Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

U.S. to return first Central American asylum seekers to Mexico

A migrant man and woman, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America tying to reach the United States, carry their belongings during the closing of the Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

By Julia Love

TIJUANA (Reuters) – The United States will send the first group of Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico on Tuesday, a U.S. official said, as part of a hardened immigration policy to keep migrants south of the border while their cases are processed in U.S. courts.

Tuesday’s return of migrants was to be carried out under a policy dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said. Mexican officials had said on Friday that the transfers would happen that day.

MPP was implemented “once the appropriate field guidance was issued,” Waldman said.

A Mexican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the first group would be sent across on Tuesday.

Under MPP, the United States will return non-Mexican migrants who cross the U.S. southern border back to Mexico while their asylum requests are processed in U.S. immigration courts.

Asylum seekers have traditionally been granted the right to stay in the United States while their cases were decided by an immigration judge, but a backlog of more than 800,000 cases means the process can take years.

U.S. authorities are expected to send as many as 20 people per day through the Mexican border city of Tijuana and gradually start sending people back through the other legal ports of entry, Mexico’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

The U.S. policy is aimed at curbing the increasing number of families arriving mostly from Central America to request asylum who say they fear returning home because of threats of violence there. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump says many of the claims are not valid.

(Reporting by Julia Love in Tijuana, Yeganeh Torbati in New York and Dave Graham in Mexico City; Writing by Delphine Schrank and Anthony Esposito; editing by Grant McCool)

Islamic State pinned in tiny eastern Syria enclave with families, U.S. backed force says

FILE PHOTO: Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) celebrate the first anniversary of Raqqa province liberation from ISIS, in Raqqa, Syria Ocotber 27, 2018. REUTERS/Aboud Hamam/File Photo

By Rodi Said

QAMISHLI, Syria (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria are pinned down in a final tiny pocket with their wives and children, forcing a U.S.-backed militia to slow its advance to protect civilians, the militia said on Tuesday.

An aid agency said separately that 10,000 civilians had fled the enclave since last week and were arriving hungry and desperate at a camp.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have been backed by 2,000 U.S. troops and air support, are preparing for a final showdown with Islamic State in eastern Syria after helping to drive the fighters from the towns and cities that once formed the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said Islamic State fighters were now confined to a pocket of just 5-6 square km (around 2 square miles) by the Euphrates River. The presence of their wives and children meant the U.S.-backed militia could not launch an all-out storm of it, and was using slower, more precise tactics instead.

“There are thousands of Daesh families there. They are civilians at the end of the day,” Bali told Reuters, using an acronym for Islamic State. “We cannot storm the area or put any child’s life in danger.”

The SDF had refused an offer from the jihadists via mediators to surrender the territory in return for safe passage out, Bali said.

Clashes had slowed because of the presence of the civilians, and “precise operations” were taking more time. “Calm prevails on the frontlines but there’s a state of caution and waiting.”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) charity said it was helping tend to a sudden influx of more than 10,000 people, almost all women, children and elderly, who had arrived at a camp in northeast Syria since last week.

Most were exhausted, extremely hungry, and thirsty as they fled Islamic State territory, the global aid agency said. Many arrived barefoot. The United Nations confirmed that 12 young children had died after reaching the al-Hol camp or on the dangerous journey there, the IRC added on Tuesday.

The SDF, spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, has seized much of north and east Syria with U.S. help. It has been battling Islamic State remnants near the Iraqi border for months.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that Islamic State had been defeated and announced the abrupt withdrawal of the U.S. troops, over objections of top advisors including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis who quit in protest.

The SDF vowed to escalate its operations against Islamic State this month after a bomb attack killed several people including two U.S. soldiers in northern Syria. SDF officials have warned of an Islamic State revival if Washington withdraws.

Kurdish leaders also fear a U.S. pullout would give Turkey, which sees the YPG as a threat on its border, the chance to mount a new assault. Washington has since said it will make sure its allies are protected when it leaves.

(Reporting by Rodi Said in Syria and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Editing by Peter Graff)

North Korea says it wants peace, relations with U.S.

Directional signs bearing North Korean and U.S. flags are seen near the demilitarized zone in Paju, South Korea, June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea said on Tuesday that relations with the United States will develop “wonderfully at a fast pace” if Washington responds to its efforts on denuclearization with trustworthy measures and practical actions.

North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Han Tae Song, told the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament that Pyongyang would continue working to establish a “permanent and durable peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula”.

The landmark summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump last June produced a promise to work toward the complete denuclearization of the divided peninsula. Progress since then has been patchy.

Washington is demanding concrete action, such as a full disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities, before agreeing to key goals of Pyongyang – easing international sanctions and declaring an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice.

The summit had brought about a dramatic turn in relations that had been “the most hostile on earth” and contributed to ensuring peace and security on the peninsula, Han said..

He referred to the two leaders’ joint statement issued after their meeting in Singapore and Kim’s New Year’s Address, adding:

“Accordingly we declared that we would neither make and test nuclear weapons any longer nor use and proliferate them and we have taken various practical measures.

“If the U.S. responds to our efforts with trustworthy measures and corresponding practical actions, bilateral relations will develop wonderfully at a fast pace through the process of taking more definite and epoch-making steps,” he said.

Han told Reuters that he had no information on a possible second summit between Kim and Trump, which the White House has said would be held in late February without saying where.

“As we open a new year, we are determined to seize this hard-won unprecedented window of opportunity of diplomacy,” South Korea’s deputy ambassador Lee Jang-Keun told the Geneva forum on Tuesday.

“The recent announcement by the U.S. of holding a second U.S.-DPRK summit meeting in late February is another harbinger of hope,” he said.

South Korea’s foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha told Reuters at Davos last week that North Korea must make concrete pledges toward curbing its nuclear weapons program, such as dismantling its main nuclear complex and allowing international inspections to confirm the process, when leader Kim meets Trump as soon as next month.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Angus MacSwan)

Five Vale staff and contractors arrested after Brazil dam disaster

A view of a dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA after it collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

By Pedro Fonseca and Gram Slattery

RIO DE JANEIRO/BRUMADINHO, Brazil (Reuters) – Three employees of Brazilian miner Vale and two contractors were arrested on Tuesday, prosecutors said, as a criminal investigation began after a devastating dam rupture expected to leave a death toll of more than 300 people.

Vale said it was cooperating with investigators in the case, which has enraged Brazilians and raised fresh questions about the company’s commitment to safety after a similar dam burst just over three years ago at a nearby mine it jointly owned.

Two of those arrested were Vale’s senior managers at the Corrego do Feijao mine, where a tailings dam broke on Friday, hammering the nearby town of Brumadinho with a flood of mining waste – according to a court order seen by Reuters. The job of the third Vale employee was not immediately clear.

Two other engineers, who worked on behalf of Vale and are accused of attesting to the safety of the dam, were arrested in Sao Paulo, state prosecutors there said.

Minas Gerais state investigators issued a total of five arrest warrants and seven search warrants on suspicion of murder, falsification of documents and environmental crimes, a judge’s decision showed.

The collapse of the dam in the hilly, pastoral region has caused 65 confirmed deaths so far, according to firefighters’ count on Monday night, with another 279 people missing and likely dead.

Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani said Vale was doing all it could, offering money to mourners, extra tax payments to local government, a special membrane to remove mud from the river and major investments to make its dams safer.

Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Washington Alves

Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Washington Alves

Yet residents in the devastated town of Brumadinho have been unmoved, watching in shock and anger as one dead body after another has been pulled from the mud.

Following a deadly 2015 tailings dam collapse just a few towns over at a mine half-owned by Vale, the disaster remained unforgivable in the eyes of many Brazilians.

“Vale is destroying Minas Gerais,” said Robinson Passos, 52, who lost a cousin and friends in Brumadinho.

“There’s anger, sadness, everything,” he said, holding back tears as he surveyed the destruction in Corrego do Feijao, a hamlet within Brumadinho that gave its name to the mine at the center of the disaster.

‘PREMEDITATED’

At the headquarters for the local mining union, which lost more than one in 10 members by organizers’ count, treasurer José Francisco Mateiro, blamed the company and authorities for putting him and his comrades at risk.

“They call it an accident but the design of those dams was premeditated,” he said. “There have been warnings about all mining dams for a long time now.”

Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said the facility was up to code and equipment had shown the dam was stable just two weeks before the collapse.

“We are 100 percent within all the standards, and that didn’t do it,” he said in a Sunday TV interview.

Siani said the company would donate 100,000 reais ($26,600) to each family that had lost a loved one, adding the company would continue paying mining royalties to Brumadinho despite a halt in operations there.

The company was building a membrane to stop the flow of mud now snaking down the Paraopeba River. A “bold” investment plan also would speed the process of making dams more secure, he said.

Prosecutors and politicians have not been impressed.

On Monday, a presidential task force contemplated forcing out Vale’s management. Government ministers have said Brazil’s mining regulations are broken. The country’s top prosecutor said the company should be criminally prosecuted and executives held personally responsible.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Brumadinho and Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro; Additional reporting by Marta Nogueira and Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Mark Potter and Bill Trott)

PG&E, owner of biggest U.S. power utility, files for bankruptcy

FILE PHOTO: PG&E crew work 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 Subrat Patnaik

(Reuters) – Power provider PG&E Corp filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, succumbing to liabilities stemming from wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018.

The owner of the biggest U.S. power utility has filed a motion seeking court approval for a $5.5 billion debtor-in-possession financing, it said in a statement.

PG&E listed assets of $71.39 billion and liabilities of $51.69 billion, in a court document filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.

“Throughout this process, we are fully committed to enhancing our wildfire safety efforts, as well as helping restoration and rebuilding efforts across the communities impacted by the devastating Northern California wildfires,” PG&E interim Chief Executive Officer John Simon said.

The company said it intends to pay suppliers in full under normal terms for goods and services provided on or after the date of the Chapter 11 filing.

Separately, PG&E shareholder BlueMountain Capital Management LLC said it was “deeply disappointed” that the company’s board ignored calls from multiple parties to abandon its “reckless and irresponsible plan to file for bankruptcy.”

The investment firm said it would propose a slate of board directors no later than Feb. 21, and urged all PG&E stakeholders to support change at the company.

PG&E, which had a debt burden of more than $18 billion, said earlier this month it would need to pursue a court-supervised reorganization in the aftermath of the blazes, including November’s so-called Camp Fire.

The Camp Fire broke out on the morning of Nov. 8 near the mountain community of Paradise, sweeping through the town and killing at least 86 people, in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history.

Reinsurance company Munich Re termed the Camp Fire as the world’s most expensive natural disaster of 2018 and earlier this month pegged the overall losses from it at $16.5 billion.

PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy once before in 2001, warned in November it could face “significant liability” in excess of its insurance coverage if its equipment was found to have caused the Camp Fire and other destructive wildfires.

Earlier this month, a state fire agency said PG&E equipment was not to blame for a 2017 wildfire in California’s wine country, but the company faces dozens of lawsuits from owners of homes and businesses that burned during that and other 2017 fires.

The San Francisco-based company provides electricity and natural gas to more than six million customers in Northern California. Last year, lawmakers gave it permission to raise rates to cover wildfire losses from 2017. But elected officials this month showed little appetite for new rate hikes or other maneuvers to prevent a bankruptcy filing.

(Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru and Jim Christie in San Francisco; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

‘IRA’ claims responsibility for Londonderry car bomb

The scene of a suspected car bomb is seen in Londonderry, Northern Ireland January 20, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

By Amanda Ferguson

Belfast (Reuters) – A group calling itself the “IRA” said it was responsible for placing the car bomb which detonated in Londonderry in a statement sent to the Derry Journal on Tuesday.

Northern Irish police said the main focus of the investigation was on the New IRA – one of a small number of groups opposed to a 1998 peace deal that largely ended three decades of violence in the British-run province.

“We also caution those who collaborate with the British that they are to desist immediately as no more warnings will be given,” the statement to the Journal said.

No one was injured in the blast outside a courthouse on Jan. 19 but the incident highlighted the threat still posed by militant groups opposed to the peace agreement.

Police in Northern Ireland and European Union member Ireland have said that a return to a hard border between the two after Britain leaves the EU, complete with customs and other checks, could see a return to strife.

In the statement the group denied that Brexit was a motivating factor for their actions.

“All this talk of Brexit, hard borders, soft borders, has no bearing on our actions and the IRA won’t be going anywhere.”

“Our fight goes on,” it said.

The IRA was the principal nationalist paramilitary group during the decades of violence between Protestant Unionists and mainly Catholic Republicans until it agreed to a ceasefire in 1994.

(Reporting by Graham Fahy; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Foreign media reporting conditions in China worsen, group says

Red flags flutter on the top of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China September 30, 2018. Picture taken September 30, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

BEIJING (Reuters) – Last year marked a “significant deterioration” in reporting conditions for foreign journalists in China, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said on Tuesday, with no reporter saying in a new survey that conditions had improved last year.

The group said 55 percent of respondents to its 2018 reporting conditions survey said they believed conditions deteriorated last year, the largest proportion since 2011.

“Not a single correspondent said conditions improved,” the group said, unveiling results of a survey of its 204 foreign correspondent members, 109 of whom responded to questions.

“Rapidly expanding surveillance and widespread government interference against reporting in the country’s far northwestern region of Xinjiang drove a significant deterioration in the work environment for foreign journalists in China in 2018.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing that the report was “not worth refuting” and could not represent the views of all foreign journalists.

The government has repeatedly said it is committed to ensuring foreign media can report easily, but that they must follow the rules and regulations.

According to rules issued just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, foreign reporters can interview anyone as long as they have permission.

But the government often interprets the rules to suit its needs, rights groups say, especially when it comes to sensitive subjects. Tibet remains off limits for foreign journalists apart from government-organized visits.

While foreign journalists are occasionally harassed or temporarily detained, domestic media operate under strict government controls. Chinese reporters have been fired or jailed for writing stories that stray too far from the government line.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on dissent since assuming office six years ago and his administration has tightened Communist Party controls on all levels of society, including in Xinjiang.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina; Editing by Neil Fullick)

Record-breaking cold clobbers two-thirds of the U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Cars move along a snow-covered road in Denver, U.S., January 22, 2019 in this video grab obtained from social media video by Reuters January 28, 2019. Denver International Airport/via REUTERS

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Two-thirds of the continental United States will be a frozen ice box Tuesday, as the so-called polar vortex of frigid arctic air spins across the U.S. Midwest, clips the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley and pushes on into New England.

And the sub-zero cold and bitter winds will stick around for a couple of days, possibly bringing dozens of record lows with a life-threatening freeze before dissipating by the weekend, the National Weather Service reported (NWS).

The polar vortex is a mass of freezing air that normally spins around the North Pole, but has slipped southward and swirled into the United States, forecasters said.

The hardest-hit area will be the Midwest, where wind chill could bring temperatures as low as -50 F (-46C) in the Chicago area by Tuesday evening, the NWS reported. One-to-two feet of snow was forecast in Wisconsin, and six inches in Illinois.

Even Alabama and Mississippi could see snow, the service added.

“This arctic air dumps out of Canada and will affect us for days,” said Richard Bann, a forecaster with the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park Maryland.

“We’ll even get some snow this afternoon in the (Washington) D.C. area,” he said. “And because it’s so cold, there won’t be much of a warm-up Wednesday. You’ll have to wait for the weekend, before you see any higher temperatures.”

Blizzard conditions were predicted across parts of the western Ohio Valley and snow was expected through Wednesday from the Great Lakes region into New England.

States of emergency have been declared from Wisconsin and Michigan, down to Alabama and Mississippi.

In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker said wind chill could drive temperatures to -55 degrees Fahrenheit in northern parts of the state on Tuesday evening, a level that can cause frostbite in a matter of minutes.

“This is a potentially historic winter storm that will bring extreme cold to our state and all Illinoisans must prepare,” Pritzker said in a written statement released by his office.

Parts of north and central Georgia are expecting about 2 inches of snow or more in the coming days, along with freezing rain and ice-slicked highways. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp shut down government offices in 35 counties Tuesday, and schools across swaths of the state are also closed.

Air traffic in the region is affected, with more than 1,200 flights canceled and as many delayed, the flight tracking site FlightAware.com reported early Tuesday.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc said it would waive flight change fees for passengers affected by the winter weather in Chicago, Detroit and areas of the Upper Midwest.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Maria Caspani and Gina Cherelus in New York and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Philippine president suggests church bombing was ‘suicide’ attack

President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during a ceremony marking the return of the three Balangiga bells taken by the U.S. military as war booty 117 years ago, at Balangiga, Eastern Samar in central Philippines December 15, 2018. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

By Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday twin explosions that killed 20 people in a church on a southern island at the weekend may have been a suicide attack, citing a briefing given to him by military commanders.

Duterte’s comments run counter to statements by military and police officials on Tuesday, who said the bombs inside and outside of the church in Jolo appeared to have been detonated remotely. Security camera footage of suspects believed to have planted the bombs has been shown to media.

If confirmed, it would be one of the first known cases of a suicide attack in the Philippines and would be consistent with details of a claim of responsibility by Islamic State via its Amaq news agency early on Monday.

“It exploded. That is terrorism and suicide. You cannot carry plastic bags, you will be questioned by the military, police when you have backpack,” Duterte said when asked by reporters to clarify an earlier remark.

He added: “But you could see all around bits and pieces of flesh. We even stepped on it.”

Asked separately about Duterte’s comment, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said it was possible the second blast “may have been a suicide bomber”.

“The first bomb that exploded inside the church was apparently left behind by a certain woman,” he said.

“The second bomb that exploded at the entrance about a minute and a half after, may have been a suicide bomber as indicated by body parts strewn all over,” Lorenzana said.

The bombings came six days after a referendum on autonomy for the mainly Muslim region returned an overwhelming “yes” vote.

More than 100 people were wounded along with the 20 killed in Jolo in what was one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in a region long plagued by instability.

Islamic State said last year it was behind what it called a suicide bombing, when a device was detonated by the driver of a van when he was stopped at an remote checkpoint in Basilan. It killed 11 people.

The driver was believed to be a foreigner, and may have triggered the device prematurely, according to security officials, who say the intended target was likely a more populated area.

Duterte said he was certain the militant Abu Sayyaf group was responsible for the church attack and that it was possible, though not certain, that one of the bombers was Indonesian.

He appeared to have some doubts about the mode of the attack, based on the information from a briefing he said he had received at 3 a.m. on Tuesday.

“If not suicide bomber, what? By cellphone? Yes, that is a possibility. But the eyewitnesses said it was the other way around. There could have been a companion, a support system,” he said.

Police believe an Abu Sayyaf faction called Ajang-Ajang carried out the attack in revenge for the deaths of relatives killed during military operations against the group.

Abu Sayyaf is a domestic militant group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State and engages in kidnap for ransom and piracy.

(Writing by Martin Petty; editing by Darren Schuettler)

Pakistan court upholds acquittal of Christian woman accused of blasphemy

Paramilitary soldiers stand guard outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad, Pakistan January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Saiyna Bashir

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the acquittal of a Christian woman who spent years on death row after being convicted of blasphemy, dismissing a petition filed by Islamists who have called for her execution.

“On merit, this petition is dismissed,” Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa said in court, saying the petitioners, led by a village prayer leader, had failed to point out any mistake in the original judgment

Asia Bibi, a farm worker, was convicted in 2010 of making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors working in the fields with her objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.

Her conviction was overturned in October, prompting protests from religious hardliners calling for her death and demanding that the government prevent her from leaving the country.

Under pressure from days of protests in the capital, Islamabad, and other cities, the government agreed to stop Bibi leaving the country until the Supreme Court heard a review petition.

Bibi, who spent eight years on death row, has been in hiding since the Supreme Court freed her in October. She has always denied committing blasphemy.

In remarks in court, Khosa was severely critical of the petitioners’ attempt to have the judgment reversed and said Bibi had been convicted on the basis of false evidence, pointing to discrepancies in testimony presented in the original case.

“You think we give the death sentence to someone on the basis of false evidence?” Khosa said. “Such lies were told that one statement doesn’t match with another.”

“Please point out any error in our judgment and we’re ready to rectify it,” he said.

“You start declaring someone deserves to be killed just on the basis of false evidence.”

Hours before the Supreme Court announced its decision, Shafeeq Ameeni, acting head of the hardline Tehreek-e Labaik group, which led the protests last year, issued a new warning to the court not to rule in favor of the “blasphemer”.

Ameeni was not immediately available for comment after the ruling.

Bibi’s case attracted headlines around the world last year, highlighting Pakistan’s strict anti-blasphemy laws which campaigners have urged the government to repeal.

Rights group Amnesty International issued a statement calling for Bibi, who is staying at an undisclosed location, to be allowed to “reunite with her family and seek safety in a country of her choice”.

“The authorities must also resist and investigate any attempts to intimidate the Supreme Court,” said Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, Rimmel Mohydin.

“They have a duty to protect against threats of violence to harm religious minorities or the lives of judges or other government officials.”

If allowed to do so, Bibi is expected to seek asylum abroad. In November, Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau said his country was in talks with Pakistan about helping her.

(Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Robert Birsel)