Tag Archives: United States

NHC says Storm Arthur forecast to move away from U.S. east coast

(Reuters) – The center of tropical storm Arthur is forecast to continue to move away from the east coast of the United States, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Monday.

Arthur, the first named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is located about 110 miles (175 kilometers) north-east of Cape Hatteras North Carolina with maximum winds of 50 miles per hour (85 km per hour), the Miami-based weather forecaster said.

“While some strengthening is forecast during the next 24 hours, Arthur is likely to lose its tropical characteristics late by tonight or Tuesday,” NHC added.

(Reporting by Sumita Layek in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)

Some signs children may not transmit COVID-19, two UK epidemiologists say

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) – There are tentative signs that children may not spread the novel coronavirus as much as adults, two top epidemiologists said on Tuesday, though they cautioned that the bad news was that human immunity may not last that long.

As Europe and the United States try to get back to work after the first deadly wave of the novel coronavirus outbreak, world leaders are trying to work out when it is safe for children and students can get back to their studies.

The signs are that children may not spread it as much as adults, Dr Rosalind Eggo, who is on committees that advise the British government on its infectious disease response, told members of parliament’s upper house.

“We think that children are less likely to get it so far but it is not certain, we are very certain that children are less likely to have severe outcomes and there are hints that children are less infectious but it is not certain,” said Eggo of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

John Edmunds, a member of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told the House of Lords’ science committee that it was striking how children did not seem to play much of a role in spreading the novel coronavirus.

“It is unusual that children don’t seem to play much of a role in transmission because for most respiratory viruses and bacteria they play a central role, but in this they don’t seem to,” said Edmunds, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“There is only one documented outbreak associated with a school – which is amazing,” Edmunds said.

But he added there was potentially bad news, though, that human immunity to the novel coronavirus may not last long.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Michael Holden)

Trump administration awards contract to make COVID-19 drugs in U.S

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has awarded a $354 million contract to U.S.-based Phlow Corp to manufacture drugs being tested or used to fight the new coronavirus as well as some medicines that are in shortage.

The four-year contract, with an additional $458 million included as potential options, is a move by the administration to reduce the country’s dependency on foreign nations to support its drug supply chain.

Virginia-based Phlow Corp said it had started making pharmaceutical ingredients and finished dosage forms for over a dozen essential medicines to treat hospitalized patients with COVID-19-related illnesses.

Many of these medicines are in shortage and have previously been imported from other countries, the private company said in a statement. India and China account for a vast majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients used to make drugs in the United States.

“For far too long, we’ve relied on foreign manufacturing and supply chains for our most important medicines and active pharmaceutical ingredients while placing America’s health, safety, and national security at grave risk,” Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said in a statement.

The funding immediately enabled Phlow to deliver to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile over 1.6 million doses of five essential generic medicines used to treat COVID-19 patients, it said.

Phlow will partner with private sector entities that include Civica Rx, Ampac Fine Chemicals and the Medicines for All Institute to manufacture the medicines.

All pharmaceutical products by Phlow will be made in the United States, according to the company’s website.

The private company said it was also building the United States’ long-term, national stockpile to secure key ingredients used to manufacture the most essential medicines on U.S. soil.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Texas prepares for a pandemic first: a jury trial by Zoom

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – With jury trials on hold throughout the United States because of the coronavirus pandemic, court officials in Texas are trying something new: let jurors hear a case through Zoom.

Lawyers in an insurance dispute in Collin County District Court on Monday picked a jury to hear the case by videoconference, in what officials believe is the first virtual jury trial to be held nationally amid the COVID-19 crisis.

More than two dozen potential jurors logged in by smartphone, laptop and tablet for jury selection, which was streamed live on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/c/JudgeEmilyMiskel, with a judge occasionally providing tech advice on how to best use their devices.

The one-day trial is a so-called summary jury trial, in which jurors hear a condensed version of a case and deliver a non-binding verdict.

The parties, having seen how their case could fare before a jury in a full-blown trial, will sit down for mediation and try to negotiate a settlement on Tuesday.

Officials say the abbreviated format and non-binding verdict make it ideal to test the viability of holding jury trials remotely, as they grapple with the more daunting challenge of how to conduct them safely in person during the pandemic.

“You can’t drag people down to the courthouse and make them sit together for days at a time,” Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said in an interview. “It’s just too dangerous.”

Courts throughout the country have since March curtailed operations and limited in-person court hearings as states adopted stay-at-home orders and ordered businesses closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In 39 states and the District of Columbia, court systems on a statewide basis directed or encouraged judges to conduct hearings remotely by phone or videoconference, according to the National Center for State Courts. But jury trials came to a halt.

Monday’s case, a lawsuit accusing the insurer State Farm of failing to honor its obligations to cover property damage to a building caused by a 2017 storm, was originally set to go to trial in McKinney, Texas, in March.

Even as courts in many states draw up plans to resume operations, judges and court officials have questioned how to safely conduct in-person trial proceedings.

Ideas include spreading jurors out in a courtroom and requiring them and lawyers to wear masks. Even with these precautions, it is not clear how hundreds of people can be asked to show up for jury duty in cramped courthouses.

“It’s just imponderable,” Hecht said. “There are hundreds of people over the country studying how do we get back to jury trials.”

The Indiana Supreme Court said last week that once jury trials resume in the state, parties in civil cases can agree to conduct them remotely. And in Arizona, the state’s top court has said it will allow jurors to be selected remotely.

The moves come as courts face a growing backlog of cases. In 2019, Texas held an average of 186 jury trials per week, said David Slayton, the Texas Office of Court Administration’s administrative director.

Whether virtual trials will be successful remains to be seen.

Judge Emily Miskel, whose courthouse is overseeing Monday’s trial, said the case could illuminate whether a “hybrid approach” is possible, in which jury selection is virtual and the remainder of the trial is conducted in person.

Slayton acknowledged that holding trials remotely presents challenges, including making sure jurors remain attentive and do not conduct research online. But those issues also exist with in-person trials and can be easily dealt with by a warning from the judge, he said.

“Obviously it’s on video, so the judge can tell if jurors are washing dishes or doing something else,” Slayton said.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Daniel Wallis and Tom Brown)

Europe sees two deaths, multiple cases of COVID-linked syndrome in children

(Reuters) – A new life-threatening inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19 has affected 230 children in Europe and killed two so far this year, a regional health body said on Friday, as medics worldwide were told to be on alert.

The Swedish-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a risk report that two children had succumbed to the condition: one in Britain and one in France.

The new coronavirus has so far taken its greatest toll on the elderly and those with chronic health conditions, but reports about the syndrome in children have raised fears it could pose a greater risk to the young than first through.

At a briefing in Geneva, the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged clinicians to be alert to the rare syndrome but cautioned that links to COVID-19 were still unclear.

The condition, known as paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS), shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.

“I call on all clinicians worldwide to work with your national authorities and WHO to be alert and better understand this syndrome in children,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

On Friday, the WHO issued a preliminary definition of the syndrome, which it said had become more frequent during the current pandemic but has also appeared in children who did not test positive for COVID-19.

The condition affected children and adolescents showing fever for more than three days, with elevated markers of inflammation.

The children also showed at least two of the following symptoms: rash or signs of inflammation around the mouth, hands or feet; shock or low blood pressure; heart problems; evidence of bleeding disorder; and acute gastrointestinal problems.

The case definition pertained to children who had contracted COVID-19 or had had likely contact with COVID-19 patients, and had no other obvious microbial cause of inflammation, it said.

“We know so far very little about this inflammatory syndrome,” said WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove.

In France, doctors said a nine-year old boy died a week ago in the southern town of Marseille after developing a syndrome akin to Kawasaki disease and being in contact with the coronavirus though not suffering its symptoms.

He was hospitalized on May 2 after scarlet fever had been diagnosed. Back home, he suffered from a severe heart ailment and was rushed back to Marseille’s Timone hospital’s intensive care unit, where he died.

French researchers on Thursday reported Kawasaki disease-like symptoms in 17 children admitted to a Paris hospital between April 27 and May 7, while in an average two-week period they would have expected to see only one such case.

The European Union (EU) health body ECDC added it had agreed to include the syndrome as a possible complication of COVID-19 to be reported for Europe-wide surveillance.

Research efforts should aim at determining what role the coronavirus, if any, plays in causing PIMS, it said.

The risk of PIMS in children was currently considered low, as was the risk of them contracting COVID-19, the agency said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday issued guidance to doctors on how to recognize and report cases of the syndrome, following the reports of cases in Europe and more than 100 in the state of New York.

At its briefing, the WHO urged governments and companies to work together to develop a vaccine and treatments against COVID-19, and make distribution equitable.

“Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe,” Tedros said.

Costa Rica’s President Carlos Alvarado called at the briefing for creating a pool of patents and licenses on a voluntary basis to enable fair access.

France said on Thursday the world’s nations would have equal access to any vaccine developed by pharmaceuticals giant Sanofi, a day after the company’s chief executive suggested Americans would likely be the first in line.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Michael Shields and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi in Zurich, Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Marc Leras and Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Edmund Blair)

What did eight weeks and $3 trillion buy the U.S. in the fight against coronavirus?

By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Unemployment checks are flowing, $490 billion has been shipped to small businesses, and the U.S. Federal Reserve has put about $2.5 trillion and counting behind domestic and global markets.

Fears of overwhelmed hospitals and millions of U.S. deaths from the new coronavirus have diminished, if not disappeared.

Yet two months into the United States’ fight against the most severe pandemic to arise in the age of globalization, neither the health nor the economic war has been won. Many analysts fear the country has at best fought back worst-case outcomes.

For every community where case loads are declining, other hotspots arise and fester; for states like Wisconsin where bars are open and crowded, there are others such as Maryland that remain under strict limits.

There is no universal, uniform testing plan to reveal what is happening to public health in any of those communities.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 people a day continue to die from the COVID-19 disease in the United States, and between 20,000 and 25,000 are identified as infected.

If there is consensus on any point, it is that the struggle toward normal social and economic life will take much more time, effort and money than at first thought. The risks of a years-long economic Depression have risen; fact-driven officials have become increasingly sober in their outlook, and the coming weeks and coming set of choices have emerged as critical to the future.

Faced with two distinct paths – a cavalier acceptance of the mass deaths that would be needed for “herd immunity” or the truly strict lockdown needed to extinguish the virus – “we are not on either route,” Harvard University economist James Stock, among the first to model the health and economic tradeoffs the country faces, said last week.

That means no clear end in sight to the economic and health pain.

“I am really concerned we are just going to hang out. We will have reopened across the board, not in a smart way … and we will have months and months of 15% or 20% unemployment,” Stock said. “It is hard to state how damaging that will be.”

TAKING STOCK

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed chair Jerome Powell will appear via a remote internet feed before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday to provide the first quarterly update on the implementation of the CARES Act, which along with a follow-up bill formed the signature $2.9 trillion legislative response to the pandemic. (See a graphic  of the full stimulus.)

They will likely face detailed questions about their efforts after a rocky few months. The Paycheck Protection Program, in particular, was originally overwhelmed with applicants and criticized for hundreds of loans doled out to publicly traded companies.

Yet, now two months in, a replenished program still has $120 billion in funding available – money on the table that analysts at TD Securities suggest people have refused to pick up because of confusion about the terms.

The hearing is also likely to be a platform for Democrats to coax Mnuchin and Powell toward acknowledging that more must be done – Powell said so directly in an appearance last week – and for Republicans arguing against quick new action.

DEATH PROJECTIONS DOWN, TESTING UP

The lockdowns and money have had an impact on the disease’s spread, as the postponement of sporting events and other mass gatherings, and restaurant and store closings curbed the spread of a virus that some early estimates saw killing as many as 2 million Americans.

Deaths as of Saturday stood at around 87,000 and are expected to pass 135,000 by early August. (Graphic )

After federal government missteps and delays, testing has ramped up to 1.5 to 2 million tests a day, still less than half what health experts say the country needs. (Graphic )

Strict lockdowns slowed the rate of infection in the hardest-hit areas, “flattening the curve” so hospitals could retrain nurses, cobble together donations of personal protective equipment such masks, gloves and gowns, and were spared from the direst predictions about intensive care shortages.

However, the fight against the coronavirus may still be in its initial stages in more than a dozen U.S. states, where case numbers continue to rise. (Graphic )

And community agencies are noting increases in cases of domestic violence and suicide attempts after weeks of home confinement.

TRILLIONS MORE SPENDING AHEAD?

At its passage in late March the CARES Act was regarded as a major and perhaps sufficient prop to get the U.S. economy through a dilemma.

Fighting the spread of the virus came with a massive economic hit as stores closed, transportation networks scaled back, and tens of millions of people lost jobs or revenue at their businesses. (See a graphic of the economic fallout.)

Facing a decline not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the main goal of the bill was to replace that lost income with checks to individuals and loans to small businesses that are designed to be forgiven.

JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli estimated recently that the loans and transfer payments under the act turned what would have been an annualized blow to income of nearly 60% from April through June into an annualized decline of 15% – sharp, but far more manageable.

GDP in the second quarter, however, will drop 40% on an annualized basis. The budget deficit this fiscal year is expected to nearly quadruple to $3.7 trillion.

Some of the deadlines in the CARES Act are approaching. The small business loans were meant to cover eight weeks of payroll, a period that has already lapsed for companies that closed in mid-March when President Trump issued a national emergency declaration. The enhanced $600 per week unemployment benefit expires at the end of July.

The House on Friday passed a new $3 trillion CARES Act to replenish some funding, but it is unclear whether the Republican-led Senate will take it up.

Weeks after a V-shaped economic recovery was predicted in March, most economists and health officials have a darker message.

“It is quite possible this thing will stay at however many deaths it is a day indefinitely, just wobbling up and down a little bit as epidemics move to different places around the country,” said economist and Princeton University professor Angus Deaton.

“The sort of social distancing we are prepared to put up with is not going to do very much.”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Heather Timmons and Daniel Wallis)

In patchwork restart, parts of New York and other U.S. states reopen

By Doina Chiacu and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Less populated areas of New York, Virginia and Maryland took their first steps towards lifting lockdowns on Friday, part of a patchwork approach to the coronavirus pandemic that has been shaped by political divisions across the United States.

Construction and manufacturing facilities in five out of 10 New York state regions were given the green light to restart operations, although New York City, the country’s most populous metropolis, remained under strict limits.

Joe Dundon, whose construction business in Binghamton, New York, was able to start up again after shutting down in March, said he had a long backlog of kitchen and bathroom remodeling projects and several estimates lined up for Friday.

“We are more than excited to get back to work,” he said.

New York state, home to both bustling Manhattan and hilly woods and farmland that stretch to the Canadian border, has been the global epicenter of the pandemic but rural areas have not been nearly as badly affected as New York City.

Statewide, the outbreak is ebbing. Coronavirus hospitalizations in New York declined to 6,394, a third of the level at the peak one month ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday. The number of new coronavirus deaths was 132 on Thursday, the state’s lowest daily total since March 25, he told a news briefing.

Cuomo said New York would join the nearby states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware in partially reopening beaches for the Memorial Day holiday weekend on May 23-25.

Pockets of Virginia and Maryland were allowing an array of businesses to reopen, in contrast to the region’s biggest cities – Washington, D.C., and Baltimore – which extended their stay-at-home orders for fear of a spike in coronavirus cases and deaths.

The patchwork approach has largely formed along demographic and political lines. Republican governors have pushed to reopen more quickly to jumpstart the crippled economy, especially in Southern states such as Georgia and Texas which were among the first to allow stores and businesses to reopen.

Democratic governors have been more cautious, especially about big cities, citing concerns for public health from a virus that has killed more than 85,000 Americans.

New York and Virginia are run by Democratic governors while Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, is a moderate Republican in a state that is strongly Democratic.

PANDEMIC DIVISIONS

Political divisions were on display in Wisconsin this week after its Supreme Court invalidated the governor’s stay-at-home order, causing confusion as local leaders responded in various ways across the Midwestern state.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett decided to keep his city’s stay-at-home order in place, although he told Reuters he may relax some guidelines later this month. He said he was concerned there would be outbreaks in surrounding areas that would find their way into his city of nearly 600,000 people.

“By definition a pandemic means that it is everywhere and the spread of the disease does not stop at city boundaries,” Barrett said.

The eagerness to ease restrictions reflects the devastating economic toll of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. More than 36 million Americans have submitted unemployment claims since mid-March, and government data on Friday showed that retail sales plunged 16.4% last month, the biggest decline since the government started tracking the series in 1992.

The U.S. House of Representatives cleared the way on Friday to push ahead with a $3 trillion Democratic bill that would double the amount of aid approved by Congress to ease the human and economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

But it lacked support from Republicans, who control the U.S. Senate.

Having staked his Nov. 3 re-election hopes on a strong economy, Republican President Donald Trump has urged states to reopen despite warnings of health experts, including some on his White House task force, that a premature lifting of lockdowns could spark more virus outbreaks.

Trump said on Friday the U.S. government was working with other countries to develop a coronavirus vaccine at an accelerated pace but made clear his view that the country could move on from the epidemic without one.

“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” Trump told an event in the White House Rose Garden.

Trump has also voiced support for protesters, sometimes armed, who have urged states to swiftly reopen their economies.

In Pennsylvania, hundreds of demonstrators gathered on the steps of the state capitol building in Harrisburg where they waved American and Trump 2020 flags and homemade signs, calling for the governor to fully reopen the state. Motorists including a man dressed as Santa Claus in a red convertible honked their horns in approval as they drove by.

Pennsylvania ranks 12th among U.S. states in COVID-19 cases per capita, according to a Reuters tally.

Thirty of its 67 counties are under a stay-at-home order that allows only essential business and travel to take place until June 4. Businesses are allowed to be open in the other 37 counties but must follow safety orders.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Richard Cowan, Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Howard Goller, Cynthia Osterman and Daniel Wallis)

U.S. companies discover the dark side of a COVID-19 business boom

By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) – Kevin Kelly has discovered the many ways a deadly pandemic can be both a boom and a burden on some U.S. businesses.

As the nation clamped down with stay-at-home orders, Kelly said his company, Emerald Packaging Inc. in Union City, Calif, saw demand for the factory’s output explode. Emerald churns out plastic bags for produce, like baby carrots and iceberg lettuce, and Kelly attributed the growth, in part, to the perception that packaged produce is a safer alternative to unwrapped items.

Emerald represents the other side of the current novel coronavirus crisis, which has seen unemployment surge to levels not seen since the Great Depression. The jobless rate hit 14.7% in April. While many companies face a slump, some are rushing to add workers, including delivery services like Instacart. A recent survey by the Atlanta Fed concluded there have been three jobs added to the U.S. economy for every 10 layoffs.

Eric Schnur, CEO of specialty chemical maker Lubrizol Corp., owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Corp, said he anticipates “many millions in extra costs associated with responding to COVID-19.” Lubrizol’s business boom includes a three-fold increase in its output of the gelling agent used to make hand sanitizer.

Schnur said the extra costs go beyond stepped up cleaning and safety equipment and includes “significant increases in supply chain and logistics costs as we work to get our materials to those who have the greatest need.”

Another company facing added costs is Calumet Electronics Corp., in Calumet, Mich., which said it has spent $80,000 on everything from soap to mobile desks to keep workers safe through the crisis. For more on Calumet, click here:

For Emerald, orders surged 150% in March and were up another 7% in April. But there’s a dark side to that surge, both in terms of cost and complexity.

All the steps the company has taken — both to boost output and keep workers safe — are expected to add at least $350,000 to costs by the end of the year. This doesn’t include the lost production time, which adds up to at least an hour each day, that machines have to be shut down for cleaning. Kelly, Emerald’s chief executive officer, said he hasn’t figured out what this will do to his profits, but he expects a big hit to his margins. Emerald is a family-owned business with annual sales of about $85 million.

One of the biggest costs for Emerald was $50,000 Kelly spent on an automated temperature scanner. When the crisis first hit, Emerald implemented a regimen that included workers getting their temperature taken at the start and end of each shift.

But Kelly soon realized there was a problem having 40 people at the start of each shift waiting to be checked, one by one, by someone standing close to each employee as they were screened.

“It also just isn’t comfortable,” he said. “You know it’s a temperature gun, but you basically are holding a gun up to someone else’s head. It just made everyone uncomfortable.”

The new system will be a scanner that flashes a red warning signal if someone walks by with a body temperature over 100.4 degrees.

COVID-RELATED COSTS

Another big-ticket item is the cleaning, which accounts for $75,000 of the added costs. This includes assigning six workers — two on each shift — to constantly scrub and sanitize surfaces and $10,000 for six backpacks that these workers now use to hose floors with cleanser. The company, which was founded in 1963 by Kelly’s father, has added 10 workers to its staff of 240 and is heaping on overtime as well to get the orders out the door.

Even the company’s rag bill exploded. They used to buy 2,000 rags a week. Now it’s 7,000. The cost of that one item has jumped from $300 a month to $1,000, while disposable glove use has tripled.

Michael Rincon, Emerald’s director of operations, says each week brings new twists. For instance, they’ve discovered that having workers constantly wiping surfaces with isopropyl alcohol erodes signs and buttons — but they only realized that after it was too late. On one machine in the factory, the word “danger” printed in bright red has blurred.

Rincon said the faded labels will be repainted. But he’s also had to replace buttons on machines that have had the lettering rubbed away. The cost of a new button isn’t much, but the repairs mean costly shutdowns on lines that run around the clock. Some buttons can be replaced in a few minutes, but others take longer, said Rincon.

Kelly said he even thought about trying to put through a price increase to offset some of these expenses. But a few weeks ago, his biggest customer let him know that was a non-starter. The customer told Kelly he was going to see who else might be able to supply him with produce bags, presumably at a better price.

Besides the costs, there are also plenty of unpredictable management challenges. The company made masks mandatory eight weeks ago, at the very beginning of the crisis, but Kelly and other managers still find workers in the plant who aren’t wearing them or are wearing them incorrectly.

One problem is the nature of their factory, which is dominated by large, noisy machines. The only way to communicate in many parts of the factory is to lean your head right next to your coworker. “I’m constantly walking through the factory — throwing my arms apart — to remind people,” said Kelly.

Emerald has had three false alarms, with workers either calling in sick or falling sick at work and being sent home. However, none tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Kelly said that in a country that regulates so many things, there’s still no good government guidance beyond general guidelines.

“The toughest thing is that there isn’t much direction from the state or the federal government,” Pallavi Joyappa, Emerald’s chief operating officer, said. “You are kind of making it up as you go along.”

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; editing by Diane Craft)

U.S. says Islamic State conducted attack on Kabul hospital

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday blamed Islamic State militants — not the Taliban — for a gruesome hospital attack in Afghanistan this week that killed two newborn babies, and it renewed calls for Afghans to embrace a troubled peace push with the Taliban insurgency.

But it was unclear if the U.S. declaration would be enough to bolster the peace effort and reverse a decision by the Kabul government to resume offensive operations against the Taliban.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military on Tuesday to switch to “offensive mode” against the Taliban following the hospital attack in Kabul and a suicide bombing in Nangarhar province that killed scores of people.

U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad blamed Islamic State for both attacks in a statement issued on Twitter, saying the group opposed any Taliban peace agreement and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

“Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity,” Khalilzad said.

“No more excuses. Afghans, and the world, deserve better.”

An affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. No one has claimed the hospital attack.

The Taliban denied involvement in either attack, but the government accused the group of fostering an environment in which terrorism thrives or of working with other militant groups who could have been involved, straining U.S. efforts to bring the insurgents and Afghan government together.

The attacks were another setback to U.S. President Donald Trump’s stalled plans to bring peace to Afghanistan and end America’s longest war.

A Feb. 29 U.S.-Taliban deal called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal and for the Afghan government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when peace talks were to start.

Intra-Afghan peace talks have yet to occur and there is some bitterness within the Afghan government, which was not a party to the Feb. 29 deal, that the United States undercut their leverage by negotiating directly with the Taliban.

Ghani’s decision to revive offensive operations is supported by many opposition figures, who believe Washington’s sole focus is to keep the U.S. troop withdrawal plan on track to help Trump win a second term in the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

(Reporting by Eric Beech and Phil Stewart; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Daniel Wallis)

Truckers hit by coronavirus pandemic face rocky road to recovery

By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bryan Hutchens in Oklahoma estimates he’s only used his two flat-bed trucks to shift oilfield equipment for a week out of the past month as the coronavirus crisis shutters businesses.

In New York, trucking firm ERL Intermodal says its cargo volumes have halved as lockdowns sideline its business of moving everything from olive oil to garden hoses to truck parts.

At the world’s busiest border, trucks hauling food and consumer products north to the United States are returning empty to Mexico where mass job losses have hit demand, leaving cash-strapped truckers to log hundreds of costly, empty miles.

The pandemic has turned the global trucking industry on its head. As swathes of the world economy shut down and curbs on movement and gatherings disrupt supply chains, freight companies are hemorrhaging cash and sidelining thousands of truckers.

“Once the economy gets going again, my fear is that there will be so many truckers out of the business by then,” said Steve Sperbeck, general manager for ERL, which has a fleet of 52 trucks based in Utica, New York.

According to the International Road Transport Union (IRU) in Geneva, which represents operators in 80 countries, new freight contracts have declined by 60% to 90% since COVID-19 struck while empty runs have climbed by up to 40%.

For truckers shipping products such as car parts, clothes, flowers and construction materials, operations have ground to an almost complete halt, the IRU said.

Lockdown restrictions in India, the world’s second-most populous country, have sidelined 80% of the 10 million trucks behind a $130 billion industry that hauls 60% of the country’s freight.

In Brazil, which relies on trucks to shift key exports such as soybeans, coffee and sugar to ports, shipments have also slumped. Carlos Litti, director for road transportation at the National Confederation of Transport Workers, said firms were now delaying critical maintenance work such as tire retreading, as government support for the sector had been insufficient.

“At the moment, there is no way to pressure the government,” Litti said. “The economy just has to turn around.”

SMALL CARRIERS VULNERABLE

In March, U.S. freight rates surged on fears the virus and the closure of highway truck stops would discourage drivers from making long trips. But with many factories shut and port traffic down, rates have plummeted as truckers battle over jobs to try to stay afloat through the crisis.

If the pain is prolonged, smaller U.S. carriers that cannot spread their costs across a large fleet could shut their doors, pushing skilled drivers out of the business and accelerating a longer-term shortage of truckers, industry groups say.

Some 97% of trucking companies in the United States operate fewer than 20 trucks, and 91% have six or fewer, according to the American Trucking Associations. Those workers rely more often on one-off jobs than long-term contracts.

Some routes are paying just 75 cents to 80 cents a mile, less than half of what’s needed to pay for fuel, insurance and other operating costs, according to five truckers. Pay is mostly determined by distances driven and they have also dropped.

When energy firms hit by the slump in oil prices stopped giving work to Hutchens in Oklahoma, he parked his rigs instead of rushing, like many other truckers, to haul essential goods such as food and medical equipment at loss-making rates.

Bids in the spot market have crashed to the lowest in years as shuttered factories, schools and malls have left scores of truckers that usually have longer-term contracts searching for new cargo to haul.

“In some lanes, rates are lower now than they were 15 years ago, but all of our costs, from fuel to insurance, have gone up,” Hutchens said.

He has laid off one employee and may have to begin selling his equipment if business does not return to more normal levels in the next two to three months. Relaxed restrictions on driver hours and more transparency on shippers’ margins could help smaller operators compete, Hutchens said.

“We’re a small company. There’s not a whole lot we can cut,” he said. “When we do come back online, we don’t know what the volume is going to be, so we don’t know how quickly things are going to return to normal.”

For an interactive graphic on average U.S. truck freight rates click on: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Z3sgYG

‘WE’RE BEING GOUGED’

ERL Intermodal says it earns more from pre-contracted shipments than spot market loads but revenues for the central New York trucker have also dropped. Six ERL drivers have been furloughed and paychecks for those left have dropped 30% as their hours behind the wheel decline.

To make ends meet, ERL leased nine of its refrigerated trailers to the Department of Homeland Security for use as makeshift morgues for COVID-19 victims. The company also tapped an emergency government loan program to help to pay salaries.

“Financially, it probably wasn’t the best decision, but good drivers are hard to come by,” said ERL’s Sperbeck.

At the Mexico-U.S. border, some truckers are carrying just one full load south for every seven full northbound trips, well below the usual three-to-one ratio, according to data from freight forwarder Nuvocargo.

“We are very concerned that if business does not come back to usual … it’s going to result in things like bankruptcies and losing jobs,” Nuvocargo chief executive Deepak Chhugani said.

Dozens of U.S. truckers parked near the White House in Washington for over a week this month to protest over the low freight rates and industry regulations they say are disproportionately hurting small, independent truckers.

Standing by make-shift shelters, truck driver Mike Landis from Pennsylvania said his workload had dropped by up to 50% since the pandemic struck, and most of the jobs available were being offered at rates below operating costs.

“After being told we’re essential and told by the government to stay out here and basically risk our health to continue moving the things that the country needs, we’re being gouged,” Landis said.

“We’re here as middle-class people, the people that put the president in office, and we’re here asking him for help.”

(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Alberto Alerigi in Sao Paulo and Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and David Clarke)