Tag Archives: United States

Texas governor bans jail time for coronavirus lockdown violations

By Brad Brooks

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday banned the jailing of anybody in the state who defied his orders to shut businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic, a move that followed an outcry over the arrest and incarceration of a Dallas salon owner.

“Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,” Abbott, a Republican, said in a written statement.

The Texas Supreme Court held up Abbott’s order, which was issued two days after Shelley Luther was arrested and put in the Dallas County jail for opening her business, Salon à la Mode, on April 24 in defiance of a closure order across the state.

Luther was sentenced to serve one week as punishment. She was expected to be freed later on Thursday.

The order will also benefit two women who were arrested last month in Laredo, Texas, for providing salon services and arrested during what local authorities called a sting operation. The two women were already free on bond.

Luther’s case became a rallying cause for protesters and others in Texas who want to see the state open up faster.

Texas, which has one of the lowest per-capita death rates in the country from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, is in the vanguard of states seeking to restart the economy despite the pandemic.

Restaurants, retailers and other stores reopened this week – but under conditions that they only allow in 25% of normal capacity. Salons across Texas will be able to open again on Friday as part of the reopening plan.

Luther’s salon and all others across the state were closed on March 22 because of the pandemic. She publicly railed against Abbott’s orders then, saying she and her salon staff could not feed their kids without income.

Luther reopened her salon on April 24.

A day later, surrounded by boisterous supporters calling for businesses to reopen, Luther tore up a cease and desist order she had received from a Dallas County judge ordering her to close her shop. She kept her salon open.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moye on Tuesday said during a hearing that he would not order Luther jailed if she acknowledged that her actions were selfish and apologized.

“I have to disagree with you sir, when you say that I’m selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish,” Luther said, refusing to apologize.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks; Editing by Paul Simao)

To keep COVID-19 patients home, some U.S. states weigh house arrest tech

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – How do you ensure that someone sick with COVID-19 stays home?

As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps – could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers.

But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

Case in point is Hawaii, which considered the sweeping use of GPS-enabled ankle bracelets or smartphone tracking apps to enforce stay-at-home orders given to arriving air passengers, according to Ronald Kouchi, the president of the Hawaii state senate.

Kouchi said Hawaiian officials were concerned that many travelers were flouting the state’s 14-day quarantine order, putting the archipelago’s inhabitants at risk. But he said that the plan for mass tracking of incoming travelers – inspired by similar technology in place in South Korea – was put on the back burner after the Hawaii attorney general’s office raised concerns.

“America is America,” Kouchi told Reuters. “There are certain rights and freedoms.”

In response to written questions to the attorney general’s office, Hawaii’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center said the “various ideas being evaluated for tracking those under mandatory quarantine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are right now just that, ideas.”

Similar ideas have already been executed in a few other states, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Seven people who broke quarantine rules in Louisville, Kentucky were court-ordered to wear GPS-tracking devices manufactured by Colorado-based SCRAM Systems, according to Amy Hess, the city’s chief of public services. She told Reuters that while she would rather not have had to use the devices at all, state law permitted the imposition of home confinement to protect public health.

“We don’t want to take away people’s freedoms but at the same time we have a pandemic,” she said.

In West Virginia’s capital, Charleston, Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford told Reuters his force had leased 10 additional location-monitoring ankle bracelets from GEO Group Inc. at the outset of the epidemic “to be on the safe side,” although he said they’ve so far just sat on the shelf.

Industry executives including Shadowtrack Technologies Inc. President Robert Magaletta, whose Louisiana-based company supplies nearly 250 clients across the criminal justice system, said they had fielded calls from state and local governments about repurposing their tools for quarantine enforcement, although they wouldn’t name the prospective buyers.

Kris Keyton, of Arkansas-based E-Cell, said he had recently been approached by a state agency that wanted to adapt his detainee-tracking smartphone app for quarantine enforcement.

He said the changes the agency requested were purely cosmetic, including swapping out the word “client” – E-Cell’s term for arrestees – with the word “patient.”

“They just wanted to reskin our app,” he said.

“UNCHARTED TERRITORY”

The industry has two main ways of keeping track of offenders: One is through the traditional ankle bracelet, a battery-powered device which is fastened to a person’s leg and is monitored through GPS. The other is through a smartphone app, either used in conjunction with facial or voice recognition technology to make sure it’s attached to the right person or, as with the app made by E-Cell, tethered via Bluetooth to a fitness tracker-style wrist band to ensure it stays on or near the person it is meant to follow.

A QR code-enabled version of the app-and-wrist band solution is already being used in Hong Kong to enforce quarantines on incoming travelers. Poland uses a facial recognition-powered version of the technology that regularly prompts users to upload a selfie to prove they’re indoors.

Other governments are weighing similar technology, said Magaletta of Shadowtrack, who said he was in talks with half a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In a call with reporters last month, Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union noted that several governments were toying with the idea of using smartphones as ad hoc ankle monitors.

“As a technological matter that probably would be effective as long as too much precision is not expected,” Stanley said. But he cautioned that enforcement approach to public health “often tends to backfire.”

Magaletta also foresaw thorny issues as far as the United States was concerned, saying he was less comfortable tracking patients with COVID-19 than he was enforcing house arrests for convicted criminals.

“Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who’s innocent?” he asked. “It’s uncharted territory.”

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin)

Special Report: U.S. rearms to nullify China’s missile supremacy

By David Lague

HONG KONG (Reuters) – As Washington and Beijing trade barbs over the coronavirus pandemic, a longer-term struggle between the two Pacific powers is at a turning point, as the United States rolls out new weapons and strategy in a bid to close a wide missile gap with China.

The United States has largely stood by in recent decades as China dramatically expanded its military firepower. Now, having shed the constraints of a Cold War-era arms control treaty, the Trump administration is planning to deploy long-range, ground-launched cruise missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Pentagon intends to arm its Marines with versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile now carried on U.S. warships, according to the White House budget requests for 2021 and Congressional testimony in March of senior U.S. military commanders. It is also accelerating deliveries of its first new long-range anti-ship missiles in decades.

In a statement to Reuters about the latest U.S. moves, Beijing urged Washington to “be cautious in word and deed,” to “stop moving chess pieces around” the region, and to “stop flexing its military muscles around China.”

The U.S. moves are aimed at countering China’s overwhelming advantage in land-based cruise and ballistic missiles. The Pentagon also intends to dial back China’s lead in what strategists refer to as the “range war.” The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s military, has built up a huge force of missiles that mostly outrange those of the U.S. and its regional allies, according to senior U.S. commanders and strategic advisers to the Pentagon, who have been warning that China holds a clear advantage in these weapons.

And, in a radical shift in tactics, the Marines will join forces with the U.S. Navy in attacking an enemy’s warships. Small and mobile units of U.S. Marines armed with anti-ship missiles will become ship killers.

In a conflict, these units will be dispersed at key points in the Western Pacific and along the so-called first island chain, commanders said. The first island chain is the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.

Top U.S. military commanders explained the new tactics to Congress in March in a series of budget hearings. The commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General David Berger, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 5 that small units of Marines armed with precision missiles could assist the U.S. Navy to gain control of the seas, particularly in the Western Pacific. “The Tomahawk missile is one of the tools that is going to allow us to do that,” he said.

The Tomahawk – which first gained fame when launched in massed strikes during the 1991 Gulf War – has been carried on U.S. warships and used to attack land targets in recent decades. The Marines would test fire the cruise missile through 2022 with the aim of making it operational the following year, top Pentagon commanders testified.

At first, a relatively small number of land-based cruise missiles will not change the balance of power. But such a shift would send a strong political signal that Washington is preparing to compete with China’s massive arsenal, according to senior U.S. and other Western strategists. Longer term, bigger numbers of these weapons combined with similar Japanese and Taiwanese missiles would pose a serious threat to Chinese forces, they say. The biggest immediate threat to the PLA comes from new, long-range anti-ship missiles now entering service with U.S. Navy and Air Force strike aircraft.

“The Americans are coming back strongly,” said Ross Babbage, a former senior Australian government defense official and now a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a security research group. “By 2024 or 2025 there is a serious risk for the PLA that their military developments will be obsolete.”

A Chinese military spokesman, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, warned last October that Beijing would “not stand by” if Washington deployed land-based, long-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

China’s foreign ministry accused the United States of sticking “to its cold war mentality” and “constantly increasing military deployment” in the region.

“Recently, the United States has gotten worse, stepping up its pursuit of a so-called ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ that seeks to deploy new weapons, including ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, in the Asia-Pacific region,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters. “China firmly opposes that.”

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn said he would not comment on statements by the Chinese government or the PLA.

U.S. MILITARY UNSHACKLED

While the coronavirus pandemic rages, Beijing has increased its military pressure on Taiwan and exercises in the South China Sea. In a show of strength, on April 11 the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning led a flotilla of five other warships into the Western Pacific through the Miyako Strait to the northeast of Taiwan, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. On April 12, the Chinese warships exercised in waters east and south of Taiwan, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy was forced to tie up the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt at Guam while it battles to contain a coronavirus outbreak among the crew of the giant warship. However, the U.S. Navy managed to maintain a powerful presence off the Chinese coast. The guided-missile destroyer USS Barry passed through the Taiwan Strait twice in April. And the amphibious assault ship USS America last month exercised in the East China Sea and South China Sea, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said.

In a series last year, Reuters reported that while the U.S. was distracted by almost two decades of war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA had built a missile force designed to attack the aircraft carriers, other surface warships and network of bases that form the backbone of American power in Asia. Over that period, Chinese shipyards built the world’s biggest navy, which is now capable of dominating the country’s coastal waters and keeping U.S. forces at bay.

The series also revealed that in most categories, China’s missiles now rival or outperform counterparts in the armories of the U.S. alliance.

To read the series, click https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/china-army

China derived an advantage because it was not party to a Cold War-era treaty – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) – that banned the United States and Russia from possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers. Unrestrained by the INF pact, China has deployed about 2,000 of these weapons, according to U.S. and other Western estimates.

While building up its missile forces on land, the PLA also fitted powerful, long-range anti-ship missiles to its warships and strike aircraft.

This accumulated firepower has shifted the regional balance of power in China’s favor. The United States, long the dominant military power in Asia, can no longer be confident of victory in a military clash in waters off the Chinese coast, according to senior retired U.S. military officers.

But the decision by President Donald Trump last year to exit the INF treaty has given American military planners new leeway. Almost immediately after withdrawing from the pact on August 2, the administration signaled it would respond to China’s missile force. The next day, U.S. Secretary for Defense Mark Esper said he would like to see ground-based missiles deployed in Asia within months, but he acknowledged it would take longer.

Later that month, the Pentagon tested a ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missile. In December, it tested a ground-launched ballistic missile. The INF treaty banned such ground-launched weapons, and thus both tests would have been forbidden.

A senior Marines commander, Lieutenant General Eric Smith, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 11 that the Pentagon leadership had instructed the Marines to field a ground-launched cruise missile “very quickly.”

The budget documents show that the Marines have requested $125 million to buy 48 Tomahawk missiles from next year. The Tomahawk has a range of 1,600km, according to its manufacturer, Raytheon Company.

Smith said the cruise missile may not ultimately prove to be the most suitable weapon for the Marines. “It may be a little too heavy for us,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, but experience gained from the tests could be transferred to the army.

Smith also said the Marines had successfully tested a new shorter-range anti-ship weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, from a ground launcher and would conduct another test in June. He said if that test was successful, the Marines intended to order 36 of these missiles in 2022. The U.S. Army is also testing a new long-range, land-based missile that can target warships. This missile would have been prohibited under the INF treaty.

The Marine Corps said in a statement it was evaluating the Naval Strike Missile to target ships and the Tomahawk for attacking targets on land. Eventually, the Marines aimed to field a system “that could engage long-range moving targets either on land or sea,” the statement said.

The Defense Department also has research underway on new, long-range strike weapons, with a budget request of $3.2 billion for hypersonic technology, mostly for missiles.

China’s foreign ministry drew a distinction between the PLA’s arsenal of missiles and the planned U.S. deployment. It said China’s missiles were “located in its territory, especially short and medium-range missiles, which cannot reach the mainland of the United States. This is fundamentally different from the U.S., which is vigorously pushing forward deployment.”

BOTTLING UP CHINA’S NAVY

Military strategists James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara suggested almost a decade ago that the first island chain was a natural barrier that could be exploited by the American military to counter the Chinese naval build-up. Ground-based anti-ship missiles could command key passages through the island chain into the Western Pacific as part of a strategy to keep the rapidly expanding Chinese navy bottled up, they suggested.

In embracing this strategy, Washington is attempting to turn Chinese tactics back on the PLA. Senior U.S. commanders have warned that China’s land-based cruise and ballistic missiles would make it difficult for U.S. and allied navies to operate near China’s coastal waters.

But deploying ground-based U.S. and allied missiles in the island chain would pose a similar threat to Chinese warships – to vessels operating in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea, or ships attempting to break out into the Western Pacific. Japan and Taiwan have already deployed ground-based anti-ship missiles for this purpose.

“We need to be able to plug up the straits,” said Holmes, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. “We can, in effect, ask them if they want Taiwan or the Senkakus badly enough to see their economy and armed forces cut off from the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. In all likelihood the answer will be no.”

Holmes was referring to the uninhabited group of isles in the East China Sea – known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China – that are claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing.

The United States faces challenges in plugging the first island chain. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to distance himself from the United States and forge closer ties with China is a potential obstacle to American plans. U.S. forces could face barriers to operating from strategically important islands in the Philippines archipelago after Duterte in February scrapped a key security agreement with Washington.

And if U.S. forces do deploy in the first island chain with anti-ship missiles, some U.S. strategists believe this won’t be decisive, as the Marines would be vulnerable to strikes from the Chinese military.

The United States has other counterweights. The firepower of long-range U.S. Air Force bombers could pose a bigger threat to Chinese forces than the Marines, the strategists said. Particularly effective, they said, could be the stealthy B-21 bomber, which is due to enter service in the middle of this decade, armed with long-range missiles.

The Pentagon is already moving to boost the firepower of its existing strike aircraft in Asia. U.S. Navy Super Hornet jets and Air Force B-1 bombers are now being armed with early deliveries of Lockheed Martin’s new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, according to the budget request documents. The new missile is being deployed in response to an “urgent operational need” for the U.S. Pacific Command, the documents explain.

The new missile carries a 450 kilogram warhead and is capable of “semi-autonomous” targeting, giving it some ability to steer itself, according to the budget request. Details of the stealthy cruise missile’s range are classified. But U.S. and other Western military officials estimate it can strike targets at distances greater than 800 kilometers.

The budget documents show the Pentagon is seeking $224 million to order another 53 of these missiles in 2021. The U.S. Navy and Air Force expect to have more than 400 of them in service by 2025, according to orders projected in the documents.

This new anti-ship missile is derived from an existing Lockheed long-range, land attack weapon, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. The Pentagon is asking for $577 million next year to order another 400 of these land-attack missiles.

“The U.S. and allied focus on long-range land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles was the quickest way to rebuild long-range conventional firepower in the Western Pacific region,” said Robert Haddick, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and now a visiting senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies based in Arlington, Virginia.

For the U.S. Navy in Asia, Super Hornet jets operating from aircraft carriers and armed with the new anti-ship missile would deliver a major boost in firepower while allowing the expensive warships to operate further away from potential threats, U.S. and other Western military officials say.

Current and retired U.S. Navy officers have been urging the Pentagon to equip American warships with longer-range anti-ship missiles that would allow them to compete with the latest, heavily armed Chinese cruisers, destroyers and frigates. Lockheed has said it successfully test-fired one of the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles from the type of launcher used on U.S. and allied warships.

Haddick, one of the first to draw attention to China’s firepower advantage in his 2014 book, “Fire on the Water,” said the threat from Chinese missiles had galvanized the Pentagon with new strategic thinking and budgets now directed at preparing for high-technology conflict with powerful nations like China.

Haddick said the new missiles were critical to the defensive plans of America and its allies in the Western Pacific. The gap won’t close immediately, but firepower would gradually improve, Haddick said. “This is especially true during the next half-decade and more, as successor hypersonic and other classified munition designs complete their long periods of development, testing, production, and deployment,” he said.

(Additional reporting by the Beijing newsroom. Edited by Peter Hirschberg.)

U.S. coronavirus deaths exceed 70,000 as forecasting models predict grim summer

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus surged past 70,000 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, as a key forecasting model nearly doubled its previous estimate for fatalities.

Nearly 1.2 million people in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 – more than the combined total of the next largest outbreaks in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

A University of Washington research model https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america often cited by White House officials on Monday nearly doubled its projected U.S. death toll to over 134,000 by Aug. 4.

The revision reflected “rising mobility in most U.S. states” with an easing of business closures and stay-at-home orders expected in 31 states by May 11, the institute said.

The revised projection coincided with disclosure of an internal Trump administration forecast predicting a surge in fatalities to 3,000 a day by the end of May, up from about 2,000 now in the Reuters tally.

The U.S. coronavirus outbreak is deadlier than any flu season since 1967 when about 100,000 Americans died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID-19 deaths in the United States also have eclipsed in a few months the 58,220 Americans killed during 16 years of U.S. military involvement during the Vietnam War.

The current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 675,000 Americans.

There is as yet no treatment or vaccine for coronavirus while flu vaccines are widely available along with treatments.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

State-backed hackers targeting coronavirus responders, U.S. and UK warn

By Jack Stubbs and Christopher Bing

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Government-backed hackers are attacking healthcare and research institutions in an effort to steal valuable information about efforts to contain the new coronavirus outbreak, Britain and the United States said on Tuesday in a joint warning.

In a statement, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the hackers had targeted pharmaceutical companies, research organisations and local governments.

The NCSC and CISA did not say which countries were responsible for the attacks. But one U.S. official and one UK official said the warning was in response to intrusion attempts by suspected Chinese and Iranian hackers, as well as some Russian-linked activity.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non-public details of the alert. Tehran, Beijing and Moscow have all repeatedly denied conducting offensive cyber operations and say they are the victims of such attacks themselves.

State hacking groups “frequently target organisations in order to collect bulk personal information, intellectual property and intelligence that aligns with national priorities,” the NCSC and CISA said.

“For example, actors may seek to obtain intelligence on national and international healthcare policy or acquire sensitive data on COVID-19 related research.”

The warning follows efforts by a host of state-backed hackers to compromise governments, businesses and health agencies in search of information about the new disease and attempts to combat it.

Reuters has reported in recent weeks that Vietnam-linked hackers targeted the Chinese government over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak and that multiple groups, some with ties to Iran, tried to break into the World Health Organization.

The officials said the alert was not triggered by any specific incident or compromise, but rather intended as a warning – both to the attackers and the targeted organizations that need to better defend themselves.

“These are organizations that wouldn’t normally see themselves as nation-state targets, and they need to understand that now they are,” said one of the officials.

The agencies said hackers had been seen trying to identify and exploit security weaknesses caused by staff working from home as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

In other incidents, the attackers repeatedly tried to compromise accounts with a series of common and frequently-used passwords – a technique known as “password spraying”.

“It’s no surprise that bad actors are doing bad things right now, in particular targeting organizations supporting COVID-19 response efforts,” a CISA spokesman said.

“We’re seeing them use a variety of tried and true techniques to gain access to accounts and compromise credentials.”

(Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alex Richardson and Peter Graff)

Trump says U.S. will report virus origins, gives no timeline

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump urged China on Tuesday to be transparent with what it knows about the origin of the coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan, China, and has wreaked havoc on the world.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory, but did not dispute U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that it was not man-made.

The Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology has dismissed the allegations, and other U.S. officials have downplayed their likelihood. Most experts believe the virus originated in a market selling wildlife in Wuhan and jumped from animals to people.

Trump, speaking to reporters outside the White House before leaving on a trip to Arizona, said the United States would release its report detailing the origins of the novel coronavirus over time but gave no other details or timeline.

“We will be reporting very definitively over a period of time,” the Republican president said.

Trump, who initially praised China over its response to the outbreak but has since blamed Beijing harshly over the virus, also said that he has not spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“We want them to be transparent. We want to find out what happened so it never happens again,” he said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Tim Ahmann; writing by Susan Heavey, Editing by Franklin Paul and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. traffic deaths fell in 2019 for third straight year

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. traffic deaths fell in 2019 for the third straight year even as overall road use increased, according to preliminary government data set to be released Tuesday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported an estimated 36,120 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year, down 1.2% from 36,560 in 2018, even travel rose 0.9% to 3.23 trillion miles.

The fatality rate was 1.10 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, down from 1.13 in 2018. Last year was tied for the second lowest annual fatality rate in U.S. history.

“We’ve continued focusing on the behaviors that we all know are unsafe: failing to wear a seat belt, speeding, driving while impaired, driving while distracted,” Acting NHTSA Administrator James Owens said in an interview.

As recently as 2007, 41,259 people died on U.S. roads and the fatality rate was 1.36 per 100 million vehicle miles, and 51,091 people died in 1980 when the fatality rate was three times higher than the current rate.

NHTSA has been grappling with a recent spike in pedestrian deaths that some attribute to more distraction and use of electronic devices. In 2018, the number of pedestrians killed rose to its highest level since 1990 climbing 3.4% to 6,283.

Early data suggests in 2019 pedestrian deaths fell 2% and bicyclist deaths dropped 3%.

U.S. traffic safety officials are concerned about what happens when tens of millions of commuters return to work after spending an extended period at home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ownens noted some data suggests there has been significant additional speeding on emptier U.S. roads in recent weeks.

NHTSA opted to delay some spending on public awareness campaigns and high-visability traffic enforcement because of the steep reduction in driving.

“We’re going to be ramping up our campaign efforts on raising public awareness over the next couple of weeks and months,” Owens said, saying it would focus on states where the stay-at-home orders are being lifted first.

Owens said the agency is gearing up to remind motorists to drive safely. “When you get back on the road — now is the time to remember all the safe driving practices that you had,” Owens said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officials

By Humeyra Pamuk and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with U.S. planning.

President Donald Trump, who has stepped up recent attacks on China ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas.

Now, economic destruction and the massive U.S. coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move U.S. production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior U.S. administration officials said.

“We’ve been working on [reducing the reliance of our supply chains in China] over the last few years but we are now turbo-charging that initiative,” Keith Krach, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment at the U.S. State Department told Reuters.

“I think it is essential to understand where the critical areas are and where critical bottlenecks exist,” Krach said, adding that the matter was key to U.S. security and one the government could announce new action on soon.

The U.S. Commerce Department, State and other agencies are looking for ways to push companies to move both sourcing and manufacturing out of China. Tax incentives and potential re-shoring subsidies are among measures being considered to spur changes, the current and former officials told Reuters.

“There is a whole of government push on this,” said one. Agencies are probing which manufacturing should be deemed “essential” and how to produce these goods outside of China.

Trump’s China policy has been defined by behind-the-scenes tussles between pro-trade advisers and China hawks; now the latter say their time has come.

“This moment is a perfect storm; the pandemic has crystallized all the worries that people have had about doing business with China,” said another senior U.S. official.

“All the money that people think they made by making deals with China before, now they’ve been eclipsed many fold by the economic damage” from the coronavirus, the official said.

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY NETWORK

Trump has said repeatedly that he could put new tariffs on top of the up to 25% tax on $370 billion in Chinese goods currently in place.

U.S. companies, which pay the tariffs, are already groaning https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tariffs/trumps-tariffs-add-to-pandemic-induced-turmoil-of-u-s-manufacturers-idUSKBN22C1MY under the existing ones, especially as sales plummet during coronavirus lockdowns.

But that does not mean Trump will balk at new ones, officials say. Other ways to punish China may include sanctions on officials or companies, and closer relations with Taiwan, the self-governing island China considers a province.

But discussions about moving supply chains are concrete, robust, and, unusually for the Trump administration, multi-lateral.

The United States is pushing to create an alliance of “trusted partners” dubbed the “Economic Prosperity Network,” one official said. It would include companies and civil society groups operating under the same set of standards on everything from digital business, energy and infrastructure to research, trade, education and commerce, he said.

The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29.

These discussions include “how we restructure … supply chains to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Pompeo said.

Latin America may play a role, too.

Colombian Ambassador Francisco Santos last month said he was in discussions with the White House, National Security Council, U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. Chamber of Commerce about a drive to encourage U.S. companies to move some supply chains out of China and bring them closer to home.

China overtook the United States as the world’s top manufacturing country in 2010, and was responsible for 28% of global output in 2018, according to United Nations data.

The pandemic has highlighted China’s key role in the supply chain for generic drugs https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-pharmaceuticals-ap/chinas-coronavirus-induced-supply-chain-woes-fan-concerns-of-possible-drug-shortages-idUSKBN20Y1C7 that account for the majority of prescriptions in the United States. It has also shown China’s dominance in goods like https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon-com-cameras/exclusive-amazon-turns-to-chinese-firm-on-u-s-blacklist-to-meet-thermal-camera-needs-idUSKBN22B1AL the thermal cameras needed to test workers for fevers, and its importance in food supplies.

HARD SELL FOR COMPANIES

Many U.S. companies have invested heavily in Chinese manufacturing and rely on China’s 1.4 billion people for a big chunk of their sales.

“Diversification and some redundancy in supply chains will make sense given the level of risk that the pandemic has uncovered,” said Doug Barry, spokesman for the U.S.-China Business Council. “But we don’t see a wholesale rush for the exits by companies doing business in China.”

John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that U.S. manufacturers already meet 70% of current pharmaceutical demand.

Building new facilities in the United States could take five to eight years, he said. “We’re concerned that officials need to get the right fact sets before they start looking at alternatives,” Murphy said.

Trump White House pledges to punish China have not always been followed by action.

A move to block global exports of chips to blacklisted Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, for example, favored by hawks in the administration and under consideration since November, has not yet been finalized.

(Additional reporting by Alex Alper, David Lawder, Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Heather Timmons; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. states plow ahead with reopening; Trump warns death toll could hit 100,000

By Susan Heavey and Maria Caspani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ohio and other U.S. states on Monday planned to ease more restrictions on businesses even as President Donald Trump acknowledged that as many as 100,000 Americans could die in a pandemic that has also decimated the U.S. economy.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine was allowing construction and manufacturing to reopen on Monday, and letting office workers return. Retail shops and many consumer services were due to resume operations on May 12.

To reopen, businesses must meet state requirements that workers wear face coverings and stay at least six feet apart, and employers sanitize their workplaces. DeWine has urged as many workers as possible to work from home.

“It’s a delicate balance,” he told MSNBC on Monday.

About half of all U.S. states have lifted shutdowns, at least partially, as the number of new cases of the COVID-19 illness has begun to decline or level off in many places, though infections are still rising in others.

Health experts have warned of a possible resurgence of the virus if states rushed to restart their battered economies too early and without a widespread testing and tracing network in place.

COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, has infected more than 1.1 million people in the United States and killed nearly 68,000.

Trump late on Sunday acknowledged the U.S. death toll from the disease would exceed previous projections cited by the White House.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday night. As recently as Friday the president said he hoped fewer than 100,000 Americans would die and earlier in the week had talked of 60,000 to 70,000 deaths.

‘MIXED BAG’

Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said on Sunday the country was seeing a “mixed bag” of results from coronavirus mitigation efforts.

He said about 20 states had experienced a rising number of new cases including Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Virginia reported a record number of deaths on Sunday, up 44 for a total of 660.

“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “If we don’t snuff this out more and you have this slow burn of infection, it can ignite at any time.”

But Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado on Monday said that residents could not be kept at home indefinitely.

“Stay-at-home is so unsustainable,” Polis told FOX News’s “Fox and Friends” program, adding that he hoped his state’s partial reopening that began on April 27 could help ease the burden on state unemployment benefit filings.

“We have to start being able to do this in a way that’s psychologically sustainable, economically sustainable, but also works form a health perspective so we don’t overwhelm our hospital system.”

A weekend of warm weather in many parts of the country put enforcement of social-distancing rules to the test in densely populated metropolitan areas such as New York City and Washington, D.C.

On Saturday, thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington to view a U.S. Navy flyover to honor healthcare workers and others battling the pandemic.

In New York City, the warmest weather yet this spring caused picnickers and sunbathers to flock to green spaces in Manhattan. Photos on social media showed crowded conditions at the Christopher Street Pier in Greenwich Village and other open spaces.

Last week, California ordered beaches in Orange County to close, after crowds defied public health guidelines to throng the popular shoreline. Police in the county’s Huntington Beach said people were complying on Sunday.

In a break from tradition caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday for the first time heard arguments in a case by teleconference – and even typically silent Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Writing by Maria Caspani, Editing by Howard Goller)

Masked and gloved, Italy joins nations creeping out of lockdown

By Crispian Balmer and Jonathan Allen

ROME/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Italy was among a slew of countries easing lockdown restrictions on Monday to resurrect their economies, but officials cautioned against moving too swiftly as new coronavirus cases passed 3.5 million globally and deaths neared a quarter of a million.

Italy, among the world’s hardest-hit countries, started to relax the longest lockdown in Europe, allowing about 4.5 million people to return to work after nearly two months at home. Construction work can resume and relatives can reunite.

“I woke up at 5.30 a.m. I was so excited,” said Maria Antonietta Galluzzo, a grandmother taking her three-year-old grandson for a walk in Rome’s Villa Borghese park, the first time they had seen each other in eight weeks.

“He has grown by this much,” she said, holding up three horizontal fingers.

Spain, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Israel, Tunisia and Lebanon were also among countries easing some restrictions, variously reopening factories, construction sites, parks, hairdressers and libraries. In the United States, around half of states partially reopened their economies over the weekend.

The easing comes as the daily rate of new COVID-19 cases worldwide has been sitting in a 2%-3% range over the past week, down from a peak of around 13% in mid-March.

Global cases have risen to around 3.52 million, according to a Reuters tally based on government data. However, cases may cause only mild symptoms and not everyone with symptoms is tested, while most countries only record hospital deaths.

“We still have to be sceptical about the numbers we get,” said Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital. “We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren’t immune.”

Children play in the courtyard of a private school open to children of health workers and workers on the coronavirus frontline in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in France, May 4, 2020. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

PHASED REOPENING

Countries are only gradually reopening due to such fears and warnings from officials not to lower their guard.

In the United States, even as warm weather led sunseekers to flock to green spaces in Manhattan, an epidemic epicentre, President Donald Trump warned the national death toll – now at almost 68,000 – could rise to 100,000.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said his country, where the novel coronavirus has killed almost 29,000 people and over a thousand new cases are reported daily, was still in the “full throes of the pandemic”.

Friends in the country are still barred from meeting up, most shops must stay shut until May 18, and schools, cinemas and theatres remain closed indefinitely.

“It is good to be back, but the world has totally changed,” said Gianluca Martucci, pulling up the shutters on the small warehouse of a catering business in the backstreets of Rome.

“The government has been very wise so far, but I worry that we might be starting up a little too soon … I don’t know if the country could survive a second wave.”

Israel, after weeks of strict closures, has also started to relax curbs in a phased manner. Schools for children in grades 1-3, aged six to nine, have reopened, following the opening of some stores in late April.

MASK, GLOVES, DISTANCE

People around the world are adjusting to a new normal.

A continuous hum of cars, buses and motorbikes pointed to an increase in early morning commuting in Rome, but traffic was noticeably lighter than before the virus struck and those out appeared to be following the guidelines on social distancing.

In Beirut, restaurants began to reopen but were removing chairs and tables in compliance with government rules that they do not fill beyond 30% of their capacity.

“This is a great step,” said Ralph Malak, a bar owner. “It’s very good for the staff to start to get motivated again, to come back to work, and for the economy to start moving.”

Hairdressers were allowed to partially reopen, with barbers operating on certain days and women’s salons on others.

Iran, which has reported more than 6,000 deaths, is due to reopen mosques in 132 cities on Monday. Worshippers must maintain social distancing, wear masks and gloves and not stay for more than half an hour, the ISNA news agency reported.

More movement is seen on the Constitution bridge, as the country begins relaxing restrictions as it prepares a staged end to Europe’s longest coronavirus lockdown due to spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Venice, Italy, May 4, 2020. REUTERS/Manuel Silvestri

WAR OF WORDS ON VIRUS

While stringent measures to curb the outbreak have often been broadly backed by the public, governments are counting the economic price.

Factory activity was ravaged across the world in April, business surveys showed, and the outlook looked bleak as shutdowns froze global production and slashed demand. As a result, the global economy is expected to suffer its steepest contraction on record this year.

“This past week saw the amazing coincidence of the publication of the deepest quarterly economic decline in the Western world in almost 100 years and the conclusion to the strongest monthly equity rally in more than 30 years,” said Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit.

Escalating tensions between the United States and China over the origin of the pandemic drove down stock markets and oil prices on Monday as investors feared a new trade war.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the virus emerged from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. He did not provide evidence or dispute an earlier U.S. intelligence conclusion that the virus was not man-made.

An editorial in China’s Global Times, run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said he was “bluffing” and called on Washington to present its evidence.

(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones in Rome, Steven Scheer in Tel Aviv, Tarek Amara in Tunis, Tom Perry in Beirut, Jonathan Cable in London, Sam Holmes and Jane Wardell in Sydney, Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Pravin Char; Editing by Nick Tattersall)