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Israeli team scanning Danube river for remains of Holocaust victims

Volunteers of Israeli rescue and recovery organisation ZAKA survey images transmitted by an underwater sonar during a search for the remains of Holocaust victims murdered on the banks of the Danube river in 1944 in Budapest, Hungary January 15, 2019. REUTERS/Tamas Kaszas

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – An Israel recovery team began mapping out the floor of the Danube in Budapest on Tuesday in search of the remains of Holocaust victims murdered on the riverbank in 1944 and 1945.

Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem estimates that 565,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the majority of them deported to the Auschwitz death camp between May and July 1944.

In October of that year, when the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross party took power in Hungary, thousands of Jews from Budapest were murdered on the banks of the Danube, according to Yad Vashem.

A volunteer of Israeli rescue and recovery organisation ZAKA pulls an underwater sonar from the Danube river during a search for the remains of Holocaust victims murdered on the banks of the river in 1944 in Budapest, Hungary January 15, 2019. REUTERS/Tamas Kaszas

Israeli Interior Minister Arye Deri said on Monday Hungarian counterpart Sandor Pinter had agreed to his request to provide special equipment to forensic experts from the Israeli volunteer group ZAKA who traveled with him to Budapest.

The Hungarian Interior Ministry has yet to respond to emailed questions seeking comment.

On Tuesday ZAKA divers began scanning the bottom of the Danube with an underwater sonar near a Budapest bridge where some remains were recovered several years ago.

“I think it is a triumph, it is after all these years we come to this work, this holy work on Hungarian ground,” Ilan Berkovich, leader of the ZAKA team, told Reuters.

“For me, I am basically Hungarian, my parents, my grandparents, all my family actually were from here. It is kind of a closure, so emotionally it is amazing, actually.”

ZAKA director Yehuda Meshi-Zahav told Reuters it remained unclear where any remains recovered would be buried. “That has yet to be determined. There is some sensitivity in Hungary about this matter,” he said.

Hungarian Jews have voiced concern at the right-wing nationalism of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has praised a Hungarian wartime leader who was an ally of Hitler and used an image of Jewish U.S. financier George Soros in an anti-immigration billboard campaign.

On a visit to Jerusalem last July, Orban said Jews should feel safe under his government. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who praised Orban, has found common cause with him on Soros and the U.S. billionaire’s support for critics of their governments’ policies.

More divers are expected in Budapest at the end of February to recover as much as possible of the Holocaust victims’ remains in a mission estimated to cost more than one million euros.

“For us it is very important to give respect for the people who died, even after 70 or something years, and we do the best we can to find as many as we can,” ZAKA diver Ilan Levy said.

(Reporting by Krisztina Fenyo in Budapest with additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. delivers food for 9.5 million in Yemen last month, shy of target

FILE PHOTO: Internally displaced people gather to collect food aid from an ICRC aid distribution centre in Bajil, Yemen, December 13, 2018, 2018. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad/File Photo

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. food agency delivered emergency food and vouchers for over 9.5 million people in Yemen in December, just shy of its 10 million monthly target in the famine-threatened country, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Yemen’s nearly four-year war and economic collapse have left 15.9 million people, 53 percent of the population, facing “severe acute food insecurity”, and famine looms if immediate action is not taken, a survey said last month.

“We were at a bit less than 10 million because the actual situation slowed down a bit the distribution in some areas. The security is not as good as expected in some areas,” World Food Programme spokesman Herve Verhoosel told a Geneva news briefing.

FILE PHOTO: A man displaced from Yemen’s Red Sea city of Hodeidah receives food ration from a charity food distribution in Sanaa, Yemen July 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

“Some of our trucks were also stopped for longer than usual in some security checkpoints.”

Verhoosel later clarified that the figures represented food aid that was “dispatched” to local distribution centers across Yemen but not all had been handed out to recipients yet.

The WFP, which got supplies to 7-8 million Yemenis in November, is trying to reach as many as 12 million people at risk of starvation. In December it said that some food aid meant for Yemenis was being stolen and sold in some areas controlled by the Iran-aligned Houthi militia.

U.N.-brokered peace negotiations between the Saudi-backed Yemen government and the Houthis held in Stockholm last month yielded a shaky ceasefire deal in the lifeline port city of Hodeidah.

In January, the WFP managed to deliver food to more than 10,000 families in two hard-hit areas of Hodeidah – Tahita and Duraihmi – for the first time since July, thanks to a reduction in fighting, Verhoosel said.

“The truce is inconsistent, there are still some sporadic problems in and around Hodeidah.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. authorities charge several people in SEC hacking scheme

(Reuters) – U.S. authorities on Tuesday charged several individuals and companies in a scheme to trade on information in nonpublic corporate press releases by hacking into a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission database.

In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, the SEC said individuals in the United States, Russia and Ukraine reaped more than $4.1 million in illegal gains by trading on nonpublic filings from its Edgar database, including approximately 157 corporate earnings announcements.

According to the SEC, some of the defendants kicked back some of their trading profits to Oleksandr Ieremenko, a Ukrainian hacker who along with others infiltrated Edgar between May 2016 and October 2016 to obtain thousands of “test filings,” including some containing earnings results.

Ieremenko was charged in 2015 in a similar scheme involving hacking into databases of corporate press release distributors.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest scheme is the subject of a law enforcement action being announced later Tuesday by the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice. Neither agency immediately responded to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Trump to meet lawmakers at White House as shutdown enters 25th day

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a "roundtable discussion on border security and safe communities" with state, local, and community leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 11, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will meet members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday as the partial U.S. government shutdown enters a 25th day without resolution amid a standoff over border wall funding.

Trump is scheduled to host the lawmakers for lunch, according to his public schedule, which did not say who was attending. Moderate House Democrats were invited, CNN and Politico reported.

Representatives for the White House and congressional leaders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Neither Trump nor Democratic leaders in Congress have shown signs of bending on wall funding but the Washington Post on Monday reported a new bipartisan group of U.S. senators is searching for an agreement that could help end the partial shutdown.

Trump, who has demanded $5.7 billion from Congress to build his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, on Monday rejected a call by fellow Republicans to temporarily reopen the government while talks continue on border security issues.

He campaigned in 2016 on a promise of building a wall to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking and more recently raised the possibility of declaring a national emergency to go around Congress to secure funding for the wall. In recent days, however, he has said that he would prefer Congress to act.

Democrats, who took over the U.S. House of Representatives this month, have rejected the border wall but back other border security measures.

House Democrats have passed a number of bills to fund the roughly one-quarter of federal operations that have been closed, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has said the chamber will not consider legislation that Trump will not sign into law.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday called on McConnell to move forward, suggesting that Congress go around the president.

The partial shutdown is the longest in U.S. history and its effects have begun to reverberate across the country.

Longer lines have formed at some airports as more security screeners fail to show up for work while food and drug inspections have been curtailed and farmers, stung by recent trade spats, have been unable to receive federal aid.

The shutdown began on Dec. 22 and its impact is worrying some on Wall Street. Roughly 800,000 federal employees are feeling the financial sting after missing their first paycheck last week, a loss of income expected to have ripple effects.

Speaking on CNBC, Delta Air Lines Inc Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said the partial shutdown will cost the airline $25 million in lost revenue in January because fewer government contractors are traveling.

Other U.S. airlines also are not able to open new routes or use new airplanes because they need certification from federal officials who are furloughed.

A number of companies, already concerned about a global economic uncertainty, also have urged Republicans and Democrats to end the stalemate in Washington.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Bill Trott)

House Republicans move to reprimand King over white supremacy comments

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senior Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives moved on Monday to strip congressman Steve King of his committee assignments after the Iowa Republican gave a media interview in which he questioned why white supremacy is considered offensive.

The decision by the House Republican Steering Committee to remove King from his posts on the Judiciary, Agriculture and Small Business committees must be ratified by the full caucus of House Republicans.

The move comes as several House Democrats filed censure motions against King after he told the New York Times in an interview published last week: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization – how did that language become offensive?”

King, who has a history of making statements that critics have condemned as racist, said in a statement that his comments in the Times interview were “completely mischaracterized” and the committee’s decision was “a political decision that ignores the truth.”

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement that King’s remarks were “beneath the dignity” of the party and the country.

“Let us hope and pray earnestly that this action will lead to greater reflection and ultimately change on his part,” McCarthy said.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, called on King to resign. King was first elected to Congress in 2002 and won re-election in November with just over 50 percent of the vote, sharply lower than the 61.2 percent he polled in 2016.

The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said in a statement: “If he doesn’t understand why ‘white supremacy’ is offensive, he should find another line of work.”

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney)

U.S. holiday shoppers spend record $126 billion online

FILE PHOTO: Shoppers walk through the King of Prussia Mall, United States' largest retail shopping space, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, U.S., December 8, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela

By Melissa Fares

(Reuters) – U.S. shoppers spent a record $126 billion on online shopping during the 2018 holiday season, taking advantage of early discounts on Amazon.com and other websites and with more people using smartphones to place their orders, Adobe Analytics said on Tuesday.

Adobe, which collects its data by measuring 80 percent of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. web retailers, said the amount was 16.5 percent higher than last year’s total.

Mobile platforms made up 51 percent of traffic to retail websites during the November-December period and were responsible for nearly a third of all online spending.

Online shoppers spent $3.7 billion on Thanksgiving and $6.2 billion on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Cyber Monday the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday — was the biggest U.S. online shopping day ever, with $7.9 billion spent.

Top-selling items online were L.O.L. Surprise Fingerlings toys; Take-Two Interactive Software’s video game Red Dead Redemption 2; Nintendo’s Switch console; streaming devices; and Dell and Apple laptops, Adobe said.

Consumers spent an average 40 percent more per day during the three weeks after Cyber Monday than in the first three weeks of the season, Adobe said. Sales continued to grow until Dec. 17.

While the online sales figures showed how low U.S. unemployment rates and rising wages boosted consumer confidence during the holiday season, department stores continue to struggle.

Further, consumer confidence in 2019 is seen as likely to be strained by rising U.S. interest rates, the ongoing trade dispute with China, market volatility due to concerns over global growth and political deadlock in Washington.

Macy’s Inc shares plunged 18 percent on Thursday after the department store chain slashed its full-year profit and sales forecast on the back of an anemic holiday season.

Kohl’s Corp reported similarly muted comparable sales growth for the holidays, sending its shares down as much as 9 percent on Thursday. Shares of Target Corp were down nearly 4 percent even after the retailer posted relatively strong holiday sales growth of nearly 6 percent on Thursday.

Overall sales for the 2018 U.S. holiday shopping season rose 5.1 percent to over $850 billion, hitting a six-year high, as shoppers were encouraged by early discounts, according to a Mastercard report in late December.

(Reporting by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Iran satellite launch, which U.S. warned against, fails

The Payam satellite is launched in Iran, January 15, 2019, in this still image taken from video. Reuters TV/via REUTERS

GENEVA (Reuters) – Iran’s bid to put a satellite into orbit, in defiance of U.S. warnings, failed on Tuesday after the rocket carrying it did not reach escape velocity, as the country’s telecoms minister said a second launch would go ahead.

Authorities in Washington this month warned Tehran against undertaking three planned launches that they said would, by using long-range ballistic missile technology, violate the U.N. Security Council resolution that enshrined Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The United States is concerned that that technology can also be used to launch warheads.

Iran, which considers its space program a matter of national pride, has said its space vehicle launches and missile tests are not violations and will continue.

Telecoms Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi said Tuesday’s satellite, named Payam, was mounted with four cameras. It was intended to be used for imaging and communications purposes and orbit at an altitude of 500 km (310 miles), according to a report on the ministry’s website.

He said the satellite failed at the third stage because the rocket “did not reach adequate speed”.

“I would have liked to make everybody happy with good news but sometimes life doesn’t go forward the way we anticipate,” he said on Twitter.

Another satellite, named Doosti, was waiting to be launched.

“We should not come up short or stop,” Azari-Jahromi wrote. “It’s exactly in these circumstances that we Iranians are different than other people in spirit and bravery.”

Under the nuclear deal – which Washington pulled out of last spring before reimposing sanctions – the country is “called upon” to refrain from work for up to eight years on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons.

President Hassan Rouhani said Washington was waging an economic war against Tehran in order to get concessions on the missile program, but “is not able to build a wall around Iran”.

The country launched its first domestically built satellite, the OMID (Hope) research and telecoms satellite, in 2009 on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. The 40th anniversary falls in February.

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; editing by John Stonestreet)

Family of former U.S. marine held by Russia denies reports of Russia visit

FILE PHOTO: Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen detained in Russia for suspected spying, appears in a photo provided by the Whelan family on January 1, 2019. Courtesy Whelan Family/Handout via REUTERS

MOSCOW/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The brother of ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is being held in Moscow on suspicion of spying, denied on Tuesday a Russian media report that said his family planned to visit Russia in an effort to free him.

“Those reports are false,” David Whelan, the ex-Marine’s twin brother, said in an email to Reuters. “Neither his parents nor his siblings are flying to Russia, and we have no plans to fly to Russia.”

The Interfax news agency on Tuesday had cited a lawyer for the Whelan family as saying that they would make such a visit.

Whelan, a former U.S. marine who also holds British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service on Dec. 28. His family have said he is innocent and that he was in Moscow to attend a wedding.

(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow and Barbara Goldberg in New York, writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum)

No clear path for California as massive PG&E utility nears bankruptcy

FILE PHOTO: PG&E works on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – PG&E Corp’s announcement that it will file for bankruptcy, citing massive potential liability from deadly wildfires, puts California politicians in quandary, whether to offer a bailout or risk allowing the state’s largest private utility to fail.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told reporters late on Monday his team was discussing the possibility of helping PG&E stay solvent, but no decisions had been made.

And lawmakers in the state legislature, who last year approved a bill making it easier for PG&E to bill ratepayers for the costs of wildfires sparked by its equipment in 2017, said that there was less support this year for extending additional financial assistance to the company.

“We would like to see it (bankruptcy) avoided, but we are not naive,” Newsom said. “I’m cognizant of the taxpayers, and I’m cognizant of the ratepayers, and I’m absolutely cognizant of those who lost everything.”

FILE PHOTO: Forensic anthropologists recover remains from a trailer home destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S., November 17, 2018. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester/File Photo

PG&E’s announcement on Monday that it intends to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as this month, citing potential liability exceeding $30 billion due to wildfires, came a day after its chief executive officer, Geisha Williams, was ousted from her post.

PG&E, which ranks as the largest U.S. power utility by the number of customers, supplies electricity to 40 percent of Californians. The state, Newsom said, is determined to keep service running to those customers.

But the utility’s power equipment has been linked to the ignition of more than a dozen wildfires in the past two years and is a suspected cause of the deadliest fire in state history, which swept through the town of Paradise in November, killing 86 people and destroying 90 percent of homes and businesses there.

Mark Toney, executive director of consumer advocate group the Utility Reform Network, said the atmosphere had cooled considerably toward PG&E in recent months, making a bailout politically more difficult for lawmakers.

“PG&E is going to have a much harder time because it doesn’t appear that they’ve learned any lessons,” Toney said.

FILE PHOTO: Statues are seen on a property damaged by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

MIXED SIGNALS

The legislature and the governor could decide to allow PG&E to pass along the costs associated with victim lawsuits and other fire losses to ratepayers, as they did last year for a series of deadly northern California blazes in 2017.

Such legislation would also let utilities shift some future fire-related costs to consumers so long as regulators find no negligence on the companies’ part.

But state lawmakers have given mixed signals about what they might do about liability stemming from the deadly Camp Fire of November 2018 that incinerated most of Paradise.

Legislators representing areas devastated by wildfires have opposed any bailout for PG&E, saying its investors should absorb the costs – even if that means the company is bankrupted.

PG&E’s safety record has come under sharp scrutiny before.

State Senator Jerry Hill, whose district includes the site of the deadly 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion determined to have been caused by PG&E’s criminal negligence said support for the utility was softer this year.

“I think there’s less chance, less thought of a bailout this year than we saw last year, certainly,” said Hill, who has the names of the nine people killed in the San Bruno blast framed in his office.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Editing by Steve Gorman and Clarence Fernandez)

Los Angeles teachers strike, shutting classes in second-largest U.S. system

The downtown skyline is pictured in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – More than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers demanding higher pay and smaller class sizes walked off the job in the second-largest U.S. school system on Monday, union officials said, leaving 640,000 students in limbo.

Students arriving for classes at some 900 campuses in the Los Angeles County School District were met by teachers carrying picket signs and rallying in the rain for higher salaries, increased staff and smaller classes, the city’s first teachers’ strike in three decades.

The action is the latest in a wave of teachers’ strikes across the United States, following large-scale actions that began in West Virginia and spread to Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona.

While those cases represented unions battling Republican-dominated state legislatures that had focused on cutting spending, the Los Angeles strike is the largest targeting a Democratic-controlled government. Los Angeles County officials contend the strikers’ demands are unaffordable.

Videos posted on Twitter by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), showed teachers and others marching with picket signs outside of a local public school chanting.

“The district would like us to believe that class sizes don’t matter,” said Mabel Wong, a teacher at John Marshall High School, during a news conference on Monday.

The union wants a 6.5 percent pay raise, more librarians, counselors and nurses on campuses, smaller class sizes and less testing, as well as a moratorium on new charter schools.

Talks broke down on Friday, when union negotiators said they were “insulted” by the latest offer of a 6 percent salary increase from district officials.

Some teachers in Denver also walked out on Monday amid salary negotiations, according to a video posted on the Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s Twitter page.

Officials from the Los Angeles County School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Los Angeles County School Superintendent Austin Beutner said Friday’s offer to teachers was beefed up after newly installed California Governor Gavin Newsom increased education spending in his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

County officials have said UTLA’s demands would bankrupt the district.

“Our commitment to our families is to make sure all of the money we have is being spent in schools. We are doing that,” Beutner said in a statement on Friday. “We hope UTLA leadership will reconsider its demands, which it knows Los Angeles Unified cannot meet.”

Nearly a year ago, West Virginia teachers picketed for more than a week, pressing lawmakers for higher salaries in a state with some of the lowest-paid teachers in the country. State officials eventually approved a 5 percent pay raise for all state workers.

In April 2018, teachers in Oklahoma ended a nearly two-week strike that affected about 500,000 schools and 700,000 students after securing pay raises and increased education funding from Republican leaders. In Kentucky and Arizona, teachers saw a boost in funding and wages last year after walkouts.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Grant McCool)

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