Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Some 200 migrants in Mexico caravan to seek U.S. asylum: organizers

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, gesture as they arrive from Puebla city to La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Delphine Schrank

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – At least 200 Central American migrants in a “caravan” traveling through Mexico that provoked the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump plan to seek asylum in the United States, organizers said on Monday.

After arriving in Mexico City on Monday, hundreds of migrants poured into the Basilica of Guadalupe, a Roman Catholic shrine, to give thanks, collect themselves or unleash emotions coiled tight during their long journey together from the southern border.

The number looking to claim U.S. asylum was more than double what organizers had anticipated, said Rodrigo Abeja, a coordinator from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a transnational organization that staged the caravan.

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, march from La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, march from La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

For many, the arduous trek to the capital began days or weeks before, each hinging on a personal decision to flee conditions too difficult to bear in El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras.

Barely across the cathedral’s threshold, dozens fell to their knees, heads bowing or eyes glistening as they gazed across the vaulted expanse and strained to hear a priest leading them in prayer.

Honduran Misael George beamed, grateful to have made it this far, and said that after the service he would meet with the other migrants who wanted to seek asylum in the United States.

With his three children and his wife, he went on the run from Honduras after a close relative was killed by a gang, and the threat spread to his family, he said. But with no proof on paper, he knew his odds for claiming asylum were long.

“Difficult, yes,” he said. “But not impossible.”

Trump last week lashed out at the caravan, accusing Mexico of failing to stop illegal immigrants headed to the border.

Manuel de Jesus Rodas, 27, from Honduras, daubed his tears with a tissue but could not staunch the emotion that choked his voice. His mother had just told him to come home, he said, because she was sick and in pain.

Now he waited for guidance about whether to go home – or go on. “I don’t know, but I think I have to follow my route,” he said.

Others in the caravan said they would stay in Mexico.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

CEO Zuckerberg says Facebook could have done more to prevent misuse

FILE PHOTO: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo

By Dustin Volz and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told Congress on Monday that the social media network should have done more to prevent itself and its members’ data being misused and offered a broad apology to lawmakers.

His conciliatory tone precedes two days of Congressional hearings where Zuckerberg is set to answer questions about Facebook user data being improperly appropriated by a political consultancy and the role the network played in the U.S. 2016 election.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he said in remarks released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

Zuckerberg, surrounded by tight security and wearing a dark suit and a purple tie rather than his trademark hoodie, was meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Monday ahead of his scheduled appearance before two Congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Zuckerberg did not respond to questions as he entered and left a meeting with Senator Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee. He is expected to meet Senator John Thune, the Commerce Committee’s Republican chairman, later in the day, among others.

Top of the agenda in the forthcoming hearings will be Facebook’s admission that the personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

But lawmakers are also expected to press him on a range of issues, including the 2016 election.

“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm…” his testimony continued. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”

Facebook, which has 2.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, said on Sunday it plans to begin on Monday telling users whose data may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica. The company’s data practices are under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

London-based Cambridge Analytica, which counts U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign among its past clients, has disputed Facebook’s estimate of the number of affected users.

Zuckerberg also said that Facebook’s major investments in security “will significantly impact our profitability going forward.” Facebook shares were up 2 percent in midday trading.

ONLINE INFORMATION WARFARE

Facebook has about 15,000 people working on security and content review, rising to more than 20,000 by the end of 2018, Zuckerberg’s testimony said. “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” he said.

As with other Silicon Valley companies, Facebook has been resistant to new laws governing its business, but on Friday it backed proposed legislation requiring social media sites to disclose the identities of buyers of online political campaign ads and introduced a new verification process for people buying “issue” ads, which do not endorse any candidate but have been used to exploit divisive subjects such as gun laws or police shootings.

The steps are designed to deter online information warfare and election meddling that U.S. authorities have accused Russia of pursuing, Zuckerberg said on Friday. Moscow has denied the allegations.

Zuckerberg’s testimony said the company was “too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference, and we’re working hard to get better.”

He vowed to make improvements, adding it would take time, but said he was “committed to getting it right.”

A Facebook official confirmed that the company had hired a team from the law firm WilmerHale and outside consultants to help prepare Zuckerberg for his testimony and how lawmakers may question him.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Dustin Volz; Editing by Bill Rigby)

‘Russia in the doldrums?’: new U.S. sanctions to weigh on recovery

By Jack Stubbs and Polina Nikolskaya

MOSCOW (Reuters) – An escalation in U.S. sanctions against Moscow risks derailing a fragile recovery in Russia’s economy, which had just begun to take hold after the Kremlin’s last confrontation with the West in 2014, analysts and investors said on Monday.

The United States imposed major new sanctions against Russia on Friday, striking at senior Russian officials and some of the country’s biggest companies in one of Washington’s most aggressive moves to punish Moscow for its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other “malign activity”.

“One gets the impression that since 2014 we have been convinced that sanctions are painless for our economy,” said Kirill Tremasov, head of research at Loko-Invest and former director of the Russian Economy Ministry’s forecasting department.

“This is completely groundless. What happened on Friday opens a new stage in relations with Western countries. We have found ourselves in a new reality. And it is very, very serious.”

Analysts and investors in Moscow said the sanctions could consign Russia to years of low growth, frustrating government efforts to stimulate a rebound from a two-year downturn brought on by low oil prices and Western sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

Putin was re-elected for his fourth presidential term in March with a huge majority, but is under increasing pressure to meet voters’ expectations of better growth and assuage concerns about falling living standards.

SLOW-GROWTH ENVIRONMENT

After two years of contraction, Russian GDP returned to growth of 1.5 percent last year on the back of higher oil prices, still short of a government target of 2 percent.

Chris Weafer, a senior partner at economic and political consultancy Macro Advisory, said he still saw Russia’s economy growing by 1.8 percent this year, with oil prices above $60 a barrel.

“But the big question, of course, is ‘How long does Russia stay in this low-growth environment?’ That’s where the impact of sanctions happens,” he said.

“We all know that the economy needs to grow at a faster pace over the course of the next (presidential) term, it needs to get stronger – and sanctions and the impact on foreign direct investment, that’s where it comes in,” he said. “2018 is the year of Russia in the doldrums.”

The latest round of U.S. sanctions represents the biggest escalation in Western action against Russia since Washington and the European Union first targeted oligarchs close to Putin and their businesses over the Ukraine crisis in 2014.

Investors said the inclusion of people who are not traditionally seen as part of Putin’s inner circle showed that any Russian company or business leader could now be targeted.

Russia’s rouble suffered its biggest daily fall in over three years on Monday and stocks in major Russian companies also slid, as investors reacted to the new sanctions. State-owned Sberbank, often seen as a barometer of the wider economy, fell 17 percent in Moscow and aluminum giant Rusal <0486.HK> lost over half its value in Hong Kong after its main owner Oleg Deripaska was named on the sanctions list.

TIGHTER MONEY

The increased uncertainty and risk will make it harder for Russian companies to borrow abroad and reduce the amount of inward investment, said Tim Ash at BlueBay Asset Management.

“Unless there is a move to de-escalation, you have to assume that financing conditions around Russia will get even tighter,” he said. “Long-term, that’s going to be bad for growth and mean even more stagnation in the Russian economy.”

Natalia Orlova, head economist at Alfa Bank, said the central bank might now take more time over interest rate cuts that could boost growth: “Based on economic logic … it seems to me that it is dangerous to hurry with a rate cut in such uncertain conditions.”

Loko-Invest’s Kirill Tremasov said the biggest danger of the new sanctions might be in scaring foreign investors off Russian OFZ treasury bonds, popular in the West because of their high yields.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year OFZ rose as high as 7.32 percent on Monday as the price of the bond fell. It had stood at around 7.05 percent last week.

Foreigners’ holdings of OFZ bonds stood at nearly $40 billion, or 33.9 percent of all OFZ bonds as of Feb. 1, the last period for which data was available.

“For foreign investors, this is a very, very serious signal … and now there could be some OFZ outflows,” Tremasov said. “This will be reflected in the growth of interest rates in the economy.”

(Additional reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Trump says to make fast decision after suspected Syrian chemical attack

A girl looks on following alleged chemical weapons attack, in what is said to be Douma, Syria in this still image from video obtained by Reuters on April 8, 2018. White Helmets/Reuters TV via REUTERS

By Steve Holland and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

WASHINGTON/AMMAN (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday condemned a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in Syria that killed dozens of people and said he would decide on a response probably by the end of the day.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Trump said he was talking to military leaders and would decide who was responsible for what he called a “heinous attack” on innocent Syrians — whether it was Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Iran, or all of them together.

“We’ll be making that decision very quickly probably by the end of the day. But we cannot allow atrocities like that,” Trump said. “Nothing is off the table,” he said, when asked if U.S. military action was a possibility.

Asked if there was any doubt over who was responsible for the attack, Trump said: “To me there’s not much of a doubt but the generals will figure it out probably over the next 24 hours.”

International bodies led by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were also trying to establish exactly what happened on Saturday in Douma, a besieged town in eastern Ghouta near Damascus.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in the attack.

U.S. government sources said on Monday that the administration’s initial assessment suggested that a nerve agent was used but further evidence was needed to determine what specifically it was.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also said earlier he would not rule out military action such as air strikes if blame was proven. He accused Russia of falling short on its obligations to ensure that Syria abandoned its chemical weapons capabilities.

“The first thing we have to look at is why are chemical weapons still being used at all when Russia was the framework guarantor of removing all the chemical weapons,” Mattis told reporters.

Trump said on Sunday after initial reports of an attack that there would be a “big price to pay”.

A Syria medical relief group said at least 60 people had been killed and more than 1,000 injured in several sites in Douma.

The stakes were further raised on Monday when unidentified war planes struck a Syrian air base near Homs, killing at least 14 people, including Iranian personnel. Syria and Russia accused Israel of carrying out the attack.

Israel, which has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of its neighbour’s seven-year-old civil war, has neither confirmed nor denied mounting the raid.

But Israeli officials said the Tiyas, or T-4, air base was being used by troops from Iran and that Israel would not accept such a presence in Syria by its arch foe.

The two incidents in Douma and Tiyas demonstrated the complex and volatile nature of the Syria war, which started in March 2011 as an anti-Assad uprising and now involves a number of countries and a myriad of insurgent groups.

Assad now has the upper hand in the conflict, largely thanks to Russian intervention on his side, but any international action could delay his efforts to bring it to close.

RANGE OF OPTIONS

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Monday following rival requests by Russia and the United States to discuss the situation. Senior officials in the Trump administration were also to meet in the White House.

Britain said it was working with its allies to agree a joint response to the reported chemical attack on Douma.

“If there is clear verified evidence of the use of chemical weapons and a proposal for action where the UK would be useful, then we will look at the range of options,” Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said.

France said it would work closely with the United States on a response to the suspected chemical attack. Both countries agreed responsibility for the strike must be established.

President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Trump by telephone on Sunday, had issued repeated warnings previously that France would strike if proof of lethal chemical attacks were established. But Paris stopped short of apportioning blame on Assad’s forces for Saturday’s attack.

Trump had referred in a Tweet to “Animal Assad” and criticised Russia and Iran for backing the Syrian leader, directly naming Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said such allegations were false and a provocation. Lavrov also said the strike on the T-4 base was a dangerous development.

Syrian government forces had launched an air and ground assault on Douma, the last rebel-held town in the eastern Ghouta district, on Friday.

The Union of Medical Care Organizations (UOSSM) said at least 60 people had been killed by the alleged chemical attack.

“The numbers keep rising as relief workers struggle to gain access to the subterranean areas where gas has entered and hundreds of families had sought refuge,” it said.

One video shared by activists showed bodies of about a dozen children, women and men, some with foam at the mouth. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

The OPCW, based in the Hague, said people were possibly gassed to death by a poisonous cocktail of sarin and chlorine.

Dr. Muhammad, a doctor in Ghouta quoted by UOSSM, said patients were coughing blood, a symptom not seen in previous chemical attacks.

U.N. war crimes investigators had previously documented 33 chemical attacks in Syria, attributing 27 to the Assad government, which has repeatedly denied using the weapons.

The United States fired missiles on a Syrian air base a year ago in response to the killing of dozens of civilians in a sarin gas attack in an opposition-held town in northwest Syria, blamed on Assad.

RED LINES

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said at least 14 people were killed in Monday’s air strike on the T-4 base, including foreign fighters – a reference to Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia members, mostly from Iraq, Lebanon and Iran fighting alongside the Syrian army.

Iran’s Fars news agency said three Iranians were killed.

The Russian military said two Israeli F-15 war planes carried out the strike. Interfax news agency cited the Russian Defence Ministry as saying Syrian air defence systems had shot down five of eight missiles fired.

Syrian state news agency SANA, citing a military source, carried a similar report.

The Israeli government had no immediate comment.

Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant, while not confirming that Israel had carried out the attack, said his country had clear interests in Syria.

“We laid down red lines there, which said that we would not allow Syrian land to be a springboard for game-changing weaponry to Lebanon, we would not allow the building of an Iranian army in Syria and we would not allow the opening of another front on the Golan Heights,” he told Israel Radio.

“In this context we are taking action with all means, over time.”

In Washington, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged Trump and his administration to destroy Assad’s air capabilities, enforce safe zones inside Syria, and target Assad directly.

“This president has the chance to do exactly the opposite of (former U.S. President Barack) Obama – send a strong signal that there’s a new sheriff in town and America’s back,” Graham told Fox News in an interview.

(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah, Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Ellen Francis, Maria Kiselyova, Dan Williams, John Irish, Matt Spetalnick; Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

Oklahoma teachers press Senate to pass tax plan to end strike

Teachers rally outside the state Capitol on the second day of a teacher walkout to demand higher pay and more funding for education in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

By Heidi Brandes

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Oklahoma teachers packed the state Capitol on Monday to press the Republican-dominated Senate to enact a capital gains tax overhaul educators said could bring in about $100 million and help end a statewide walkout now in its second week.

Tens of thousands of teachers have come to the Capitol each working day since the strike started April 2 calling for increased spending for an education system where inflation-adjusted general funding per student dropped by 28.2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the biggest reduction of any state, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Public schools serving more than half of the state’s 700,000 students were closed on Monday, including those around Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Oklahoma teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country.

“We need lawmakers to make a long-term investment in our children’s future,” the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union with about 40,000 members, said on Monday.

In the past few weeks, lawmakers approved nearly $450 million in new taxes and revenue to help fund teachers’ pay and education, but that is still short of the $600 million being sought by teachers.

The Senate is set to meet this afternoon and discuss a bill that would remove a tax exemption on capital gains. If the bill is enacted, the union has said it would be a major step toward ending the strike.

They also want lawmakers to implement a hotel tax that would bring in an estimated $50 million.

The strike has garnered strong public backing, with a statewide survey from the Sooner Poll agency released last Friday showing that 72.1 percent of respondents supported the walkout.

The job action comes after a West Virginia strike last month ended with a pay raise and as teachers in other states, increasingly angry over stagnating wages, consider walkouts of their own.

Opponents of the tax hikes, including Oklahoma Taxpayers United, argue that lawmakers could boost education spending by cutting bureaucracy and waste rather than raising taxes.

The new tax and revenue that has been approved by lawmakers translates into an average teacher pay raise of about $6,100.

Teachers are seeking a $10,000 raise over three years. The minimum salary for a first-year teacher is currently $31,600, state data shows.

A major cause of budget strain comes from tax breaks Oklahoma granted to its energy industry, which were worth $470 million in fiscal-year 2015 alone.

(Writing and additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)

Trudeau attends emotional vigil for Canada bus crash victims

Community members leave notes and flowers at a memorial at Elgar Petersen Arena in Humboldt, April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Matt Smith

By Katherine Fitzpatrick

HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined religious and community leaders at an emotional vigil on Sunday night to honor the 15 members of a junior ice hockey team killed in a bus crash that shocked the hockey-loving nation.

Hundreds of people including National Hockey League (NHL) players attended the vigil at the Elgar Petersen Arena, home of the Humboldt Broncos club at the center of one of the worst disasters to hit Canada’s sporting community.

“We’re here behind you. We will be here for you,” Rob Muench, mayor of the small farming town of Humboldt in Saskatchewan province, told the gathering.

“We will get through this.”

Fourteen other members of the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team were injured in the accident, which occurred as the team was traveling to a league playoff game in the town of Nipawin, about 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Humboldt, on Friday.

The bus collided with a semi-trailer truck. Canadian police are looking into road, weather and vehicle conditions.

Former NHL star Sheldon Kennedy was among those who were expected to attend the vigil, along with former players Bob Wilkie and Peter Soberlak. Kennedy was on board a bus involved in another fatal crash in 1986, in which four members of the Swift Current Broncos were killed.

One minute silence was observed at the time when the playoff was scheduled on Sunday evening.

“Today and for every day forward we are all humble Broncos and we will be forever humble Broncos strong,” Broncos President Kevin Geringer told the members attending the vigil.

For the prairies community of Humboldt, population about 6,000, ice hockey is a sport that unifies the town and gives it its identity, bringing home two national championships.

Townspeople and team supporters gathered at the local Uniplex sports and education complex to comfort each other. An online fund-raising initiative to help the victims’ families has raised C$3.7 million ($2.9 million).

Rob Eichorst, the team’s governor, said Sunday’s interdenominational vigil was organized by local religious leaders “for healing of the community, the hockey team, the province, the country.”

“There’s no playbook on how to handle this,” Eichorst said. “People are bringing food … We’ve got multinational companies helping us, we’ve got national companies offering stuff. The support is overwhelming and truly appreciated.”

He estimated 300 to 400 people had gathered at the complex on Friday evening. Grief counselors were on hand and the Red Cross was providing support to players’ families as well as the families who billet players.

(Reporting by Katherine Fitzpatrick in HUMBOLDT, Saskatchewan; Writing by Denny Thomas; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Stephen Coates)

Iran tells Trump he would regret dropping nuclear deal

FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a meeting with Muslim leaders and scholars in Hyderabad, India, February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

LONDON (Reuters) – Donald Trump will regret it if he pulls out of the nuclear deal with Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday, warning the U.S. President that Tehran’s response would be stronger than he thinks.

U.S. sanctions that were lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015 will resume unless Trump waives them again on May 12. Trump has effectively set that as a deadline for European powers to “fix the terrible flaws” of the deal.

“The new U.S. president – who has big claims and many ups and downs in his words and actions – has been trying for 15 months to break the JCPOA … but the structure of the JCPOA is so strong that it has not been shaken by such quakes,” Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state television.

“Iran will not violate the nuclear deal, but if the United States withdraws from the deal, they will surely regret it. Our response will be stronger than what they imagine and they would see that within a week.”

Iran has warned that it would ramp up its nuclear program if the JCPOA collapses, to achieve a more advanced level than before the deal.

Rouhani was speaking as Tehran marked National Nuclear Technology Day and unveiled what it said were its latest nuclear achievements including a nuclear battery and centrifuges for the oil industry.

Rouhani said Iran has been preparing for every possible scenario, including a JCPOA without the United States – which would still include European signatories, China and Russia – or no deal at all.

France, Britain and Germany are seeking to persuade their EU partners to back new sanctions on Iran, as a way to persuade Trump to stick with the nuclear deal curbed on Iran’s nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief.

Those sanctions would not involve measures that were lifted under the nuclear deal but would target individual Iranians that the EU believes are behind Iran’s ballistic weapons program and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Rouhani said on Monday that Iran’s missile capabilities were purely defensive.

“We will produce any weapons necessary to defend our country in such a volatile region. But we will not use our weapons against our neighbors,” Rouhani said.

Iran’s currency hit a new low on Monday on continued concerns over a return of crippling sanctions if Trump carries out his threat.

The U.S. dollar jumped in a day from 54,700 rials to 58,000 rials in the open market in Tehran, local media reported. A dollar was 36,000 rials in mid-September.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Iran hit by global cyber attack that left U.S. flag on screens

FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections”, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday.

“The attack apparently affected 200,000 router switches across the world in a widespread attack, including 3,500 switches in our country,” the Communication and Information Technology Ministry said in a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

The statement said the attack, which hit internet service providers and cut off web access for subscribers, was made possible by a vulnerability in routers from Cisco which had earlier issued a warning and provided a patch that some firms had failed to install over the Iranian new year holiday.

A blog published on Thursday by Nick Biasini, a threat researcher at Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group, said: “Several incidents in multiple countries, including some specifically targeting critical infrastructure, have involved the misuse of the Smart Install protocol…

“As a result, we are taking an active stance, and are urging customers, again, of the elevated risk and available remediation paths.”

On Saturday evening, Cisco said those postings were a tool to help clients identify weaknesses and repel a cyber attack.

Iran’s IT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi posted a picture of a computer screen on Twitter with the image of the U.S. flag and the hackers’ message. He said it was not yet clear who had carried out the attack.

Azari-Jahromi said the attack mainly affected Europe, India and the United States, state television reported.

“Some 55,000 devices were affected in the United States and 14,000 in China, and Iran’s share of affected devices was 2 percent,” Azari-Jahromi was quoted as saying.

In a tweet, Azari-Jahromi said the state computer emergency response body MAHER had shown “weaknesses in providing information to (affected) companies” after the attack which was detected late on Friday in Iran.

Hadi Sajadi, deputy head of the state-run Information Technology Organisation of Iran, said the attack was neutralized within hours and no data was lost.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom, additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; editing by Ros Russell and G Crosse)

Israelis on Gaza border unmoved by Palestinian protests

A farmer tends to a water faucet in a field in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Gaza Strip border, Israel April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Dan Williams

NAHAL OZ, Israel (Reuters) – Hardened by years of rocket attacks from next-door Gaza, residents of this frontline Israeli village seemed unmoved on Sunday by Palestinians’ mass demonstrations at the border and Israel’s deadly response to them.

Confrontations on each of the last two Fridays have been clearly visible from Nahal Oz, a kibbutz just 800 meters (yards) from the frontier. The sounds of Arabic chants, smoke from burning tyres and the cracks of gunfire from Israeli sharpshooters have wafted in across the wheat, jojoba and sunflower fields.

“I’m sorry about what is happening there. I know the situation is very, very difficult,” Israeli farmer Daniel Rahamim said about economic hardship in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, an Islamist group that advocates Israel’s destruction.

“But I don’t talk about a peace deal anymore. Maybe we can achieve a long-term ceasefire,” Rahimim, 63, said as he irrigated his crops. He said his 24-year-old daughter, still “traumatized by rockets” left the area after the demonstrations started.

FILE PHOTO - A demonstrator with a Palestinian flag looks on during clashes with Israeli troops at the Israel-Gaza border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

FILE PHOTO – A demonstrator with a Palestinian flag looks on during clashes with Israeli troops at the Israel-Gaza border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Twenty nine Palestinians have been killed since the protests began on March 30 along the frontier of the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations have been dubbed “The Great March of Return” of refugees and their descendants to ancestral homes now in Israel.

Drawing international criticism for its use of live fire, Israel said it is doing what is necessary to stop violent protesters from damaging or breaching its fence with the blockaded enclave.

Nahal Oz, like dozens of other villages and working class towns on the Gaza periphery, has over the years been targeted by Palestinian short-range rockets and mortar bombs and faced the threat of Hamas cross-border tunnels.

As last Friday’s protest got under way, six Israeli high school students who were on a study visit to Nahal Oz, clambered up an abandoned guard tower to peer into Gaza. They watched impassively and silently as the crowds gathered.

“I don’t feel any empathy for them (Palestinians),” said Ahuva Avraham, 62, who runs the grocery. “I would be happy if we could live in peace, but they don’t want to sit and talk with us.”

Haim Jelin, a legislator from Israel’s opposition centrist Yesh Atid party, and a resident of nearby Kibbutz Beeri, agreed with the government in rejecting U.N. and European Union calls for an inquiry into Israel’s killing of protesters.

“When it comes to the Gaza Strip, there is no coalition and opposition,” he told Reuters in an interview on farmland 300 meters (yards) from the border fence.

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Susan Fenton)

Shallow quakes shake parts of western Japan, more tremors expected

A stone torii gate damaged by an earthquake is seen at Karita Shrine in Ohda, Shimane Prefecture, Japan in this photo taken by Kyodo April 9, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

TOKYO (Reuters) – A series of shallow earthquakes shook parts of western Japan on Monday and authorities warned that further strong shaking is possible over the coming days.

A quake at 1632 GMT measured at magnitude 5.8 by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), at a depth of 10 kms (7.5 miles), causing strong shaking in parts of Shimane prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast.

Shaking of that intensity can cause walls to collapse, open cracks in the ground and trigger landslides. The United States Geological Service Survey (USGS) measured the initial quake at magnitude 5.6 at a depth of 7 kms.

A JMA official warned at a press briefing that the region could experience further jolts over the next week, particularly in the coming two or three days.

No injuries have so far been reported as a result of the earthquakes, public broadcaster NHK said.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Stephen Coates)