Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

More than 30,000 displaced in Syria’s Idlib in latest offensive: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: An internally displaced woman sits outside a tent in Idlib province, Syria July 30, 2018. Picture taken July 30, 2018. REUTERS/ Khalil Ashawi/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – More than 30,000 people have been displaced within rebel-held northwest Syria by bombardment by Syrian government and allied forces which began last week, a United Nations official said on Monday.

“As of 9 Sept. 30,542 people have been displaced from northwest Syria, moving to different areas across Idlib,” David Swanson, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said.

Damascus, backed by allies Russia and Iran, has been preparing a major assault to recover Idlib and adjacent areas of northwest Syria from rebels. The area is Syria’s last major stronghold of active opposition to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

About 3 million people live in the opposition-held area, which comprises most of Idlib province and adjacent small parts of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces.

Swanson said that since Friday mortar and rocket attacks had increased, especially in the northern Hama countryside and southern Idlib rural areas.

He said 47 percent of those displaced have moved to camps, 29 percent are staying with families, 14 percent have settled in informal camps and 10 percent are in rented accommodation.

(Writing by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Angus MacSwan)

Ebola fight has new science but faces old hurdles in restive Congo

A doctor cares for a patient inside an isolate cube at The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) treatment center in Beni, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Fiston Mahamba

By Fiston Mahamba

BENI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – When Esperance Nzavaki heard she was cured of Ebola after three weeks of cutting-edge care at a medical center in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, she raised her arms to the sky with joy and praised the Lord.

Her recovery is testament to the effectiveness of a new treatment, which isolates patients in futuristic cube-shaped mobile units with transparent walls and gloved access, so health workers no longer need to don cumbersome protective gear.

“I started to feel sick, with a fever and pain all over my body. I thought it was typhoid. I took medicine but it didn’t work,” Nzavaki told Reuters in Beni, a city of several hundred thousand, where officials are racing to contain the virus.

“Then an ambulance came and brought me to hospital for Ebola treatment. Now I praise God I’m healed.”

The fight against Ebola has advanced more in recent years than in any since it was discovered near the Congo River in 1976. When the worst outbreak killed 11,300 people in West Africa in 2013-2016, there was no vaccine and treatment amounted to little more than keeping patients comfortable and hydrated.

Now there’s an experimental vaccine manufactured by Merck which already this year helped quash an earlier outbreak of this strain of the virus on the other side of the country in under three months. And there are the cube treatment centers, pioneered by the Senegalese medical charity, ALIMA.

“With this system … where there are not people donning masks, the patients feel reassured and perceive that there is life here,” said Claude Mahoudeau, the coordinator of ALIMA’s treatment center in Beni.

In addition, three experimental treatments have been rolled out for the first time, offering patients additional reason to hope that their diagnosis is not a death sentence.

Yet even the smartest science can do little about the marauding rebel groups and widespread fear and mistrust that could yet scupper efforts to contain Congo’s tenth outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever.

The latest outbreak is so far believed to have killed 90 people since July and infected another 40.

The stakes are high, not just for health reasons. Ebola could complicate Congo’s first democratic change of power, the holding of a Dec. 23 election to replace President Joseph Kabila that is already two years late.

FILE PHOTO: Congolese officials and the World Health Organization officials wear protective suits as they participate in a training against the Ebola virus near the town of Beni in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 11, 2018. REUTERS/Samuel Mambo

FILE PHOTO: Congolese officials and the World Health Organization officials wear protective suits as they participate in a training against the Ebola virus near the town of Beni in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 11, 2018. REUTERS/Samuel Mambo

REBELLION, FEAR, MISTRUST

The affected North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been a tinder box of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civil wars in the late 1990s. Some areas near the epicenter require armed escorts to reach because of insecurity. Two South African peacekeepers there were wounded in a rebel ambush last week.

And last week, authorities confirmed the first death from Ebola in the major trading hub of Butembo, a city of almost a million near the border with Uganda, dampening hopes that the virus was being brought under control.

Insecurity aside, the biggest challenges the government faces could be panic and downright denial, as they were during the catastrophic West Africa outbreak.

“Ebola does not exist in Beni,” resident Tresor Malala said, shaking his head. “For a long time, people got sick with fever, diarrhea, vomiting and they healed. Now someone gets a fever, they get sent to the Ebola treatment center and then they die.”

Taxi driver Mosaste Kala was equally skeptical: “The only people dying are the ones going to the … treatment center.”

Tackling these perceptions will be crucial if authorities are to halt the epidemic.

At a news conference on Saturday, Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga admitted that “community resistance is the first challenge to the response to the epidemic”.

In the district of Ndindi, in Beni, Ebola is spreading due to the community’s reluctance to cooperate with health workers, the ministry says. Some locals have hidden sick relatives or refused to be vaccinated.

The problem, says school teacher Alain Mulonda, many of whose pupils were being kept at home by anxious parents, is that locals have little understanding of Ebola.

“If the population of Beni continues to show this distrust,” he said, “this disease will consume the whole town.”

(Additional reporting by Amedee Mwarabu in Kinshasa and Aaron Ross in Dakar; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Tim Cocks, David Evans and Peter Graff)

Crews fight to outflank raging Northern California wildfire

Smoke rises as the large fire spread along Pope Valley in California, U.S., September 8, 2018 in this picture obtained on September 8, 2018 from social media. Craig Philpott/via REUTERS

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters battled on Saturday to outflank a wildfire that has forced the closure of an interstate highway in Northern California as the blaze swept through explosively dry mountain timber in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest for a fourth day.

As of late Saturday, the Delta Fire had scorched more than 40,500 acres (16,839 hectares) in the Cascade range since erupting on Wednesday in a forest canyon along the Sacramento River, about 250 miles (402 km) north of San Francisco, fire officials said.

No serious injuries or deaths have been reported, but the blaze has caused major travel disruptions. On Wednesday, flames raced across Interstate 5, chasing a number of truckers from their vehicles before flames engulfed their abandoned rigs.

A 45-mile (72-km) stretch of the I-5, a key north-south route through the entire state, has remained closed since then, requiring traffic detours of up to 120 miles (193 km).

Although containment of the blaze, a measure of the progress made in carving buffers around the fire’s perimeter to halt its spread, remained at zero, crews have made gains clearing away tinder-dry brush beyond its leading edge.

Firefighters were using natural barriers like roadways and ridges to set up control lines, which will allow them to burn away fuel ahead of the wildfire to slow its growth, Captain Brandon Vaccaro, a spokesman for the Delta fire incident command, said.

Smoke rises as the large fire spread along Pope Valley in California, U.S., September 8, 2018 in this picture obtained on September 8, 2018 from social media. Craig Philpott/via REUTERS

Smoke rises as the large fire spread along Pope Valley in California, U.S., September 8, 2018 in this picture obtained on September 8, 2018 from social media. Craig Philpott/via REUTERS

“The topography here is very steep, with a lot of canyons and valleys that make it very difficult for firefighters to work,” he said.

Much of the effort has also focused on protecting scattered homes and small communities in the sparsely populated fire zone. Two single-family homes have been destroyed, and two other buildings damaged, Vaccaro said.

Approximately 150 people were under mandatory evacuation orders in Shasta and Trinity counties, Vaccaro said. Farther north, an evacuation warning was in effect for the town of Dunsmuir, advising some 1,600 residents to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

Cooler temperatures and higher humidity arrived overnight on Friday, providing a bit of a respite from the scorching weather that has hampered firefighting this week.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park Maryland said temperatures are expected to slowly drop from a high of 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35.6°C) Sunday to a high of 83 degrees Fahrenheit (28.3°C) by Tuesday.

Shasta County communities are still recovering from a devastating blaze this summer that killed eight people and incinerated hundreds of dwellings in and around Redding.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Joseph Ax in New York; Editing by Alexander Smith and Diane Craft)

China outlaws large underground Protestant church in Beijing

FILE PHOTO: The head pastor of the Zion church in Beijing Jin Mingri poses for picures in the lobby of the unofficial Protestant "house" church in Beijing, China, August 28, 2018. Picture taken August 28, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

By Christian Shepherd

BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing city authorities have banned one of the largest unofficial Protestant churches in the city and confiscated “illegal promotional materials”, amid a deepening crackdown on China’s “underground” churches.

The Zion church had for years operated with relative freedoms, hosting hundreds of worshippers every weekend in an expansive specially renovated hall in north Beijing.

But since April, after they rejected requests from authorities to install closed-circuit television cameras in the building, the church has faced growing pressure from the authorities and has been threatened with eviction.

On Sunday, the Beijing Chaoyang district civil affairs bureau said that by organizing events without registering, the church was breaking rules forbidding mass gatherings and were now “legally banned” and its “illegal promotional material” had been confiscated, according to images of the notice sent to Reuters late on Sunday and confirmed by churchgoers.

“I fear that there is no way for us to resolve this issue with the authorities,” Zion’s Pastor Jin Mingri told Reuters.

China’s religious affairs and civil affairs bureaux did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but since President Xi Jinping took office six years ago the government has tightened restrictions on religions seen as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Communist Party.

Churches across China have faced new waves of harassment and pressure to register since a new set of regulations to govern religious affairs in China came into effect in February and heightened punishments for unofficial churches.

In July, more than 30 of Beijing’s hundreds of underground Protestant churches took the rare step of releasing a joint statement complaining of “unceasing interference” and the “assault and obstruction” of regular activities of believers since the new regulations came into effect.

China’s Christian believers are split between those who attend unofficial “house” or “underground” churches and those who attend government-sanctioned places of worship.

Churchgoers were also given a notice from the district religious affairs bureau saying that the “great masses of believer must respect the rules and regulations and attend events in legally registered places of religious activity”.

Zion’s attendees were also given pamphlets of officially sanctioned churches that they might attend instead.

But for many worshippers and pastors, such as Jin, accepting the oversight and ultimate authority of the Communist Party would be a betrayal of their faith.

“On this land, the only one we can trust in is God,” Jin said.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Michael Perry)

Death toll from Japan quake hits 44, power supply, Toyota output disrupted

Police officers and members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) carry a missing person found from an area damaged by a landslide caused by an earthquake in Atsuma town, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 8, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

By Kaori Kaneko and Osamu Tsukimori

TOKYO (Reuters) – The death toll from a powerful earthquake in northern Japan last week rose to 44, with 660 injured, the government said on Monday, as electricity supply remained short and top automaker Toyota suspended work at most of its assembly plants.

The pre-dawn, 6.7-magnitude quake on Thursday temporarily paralyzed the island of Hokkaido, cutting off access by air and train and knocking out power to an island the size of Austria.

A family is seen at a gymnasium of elementary school, acting as an evacuation shelter at an area damaged by an earthquake in Sapporo, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 7, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

A family is seen at a gymnasium of elementary school, acting as an evacuation shelter at an area damaged by an earthquake in Sapporo, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 7, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

About 2,500 people remain in evacuation centers, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, after landslides buried houses and rain at the weekend loosened soil in a further threat to unstable houses.

Yoshihide Suga, the top government spokesman, said a team of about 40,000 Self-Defense Force troops, police, firefighters and others were working on clearing debris and other clean-up operations. There were no more missing residents, he said.

Power supply has been restored to nearly all customers in Hokkaido but trade minister Hiroshige Seko called on the island’s businesses and 5.3 million residents to use about 20 percent less energy to prevent further blackouts.

“It’s very important now for all residents, businesses, the government, and electricity suppliers to work together towards this goal of 20 percent energy-saving,” Seko told a news conference late on Sunday.

The government has no plans for rolling blackouts on Monday and Tuesday despite the continued closure of a fossil fuel-fired power plant that supplies about half the island’s power, he said.

With electricity restored, Toyota Motor Corp said on Monday its parts factory in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, which builds transmissions and other components, was preparing to resume production during the night shift.

However, the fallout has already spread beyond the island, with Toyota suspending production at 16 of its 18 domestic car assembly plants on Monday to assess its parts inventory. The automaker said it would gradually restore production from Tuesday, resuming work fully by Thursday.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Maki Shiraki, Osamu Tsukimori; Writing by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

For families of some 9/11 victims, new DNA tools reopen old wounds

Andrew Schweighardt holds a vial with a DNA sample at the office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York during an event in New York City, New York, U.S., September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

By Gabriella Borter and Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A breakthrough in DNA analysis is helping identify more victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, but the scientific advance is of little consolation for families of those whose remains may have been buried in a Staten Island landfill.

The official death toll in the attacks on lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center is 2,753, including the missing and presumed dead. Only 1,642 of them, or about 60 percent, have been positively identified.

The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office has worked for 17 years to identify the remaining 1,100 victims. Using advances in DNA extraction techniques over the past five years, it has made five more identifications.

The advances have been bittersweet for 9/11 families who unsuccessfully fought to stop the city from making a park out of Staten Island’s enormous Fresh Kills landfill, where 1.8 million tons of Twin Towers debris was dumped and buried.

“We are grateful that the identification continues, but there is more material that could have been part of that had the city not been so cavalier with us,” said Diane Horning, who led a failed court battle by a group called World Trade Center Families for Proper Burial that hoped block the park project.

Horning led the group, although her son Matthew was one of those identified early on. Matthew, 26, a database administrator for an insurance company, was working the 95th floor of the North Tower when the planes hit.

New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals found in 2009 that accusations that the city had mishandled the remains at Fresh Kills amounted to “lack of due care,” which was not sufficient to successfully sue the city.

New York officials said at the time that the city did not intend to be insensitive or offend victims’ families.

To create the park, Fresh Kills Landfill was covered with layers of soil and other materials to prevent the release of toxic gas from decomposing trash into the atmosphere, according to the Freshkills Park Alliance, New York City’s nonprofit partner in developing the park.

Charles Wolf lost his wife Katherine on September 11 and her remains have not been identified.

If they are in the sealed landfill, he considers it “God’s will” and he is “at peace” with it.

“What’s the remedy? Dig everything up and risk exposing all those toxins again to the environment?, Wolf said. “No, that’s not the answer, because all of a sudden now the cure is worse than the disease.”

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH

The ability to identify more victims is the latest chapter in a saga of pain that began on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Destruction of the Twin Towers was part of the coordinated hijackings of four airliners by al-Qaeda militants that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and western Pennsylvania, where one of the planes crashed in a farm field. The attacks triggered an escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East that persists to this day.

A scientific breakthrough in the extraction of genetic material was made this year and announced by the New York City chief medical examiner last week, as the 17th anniversary of the attacks approached.

The new technique places bone fragments in a chamber containing liquid nitrogen to make them more fragile so they can be pulverized into fine powder. The more a bone is pulverized, the more likely it becomes to extract DNA.

It is the latest effort in the largest forensic investigation in U.S. history, involving a medical examiner’s team of 10 scientists working on remains once thought too degraded from jet fuel, heat and other conditions to undergo testing.

“We’re going back to the same remains that we’ve tried five, 10, 15 times,” Mark Desire, who heads the Medical Examiner’s crime lab, said in the briefing last week.

“We are making DNA profiles from remains we had no hopes of identifying in the past,” he added.

Wolf, who was not among those who opposed the Freshkills Park project, was gratified by the renewed effort.

“It warms my heart that possibly there will be remains found for people who still want them,” he said.

“I’ve gone through a lot of trauma with nothing to grieve over,” Wolf said, choking up in a telephone interview. “I remember watching Nancy Reagan touch her husband’s casket. I miss not having that.”

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Hurricane Florence to become major hurricane soon, forecasters say

A photo taken from the International Space Station by astronaut Ricky Arnold shows Hurricane Florence over the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of September 6, 2018. Courtesy @astro_ricky/NASA/Handout via REUTER

By Rich McKay and Letitia Stein

(Reuters) – Hurricane Florence strengthened early on Monday, packing maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (170 kph), and forecasters warned that it is “expected to become a major hurricane very soon” as it churns toward the U.S. East Coast.

The category 2 hurricane was mustering might as it traveled over warm Atlantic waters, about 625 miles southeast of Bermuda at 5.am. ET, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in an advisory.

It is expected to pickup speed, moving between Bermuda and the Bahamas on Tuesday and Wednesday and could make landfall possibly as a category 3 or higher on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, forecasters said.

Landfall could be made between South Carolina and North Carolina on Thursday, according to NHC predictions.

Storm-force winds could begin buffeting the Carolina coast by Wednesday night, forecasters said.

A photo taken from the International Space Station by astronaut Ricky Arnold shows Hurricane Florence over the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of September 6, 2018. Courtesy @astro_ricky/NASA/Handout via REUTERS

A photo taken from the International Space Station by astronaut Ricky Arnold shows Hurricane Florence over the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of September 6, 2018. Courtesy @astro_ricky/NASA/Handout via REUTERS

“Make your plans now,” South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster urged residents during a news conference on Sunday. “Presume that a major hurricane is going to hit right smack dab in the middle of South Carolina.”

McMaster said he had asked President Donald Trump to declare a federal emergency in South Carolina in anticipation of the storm’s arrival.

Residents as far north as Virginia were warned that Florence posed an increasing risk of generating a life-threatening coastal storm surge, as well as flooding from heavy rainfall should the slow-moving storm stall over the southeast.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper also urged his state’s residents to get ready, noting the storm already was generating swelling waves and dangerous currents along the coast.

“Everyone in North Carolina needs to keep a close eye on Florence and take steps now to get ready for impacts later this week,” Cooper said in a statement on Sunday.

The governors of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina have all declared states of emergency.

The storm’s center was on track to pass between Bermuda and the Bahamas on Wednesday, the NHC said.

The NHC was also tracking two other storms farther out in the Atlantic.

Isaac, previously a tropical storm, strengthened into the fifth hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic season on Sunday, the NHC said.

As of early Monday, Isaac was about 1,230 miles east 1,305 miles (1,985 km) east of the Windward Islands with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph), the NHC said.

Hurricane Helene, was spinning in the Atlantic off West Africa’s Cape Verde islands with 85-mph (140-kph) winds on Monday, but did not appear to pose an immediate threat to land.

(This refiled version of the story corrects to show strength of hurricane as category 2 not category 1 in paragraph 2.)

(Reporting by Rich McKay and Letitia Stein; Editing by Alison Williams)

France accuses Russia of spying on military from space

French Defence minister Florence Parly and her Finnish counterpart Jussi Niinisto (not pictured) during a joint news conference in Helsinki, Finland, August 23, 2018. Lehtikuva/Vesa Moilanen/via REUTERS

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) – Russia attempted to intercept transmissions from a Franco-Italian satellite used by both nations’ armies for secure communications, French Defence Minister Florence Parly said on Friday, describing the move as an “act of espionage”.

In a speech outlining France’s space policy for the coming years, Parly said the Russian satellite Louch-Olymp had approached the Athena-Fidus satellite in 2017.

Parly said it came so close “that anyone would have thought it was attempting to intercept our communications.” She added: “Attempting to listen to your neighbors is not only unfriendly, it’s an act of espionage.

The minister’s remarks come a week after President Emmanuel Macron urged the European Union to modernize its post-Cold War ties with Moscow despite tensions with the West, including over allegations of meddling in foreign elections.

Built by Thales Alenia Space, the satellite provides secure communications to the French and Italian armed forces and emergency services.

Parly described the Russian efforts as a “little Star Wars” and said measures were taken immediately to prevent sensitive communications being compromised. The Louch-Olymp had since targeted other satellites, she added.

“We are in danger. Our communications, our military exercises, our daily lives are in danger if we do not react,” Parly said, emphasizing that Paris would complete a strategic space defense plan by the end of the year.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in August announced an ambitious plan to usher in a new “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the U.S. military by 2020.

It would be responsible for a range of space-based U.S. military capabilities, which include everything from satellites enabling the Global Positioning System (GPS) to sensors that help track missile launches.

“I have heard many people mock the announcement of the creation of an American Space Force. I am not one of them… all I see is an extremely powerful sign, a sign of future confrontations,” Parly said.

(Editing by Johanna Decorse; writing by John Irish; editing by Richard Lough)

Canada optimistic NAFTA deal can be struck this month: source

FILE PHOTO: Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland takes part in a news conference at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, U.S., August 31, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo

By David Ljunggren

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Canada is increasingly optimistic it can reach a deal with the United States to salvage the North American Free Trade Agreement, although it may take until the end of September, a source with direct knowledge of the talks said on Friday.

U.S. and Canadian officials resumed their negotiations this week to modernize the 1994 pact, which governs $1.2 trillion a year in trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs.

President Donald Trump has struck a trade deal with Mexico and threatened to push ahead without Canada, a move that would kill NAFTA.

The talks in Washington are focused on Canada’s dairy supply system, which the United States says hurts its exports, Ottawa’s desire to keep NAFTA’s Chapter 19 dispute resolution mechanism and Canadian media laws that favor domestically produced content.

The Canadian source, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the situation, said Canadian negotiators thought it was quite possible the talks would continue until the end of this month.

A U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday that Canada needed to move further on dairy. In its recent trade deal with the European Union, Canada made concessions on dairy imports.

“We’re down to three issues: Chapter 19, the cultural issues and dairy. We’ve created leverage and driven Canada to the table,” the U.S. official said. “Part of our problem is that Canada has been backsliding on its commitments (on dairy).”

Trump has targeted what he sees as “unfair” trade as part of his “America First” agenda to boost U.S. manufacturing and jobs, imposing tariffs on trading partners, including Canada, China, the EU and Mexico. That has prompted retaliation.

Tens of billions of dollars in Chinese imports have been slapped with U.S. tariffs and a new round of duties are due to be triggered soon.

Both Canada and Mexico want Trump to agree to permanently exempt them from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Washington has used those tariffs as leverage in the NAFTA talks.

Canada has used the provisions of NAFTA’s dispute resolution mechanism to defend its lumber exports to the United States. Washington charges that Canadian lumber unfairly undercuts prices on U.S. lumber.

APPROVAL OF CONGRESS

Trump appeared to set a deadline for a deal this week, prompting aides to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland to work well into the evening on Thursday to find ways to move forward.

The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady, a powerful voice in Congress on trade, told reporters differences remained between the two sides over Canada’s dairy quota regime, a trade dispute resolution settlement procedure and “other longstanding issues.”

“My sense is that everyone is at the table with the intention of working these last, always difficult issues out,” Brady told reporters after speaking with Lighthizer on Thursday.

Trump has notified Congress he intends to sign the trade deal reached last week with Mexico by the end of November, and officials said the text would be published by around Oct. 1.

Negotiators have blown through several deadlines since the talks started in August 2017. As the process grinds on, some in Washington insist Trump cannot pull out of NAFTA without the approval of Congress.

(Writing by David Chance; Editing by Paul Simao)

British Airways apologizes after 380,000 customers hit in cyber attack

Commuters pass a British Airways advert on the tube at Canary Wharf station in London, Britain September 7, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Coombs

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) – British Airways was forced to apologize on Friday after the credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers were stolen over a two-week period in the most serious attack on its website and app.

The airline discovered on Wednesday that bookings made between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5 had been infiltrated in a “very sophisticated, malicious criminal” attack, BA Chairman and Chief Executive Alex Cruz said. It immediately contacted customers when the extent of the breach became clear.

Around 380,000 card payments were compromised, the airline said, with hackers obtaining names, street, and email addresses, credit card numbers, expiry dates and security codes – sufficient information to steal from accounts.

The attack came 15 months after the carrier suffered a massive computer system failure at London’s Heathrow airport, which stranded 75,000 customers over a holiday weekend.

Shares in BA’s parent, International Airlines Group, were down 2 percent in afternoon trading on Friday.

Cruz said the carrier was “deeply sorry” for the disruption caused by the attack which was unprecedented in the more than 20 years that BA had operated online.

He said the attackers had not broken the airline’s encryption but did not explain exactly how they had obtained the customer information.

“There were other methods, very sophisticated efforts, by criminals in obtaining the data,” he told BBC radio.

IT security company Avast said that based on the limited information available the attackers had probably targeted a gateway between the airline and a payment processor because no travel details had been stolen.

“Quite often, when it’s just a hack of a database somewhere it is hard to identify when something has been compromised,” Avast’s consumer security expert Pete Turner said.

“This feels much more like a transaction-type attack, where data is moving about within the system.”

COMPENSATION

The British government said authorities including the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency were working to establish what had happened.

The country’s Information Commissioner’s Office said it had been alerted by BA and it was making inquiries. Under new GDPR data regulations, companies must inform regulators of a cyber attack within 72 hours.

BA advised customers to contact their bank or credit card provider and follow their recommended advice. It also took out ads in national newspapers on Friday.

Cruz said anyone who lost out financially would be compensated by the airline.

Data security expert Trevor Reschke said that like any website which sees large volumes of card transactions, BA was a ripe target for hackers.

“It is now a race between British Airways and the criminal underground,” said Reschke, head of threat intelligence at Trusted Knight.

“One will be figuring out which cards have been compromised and alerting victims, whilst the other will be trying to abuse them while they are still fresh.”

NatWest, one of Britain’s biggest card issuers, said it was receiving higher-than-usual call volumes because of the breach.

It said in a recorded message that its security systems would likely stop any fraud as a result of the hack but anyone affected should look out for unusual activity on their accounts.

IAG said the data breach had been resolved and the website was working normally, and that no travel or passport details were stolen.

After the computer system failure in May 2017, BA said it would take steps to ensure such an incident never happened again, but in July it was forced to cancel and delay flights out of the same airport due to problems with a supplier’s IT systems.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle and James Davey in London and Sangameswaran S and Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru; Editing by Keith Weir)