Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. places Pakistan on watch list for religious freedom violations

Trump to make final tax push as Republican negotiators near deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department has placed Pakistan on a special watch list for “severe violations of religious freedom,” it said on Thursday, days after the White House said Islamabad would have to do more to combat terrorism to receive U.S. aid.

The State Department also said it had re-designated 10 other nations as “countries of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act for having engaged in or tolerated egregious violations of religious freedom.

The re-designated countries were China, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. They were re-designated on Dec. 22.

“The protection of religious freedom is vital to peace, stability, and prosperity,” the department said in a statement. “These designations are aimed at improving the respect for religious freedom in these countries.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized Pakistan for not doing more to combat terrorism, and his administration has informed members of Congress that it will announce plans to end “security assistance” payments to the country.

Pakistan has said it is already doing a lot to fight militants, and summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain a tweet by Trump that said the United States had been foolish in dispensing aid to Islamabad.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Susan Thomas)

Suspected Russian jets bomb residential area near Damascus; kill 30

A boy walks on rubble of damaged buildings after an airstrike on the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, Syria, January 4, 2018.

AMMAN (Reuters) – At least 30 civilians were killed early on Thursday when jets dropped bombs on a residential area in a besieged rebel enclave east of Syria’s capital, a war monitor said, identifying the planes as Russian.

At least four bombs flattened two buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, in an attack that killed around 20 and wounded more than 40 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and civil defense sources said.

Elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta, the last major rebel enclave near Damascus, at least ten people were killed in aerial strikes in other nearby towns, the Observatory, rescuers and residents said.

The Observatory, a war monitor based in Britain, said 11 women and a child were among the dead in the strikes in Misraba, which it said were carried out by Russian planes.

Backed by Russian strikes, government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent months, seeking to tighten a siege that residents and aid workers say is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

Russia rejects Syrian opposition and rights groups’ accusations that its jets have been responsible for deaths of thousands of civilians since its major intervention two years ago that turned the tide in the country’s nearly seven-year-old war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.

Moscow says it only attacks hardline Islamists.

Video footage posted on Thursday by activists on social media in Eastern Ghouta showed rescue workers pulling women and children from rubble. The footage could not be independently confirmed.

Jets also pounded Harasta, on the western edge of the enclave, where rebels this week besieged and overran a major military base which residents say the army uses to pound residential areas.

The rebel assault aimed partly to relieve the pressure of the tightening siege.

The United Nations says about 400,000 civilians besieged in the area face “complete catastrophe” because aid deliveries by the government are blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Scores of hospitals and civil defense centers in Ghouta and across Syria have been bombed during the conflict in what the opposition said is a “scorched earth policy” to paralyze life in rebel-held areas.

Syrian state news agency SANA said on Thursday rebel shelling of the government-held capital Damascus killed one and injured 22 in the Amara district of the city.

A man stands on rubble of damaged buildings after an airstrike on the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, Syria, January 4, 2018.

A man stands on rubble of damaged buildings after an airstrike on the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, Syria, January 4, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

IDLIB PUSH

Supported by Iran-backed militias and intensive Russian bombing, the Syrian army has since last month waged a new campaign to push into the heart of another rebel-held part of Syria, Idlib province in the country’s northwest.

Idlib is a heavily populated area where over two million people live.

Rescue workers said there had been a spike in civilian casualties there in the last twenty days from stepped-up aerial strikes on residential areas, documenting 50 dead at least in that period.

“There have been at least six major massacres perpetrated by Russia in indiscriminate bombing of cities and towns with thousands fleeing their homes in the last two weeks,” said Mustafa al Haj Yousef, the head of Idlib’s Civil Defence, rescuers who work in opposition-held areas.

On Wednesday air strikes hit a maternity hospital in Idlib’s Ma’arat al-Nu’man city, killing five people, the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) charity, which supports the hospital, said.

The hospital, which SAMS said delivers around 30 babies a day, had been struck three times in four days and the last strikes temporarily put the hospital out of service.

Overnight, a family of seven was buried under rubble in Tel Dukan village, rescuers said.

The army has been gaining ground in Idlib and the adjoining eastern Hama countryside, with scores of villages seized from rebels mainly belonging to Tahrir al Sham, a coalition of jihadist groups with mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions also engaged in the battles.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Nick Macfie and John Stonestreet)

Indonesia shrinks danger zone around grumbling Bali volcano

Mount Agung volcano erupts as seen from Kubu, Karangasem Regency, Bali, Indonesia, December 1, 2017.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia shrank the exclusion zone around a grumbling volcano on the resort island of Bali on Thursday after fears of an imminent eruption, allowing farmers to return to their homes.

The 3,000-meter Mount Agung remains on alert for a major eruption, but officials said the danger zone around the crater would be reduced to a six-km (four-mile) radius from 10 km.

“Mount Agung remains in an eruption phase and could affect settlements. All parties are urged to remain cautious,” Agung Pribadi, press relations officer at the natural resources ministry, said in a statement.

The volcano has been spewing lava and ash since late November, when authorities raised the alert status to the highest.

Bali airport was closed for three days, leaving thousands of tourists stranded and prompting others to cancel their year-end holiday plans.

(Reporting by Wilda Asmarini; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Japan faces greatest danger since World War due to North Korea

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attends Universal Health Coverage Forum 2017 in Tokyo, Japan December 14, 2017.

TOKYO (Reuters) – The security situation facing Japan is the most perilous since World War Two because of North Korea’s “unacceptable” provocations, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday and he vowed to bolster defenses to protect the Japanese people.

Tension in the region has been rising, particularly since North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September, and then in November, said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach all of the U.S. mainland.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that the security environment surrounding Japan is at its severest since World War Two. I will protect the people’s lives and peaceful living in any situation,” Abe told a New Year news conference.

Abe said Japan would take new steps to strengthen its defense posture but he did not go to specifics.

The government approved a record military budget last month, with defense outlays due to rise for a sixth year, increasing by 1.3 percent to 5.19 trillion yen ($46 billion), with the biggest item 137 billion yen in reinforcing defenses against North Korean ballistic missiles.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said this week the United States was hearing reports that North Korea might be preparing to fire another missile, and she warned it not to.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that North Korea is trampling the strong desire of Japan and the rest of the international community for peaceful resolutions and continuing with its provocative behavior,” Abe said.

Abe has said he wants to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution with the aim of loosening constraints on the military, although the public is divided over changes to the charter imposed after Japan’s World War Two defeat.

War-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution, if read literally, bans the existence of standing armed forces, but has long been interpreted to allow a military for exclusively defensive purposes.

Abe said he wanted more debate on the issue.

“I would like this to be a year in which public debate over a constitutional revision will be deepened further,” he said.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition retained its two-thirds “super majority” in parliament’s lower house in an Oct. 22 election, re-energizing his push to revise the constitution.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim, Robert Birsel)

Blizzard roars into U.S. Northeast, snarling travel

A lone visitor takes a picture near the brink of the ice covered Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls, Canada.

By Gina Cherelus and Scott Malone

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – The first major winter storm of 2018 bore down on the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, closing schools and government offices and disrupting travel as work crews scrambled to clear roads of snow before plummeting temperatures turn it to treacherous ice.

After bringing rare snowfall to the southeast a day earlier, the storm carried rapid accumulation and high winds to New York, where subway systems appeared less crowded than usual as many commuters heeded officials’ warnings to stay home.

Blizzard warnings were in place along the coast from North Carolina to Maine, with the National Weather Service forecasting winds as high as 55 miles per hour (89 kph) that may bring down tree limbs and knock out power.

More than a foot (30 cm) of snow was forecast for Boston and coastal areas in northern New England.

The storm is the product of a rapid and rare plunge in barometric pressure that some weather forecasters are referring to as bombogenesis, or the so-called “bomb cyclone.”

The term comes from the merging of two words: bomb and cyclogenisis, according to private forecaster AccuWeather.

On Wednesday, the storm dumped snow on Florida’s capital Tallahassee for the first time in 30 years, and was expected to last through the day.

About 3,000 airline flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled ahead of the storm’s arrival on Thursday, with New York’s three major airports and Boston’s Logan International seeing as many as three out of four flights called off, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

Federal government offices planned to delay opening for two hours on Thursday, while state officials in Connecticut and Massachusetts ordered non-essential workers to stay home. In Maine, Governor Paul LePage ordered state offices closed for the day.

“Travel conditions are expected to be treacherous,” LePage said in a statement. “Avoiding unnecessary travel will keep accidents to a minimum and allow state and municipal road crews to safely go about their work.”

The snow storm brought a break in extreme cold temperatures that have gripped much of the region since Christmas, frozen part of the Niagara Falls, played havoc with public works and impeded firefighting in places where temperatures barely broke 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 6 centigrade).

But forecasters warned temperatures would drop sharply on Friday and into the weekend. That left work crews scrambling to clear snow off roadways and sidewalks on Thursday before it freezes to ice and makes conditions more treacherous for pedestrians and drivers alike.

“These are tough conditions to move around in, so if you don’t need to be on the road … you shouldn’t,” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Twitter. “Everyone needs to take this weather very seriously.”

Schools were ordered to close in New York, many parts of New Jersey, Boston and other cities through the region.

A woman walks down the street during a blizzard in Long Beach, New York, U.S. January 4, 2018.

A woman walks down the street during a blizzard in Long Beach, New York, U.S. January 4, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

SOUTHERN SNOW

Private forecaster AccuWeather said snow would fall quickly during the day, at a rate of several inches per hour, with the storm intensified by the bombogenesis effect.

The phenomenon occurs when a storm’s barometric pressure drops by 24 millibars in 24 hours. As a result, the accumulation of snow and winds intensifies, which can cause property damage and power outages.

More than 35,000 customers were without power in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia early on Thursday, utilities reported online.

A part of US-13 at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia was closed due to high winds early on Thursday while state transportation departments throughout the region reported dozens of delays due to deteriorating roads conditions.

Late on Wednesday, a baggage car and two sleeper cars on an Amtrak train traveling from Miami to New York, with 311 passengers aboard, derailed as it was slowly backing into a station in Savannah, Georgia. No one was injured, an Amtrak spokesman said.

The cold has been blamed for at least nine deaths over the past few days, including those of two homeless people in Houston.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Alison Williams and Bernadette Baum)

U.S. firm Ocean Infinity says hopeful of getting MH370 search contract soon

- A woman leaves a message of support and hope for the passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 in central Kuala Lumpur March 16, 2014.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – U.S.-based seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity on Wednesday said it was moving a vessel closer to a possible search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 as it soon expects to be awarded a contract by Malaysia to resume the search.

The disappearance of the aircraft en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 with 239 people aboard ranks among the world’s greatest aviation mysteries. Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless A$200-million ($156.62 million) search in January last year.

But in October, Malaysia said it was in talks with Ocean Infinity to resume the search on a “no-cure, no-fee” basis, meaning it will only get paid if it finds the plane.

“Ocean Infinity is hopeful of receiving the final contract award for the resumption of the search for MH370 over the coming days,” a company spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement.

“With a relatively narrow weather window, we are moving the vessel, Seabed Constructor, towards the vicinity of the possible search zone. This is designed to save time should the contract award be forthcoming, as hoped,” he said.

Reuters shipping data showed the Seabed Constructor left Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday and was headed to Perth, Australia, where it is due on Feb. 7.

Malaysia’s deputy transport minister, Aziz Kaprawi, said the government was negotiating final terms of the agreement with Ocean Infinity and he was not aware of the vessel’s movement.

“We are in the final stages of the decision. On our part, we have yet to finalize the agreement,” he told Reuters.

When asked whether Australia and China would be consulted about the contract award, Aziz said: “Basically, Malaysia will make the decision, as this offer was made to the Malaysian government. The cost will also be decided by Malaysia.”

Investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the transponder of the Boeing 777 before diverting it over the Indian Ocean.

Various pieces of debris have been collected from Indian Ocean islands and Africa’s east coast and at least three of them have been confirmed as coming from the missing plane.

($1 = 1.2770 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff in Kuala Lumpur, Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard in Johannesburg; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Canada criticizes U.S. lumber duties put in place on Wednesday

A log driver works a barge of Canadian logs at Squamish Mills Ltd in Howe Sound near Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, April 25, 2017.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Wednesday criticized the United States for a decision to impose duties on certain softwood lumber exports and underlined its determination to fight the move.

The duties, which went into effect on Wednesday, are “unfair, unwarranted and troubling,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement.

Ottawa has already launched challenges against the duties – which range from about 10 percent to nearly 24 percent, below a preliminary range of about 17 percent to 31 percent – with the World Trade Organization and through NAFTA.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s decision will impose anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties affecting about $5.66 billion worth of lumber and comes amid increasingly acrimonious talks on renegotiating NAFTA, the trilateral trade pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Joe Patton, U.S. Lumber Coalition Co‐Chair and Vice President of Wood Products at The Westervelt Company, defended the duties.

“These duties are a fair enforcement of U.S. trade law. For decades, the Canadian government has abused the law and provided massive subsidies to its lumber industry, harming U.S. producers and workers,” he said on Wednesday.

The decision to impose tariffs followed failed talks to end the decades-long dispute between the two countries. The row centers on the fees paid by Canadian lumber mills for timber cut largely from government-owned land. Those fees are lower than fees paid on U.S. timber, which comes largely from private land.

The U.S. Commerce Department accuses Canada of unfairly subsidizing and dumping softwood lumber, which is commonly used in the construction of homes. Canada denies it is dumping the lumber.

The US Dept of Commerce was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; writing by Sue Thomas; Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jim Finkle)

Macron wants anti-‘fake news’ law in 2018

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his New Year wishes to the members of the press corps at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, January 3, 2018.

PARIS (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he would overhaul French media legislation this year to fight the “fake news” spread on social media which he said threatened liberal democracies.

Since he was elected last year, Macron has criticized Russian media in particular, openly accusing TV channel RT of sowing disinformation about him via its website and social media during the presidential election.

“If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must have strong legislation,” Macron told a news conference.

Macron said the legislation would concern social media platforms, especially during election periods, and deeply change the role of France’s media watchdog CSA.

(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Ingrid Melander)

New York to install 1,500 more sidewalk barriers after vehicle attacks

Additional bollards are seen on sidewalks and plazas to protect pedestrians in Times Square, New York City, New York, U.S., January 2, 2018.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City will install more than 1,500 new barrier posts on sidewalks and plazas to protect pedestrians from vehicles after at least two instances last year of drivers killing people after mounting the curb, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.

The thin, cylindrical, waist-height metal bollards are intended to be a more attractive alternative to the hulking concrete blocks the New York Police Department had deposited in busier areas around the city following the vehicle attacks, de Blasio said.

“We understand what’s happening around the world and we even saw some tragedies here,” the mayor said at a Times Square announcement in front of a line of the posts. Similar bollards were installed in Times Square in 2016.

There has been a spate of attacks on pedestrians in European and U.S. cities by people using cars or trucks, a tactic that the Islamic State militant group encourages its supporters to use. In July 2016, a driver used a truck to kill 86 people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. Similar carnage unfolded at a Christmas market in Berlin a few months later.

De Blasio spoke within sight of the place where an intoxicated man in May steered a car along sidewalks for three city blocks, killing a young woman and injuring at least 22 people.

Last November, a man was charged with murder and providing support to Islamic State after he plowed down people on a Manhattan bike lane the previous month, killing eight.

“We know we have to do even more to keep people safe,” de Blasio said on Tuesday. The city will spend an additional $50 million on installing the new bollards in busy, high-profile areas and other efforts to protect public spaces, the mayor said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Frances Kerry)

FEMA allows churches to apply retroactively for disaster aid

Interstate highway 45 is submerged from the effects of Hurricane Harvey seen during widespread flooding in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Tuesday that churches may apply for aid relating to disasters declared after Aug. 23, 2017, following pressure from President Donald Trump and a lawsuit by Texas churches.

The federal disaster relief agency was sued in September by three Texas churches severely damaged in Hurricane Harvey, over what they called its policy of refusing to provide disaster relief to houses of worship because of their religious status.

Trump had said in a tweet that Texas churches should be able to receive money from FEMA for helping victims of Hurricane Harvey. It was not clear whether the three churches provided aid to victims.

The churches that sued are the Rockport First Assembly of God in Rockport, which lost its roof and steeple and suffered other structural damage, and the Harvest Family Church in Cypress and Hi-Way Tabernacle in Cleveland, which were both flooded.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Houston, the churches said they would like to apply for aid but it would be “futile” because FEMA’s public assistance program “categorically” excluded their claims, violating their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

They said FEMA’s ban on providing relief where at least half a building’s space is used for religious purposes, a policy also enforced after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, contradicted a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision making it easier for religious groups to get public aid.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders; Editing by Leslie Adler)