Tag Archives: United States

U.S. shale oil output to rise to highest since May 2020

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. shale oil output is expected to rise to 8.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in September, the highest since May 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration’s monthly drilling productivity report on Monday.

The forecast is led by growth in the largest formation, the Permian Basin, where crude output is estimated to rise 49,000 bpd in the month, offsetting falling output expected from the Bakken and other top regions.

Production in the Permian is expected to reach 4.8 million bpd in September, the highest since March 2020.

In contrast, output in the Eagle Ford in South Texas is expected to slide by 5,000 bpd to 1.05 million bpd while the Bakken basin of North Dakota and Montana is expected to see a decline of about 1,000 bpd to 1.14 million bpd.

As oil prices recovered from the lows seen last year, U.S. energy firms have ramped up some drilling activity.

U.S. oil rigs rose 10 to 397 last week, their highest since April 2020, and up from 172 a year ago, Baker Hughes data showed.

Enverus, a provider of energy data with its own closely watched rig count, said the number of active rigs increased by eight to 575 in the week to Aug. 11 with most of the increases in Appalachia and the Permian.

Total gas output will increase by 0.16 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) to 86.1 bcfd in September, the EIA said.

Gas output in Appalachia, the biggest shale gas basin, was expected to increase by less than 0.1 bcfd to 34.4 bcfd in September. That compares with a monthly record of 35.6 bcfd in December 2020.

Gas output in the Haynesville in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas was expected to increase by over 0.1 bcfd to 13.5 bcfd in September.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar and David Gaffen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Barbara Lewis)

Children hospitalized with COVID-19 in U.S. hits record number

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) -The number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States hit a record high of just over 1,900 on Saturday, as hospitals across the South were stretched to capacity fighting outbreaks caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

The Delta variant, which is rapidly spreading among mostly the unvaccinated portion of the U.S. population, has caused hospitalizations to spike in recent weeks, driving up the number of confirmed and suspected pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations to 1,902 on Saturday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Reuters includes confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases for hospitalization, case and death data.

Children currently make up about 2.4% of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations. Kids under 12 are not eligible to receive the vaccine, leaving them more vulnerable to infection from the new, highly transmissible variant.

“This is not last year’s COVID. This one is worse and our children are the ones that are going to be affected by it the most,” Sally Goza, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CNN on Saturday.

The numbers of newly hospitalized COVID-19 patients aged 18-29, 30-39 and 40-49 also hit record highs this week, according to data from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The spike in new cases has ramped up tension between conservative state leaders and local districts over whether school children should be required to wear masks as they head back to the classroom this month.

School districts in Florida, Texas and Arizona have mandated that masks be worn in schools, defying orders from their Republican state governors that ban districts from imposing such rules. The administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has threatened to withhold funding from districts that impose mask requirements, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott is appealing to the state Supreme Court to overturn Dallas County’s mask mandate, the Dallas Morning News reported on Friday.

A fifth of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations are in Florida, where the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients hit a record 16,100 on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally. More than 90% of the state’s intensive care beds are filled, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

INCREASED HOSPITALIZATIONS

The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, came out in support of mandatory vaccination for its members this week. NEA President Becky Pringle said on Saturday that schools should employ every mitigation strategy, from vaccines to masks, to ensure that students can come back to their classrooms safely this school year.

“Our students under 12 can’t get vaccinated. It’s our responsibility to keep them safe. Keeping them safe means that everyone who can be vaccinated should be vaccinated,” Pringle told CNN.

The U.S. now has an average of about 129,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, a rate that has doubled in a little over two weeks, according to a Reuters tally. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is at a six-month high, and an average of 600 people are dying each day of COVID-19, double the death rate seen in late July.

Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oregon have reported record numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations this month, according to a Reuters tally, pushing healthcare systems to operate beyond their capacity.

“Our hospitals are working to maximize their available staff and beds, including the use of conference rooms and cafeterias,” Florida Hospital Association President Mary Mayhew said in a statement on Friday.

In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown said on Friday that she was sending 500 National Guard members to assist overwhelmed hospitals, with 1,500 members in total available to help.

In Jackson, Mississippi, federal medical workers are assisting understaffed local teams at a 20-bed triage center in the parking garage of the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) to accommodate the overflow of COVID-19 patients.

Fifteen children and 99 adults were hospitalized with COVID-19 at UMMC as of Saturday morning, the hospital said. More than 77% of those patients were unvaccinated.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Lisa Shumaker; editing by Diane Craft and Aurora Ellis)

U.S. focused on securing Kabul airport after chaos

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will focus on securing the Kabul airport and additional U.S. forces will flow into the airport on Monday and Tuesday, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said, as people tried to flee a day after Taliban insurgents seized the Afghan capital.

The United States has temporarily halted all evacuation flights from Kabul to clear people who had converged on the airfield, a U.S. defense official told Reuters, but did not say how long the pause would last.

The defense official said the United States intent was to get tens of thousands of at-risk Afghans who worked for the U.S. government out of Afghanistan and was looking at temporarily housing them at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Fort Bliss in Texas.

Five people were killed in chaos at Kabul airport on Monday, witnesses said, as people tried to flee after Taliban insurgents seized Kabul and declared the war against foreign and local forces over.

U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said that the U.S. was focused intensively on securing the Kabul airport on Monday in order to continue civilian evacuation flights for American citizens in Afghanistan, Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. over the past 20 years and for other particularly vulnerable Afghans.

“The main focus of our efforts today are going to be getting that airport back up and running so the flights can continue,” Finer told MSNBC.

Additional U.S. forces will be flowing into the airport on Monday and Tuesday to provide security, he added.

Taliban insurgents took control of the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday following a rout of the U.S.-backed Afghan army as foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Daphne Psaledakis, Lisa Lambert and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Giles Elgood and Nick Zieminski)

U.S. consumer sentiment plummets in early August to decade low

By Evan Sully and Lindsay Dunsmuir

(Reuters) -U.S. consumer sentiment dropped sharply in early August to its lowest level in a decade, in a worrying sign for the economy as Americans gave faltering outlooks on everything from personal finances to inflation and employment, a survey showed on Friday.

The unexpected reading could give Federal Reserve policymakers pause if it translates in the months ahead to a dent in economic activity. The central bank has been getting closer to a decision on when to begin pulling back the extraordinary stimulus it put in place to shield the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University of Michigan said its preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 70.2 in the first half of this month from a final reading of 81.2 in July. That was the lowest level since 2011, and there have been only two larger declines in the index over the past 50 years. Those were at the depths of the 2007-2009 recession and during the first wave of shutdowns in April 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.

The losses were widespread across income, age, and education subgroups and spanned all regions. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index would remain unchanged at 81.2.

U.S. stock market indexes slipped immediately after the report was released, while the price of gold gained ground. U.S. Treasury bond yields hit session lows.

“The renewed plunge suggests the latest wave of virus cases driven by the Delta variant could be a bigger drag on the economy than we had thought,” said Andrew Hunter, an economist at Capital Economics.

Economic growth is still expected to grow this year at its fastest pace in four decades after falling into a brief recession in 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the recovery is showing some indication of cooling off.

COVID-19 cases have doubled in the past two weeks to reach a six-month peak as the more transmissible Delta variant spreads rapidly across the country. Labor shortages across the service sector also persist while supply chain disruptions have continued.

“The pandemic’s resurgence due to the Delta variant has been met with a mixture of reason and emotion…mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end,” Richard Curtin, the survey director, said in a statement.

The survey’s gauge of current economic conditions also declined to a reading of 77.9 from 84.5 in July while its measure of consumer expectations slid to 65.2 from 79.0 in July.

The survey also showed consumers raising their expectations for medium term inflation, another measure the central bank is closely monitoring to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored.

The survey’s one-year inflation expectation edged lower to 4.6%, down from 4.7%, but its five-year inflation outlook ticked up to 3.0% from 2.8% in July.

Consumer price increases slowed in July, the Labor Department said on Wednesday, but inflation overall remained at a historically high level amid lingering supply-chain disruptions and stronger demand for travel-related services.

(Reporting by Evan Sully and Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Factbox-Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) – Drugmakers Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are expected to make billions of dollars from COVID-19 booster shots in a market that could for years rival the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines, analysts and healthcare investors say.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* The German government has designated the Israel, Turkey and the United States as high-risk countries, triggering a minimum five-day quarantine requirement for those who are unvaccinated, the Funke media group reported.

* Russia reported a record 815 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, but Moscow’s mayor said hospitalizations from the disease in the capital had halved over the last six weeks.

* Norway’s government will end some restrictions related to the pandemic, it said, but stopped short of announcing a full reopening of the economy.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Indonesia’s capital reopened its retail malls this week to an exclusive crowd – shoppers vaccinated against coronavirus.

* China reported declining numbers of new locally transmitted cases for the third consecutive day. However, ports and shipping companies are diverting vessels from a container terminal in the country’s busiest marine transportation hub, which was forced to close after a case emerged.

* Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga urged people to refrain from travelling as COVID-19 cases spiked to records in Tokyo and nationwide, heaping pressure on the medical system.

* South Korea signed a deal to buy 30 million doses of Pfizer vaccine for 2022, and the government urged people to cut holiday travel amid a worsening fourth wave of infections and a slow inoculation campaign.

AMERICAS

* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a third dose of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for people with compromised immune systems.

* The United States has started shipping nearly 569,000 Pfizer vaccine doses to member countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the U.S. State Department said.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Morocco received a shipment of 600,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as it expands its inoculation campaign to younger people following a surge in cases, said Said Afif, a member of the health ministry’s scientific committee.

* South Africa’s health minister Joe Phaahla said authorities would not would recommend a relaxation of lockdown measures from its current Level 3, despite an overall downward trend in infections as the country grapples with a third wave.

* Israel lowered to 50 from 60 the minimum age of eligibility for a vaccine booster shot and will also offer it to health workers, hoping to stem a surge in Delta variant infections.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* The World Health Organization said it was setting up a new group to trace the origins of the coronavirus, seeking to end what it called “political point scoring” that had hampered investigations.

* Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech’s nasal vaccine candidate has received regulatory approval for mid- to late-stage trials, the government’s ministry of science and technology said in a statement.

* A two-dose vaccine from China’s Sinopharm was 50.4% effective in preventing infections in health workers in Peru when it saw a surge in cases fueled by virus variants, and booster shots can be considered, a study found.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Global stock markets hit record highs on Friday, capping another bumper week as investors seized on a dip in U.S. inflation and more forecast-beating corporate earnings.

(Compiled by Veronica Snoj and Federico Maccioni; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Barbara Lewis)

U.S. to release census data used for legislative redistricting

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – The U.S. Census Bureau will release data on Thursday from the 2020 census that states will use to draw congressional and state legislative districts for the next decade, marking the start of what will be a fierce partisan battle over redistricting.

Demographers also expect the data to show that the country’s white population is declining for the first time in history, with people of color representing virtually all population growth.

The release will arrive months later than originally expected after the census took longer to complete due to the coronavirus pandemic. The delay has forced some states to go to court to postpone their redistricting deadlines.

States use the data to redraw district lines for the U.S. House of Representatives after each decennial census, based on where people now reside.

In April, the bureau published state-level figures, showing that Texas, Florida and North Carolina – all states controlled by Republicans – will gain congressional seats next year based on increased populations.

Electoral analysts have said Republicans could potentially erase the Democrats’ thin advantage in the House through redistricting alone.

Thursday’s more detailed data will show how and where the country’s white, Black, Hispanic and Asian communities grew.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. to reduce Kabul embassy to core staff, add 3,000 troops to help

By Idrees Ali and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will reduce staff at the embassy in Kabul to a “core diplomatic presence” and send about 3,000 troops temporarily to the airport to assist as the Taliban made rapid gains in Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday.

The news of the embassy drawdown, first reported by Reuters, is one of the most significant signs of concern in President Joe Biden’s administration about the security situation and the failure of the Afghan government to protect key cities.

“We’ve been evaluating the security situation every day to determine how best to keep those serving at the embassy safe,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

“Accordingly we are further reducing our civilian footprints in Kabul in light of the evolving security situation,” Price said.

“We expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan in the coming weeks,” he said, adding that the embassy was not closed.

The Pentagon said that it would send about 3,000 additional U.S. troops temporarily to Afghanistan to help secure the drawdown of personnel.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the first deployment would occur in the next 24 and 48 hours to the airport in Kabul.

About 3,500 additional U.S. troops would be sent to the region to be on standby if the situation worsened, as well as 1,000 personnel to help process Afghans going through a special immigration process.

It is common for the U.S. military to send in large number of troops to evacuate personnel in combat zones.

There are thought to be about 1,400 staff remaining at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the reduction in staff was “significant.”

The military mission in Afghanistan is set to end on Aug. 31, and roughly 650 troops remain in the country to protect the airport and embassy.

A source familiar with the situation said that the United Kingdom was expected to make a similar announcement about relocating staff.

Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, was on the verge of falling to the Taliban on Thursday amid heavy fighting, as the militant group also established a bridgehead within 150 km (95 miles) of Kabul.

The spiraling violence and the militants’ swift advances prompted the United States and Germany to urge their citizens to leave the country immediately.

A U.S intelligence assessment this week said the Taliban could isolate Kabul within 30 days and take it over in 90.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Jonathan Landay. Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Humeyra Pamuk, Arshad Mohammed, Simon Lewis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Rosalba O’Brien)

U.S. health secretary mandates COVID-19 shots for health care staff

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has mandated its health care workforce to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Thursday.

Staff at the Indian Health Service (IHS), focused on American Indians, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be impacted by this decision, according to an HHS statement.

Those affected include over 25,000 employees, contractors, trainees, and volunteers whose duties put them in contact or potential contact with patients at an HHS medical or clinical research facility.

“Our number one goal is the health and safety of the American public, including our federal workforce,” Becerra said.

U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps will also be immediately required to get vaccinated, the statement said.

HHS is the latest federal department to make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it will seek U.S. President Joe Biden’s approval by mid-September to require 1.3 million military members to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs also announced a similar move last month.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is examining what authority businesses have to mandate vaccines as it considers what more steps can be done to halt the spread of COVID-19.

United Airlines Inc Chief Executive Scott Kirby said he believes more U.S. companies and organizations will begin requiring COVID-19 vaccinations, after a meeting with Biden on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Dollar falls as U.S. consumer price rises temper in July, data show

By John McCrank

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The dollar fell on Wednesday after U.S. inflation data showed consumer price increases eased in July, taking some pressure off the Federal Reserve to begin scaling back the monthly bond purchases that are part of its toolbox to support the economic recovery.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, was down 0.17% at 92.915 at 3:05 p.m. ET (1905 GMT).

Earlier, the U.S. currency hit 93.195, its highest since April 1, and not far off of its 2021 high of 93.439, but it sold off after data showed the consumer price index rose 0.5% last month after climbing 0.9% in June. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI rose 0.3% after increasing 0.9% in June.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast overall CPI would rise 0.5% and core CPI 0.4%.

While prices are still rising, the Fed has said it expects inflationary pressures to moderate over time as supply catches up with demand following months of COVID-19 lockdowns.

“The CPI report was enough to cause a bit of profit taking for the U.S. dollar, but at the end of the day, it’s not a game changer for the Fed,” said Kathy Lien, managing director at BK Asset Management. “They’re still going to be announcing taper,” likely within the next six weeks.

The greenback had enjoyed a lift from last week’s better-than-expected U.S. jobs data, as well as from remarks by Fed officials about tapering bond purchases and, eventually, raising rates, sooner than policymakers elsewhere.

Looking forward, the Fed will depend on data when it comes to the timing of the dialing back of its asset purchases, said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA.

“It’s all going to be all about next month’s employment report and if that does not impress, tapering, as far September goes, might even get pushed out towards the end of the year,” he said.

In Europe, investor sentiment has declined, with a survey showing a third straight month of deterioration in Germany as rising global COVID-19 cases keep markets on edge.

“Investors have to take on board the possibility of news on Fed tapering at a time when COVID is still very apparent in various parts of the world,” said Rabobank analyst Jane Foley.

“The consequence of this is likely to be a firmer dollar,” she added, especially if the euro breaches its 2021 low.

The euro gained 0.16% against the greenback, to 1.17395, following six straight sessions of losses and having fallen as low as 1.1706 in early deals in Europe, near the year’s low of $1.1704.

Sterling gained 0.2% to 1.38645 against the dollar, pulling back from a two-week low.

The yen was up 0.12% at 110.445, after dropping for five consecutive sessions against the dollar.

South Korea reported a record number of COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, while outbreaks in China, Southeast Asia and Australia grow steadily.

The Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar , seen as riskier currencies, rose after the U.S. CPI report, last up 0.33% and 0.5% respectively.

In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin touched $46,787.60, its highest since May 17. Bitcoin was last up 1.5% at $46,304.54, while ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, was up 2.7% at $3,226.18.

(Reporting by John McCrank in New York; additional reporting by Ritvik Carvalho in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Marguerita Choy)

U.S. finds Pakistan useful only to clean up mess in Afghanistan -Khan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused the United States of seeing his country as useful only in the context of the “mess” it is leaving behind in Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting.

Washington has been pressing Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban to broker an elusive peace deal as negotiations between the insurgents and Afghan government have stalled, and violence in Afghanistan has escalated sharply.

“Pakistan is just considered only to be useful in the context of somehow settling this mess which has been left behind after 20 years of trying to find a military solution when there was not one,” Khan told foreign journalists at his home in Islamabad.

The United States will pull out its military by Aug. 31, 20 years after toppling the Taliban government in 2001. But, as the United States leaves, the Taliban today controls more territory than at any point since then.

Kabul and several Western governments say Pakistan’s support for the insurgent group allowed it to weather the war.

The charge of supporting the Taliban despite being a U.S. ally has long been a sore point between Washington and Islamabad. Pakistan denies supporting the Taliban.

Khan said Islamabad was not taking sides in Afghanistan.

“I think that the Americans have decided that India is their strategic partner now, and I think that’s why there’s a different way of treating Pakistan now,” Khan said.

Pakistan and India are archrivals and have fought three wars. The two share frosty ties and currently have minimal diplomatic relations.

A political settlement in Afghanistan was looking difficult under current conditions, Khan added.

He said he tried to persuade Taliban leaders when they were visiting Pakistan to reach a settlement.

“The condition is that as long as Ashraf Ghani is there, we (Taliban) are not going to talk to the Afghan government,” Khan said, quoting the Taliban leaders as telling him.

Peace talks between the Taliban, who view Ghani and his government as U.S. puppets, and a team of Kabul-nominated Afghan negotiators started last September but have made no substantive progress.

Representatives of a number of countries, including the United States, are currently in the Qatari capital of Doha talking to both sides in a last-ditch push for a ceasefire.

U.S. forces have continued to use air strikes to support Afghan forces against Taliban advances, but it remains unclear if such support will continue after Aug. 31.

Khan said Pakistan had “made it very clear” that it does not want any American military bases in Pakistan after U.S. forces exit Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Gibran Peshimam; editing by John Stonestreet and Jonathan Oatis)