The Jim Bakker Show

U.S. states on Zika’s frontline see big gaps in funding

A Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District worker pours away stagnant water as she searches for mosquitoes in a backyard

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – In Mississippi, a small team of entomologists has begun the first survey of mosquito populations in decades. Experts do not believe the kind of mosquitoes most likely to carry the Zika virus are active in the state, but they cannot know for sure.

By contrast, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, has been active since the late 1920s. With an annual budget of over $15 million, it now deploys four helicopters, two airplanes and 33 inspectors covering 125 square miles.

Because they are funded by local taxpayer dollars, U.S. mosquito control programs reflect deep economic disparities between communities, leaving some at-risk locations badly unprepared for the virus that is spreading through the Americas.

First detected in Brazil last year, Zika has been linked in that country to more than 1,300 cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect defined by unusually small heads.

The outbreak is expected to reach the continental United States in the coming weeks as temperatures rise and mosquito populations multiply. In interviews with Reuters, more than a dozen state and local health officials and disease control experts say they worry they will have neither the money nor the time to plug gaping holes in the nation’s defenses.

They say the poorest communities along the Gulf of Mexico with a history of dengue outbreaks are at the highest risk.

States in the south are “woefully under-invested,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, epidemiologist for the Mississippi State Department of Health. “You have these gaping holes in capacity,” he said, with many poor communities mobilizing their first mosquito control efforts in years.

Among the best-prepared is Harris County, Texas, which includes the city of Houston. It dedicates $4.5 million a year to controlling disease carriers, or vectors, such as mosquitoes, ticks or rodents.

The 50-year-old program is considered one of the best in the country. Traps have been set up in 268 areas in the county to capture and catalog mosquitoes and test them for pesticide resistance. It is adding new traps for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika.

New York City plans to spend $21 million over three years to combat the virus. Aedes aegypti have never been found in the city, so its efforts will target Aedes albopictus, a mosquito believed to be capable of spreading the virus.

At the other end of the spectrum, some communities may only have a “Chuck in the truck” – someone who does spraying runs with a fogger attached to his pickup, said Stan Cope, president of the American Mosquito Control Association. Many municipalities do not even have that much.

The Obama administration has asked Congress for nearly $1.9 billion to fight Zika, including $453 million to assist with emergency response, laboratory capacity and mosquito control. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have presented their own funding proposals, which each fall far short of that sum.

STOPGAP FUNDING

To help plug some of the gaps until Congress acts, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is adding $38 million to an existing infectious diseases grant program to expand lab testing capacity and surveillance for Zika.

For the first time, CDC will also provide an additional $15 million to help local programs most in need, CDC entomologist Janet McAllister told Reuters.

She said states’ proposals are due by the end of May and could cover funding for trucks, equipment and chemicals, as well as hiring contractors.

The CDC has also earmarked $25 million for at-risk states and territories, though the funds would primarily go health departments to help them deal with Zika cases.

But the CDC money is not expected to reach states until August at the earliest, late in the game to do mosquito surveillance.

The agency estimates that Aedes aegypti could be present in as many as 27 U.S. states, though the chief worry will be areas with recent dengue fever cases, McAllister said. Those include South Florida, South Texas, Southern California, areas along the U.S. border with Mexico, Louisiana and Hawaii. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/1QvaMW6)

Frank Welch, medical director for the office of community preparedness for Louisiana, a state with 64 different types of mosquitoes, said his concern was that federal emergency funding might get delayed until the fall.

“That would certainly be too late for immediate Zika preparedness,” he said.

DIFFERENT ANIMAL

Even communities with established, well-funded insect-fighting programs may lack the tools to prevent an outbreak.

“We don’t feel horribly confident that anybody in the world is very good at controlling these mosquitoes,” said Susanne Kluh, Scientific-Technical Services Director for the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.

One reason is that most U.S. programs are designed to deal with nuisance mosquitoes or those carrying West Nile, which are controlled by spraying at night and dropping tablets that kill mosquito larvae into catch basins.

Confronting Aedes aegypti, a daytime biter that lives in and around homes and breeds in tiny containers of water, is more expensive and inherently less efficient.

“It’s a different animal. It requires a very different method to control,” said Michael Doyle, a former CDC entomologist who directs mosquito control in the Florida Keys.

In 2009, Doyle oversaw efforts to fight dengue, also carried by Aedes aegypti. Inspectors went door to door every week, dumping containers of water in back yards that could serve as breeding sites, spraying pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes and using a liquid non-toxic bacterial formulation to kill larvae. After every rainstorm, they continue to spray 80,000 acres with the larvicide.

That has proved expensive at $16 per acre (0.4 hectare) plus helicopter costs. The efforts have only reduced the Aedes aegypti mosquito population by half since 2010, which Doyle said is not enough to prevent disease transmission.

In California, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes arrived as recently as 2013 and have spread to seven counties from south of Fresno to San Diego. “It has really changed the manpower needs,” Kluh said.

Kluh said her district traditionally treats easily accessible public areas, such as catch basins, storm drains and the occasional swimming pool.

“This battle against these mosquitoes happens in every backyard and in tiny sources as small as a bottle cap filled with sprinkler water.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Tomasz Janowski)

CDC says 157 pregnant women in U.S. test positive for Zika

A pair of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes are seen during a mating ritual while the female feeds on a blood meal in a 2003 image

By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot

(Reuters) – Some 157 pregnant women in the United States and another 122 in U.S. territories, primarily Puerto Rico, have tested positive for infection with the Zika virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

The CDC, in a conference call, said that so far fewer than a dozen of the infected pregnant women it has tracked in the United States and Puerto Rico have had miscarriages or babies born with birth defects. This was the first time the agency had disclosed the number of Zika-infected pregnant women in the United States and its territories.

U.S. health officials have determined that the mosquito-borne virus, which can also be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected person, can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by unusually small head size, and can lead to severe brain abnormalities and developmental problems in babies.

The agency told reporters on the call it has dramatically increased its testing capacity for Zika in the United States as it girds for an increase in cases during the summer mosquito season.

Virtually all the Zika cases in the continental United States so far have been in people returning from countries where Zika is prevalent, such as Brazil, or through sexual transmission by travelers.

The latest report comes at a time when U.S. health officials have been clamoring for adequate funding to support mosquito protection and eradication, development of anti-Zika vaccines and better diagnostics, and long-term studies needed to follow children born to infected mothers and to better understand the sexual transmission risk.

The Obama Administration has requested $1.9 billion in emergency Zika funding. The U.S. Senate approved $1.1 billion of that request. The U.S. House of Representatives, however, voted to allocate $622.1 million financed through cuts to existing programs, such as for Ebola, which U.S. health officials have called inadequate and shortsighted.

The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,300 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.

(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish)

U.N. vows to airdrop Syria aid if needed, eyes renewed peace talks

United Nations special envoy on Syria de Mistura speaks during a news conference in Vienna

By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations will take the “last resort” option of air drops of humanitarian aid if access to besieged areas in Syria is not improved by June 1, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday.

Without improved aid access and some restoration of Syria’s tattered cessation of hostilities, the credibility of the next round of peace talks would be in question, he said.

The damage to the peace talks prompted the United States and Russia to convene the International Syria Support Group of major and regional powers on Tuesday, which toughened the truce terms and endorsed a stronger push for humanitarian aid.

“We want to bring aid to everyone. If the food cannot be brought by convoys, the alternative is air drops,” de Mistura told reporters.

Air drops were “the most expensive, the most complicated, the most dangerous option”, he added. “So the air drops are the last resort, but we are getting close to it.”

The U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) has made 35 air drops of food and other supplies to about 100,000 people in the eastern town of Deir al-Zor, besieged by Islamic State, due to a total lack of access, but that is the only location so far.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in a position paper given to donors on Wednesday and obtained by Reuters, voiced deep concerns about air drops and urged states to consider the risks and consequences.

“Air drops in certain contexts, particularly populated, urban environments such as many of those areas under siege in Syria, can pose a real, physical danger to persons to whom they are intended to provide relief,” the ICRC said.

“To avoid causing unnecessary injuries, and to ensure the orderly, non-violent distribution of the assistance, the drop zone must be adequately controlled.”

Air drops should not substitute the need for ground-based aid, it added.

CREDIBILITY OF TALKS

De Mistura said he would not abandon the peace talks, but was waiting for the right date.

“Obviously we are in a clear hurry to start reintroducing the next round of the intra-Syrian talks,” he said.

He did not rule out overriding any Syrian government objections to air drops, but said it would depend on U.N., U.S. and Russian assessments.

De Mistura’s humanitarian advisor Jan Egeland said a clear intention to organise air drops for Syria’s remaining besieged areas would help convince President Bashar al-Assad to allow humanitarian convoys to go in by road.

“We do believe that the option of air drops will actually make it possible for us to go by land in the next weeks,” he said.Egeland said aid had reached 13 of 18 besieged areas after a convoy got into the Harasta suburb of Damascus on Wednesday. But another convoy was turned back from Daraya town last week because what he called “well-fed” soldiers barred it from delivering baby milk powder.

Humanitarian supplies this month have not reached half the 900,000 people the U.N. wanted to supply in besieged and hard-to-reach areas, he said. The target for June is 1.1 million.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Chinese jets intercept U.S. military plane over South China Sea

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative file image of an octagonal tower with a conical feature at its top, located on the northeast side of Subi Reef

By Idrees Ali and Megha Rajagopalan

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – Two Chinese fighter jets carried out an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, drawing a rebuke from Beijing, which demanded that Washington end surveillance near China.

The incident, likely to increase tension in and around the contested waterway, took place in international airspace on Tuesday as the U.S. maritime patrol aircraft carried out “a routine U.S. patrol,” a Pentagon statement said.

The encounter comes a week after China scrambled fighter jets as a U.S. Navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.

Another Chinese intercept took place in 2014 when a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic maneuvers around a U.S. spy plane.

The intercept occurred days before President Barack Obama travels to parts of Asia from May 21-28, including a Group of Seven summit in Japan and his first trip to Vietnam.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.

Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea after creating artificial islands, while Beijing, in turn, has criticized increased U.S. naval patrols and exercises in Asia.

The Pentagon statement said the Department of Defense was addressing the issue through military and diplomatic channels.

“ENDANGERING SECURITY”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the U.S. statement was “not true” and that the aircraft had been engaging in reconnaissance close to China’s island province of Hainan.

“It must be pointed out that U.S. military planes frequently carry out reconnaissance in Chinese coastal waters, seriously endangering Chinese maritime security,” Hong told reporters at a regular press briefing on Thursday.

“We demand that the United States immediately cease this type of close reconnaissance activity to avoid having this sort of incident happening again,” Hong said, adding that the actions of the Chinese aircraft were “completely in keeping with safety and professional standards”.

“They maintained safe behavior and did not engage in any dangerous action,” Hong said.

China’s Defense Ministry said in a fax that it was looking into reports on the incident.

The Pentagon has yet to release the precise location of the encounter.

SIGNAL OF DISPLEASURE?

In 2015, the United States and China announced agreements on a military hotline and rules of behavior to govern air-to-air encounters called the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES).

“This is exactly the type of irresponsible and dangerous intercepts that the air-to-air annex to CUES is supposed to prevent,” said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.

Poling said either some part of China’s airforce “hadn’t gotten the message”, or it was meant as a signal of displeasure with recent U.S. freedom of navigation actions in the South China Sea.

“If the latter, it would be very disappointing to find China sacrificing the CUES annex for political gamesmanship.”

Zhang Baohui, a security expert at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, said he believed the encounter highlighted the limitation of CUES, and shows that Chinese pilots would still fly close to U.S. surveillance planes if needed.

“Frankly, we’re always going to see these kinds of incidents as China will always put the priority on national security over something like CUES whenever it feels its interests are directly threatened,” he said.

While the precise location of the encounter is not yet known, regional military attaches and experts say the southern Chinese coast is a military area of increasing sensitivity for Beijing.

Its submarine bases on Hainan are home to an expanding fleet of nuclear-armed submarines and a big target for on-going Western surveillance operations.

The Guangdong coast is also believed to be home to some of China’s most advanced missiles, including the DF-21D anti-ship weapon.

The Pentagon last month called on China to reaffirm it has no plans to deploy military aircraft in the Spratly Islands after China used a military plane to evacuate sick workers from Fiery Cross Reef, where it has built a 3,000 meter (9,800 ft) runway.

In April 2001, an intercept of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the American plane to make an emergency landing at a base on Hainan.

The 24 U.S. air crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologized for the incident. That encounter soured U.S.-Chinese relations in the early days of President George W. Bush’s first administration.

Last month, the Pentagon said that Russia had intercepted a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the Baltic Sea in an “unsafe and unprofessional” way.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington, Greg Torode in Hong Kong, and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Sandra Maler, Lincoln Feast and Mike Collett-White)

China supporting steel exports, U.S. imposes hefty tariffs

Columns of steel are stacked inside the China Steel production factory in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan

By Ruby Lian and David Lawder

SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China said it would persist with controversial tax rebates to steel exporters to support the sector’s painful restructuring, defying a United States move to impose punitive import duties on Chinese steel products.

A worldwide steel glut has become a major trade irritant, with China under fire from global rivals who say it is dumping cheap exports after a slowdown in demand at home.

In a marked escalation of the spat, the United States on Tuesday said it would impose duties of more than 500 percent on Chinese cold-rolled flat steel, widely used for car body panels, appliances and in construction.

However, China’s Ministry of Finance said it would “continue to implement a tax rebate policy on steel exports” as it tries to finance a costly capacity closure plan.

By far the world’s largest steel producer, China plans to eliminate 100-150 million tonnes of annual production – more than the U.S. produces per year – over the next five years. The cabinet said central government-controlled firms will cut steel and coal production capacity by a tenth in 2016-17.

The finance ministry said China was making special funds available to curb overcapacity in both steel and coal and would reward local authorities for exceeding their targets and meeting them early.

The policy document, though dated May 10, was published just hours after the U.S. tariffs were announced. It is the latest policy announced by different departments including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security to push forward capacity cuts.

ON G7 MENU

The U.S. Commerce Department said the new duties effectively increase more than five-fold the import prices on Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel products, which totaled $272.3 million in 2015. It found that products were being sold in the U.S. below cost and with unfair subsidies.

China’s Commerce Ministry expressed its “strong dissatisfaction” with the U.S. ruling, and said the United States should rectify its mistakes as soon as possible.

“The United States adopted many unfair methods during the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese products, including the refusal to grant Chinese state-owned firms a differentiated tax rate,” it said.

The Group of Seven rich nations plans to address the steel glut when it meets in Japan later this month, in a move seen likely to add to pressure on China.

Analysts said the potential closing off of the U.S. market would not substantially reduce China’s exports, accounting for just 2 percent of its total shipments.

“The duty will not have a big impact on China’s overall steel exports because the volume to the United States is very small… but because of anti-dumping, export destinations are becoming more and more dispersed,” said Kevin Bai, an analyst with CRU in Beijing.

CHINA DENIES FLOODING MARKETS

While a flood of cheap Chinese steel has been blamed for putting some overseas producers out of business, China denies its mills have been dumping their products on foreign markets, stressing that local steelmakers are more efficient and enjoy far lower costs than their international counterparts.

China has also denied there are any inducements in place that encourage steelmakers to sell their products overseas, saying trade flows are determined by the market.

“Global demand is increasing, and Chinese steel products are very competitive, so exports are increasing a little, but the steel sector is mainly used to satisfy domestic demand and there has never been any policy support for large volumes of exports,” China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) chairman Ma Guoqiang said at a conference this week.

However, a vaguely-worded statement from the central bank and several other government bodies last month said China would encourage exports and provide financing for steel and coal firms looking to move overseas.

While the government has offered as much as 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) to help handle worker layoffs, China’s debt-ridden steel sector cannot afford to abandon the financial lifeline provided by exports.

Foreign sales reached a record 112.4 million tonnes last year, up 19 percent, though total value fell 10.5 percent to $62.8 billion as a result of plunging prices.

More than half of large steel mills still made losses last year, according to the CISA.

Steelmakers have called on more proactive support for the export business, with Chen Ying, the general manager of Jiangsu Shagang, telling a conference on Monday that boosting foreign sales would help speed up the country’s restructuring efforts.

“China should support exports – steel product exports and moving projects and plants abroad,” she said.

(Reporting by Ruby Lian and David Lawder, with additional reporting by David Stanway and Michael Martina; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Ian Geoghegan)

Fed officials say 2-3 rate hikes possible this year

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve could still raise interest rates two or three times this year and June remains on the table, two Fed policymakers said on Tuesday.

Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said he still assumes there will be two to three rate hikes this year and that markets are more pessimistic on the U.S. economic outlook than he is.

“I think it certainly could be a meeting at which action could be taken,” Lockhart said in reference to the Fed’s next policy meeting on June 14-15.

San Francisco Fed President John Williams, who was speaking with Lockhart at a joint appearance in Washington, agreed that two to three interest rate hikes this year “seems reasonable” and that there will be a lot more economic data to parse between now and mid-June.

“I think incoming data have actually been quite good and reassuring,” Williams said.

The U.S. central bank has held rates at a target range of 0.25 to 0.50 percent since moving from near zero in December.

A key inflation index showed U.S. consumer prices in April notched their biggest increase in more than three years.

Prices for contracts on Fed funds futures suggest investors see only an 11 percent chance of an interest rate increase in June. Rather, investors expect the first and only hike this year to come in November.

(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir and Jason Lange; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Pessimism pervades Syria talks for peace

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (2R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) attend the ministerial meeting on Syria in Vienna, Austria, May 17, 2016.

By John Irish and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

VIENNA/AMMAN (Reuters) – Major powers sought at talks on Tuesday to reimpose a ceasefire in Syria and ensure aid reaches besieged areas, with Moscow and Washington deeply divided over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad and violence rumbling around the country.

The aim of the conference, which brings together 17 countries backing the two warring sides, is to convince armed factions and opposition leaders to restart negotiations with the government.

Officials and diplomats said the talks, including the United States, Russia, Iran, European and Middle East powers, were unlikely to lead to major decisions that could change the course of the five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A surge in bloodshed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, wrecked a partial “cessation of hostilities” sponsored by Washington and Moscow from February, which had allowed U.N.-brokered indirect talks that included the warring sides to take place in Geneva.

Those talks collapsed last month after the opposition walked out due to a surge in bloodshed. U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura hopes to launch a new round of peace talks between the two sides by the end of May.

“We’ll need to see the guarantors of the ceasefire – Russia and the U.S. – putting something down that will really convince the opposition that this process is worthwhile,” a senior Western diplomat involved in the talks said.

“Sadly, I don’t sense that and fear the U.S. will try to impose a text that is excessively optimistic, but for which its implementation will not be possible.”

The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group and drawn in regional and global powers.

Washington insists Assad must go but the president, backed by Moscow and Tehran, is fighting for territory and refuses to step down.

AID AND LOGISTICS

A Western official said the meeting, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was focusing more on the logistics of expanding and implementing the “cessation of hostilities” and increasing aid deliveries that have been blocked in some areas.

The United Nations said this month that Syria’s government, which has been on the front foot in the war since the military intervention of its ally Russia, was refusing U.N. demands to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of people.

Describing the talks as serious and engaged, another Western diplomat said one of the key issues was stopping the violence in a way which successfully separated al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s wing in Syria, from opposition fighters.

Western and Arab states accuse the Syrian government and Russia of using links between rebels and Nusra as a pretext to launch major offensives against Western and Arab-backed opponents of Assad. Nusra, along with Islamic State, is not party to the ceasefire.

“We must find a way back into the political process … It’s about improving the conditions for the ceasefire and humanitarian aid so as to win the opposition over to negotiate with the regime in Geneva,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said ahead of the meeting.

The main Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee has said it would not resume talks until there was progress on the ground.

HNC chief negotiator Asaad al-Zoubi was doubtful about how much the Vienna talks can achieve: “I don’t think there will be results, and if there are any results they will not be sufficient for the Syrian people,” he told Reuters.

“We are used to the fact that Russian and U.S. foreign ministers are taking the world into an unknown direction,” saying they are working against the people not for them.

The group walked out of the Geneva talks. Asked if the HNC would return to another round of talks, al-Zoubi said: “The HNC has said that if aid does not reach everybody, if the sieges aren’t lifted and if a full truce does not happen, there will be no negotiations.”

De Mistura is trying to meet an Aug. 1 deadline to establish a transitional authority for the country that would lead to elections in 18 months as agreed in a December United Nations Security Council resolution.

FATE OF ASSAD

However, the U.S. administration’s failure to convince Moscow that Assad must go is fuelling European and Arab frustration at being sidelined in efforts to end the country’s five-year civil war, diplomats say.

Some diplomats and analysts question whether the United States has misread Russia’s desire to keep Assad in power.

In the past weeks, several hundred civilians have been killed in air strikes and rebel bombardments in Aleppo province alone, while fighting has taken place in other parts of Syria, including Idlib, Deir al-Zor and around Damascus.

As the talks took place, rebel fighters and officials in a besieged Syrian town on the outskirts of Damascus said they believed government forces were preparing an assault after they turned back an aid convoy last week.

Daraya, situated close to a large air base and just a few kilometers (miles) from Assad’s palace, had seen little violence since the cessation of hostilities agreement came into effect.

But, with the truce unraveling across Syria, government forces began shelling the town on Thursday after refusing entry to the first aid convoy it would have ever received. Residents say they are on the verge of starvation.

Known for its peaceful protests in the early days of the uprising against Assad, Daraya has been besieged and regularly bombed since 2012.

“Large convoys of (government) troops are moving from the airport and from Ashrafiyat Sahnaya (the next town south),” said Abu Samer, spokesman for the Liwa Shuhada al-Islam rebel group.

“We are prepared to repel their assault but our main fear is for the civilians besieged in the town who face severe shortages of food.”

A Syrian military source denied rebel accounts of troop deployments, saying nothing had changed in the area.

The aid convoy blocked last week would have been the first delivered since the siege began. But even then it was not allowed to contain food, only medical and other aid, and residents launched an online campaign ahead of the expected delivery with the slogan: “We cannot eat medicine”.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Shadia Nasralla in Vienna and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff)

U.S. activates Romanian missile defense site, angering Russia

By Robin Emmott

DEVESELU, Romania (Reuters) – The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday that it sees as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but the Kremlin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal.

To the music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior U.S. and NATO officials declared operational the ballistic missile defense site, which is capable of shooting down rockets from countries such as Iran that Washington says could one day reach major European cities.

“As long as Iran continues to develop and deploy ballistic missiles, the United States will work with its allies to defend NATO,” said U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work, standing in front of the shield’s massive gray concrete housing that was adorned with a U.S. flag.

Despite Washington’s plans to continue to develop the capabilities of its system, Work said the shield would not be used against any future Russian missile threat. “There are no plans at all to do that,” he told a news conference.

Before the ceremony, Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, warned that Iran’s ballistic missiles can hit parts of Europe, including Romania.

When complete, the defensive umbrella will stretch from Greenland to the Azores. On Friday, the United States will break ground on a final site in Poland due to be ready by late 2018, completing the defense line first proposed almost a decade ago.

The full shield also includes ships and radars across Europe. It will be handed over to NATO in July, with command and control run from a U.S. air base in Germany.

Russia is incensed at such of show of force by its Cold War rival in formerly communist-ruled eastern Europe. Moscow says the U.S.-led alliance is trying to encircle it close to the strategically important Black Sea, home to a Russian naval fleet and where NATO is also considering increasing patrols.

“It is part of the military and political containment of Russia,” Andrey Kelin, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, said on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported.

“These decisions by NATO can only exacerbate an already difficult situation,” he added, saying the move would hinder efforts to repair ties between Russia and the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said Moscow also doubted NATO’s stated aim of protecting the alliance against Iranian rockets following the historic nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers last year that Russia helped to negotiate.

“The situation with Iran has changed dramatically,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

RETALIATION

The readying of the shield also comes as NATO prepares a new deterrent in Poland and the Baltics, following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In response, Russia is reinforcing its western and southern flanks with three new divisions.

Poland is concerned Russia may retaliate further by announcing the deployment of nuclear weapons to its enclave of Kaliningrad, located between Poland and Lithuania. Russia has stationed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles there, able to cover huge areas and complicate NATO’s ability to move around.

The Kremlin says the shield’s aim is to neutralize Moscow’s nuclear arsenal long enough for the United States to strike Russia in the event of war. Washington and NATO deny that.

“Missile defense … does not undermine or weaken Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the Deveselu base.

However, Douglas Lute, the United States’ envoy to NATO, said NATO would press ahead with NATO’s biggest modernization since the Cold War. “We are deploying at sea, on the ground and in the air across the eastern flanks of the alliance … to deter any aggressor,” Lute said.

At a cost of billions of dollars, the missile defense umbrella relies on radars to detect a ballistic missile launch into space. Sensors then measure the rocket’s trajectory and destroy it in space before it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. The interceptors can be fired from ships or ground sites.

The Romanian shield, which is modeled on the United States’ so-called Aegis ships, was first assembled in New Jersey and then transferred to the Deveselu base in containers.

While U.S. and NATO officials are adamant that the shield is designed to counter threats from the Middle East and not Russia, they remained vague on whether the radars and interceptors could be reconfigured to defend against Russia in a conflict.

The United States says Russia has ballistic missiles, in breach of a treaty that agreed the two powers must not develop and deploy missiles with a range of 500 km (310.69 miles) to 5,500 km. The United States declared Russia in non-compliance of the treaty in July 2014.

The issue remains sensitive because the United States does not want to give the impression it would be able to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles that were carrying nuclear warheads, which is what Russia fears.

(Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs, Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

U.S., China cyber group holds first talks since September pact

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of senior U.S. and China cyber officials on Wednesday held its first meeting since the two countries struck an anti-hacking agreement in September to try to ease years of acrimony over the issue.

The so-called Senior Experts Group on International Norms and Related Issues is expected to gather twice a year, the U.S. State Department said in a statement announcing the meeting.

It provided scant information about the talks, saying officials from the two nations’ foreign, defense and other ministries discussed “international norms of state behavior and other crucial issues for international security in cyberspace.”

China’s foreign ministry, in a brief statement, said the two sides had a “positive, deep and constructive” discussion about issues including international law as it relates to the Internet and trust measures.

China and the United States will hold another meeting at an appropriate time within the next six months, it added.

China withdrew in 2014 from a separate bilateral cyber working group following the U.S. indictment of five members of its military on charges it hacked six U.S. companies. The new group appears be a fresh start to grapple with cyber issues.

Cyber security has long been an irritant in relations between China and the United States, despite robust economic ties worth nearly $600 billion in two-way trade last year.

The September pact, reached during a U.S. visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, included a pledge that neither country would knowingly carry out hacking for commercial advantage.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Peter Cooney)

U.S. jobless claims rise to more than one-year high

Job Seekers at Colorado Hospital Job Fair

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, touching the highest level in more than a year, which could raise concerns about labor market health in the wake of the slowdown in job gains in April.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 294,000 for the week ended May 7, the highest level since late February 2015, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Claims for the prior week were unrevised. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast initial claims slipping to 270,000 in the latest week.

Despite last week’s jump, claims remained below 300,000, a threshold associated with healthy job market conditions, for 62 consecutive weeks, the longest stretch since 1973.

A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing last week’s claims data and no states had been estimated. There was a surge in claims in New York and Michigan in the latest week.

The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, increased 10,250 to 268,250 last week, the highest level in almost three months.

The claims report came on the heels of data last week showing nonfarm payrolls increased only 160,000 in April, the smallest gain in seven months, after advancing by 208,000 in March.

The labor market has been fairly robust despite a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter. The spike in jobless claims and moderation in employment gains likely do not suggest a deterioration given difficulties adjusting the data for seasonal fluctuations.

A report on Tuesday showed job openings hit an eight-month high in March, with the rate re-testing its post-recession high.

Thursday’s claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid rose 37,000 to 2.16 million in the week ended April 30.

The four-week average of the so-called continuing claims fell 3,750 to 2.14 million, the lowest reading since November 2000.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Paul Simao)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show