remains high.

“We’re obviously concerned about the potential for Taliban retribution going forward and we certainly, we saw it ourselves, are mindful of the threat that ISIS-K continues to pose inside Afghanistan.”

ISIS-K is the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport on Thursday that killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghan civilians.

U.S. President Joe Biden defended his decision to stick to Tuesday’s withdrawal deadline. He said the world would hold the Taliban to their commitment to allow safe passage for those wanting to leave Afghanistan.

Biden has said the United States long ago achieved the objectives it set in 2001, when it ousted the Taliban for harboring al Qaeda militants who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks.

But he has drawn heavy criticism from Republicans and some fellow Democrats for his actions since the Taliban took over Kabul this month after a lightning advance and the collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

Blinken said the United States was prepared to work with the new Taliban government if it did not carry out reprisals against opponents.

Taliban spokesman Mujahid said the group wanted to establish diplomatic relations with the United States, despite the two decades of hostility. “The Islamic Emirate wants to have good diplomatic relations with the whole world,” he said.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Steven Coates, Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie; Editing by Kevin Liffey/Mark Heinrich)

In Ida’s wake, Louisiana residents could face a month without power

By Devika Krishna Kumar and Nathan Layne

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Residents in southern Louisiana braced for weeks without electrical power and disruption to their water systems in the wake of Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast.

By early Tuesday, about 1.3 million customers in the region were without power about 48 hours after the storm made landfall, most of them in Louisiana, according to PowerOutage, which gathers data from U.S. utility companies.

The storm killed at least two people in the state, officials said, a death toll that may have been much larger if not for a fortified levee system around New Orleans, which had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina 16 years earlier.

Entergy Corp, a major power supplier in the region, said it could take weeks before electricity is restored in the hardest-hit areas.

Damage to eight high-voltage lines shut off electricity in New Orleans and nearby parishes, and parts of a transmission tower toppled into the Mississippi River on Sunday night.

The power outages have brought commerce to a standstill in New Orleans. The Hyatt Regency downtown was operating under a state of emergency and not accepting customers outside of emergency personnel, according to an automated message.

Restaurants, many of which had closed ahead of the storm, also faced an uncertain future due to a lack of electricity and other infrastructure, mirroring – at least for now – the issues that plagued businesses for weeks in the wake of Katrina.

“This is definitely feeling like Katrina,” said Lisa Blount, the public relations director at Antoine’s, a French Quarter landmark and the city’s oldest eatery. “To hear the power is potentially out for two to three weeks, that is devastating.”

Power officials have told leaders in Jefferson Parish that its roughly 440,000 residents may have to manage without electricity for a month or longer after utility poles toppled across the county, Councilman Deano Bonano told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“The damage from this is far worse than Katrina from a wind standpoint,” said Bonano. “We are going to be without with power for four to six weeks.”

Bonano said an elderly woman in the parish was found under her refrigerator on Monday and pronounced dead, and that he expected the death toll to rise, although not dramatically, once the water levels come down and full-fledged recovery efforts can get underway.

‘THEY HAVE NOTHING’

Some communities outside the levee system, including Lafitte and Grand Isle, were hit especially hard and the damage is still being assessed, the official said. More than half of the parish’s residents rode out the storm at home, Bonano said, and many were left with nothing.

“There are no grocery stores open, no gas stations open. So they have nothing,” he said.

Downed trees damaged underground water lines in the parish, and a majority of households were having to boil drinking water or cope with low pressure, according to Brett Lawson, chief of staff to a parish councilman.

Compounding the suffering, parts of Louisiana and Mississippi were under heat advisories, with temperatures forecast to reach up to 105 Fahrenheit (40.6 Celsius) on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

“The heat advisory for today does pose a big challenge,” the agency’s New Orleans outpost said on Twitter. “While you need to keep hydrated, know if you’re under a boil water advisory.”

Widespread flooding and power outages also slowed efforts on Tuesday by energy companies to assess damages at oil production facilities, ports and refineries.

HIGHWAY ‘WASHED OUT’

As the weather system traveled north on Tuesday and weakened, it unleashed heavy rain in neighboring Mississippi. At least two people were killed and 10 injured when a deep crevasse opened up on Highway 26 in George County, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Biloxi.

“We’ve had a lot of rain with Ida, torrential,” Mississippi Highway Patrol officer Calvin Robertson said. “Part of the highway just washed out.”

Seven vehicles plunged into the ditch, which was 50 feet (15 meters) long and 20 feet (6 meters) deep, Robertson said on CNN.

Officials warned residents about the hidden dangers of flood waters that might bring wildlife closer to neighborhoods.

Sheriff’s deputies in St. Tammany Parish were investigating the disappearance of a 71-year-old man after an apparent alligator attack in the flood waters brought on by the storm.

The man’s wife told authorities that she saw a large alligator attack her husband on Monday in the tiny community of Avery Estates, about 35 miles (55 km) northeast of New Orleans on Monday. She stopped the attack and pulled her husband out of the flood water.

Seeing that his injuries were severe, she took a small boat to get help, and came back to find her husband gone, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

MEMORIES OF KATRINA

Ida made landfall on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, evoking memories of a disaster that killed more than 1,800 people in 2005 and devastated New Orleans.

But a $14.5 billion system of levees, flood gates and pumps designed in the wake of Katrina’s devastation largely worked as designed during Ida, officials said, sparing New Orleans from the catastrophic flooding that devastated the area 16 years ago.

The state’s healthcare systems also appeared to have largely escaped catastrophic damage at a time when Louisiana is reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections that has strained hospitals.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Peter Szekely in New York, Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut and Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New Jersey; Additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. completes withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan

(Reuters) -The United States completed the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Monday, after a chaotic evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies to close out U.S. involvement there after 20 years of conflict.

The operation came to an end before the Tuesday deadline set by President Joe Biden, who has drawn heavy criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of Afghanistan since the Taliban made rapid advances and took over Kabul earlier this month.

The withdrawal was announced by General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, who said the final flights did not include some of the dozens of Americans who remained behind.

More than 122,000 people have been airlifted out of Kabul since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban regained control of the country two decades after being removed from power by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The United States and its Western allies scrambled to save citizens of their own countries as well as translators, local embassy staff, civil rights activists, journalists and other Afghans vulnerable to reprisals.

The evacuations became even more perilous when a suicide bomb attack claimed by Islamic State – enemy of both the West and the Taliban – killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans waiting by the airport gates on Thursday.

Biden promised after the bloody Kabul airport attack to hunt down the people responsible.

The departure took place after U.S. anti-missile defenses intercepted rockets fired at Kabul’s airport.

Two U.S. officials said “core” diplomatic staff were among 6,000 Americans to have left. They did not say whether that included top envoy Ross Wilson, expected to be among the last civilians to depart.

A U.S. official said initial reports did not indicate any U.S. casualties from as many as five missiles fired on the airport. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks.

In recent days, Washington has warned of more attacks, while carrying out two air strikes. It said both hit Islamic State targets, one thwarting an attempted suicide bombing in Kabul on Sunday by destroying a car packed with explosives, but which Afghans said had struck civilians.

Tuesday’s deadline for troops to leave was set by Biden, fulfilling an agreement reached with the Taliban by his predecessor, Donald Trump to end the United States’ longest war.

But having failed to anticipate that the Taliban would so quickly conquer the country, Washington and its NATO allies were forced into a hasty exit. They leave behind thousands of Afghans who helped Western countries and might have qualified for evacuation.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus and Idrees Ali and Rupam Jain; Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Clarence Fernandez, Peter Graff, William Maclean and Steve Holland; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Catherine Evans and Peter Cooney)

U.S. urges lawyers to volunteer to fight feared surge of evictions

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Monday urged attorneys across the legal profession to volunteer their time to assist the crush of tenants expected to be forced out of homes now that a COVID-19 pandemic-related eviction moratorium has ended.

The move came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a federal moratorium aimed at keeping people housed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Democratic President Joe Biden and top members of his party in Congress blasted that decision but have not taken further emergency action to stop what could be a wave of evictions.

In a letter addressed to “members of the legal community,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said eviction filings are expected to spike to roughly double their pre-pandemic levels and that lawyers have an ethical obligation to help the most vulnerable.

“We can do that by doing everything we can to ensure that people have a meaningful opportunity to stay in their homes and that eviction procedures are carried out in a fair and just manner,” Garland said.

Garland’s letter encouraged lawyers to volunteer at legal aid providers, or to help tenants apply for emergency rent relief through government programs.

Garland said “the vast majority of tenants need access to legal counsel because far too many evictions result from default judgments in which the tenant never appeared in court.”

The nation’s top court on Thursday granted a request by a coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups to lift the moratorium by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that was to have run until Oct. 3, saying it was up to Congress to act.

Over 60 Democrats in the House of Representatives pushed for congressional leaders to take action, writing a letter urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats, to revive the national eviction moratorium for the rest of the pandemic.

Congress approved $46 billion in rental assistance earlier in the pandemic, but the money has been slow to get to those who need it, with just $3 billion issued through June for rent, utilities and related expenses, according to U.S. Treasury data.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

More contagious Delta variant makes people sicker; oral drug shows promise in treating COVID-19 pneumonia

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.

Delta variant makes people sicker

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is known to be more easily transmissible than earlier versions, and now a large UK study suggests it also makes people sicker. Researchers analyzed data on 43,338 patients infected with either the Alpha or the Delta variant. Overall, roughly three quarters were unvaccinated, and half were under age 31. After accounting for patients’ underlying risk factors, researchers found that unvaccinated patients were 132% more likely to be hospitalized if they were infected with Delta than with Alpha. Vaccinated patients may also be more likely to require hospitalization with a Delta infection, but data for those patients was less clear, according to a report published on Friday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The results “suggest that outbreaks of the Delta variant in unvaccinated populations might lead to a greater burden on healthcare services than the Alpha variant,” the researchers concluded.

Oral drug shows promise against COVID-19 pneumonia

Severely ill patients with COVID-19 pneumonia who received the experimental oral drug opaganib developed by RedHill Biopharma required less extra oxygen and were able to leave the hospital sooner than patients receiving a placebo in a small randomized trial, researchers reported on Sunday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Within 14 days after enrolling in the study, 50.0% of patients taking opaganib no longer needed oxygen, compared to 22.2% of patients in the placebo group. In addition, 86.4% of opaganib-treated patients had been discharged, versus 55.6% in the placebo group. On Thursday, RedHill announced that opaganib strongly inhibits the Delta variant of the coronavirus in test tube experiments. The drug is believed to exert its antiviral effect by inhibiting sphingosine kinase-2 (SK2), a key enzyme in cells that may be recruited by the virus to support its replication, the company said. Based on the initial 42-patient trial conducted last year, RedHill Biopharma launched a much larger randomized trial in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 pneumonia. The last of the 475 patients in that late-stage study has now completed treatment and some of the data should be available soon, the company said last week.

Seizure in children may signal COVID-19

Seizures may be the only symptom of COVID-19 in some children, a new report cautions. Children tend to get sick from COVID-19 far less often than adults, and their symptoms are usually not severe, mainly consisting of fever and mild respiratory issues, although more have become ill with emergence of the Delta variant. Among 175 children who came to an Israeli emergency room and were diagnosed with COVID-19, 11 were brought to the hospital because of seizures, researchers reported on Saturday in the medical journal Seizure. Only seven had previously been diagnosed with a neurological disorder, and only six had fever. All 11 made full recoveries. While seizures have not been a frequently reported problem in adults with COVID-19, they “may be the main manifestation of acute COVID-19 in children,” even without fever and without a history of epilepsy, the study authors said. In some hospitals, they point out, only children with flu-like symptoms or close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient get tested for the coronavirus. Medical personnel should be aware that children with seizures should be tested, too, they said.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Abortion providers ask U.S. Supreme Court to block Texas’ six-week ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Abortion rights groups filed an emergency request at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to block a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which is set to take effect on Wednesday.

The groups, including Planned Parenthood and other abortion and women’s health providers, told the court that the law would “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas, barring care for at least 85% of Texas abortion patients” and would likely force many abortion clinics to close.

The groups challenged the law in federal court in Austin in July, contending it violates a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The law, signed on May 19, is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion past the six-week cutoff.

The law is among of a number of “heartbeat” abortion bans enacted in Republican-led states. These laws seek to ban the procedure once the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue can be detected, often at six weeks – sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

Courts have blocked such bans as a violation of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The state of Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in a major case the justices agreed to hear over a 2018 law banning abortion after 15 weeks. The justices will hear arguments in their term that begins in October, with a ruling due by the end of June 2022.

The Texas lawsuit seeks to prevent judges, county clerks and other state entities from enforcing the law through citizen lawsuits. The plaintiffs also sued the director of an anti-abortion group that they said has threatened enforcement actions under the new law.

A federal judge rejected a bid to dismiss the case, prompting an immediate appeal to the New Orleans, Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which halted further proceedings in the case. On Sunday, the 5th Circuit denied a request by the abortion providers to block the law pending the appeal.

The plaintiffs on Monday asked the Supreme Court to block the Texas law or allow proceedings in the lower court to continue.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York, additional reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

After Ida, US energy pipelines off line, damage being assessed

By Liz Hampton

(Reuters) -Oil and gas pipeline operators on Monday checked for damage after Hurricane Ida hit major energy hubs as a Category 4 storm on Sunday and caused widespread power outages.

Enbridge said it was mobilizing crews to assess its facilities and had declared it was temporarily suspending some contacts under force majeure on two offshore pipelines, according to the company and shipper notices.

Its pipelines were not operating because offshore oil and gas production remained halted at the platforms it services, a spokesperson said.

“Production remains shut in to our offshore facilities; our onshore assets are operating,” the spokesperson said.

The force majeure contract suspensions were in effect for its Nautilus Pipeline and Mississippi Canyon Gas Pipeline, according to shipper notices.

“Enbridge is in the process of reviewing the status of its employees in the areas impacted by Hurricane Ida. There is currently no ETA on getting employees back out to inspect facilities,” the notices said.

Around 95% of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil production and 94% of its natural gas production remained out of commission on Monday, according to offshore regulator the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Refineries along the Gulf Coast also cut or halted operations.

Energy Transfer said it was conducting post-hurricane assessments at its Stingray Pipeline and Sea Robin assets, which bring natural gas from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico to hubs in Louisiana, according to a shipper notice.

“Stingray will not be accepting nominations from any location, and operators are required to remain shut in until Stingray has given clearance of our flow,” the company said in a notice to shippers.

Sea Robin, which feeds a compressor station in Erath, Louisiana, posted a similar notice to shippers, requesting that they shut in to allow for post-hurricane assessments.

Enterprise Products Partners on Monday said assessments were continuing at its facilities.

(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Israel says it will loan Palestinians money after highest-level talks in years

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel will lend the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority more than $150 million after the sides held their highest-level meeting in years, Israeli officials said on Monday, while playing down prospects of any major diplomatic breakthrough.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who has overall responsibility for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, travelled to the Palestinian self-rule area of the territory for previously undisclosed talks on Sunday with President Mahmoud Abbas.

A source close to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the premier had approved the Gantz-Abbas meeting and deemed it a “routine” matter. “There is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be one,” the source told Reuters.

U.S.-sponsored talks on founding a Palestinian state stalled in 2014. The Gantz-Abbas meeting took place as Bennett, a nationalist who opposes Palestinian statehood, returned from his first talks with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington.

PA official Hussein Al Sheikh said the talks with Gantz included “all aspects” of Palestinian-Israeli relations.

Abbas coordinates West Bank security with Israel. Both sides are wary of Hamas Islamists who seized the Gaza Strip, another Palestinian territory, from Abbas in 2007.

But Israel chafes at stipends the PA pays to militants jailed or killed in attacks on Israelis. In a protest measure, the Bennett government last month withheld $180 million from 2020 tax revenues it collected on behalf of the PA. A Gantz spokeswoman said that policy was unchanged.

The 500 million shekel ($155 million) loan was meant to help “with vital PA functions” and would be repaid in 2022 out of future tax revenues collected by Israel, the spokeswoman said.

A White House statement said Biden, during his talks with Bennett on Friday, reiterated his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “underscored the importance of steps to improve the lives of Palestinians”.

Bennett did not mention Palestinians in public remarks at the White House that focused largely on arch-enemy Iran’s nuclear program.

Gantz, a centrist in Bennett’s coalition government, has called in the past for resumption of a peace process with the Palestinians, who aspire to a state of their own in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Middle East war.

But any renewed movement on the issue could shake the foundations of Bennett’s government of left-wing, rightist, centrist and Arab parties that in June ended the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year run as prime minister.

In a sign of friction within the coalition, Mossi Raz, a legislator from the left-wing Meretz party, said dismissal of prospects for renewed peace talks by the Bennett source was “outrageous.”

“A peace process is an Israeli interest,” Raz wrote on Twitter.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Howard Goller)