VIENNA, March 4 (Reuters) – Iran has given sweeping assurances to the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it will finally assist a long-stalled investigation into uranium particles found at undeclared sites and even re-install removed monitoring equipment, the watchdog said on Saturday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran issued a joint statement on IAEA chief Rafael Grossi’s return from a trip to Tehran just two days before a quarterly meeting of the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.
The statement went into little detail but the possibility of a marked improvement in relations between the two is likely to stave off a Western push for another resolution ordering Iran to cooperate, diplomats said. Iran has, however, made similar promises before that have yielded little or nothing.
“Iran expressed its readiness to … provide further information and access to address the outstanding safeguards issues,” the joint statement said. A confidential IAEA report to member states seen by Reuters said Grossi “looks forward to … prompt and full implementation of the Joint Statement”.
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Iran is supposed to provide access to information, locations and people, Grossi told a news conference at Vienna airport soon after landing, suggesting a vast improvement after years of Iranian stonewalling.
[1/2] Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi meets with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2023. Iran’s President Website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS.
Iran would also allow the re-installation of extra monitoring equipment that had been put in place under the 2015 nuclear deal, but then removed last year as the deal unravelled in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump.
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi, however, said Tehran had not agreed to give access to people.
“During the two days that Mr. Grossi was in Iran, the issue of access to individuals was never raised,” Kamalvandi told state news agency IRNA, adding there also has been no deal regarding putting new cameras in Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Follow-up talks in Iran between IAEA and Iranian officials aimed at hammering out the details would happen “very, very soon”, Grossi said.
Asked if all that monitoring equipment would be re-installed, Grossi replied “Yes”. When asked where it would be re-installed, however, he said only that it would be at a number of locations.
Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Louise Heavens and David Holmes
LOS ANGELES, Feb 22 (Reuters) – A California man was sentenced on Wednesday to at least 60 years in prison for the 2019 killing of Grammy-winning rapper Nipsey Hussle after a chance encounter in the south Los Angeles neighborhood where the men grew up.
A jury had found Eric Holder Jr, 32, guilty of first-degree murder in July 2022 for fatally shooting Hussle outside a clothing store the rapper owned.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke sentenced Holder to 25 years to life in state prison for murdering Hussle, plus an additional 25 years to life because he used a gun in the slaying.
Holder was ordered to serve an additional 10 years in prison for shooting two bystanders.
[1/3] Eric Ronald Holder sits in the courtroom at Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center ahead of his sentencing for first-degree murder in the 2019 shooting of Grammy-winning rapper Nipsey Hussle in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on September 15, 2022. Apu Gomes/Pool via REUTERS
Prosecutors said Holder shot Hussle at least 10 times after they ran into each other on a Sunday afternoon outside the clothing store. Following a brief conversation, Holder left and returned about 10 minutes later and opened fire.
Public defender Aaron Jansen acknowledged that Holder killed Hussle but argued that he should not be convicted of first-degree murder because he said the attack was not pre-meditated.
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Jansen said Holder acted in “the heat of passion” after Hussle told him there were rumors of him “snitching” to police, which he considered a serious offense. Holder did not testify during the trial.
Hussle, who was 33 when he died, had publicly acknowledged that he joined a gang as a teenager. He later became an activist and entrepreneur as he found success with rap music and collaborated with artists including Snoop Dogg and Drake.
In 2020, Hussle won two posthumous Grammy awards including one for “Racks in the Middle,” released a few weeks before his death and featuring Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy.
Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Jorge Garcia in Los Angeles
Editing by Leslie Adler, Matthew Lewis and David Gregorio
Efforts to nudge China to nuclear talks now harder -analysts
China warhead stocks rise but still far below U.S., Russia
Long term ‘no first use’ policy in question amid build-up
HONG KONG, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Russia’s suspension of its last remaining nuclear weapons treaty with the United States may have dashed any hopes of dragging China to the table to start talking about its own rapidly accelerating nuclear arms programmes.
Regional diplomats and security analysts had held out the prospect of China somehow being convinced to join U.S.-Russian talks on extending the New START arms control treaty ahead of its expiry in 2026 as a way of alleviating growing fears over Beijing’s rapid military modernisation.
China’s nuclear arsenal sits at the core of those concerns as it grows in size and sophistication – an expansion that the United States recently noted is now gathering pace.
The Pentagon’s annual China report released last November noted that Beijing appeared to accelerate its expansion in 2021 and now has more than 400 operational nuclear warheads – a figure still far below U.S. and Russian arsenals both deployed and in reserve.
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By 2035 – when the ruling Communist Party’s leadership wants its military to be fully modernised – China will likely possess a 1,500 nuclear warhead stockpile and an advanced array of missiles, the Pentagon says.
“Compared to traditional Russian-U.S. exchanges, China is a black box – but one getting bigger every year,” an Asian security diplomat said on Wednesday.
“Putin’s suspension may have set us further back in terms of getting China to step up to the transparency table. There is so much we need to know about its policies and intentions.”
In a speech ahead of the first anniversary on Friday of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow was suspending a treaty signed in 2010 that caps at 1,550 the number of strategic nuclear warheads the United States and Russia can each deploy while providing for mutual inspections.
Analysts said the move could imperil the delicate calculus that underpins mutual deterrence between the two countries, long the largest nuclear powers by far, and spark an arms race among other nuclear states.
Tong Zhao, a U.S.-based nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believed Putin’s move limits the prospects of U.S.-China nuclear cooperation.
“This is only going to make China even less interested in pursuing cooperative nuclear security with the United States,” Zhao told Reuters. “Now even this last example of arms control cooperation is being seriously undermined.”
NO FIRST USE
A nuclear power since the early 1960s, China for decades maintained a small number of nuclear warheads and missiles as a deterrent under its unique “no first use” pledge.
That pledge remains official policy but the arsenal that surrounds it has grown rapidly in recent years as part of Beijing’s broader military modernization under President Xi Jinping.
The People’s Liberation Army now has the ability to launch long-range nuclear-armed missiles from submarines, aircraft and an expanding range of silos in China’s interior – a “nuclear triad” that some experts fear could be used, for example, to coerce rivals in a conflict over Taiwan.
The Pentagon also warns of possible conditions over “no first use” as the build-up continues – questions that echo many raised by regional military attaches and security scholars.
“Beijing probably would also consider nuclear use to restore deterrence if a conventional military defeat gravely threatened PRC survival,” the Pentagon report notes, using the initials for China’s official name.
A month earlier, Washington’s Nuclear Posture Review said Beijing is reluctant to engage in strategic nuclear discussions but that both bilateral and multilateral talks are needed.
“The scope and pace of the PRC’s nuclear expansion, as well as its lack of transparency and growing military assertiveness, raise questions regarding its intentions, nuclear strategy and doctrine, and perceptions of strategic stability,” it said.
Some experts believe Beijing has long been wary of being bound by any three-way talks with Russia and the United States given how far it remains behind U.S. capabilities, at least for another decade or more.
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
Academics familiar with once-regular unofficial and semi-official exchanges – so-called Track 2 and Track 1.5 discussions – with Chinese counterparts over nuclear policy say they have dried up over the last five years amid wider political tensions.
Singapore-based strategic adviser Alexander Neill said he believed China might increasingly support Russia’s position rhetorically, while feeling emboldened to further accelerate its own build-up.
That would make it harder for the United States and its allies to engage Beijing on its nuclear doctrine, particularly on “no first use”.
“China has been consistent in supporting arms control between the U.S. and Russia and has long wanted to maintain the image of being a responsible stakeholder – but there are growing questions about the future,” said Neill, an adjunct fellow with Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank.
“The aim of the U.S. and its allies is to get crystal clarity over its ‘no first use’ policy because there’s the Taiwan question,” he said, referring to the democratically governed island that Beijing sees as its own territory.
Carnegie’s Zhao said Putin’s announcement might increase the risk of inciting other nuclear powers to expand their nuclear arsenals and break long-held commitments not to stage fresh tests.
“If that happens, it is a very negative development in terms of international … nuclear order.”
Reporting By Greg Torode in Hong Kong and Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich
BENGALURU, Feb 22 (Reuters) – India does not want the G20 to discuss additional sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine during New Delhi’s one-year presidency of the bloc, six senior Indian officials said on Wednesday, amid debate over how even to describe the conflict.
On the sidelines of a G20 gathering in India, financial leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations will meet on Feb. 23, the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion, to discuss measures against Russia, Japan’s finance minister said on Tuesday.
The officials, who are directly involved in this week’s G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs, said the economic impact of the conflict would be discussed but India did not want to consider additional actions against Russia.
“India is not keen to discuss or back any additional sanctions on Russia during the G20,” said one of the officials. “The existing sanctions on Russia have had a negative impact on the world.”
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Another official said sanctions were not a G20 issue. “G20 is an economic forum for discussing growth issues.”
Spokespeople for the Indian government and the finance and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Wednesday, the first day of meetings to draft the G20 communique, officials struggled to find an acceptable word to describe the Russia-Ukraine conflict, delegates of at least seven countries present in the meetings said.
India tried to form a consensus on the words by calling it a “crisis” or a “challenge” instead of a “war”, the officials said, but the discussions concluded without a decision.
These discussions have been rolled over to Thursday when U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be part of the meetings.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has previously said the war has disproportionately hit poorer countries by raising prices of fuel and food.
India’s neighbours – Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh – have all sought loans from the International Monetary Fund in recent months to tide over economic troubles brought about by the pandemic and the war.
U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Tuesday that Washington and its allies planned in coming days to impose new sanctions and export controls that would target Russia’s purchase of dual-use goods like refrigerators and microwaves to secure semiconductors needed for its military.
The sanctions would also seek to do more to stem the trans-shipment of oil and other restricted goods through bordering countries.
In addition, Adeyemo said officials from a coalition of more than 30 countries would warn companies, financial institutions and individuals still doing business with Russia that they faced sanctions.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has not openly criticised Moscow for the invasion and instead called for dialogue and diplomacy to end the war. India has also sharply raised purchases of oil from Russia, its biggest supplier of defence hardware.
Jaishankar told Reuters partner ANI this week that India’s relationship with Russia had been “extraordinarily steady and it has been steady through all the turbulence in global politics”.
Additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie
MEXICO CITY, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Mexican lawmakers on Wednesday approved a controversial overhaul of the body overseeing the country’s elections, a move critics warn will weaken democracy ahead of a presidential vote next year.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador argues the reorganization will save $150 million a year and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics.
But opposition lawmakers and civil society groups have said they will challenge the changes at the Supreme Court, arguing they are unconstitutional. Protests are planned in multiple cities on Sunday.
The Senate approved the reform, which still needs to be signed into law by Lopez Obrador, 72 to 50.
The changes will cut the budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE), cull staff and close offices.
The INE has played an important role in the shift to multi-party democracy since Mexico left federal one-party rule in 2000. Critics fear some of that progress is being lost, in a pattern of eroding electoral confidence also seen in the United States and Brazil.
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Lopez Obrador has repeatedly attacked the electoral agency, saying voter fraud robbed him of victory in the 2006 presidential election.
The head of the INE, Lorenzo Cordova, has called the changes a “democratic setback” that put at risk “certain, trustworthy and transparent” elections. Proposed “brutal cuts” in personnel would hinder the installation of polling stations and vote counting, Cordova said.
The changes, dubbed “Plan B,” follow a more ambitious constitutional overhaul last year that fell short of the needed two-thirds majority. That bill had sought to convert the INE into a smaller body of elected officials.
Mexico will hold two state elections in June and general elections next year, including votes for president and elected officials in 30 states.
Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Diego Ore; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Sandra Maler and William Mallard
UBE, Japan, Feb 13 (Reuters) – On a crisp February morning, four elderly Korean men bowed their heads towards Japan’s Seto Inland Sea as the surf lapped near their shoes.
They were paying respects to relatives entombed in a coal mine deep beneath their feet 80 years ago – among thousands of Korean bodies scattered across Japan in an enduring symbol of a colonial past that has long blighted ties between the neighbours.
But with renewed diplomatic efforts to improve relations, families of the men drafted to support Japan’s war effort in what is known as the Chosei mine during its 1910-45 occupation of the Korean peninsula, see a last chance for closure.
“It is now or never,” said 75-year-old Yang Hyeon, whose uncle was among 136 Koreans and 47 Japanese killed when the leaky mine beneath the seabed on southern Japan’s coast collapsed and flooded in 1942.
“Now that things are apparently getting better with Japan, I’m asking the two governments to think about us.”
Yang, who attended the low-key ceremony in the town of Ube on Feb. 4, is part of a group of family members and residents urging the two governments to dig up the bodies and send them home.
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The remains of as many as 10,000 Koreans who died in forced labour, digging mines or building dams, are still in Japan, according to South Korean government estimates. Japan says it has identified 2,799 remains of Korean wartime labourers.
Efforts to repatriate them have gone nowhere for more than a decade but since taking office last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has sought to settle historic issues with Japan and focus on shared, present-day threats such as nuclear-armed North Korea and China.
Those overtures, which resulted in the first talks between the country’s leaders in years in September, have given hope to the elderly relatives of the Chosei miners that they may still live to see their loved ones’ remains returned home.
“We’re running out of time,” said Son Bong-soo, a grandson of one of the victims, who at 65 is the youngest family member in the group. “Once we die, no one will care.”
In 2005, Japan announced a push to return the remains of Korean wartime labourers, but the initiative made little progress and petered out several years later amid souring relations.
“We expect to have a positive conversation with Japan over repatriation of the remains as now South Korea and Japan both have a strong will to resolve the forced labour issues,” South Korea’s interior ministry, which handles colonial-era forced labour disputes, said in a statement.
The ministry said it had not discussed specific cases such as the Chosei miners.
Japan’s foreign ministry said it had been in communication with South Korea about wartime labour issues but could not disclose details.
GRIM CONDITIONS
One of the challenges at Chosei is the expense and logistics of excavating bodies from a submerged mine that extends at least 1 km out to sea and nearly 40 metres underground.
[1/10] South Korean relatives of workers killed in a disaster at the Chosei coal mine, bow toward an altar for the victims at a mourning ceremony, in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, February 4, 2023. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Japan’s labour ministry, which said it had previously conducted a study of the incident, told Reuters the cost of an excavation would likely run into millions of U.S. dollars.
But campaigners argue that is a price worth paying to recognise the hardship and injustice that the families endured.
According to a 2007 report on the Chosei mine commissioned by South Korea, workers mainly drafted from poor farming towns in Korea lived in packed dormitories surrounded by high fencing and were regularly beaten by Japanese supervisors.
Living conditions were so desperate that in 1939, more than 200 workers staged a protest, breaking windows and a telephone inside the mine’s management office, the report said referring to a Japanese government statement at the time.
In the months before the mine collapsed, there were constant leaks and pumps were installed to draw water out of the shaft to keep it operational, according to testimonies of surviving miners cited in the report.
‘NEW PATH’
Now 89 and using a hearing aid and walking stick, Jeon Seok-ho vividly remembers the morning his father died in the mine when he was eight years old.
His teacher told him that there had been an accident and to go straight home. As he rushed back along the shore, he spotted columns of water spouting from the sea above the mine. Then he heard the wail of the villagers as they watched the waters rise up to the mine entrance, he recalled.
“It ended just like that. I lost my dad,” Jeon said.
After the war, Jeon returned to Korea but his family struggled to live off the meagre income his mother made selling rice cakes and what he could muster driving cattle for farmers.
Growing up, he said he often thought of his father, trapped in the water so far away, but as the years pass he is losing hope of ever bringing him home.
“The governments are paying lip service to us but actually have done nothing,” he said as he watched a video of the recent ceremony on YouTube at his home in Daegu, South Korea.
His mood lifted when Yoko Inoue, the 72-year-old Japanese head of the campaign group pressing to retrieve the remains, appeared on screen.
“Inoue-san, hang in there!” Jeon shouted, breaking into Japanese.
Back in Ube, Inoue told Reuters that if left untouched, the bodies at Chosei would forever be a symbol of the two countries’ bitter past. But if recovered, they would serve as a show of unity.
“We have a great opportunity,” she said. “There’s momentum now, and the Japanese and Korean governments are trying to reconcile their differences.”
“That also means unearthing historical problems. But given that there are both Japanese and Korean people there, this could forge a new path if both governments could work together.”
Reporting by Sakura Murakami in Ube, Japan and Ju-min Park in Daegu, South Korea; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Robert Birsel
JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 12 (Reuters) – An eerie silence lay over the courtyard of Ramadan al-Suleiman’s nursery in northern Syria on Sunday as he picked his way through smashed cinderblocks, twisted metal and broken plastic swings.
The modest nursery in the town of Jandaris – about 70 km (44 miles) from the city of Aleppo – once hosted 100 toddlers, whose dusty pictures now lay strewn among the debris caused by Monday’s devastating earthquake. Some of those children and teachers would not be coming back, Suleiman said.
“We lost two of the female teachers from the important cadres at the school. We lost seven or eight students that we know of,” he told Reuters.
They were among more than 2,600 people reported so far to have died in the earthquake in opposition-held parts of northern Syria. More than 3,500 were killed across Syria in total and nearly 30,000 in Turkey.
Children’s education in Syria was already hard hit by the war that has raged since 2011. For years, schools would regularly shut because of fighting, mortar fire by rebel groups or air strikes by the Syrian government or Russia.
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The earthquake destroyed more than 115 schools in Syria and damaged hundreds more, according to a United Nations update published Saturday.
More than 100 others were being used as makeshift shelters to host thousands displaced by the earthquake, which brought apartment blocks and even tiny rural homes crashing down on residents’ heads.
Suleiman has been trying to track down some of the nursery children from whose families he has not heard.
“I went around to buildings where I know some of the students live – and 90% of them were destroyed. There are some pupils that I suspect are dead because we cannot reach their families at all,” he said.
Jandaris was particularly devastated, with many concrete buildings pulverised.
Rescuers across Syria, including in the north, have been pulling young children out from under the rubble – some of them miraculously alive even almost a week after the quake, but orphaned.
Others did not make it.
Mohammad Hassan said he still doesn’t know what happened to his seven-year-old daughter Lafeen’s friends and classmates.
“We asked around and discovered that one of her teachers died, may God bless her soul,” Hassan told Reuters as Lafeen played quietly in his lap.
“She is shocked, she asks me to go see if something happened to the kindergarten. I’m telling her nothing happened and I will take you there once it reopens.”
Reporting by Khalil Ashawi; Writing by Maya Gebeily
Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
BERLIN/LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) – A Russian scheme to grant loan payment holidays to troops fighting in Ukraine, and for banks to write off the entire debt if they are killed or maimed, has added to growing pressure for the remaining overseas lenders in Russia to leave.
Almost a year since Moscow launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, a handful of European banks, including Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBIV.VI) and Italy’s UniCredit (CRDI.MI), are still making money in Russia.
The loan relief scheme has not only triggered criticism from Ukraine’s central bank, which said it had appealed to Raiffeisen and other banks to stop doing business in Russia, but also from investors concerned about any reputational impact.
Raiffeisen and UniCredit are both deeply embedded in the Russian financial system and are the only foreign banks on the central bank’s list of 13 “systemically important credit institutions”, underscoring their importance to Russia’s economy, which is grappling with sweeping Western sanctions.
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Their role in supporting the Russian economy at a critical time for President Vladimir Putin has prompted some investors to go public with their misgivings.
“Companies should be very careful,” said Kiran Aziz, of Norwegian pension fund KLP, cautioning of a major risk that the banks could be used to “in other ways finance the war”. KLP funds hold shares in both Raiffeisen and UniCredit.
At the time the payment holiday law was going through parliament in September, Vyacheslav Volodin, the influential speaker of the lower house, made clear its importance to Russia.
“Soldiers and officers ensure the security of our country and we must be sure that they will be taken care of,” he said.
Eric Christian Pederson of Nordea Asset Management, which has more than 300 billion euros ($320 billion) under management, said he too was concerned about Raiffeisen and UniCredit’s Russian presence and had raised this with them.
The requirement that the banks grant payment holidays to soldiers “illustrates the dangers of operating in jurisdictions where companies can … be forced into actions that go directly against their corporate values,” he added.
“We feel that it is right for companies to withdraw from Russia, given its unprovoked attack on Ukraine,” said Pederson. Refinitiv data shows Nordea owns shares in UniCredit.
Banks restructured a total of 167,600 loans for military personnel or their family members, worth more than 800 million euros, between Sept. 21 and the end of last year, Russian central bank data shows.
Raiffeisen said that only 0.2% of its Russian loans are affected by the “government-imposed loan moratorium”, a sum it described as “negligible”. The bank has a total of almost 9 billion euros of loans in Russia, where it has been for more than 25 years, including to companies.
It made a net profit of roughly 3.8 billion euros last year, thanks in large part to a 2 billion euro plus profit from its Russia business.
UniCredit, which entered the Russian market almost 20 years ago when it acquired an Austrian bank, said that the rule was “mandatory under the federal law … for all banks”, declining to say how many of its loans had been forgiven.
The Italian bank added that its business in Russia was focused on companies rather than individuals. Of UniCredit’s more than 20 billion euro total revenue last year, Russia accounted for more than 1 billion euros.
But despite an initial sharp fall, UniCredit’s shares are now significantly higher than before Russia moved its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, while Raiffeisen’s, with a more limited free float, have not recovered.
“Any profiteering on the ongoing war is not acceptable or aligned with our view of responsible investments,” said a spokesperson for Swedbank Robur, one of Scandinavia’s top investors, adding that reputational risk was a worry.
Swedbank Robur said it has stakes in both banks, but did not disclose figures.
Larger institutional investors, including France’s Amundi and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which advocates responsible investing, declined to comment when asked for their views.
WINDOW CLOSING?
Some foreign banks have made relatively quick exits.
France’s Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) severed its Russia ties in May by selling Rosbank (ROSB.MM) to businessman Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Group.
But the continued presence of two of Europe’s biggest banks is attracting the attention of regulators at the European Central Bank (ECB), one person familiar with the matter said.
Andrea Enria, the ECB’s chief supervisor, said the window to quit was “closing a bit” because Russian authorities were taking a more “hostile” approach. But he also voiced support for any bank wanting to reduce their business there or leave.
Raiffeisen and UniCredit confirmed they were in discussions about Russia with the ECB.
UniCredit said it kept the ECB “fully and regularly up to date on our strategy of orderly de-risking our exposure to Russia”.
But with money still to be made, Raiffeisen saw profit from its business in Russia more than triple last year.
Meanwhile, Russian savers lodged more than 20 billion euros with the bank, which offers a place to deposit funds with fewer sanctions risks.
This means there is no great impetus for banks to leave Russia, despite regulatory pressure.
And in Austria, which has close historical and economic ties to eastern Europe and Russia, politicians are largely silent on Raiffeisen’s continuing Russian presence, which in recent months prompted protests outside its headquarters.
Johann Strobl, Raiffeisen’s CEO, has said he is examining options for the Russian business, although points out that any move is complicated, having earlier said that the bank is not “a sausage stand” that could be closed overnight.
For some the question is more about morality than money.
Heinrich Schaller, head of RBI’s third largest shareholder Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberoesterreich and deputy chairman of Raiffeisen, is among those to have aired doubts about staying.
“Of course it is a question of morals,” he said recently. “No doubt about it.”
Whatever shareholders may say, a decree by Putin is likely to make getting out of Russia difficult. It banned investors from so-called unfriendly countries from selling shares in banks, unless the Russian President grants an exemption.
($1 = 0.9376 euros)
Additional reporting by Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich in Vienna and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith
80 years have passed since Soviet victory in Stalingrad
Putin draws parallels with Russia’s campaign in Ukraine
This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.
VOLGOGRAD, Russia, Feb 2 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin evoked the spirit of the Soviet army that defeated Nazi German forces at Stalingrad 80 years ago to declare on Thursday that Russia would defeat a Ukraine supposedly in the grip of a new incarnation of Nazism.
In a fiery speech in Volgograd, known as Stalingrad until 1961, Putin lambasted Germany for helping to arm Ukraine and said, not for the first time, that he was ready to draw on Russia’s entire arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons.
“Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country,” Putin told an audience of army officers and members of local patriotic and youth groups.
“Again and again we have to repel the aggression of the collective West. It’s incredible but it’s a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them.”
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Russian officials have been drawing parallels with the struggle against the Nazis ever since Russian forces entered Ukraine almost a year ago.
Ukraine – which was part of the Soviet Union and itself suffered devastation at the hands of Hitler’s forces – rejects those parallels as spurious pretexts for a war of imperial conquest.
Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle of World War Two, when the Soviet Red Army, at a cost of over 1 million casualties, broke the back of German invasion forces in 1942-3.
Putin evoked what he said was the spirit of the defenders of Stalingrad to explain why he thought Russia would prevail in Ukraine, saying the World War Two battle had become a symbol of “the indestructible nature of our people”.
“Those who draw European countries, including Germany, into a new war with Russia, and … expect to win a victory over Russia on the battlefield, apparently don’t understand that a modern war with Russia will be quite different for them,” he added.
“We don’t send our tanks to their borders but we have the means to respond, and it won’t end with the use of armoured vehicles, everyone must understand that.”
[1/6] Russian service members drive a tank during a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the victory of Red Army over Nazi Germany’s troops in the Battle of Stalingrad during World War Two, in Volgograd, Russia February 2, 2023. REUTERS/Kirill Braga
VICTORY PARADE
As Putin finished speaking, the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Putin had earlier laid flowers at the grave of the Soviet marshal who oversaw the defence of Stalingrad and visited the city’s main memorial complex, where he held a minute’s silence in honour of those who died during the battle.
Thousands of people lined Volgograd’s streets to watch a victory parade as planes flew overhead and modern and World War Two-era tanks and armoured vehicles rolled past.
Some of the modern vehicles had the letter ‘V’ painted on them, a symbol used by Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
Irina Zolotoreva, a 61-year-old who said her relatives had fought at Stalingrad, saw a parallel with Ukraine.
“Our country is fighting for justice, for freedom. We got victory in 1942 and that’s an example for today’s generation. I think we’ll win again now whatever happens.”
The focal point for the commemorations was the Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex, on a hill overlooking the River Volga dominated by a hulking statue called The Motherland Calls – of a woman brandishing a giant sword.
The five-month-long battle reduced the city that bore Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s name to rubble, while claiming an estimated 2 million dead and wounded on both sides.
Despite Stalin’s record of presiding over a famine that killed millions and political repression that killed hundreds of thousands, Russian politicians and school textbooks have in recent years stressed his role as a successful wartime leader who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower.
Reporting by Tatiana Gomozova
Writing by Andrew Osborn
Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Kevin Liffey
Market rout deepens in Indian tycoon Adani’s shares
Adani Enterprises loses $26 bln in value since report
Falls after Adani pulled share sale, investors spooked
Analysts say signals confidence crisis in Indian market
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Adani’s market losses swelled above $100 billion on Thursday, sparking worries about a potential systemic impact a day after the Indian group’s flagship firm abandoned its $2.5 billion stock offering.
Another challenge for Adani on Thursday came when S&P Dow Jones Indices said it would remove Adani Enterprises from widely used sustainability indices, effective Feb. 7, which would make the shares less appealing to sustainability-minded funds.
In addition, India’s National Stock Exchange said it has placed on additional surveillance shares of Adani Enterprises <ADEL.NS>, Adani Ports <APSE.NS> and Ambuja Cements <ABUJ.NS>. read more
However, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani is in talks with lenders to prepay and release pledged shares as he seeks to restore confidence in the financial health of his conglomerate, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. read more
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The shock withdrawal of Adani Enterprises’ share sale marks a dramatic setback for founder Adani, the school dropout-turned-billionaire whose fortunes rose rapidly in recent years but have plunged in just a week after a critical research report by U.S.-based short-seller Hindenburg Research.
Aborting the share sale sent shockwaves across markets, politics and business. Adani stocks plunged, opposition lawmakers called for a wider probe and India’s central bank sprang into action to check on the exposure of banks to the group. Meanwhile, Citigroup’s (C.N) wealth unit stopped making margin loans to clients against Adani Group securities.
The crisis marks an dramatic turn of fortune for Adani, who has in recent years forged partnerships with foreign giants such as France’s TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) and attracted investors such as Abu Dhabi’s International Holding Company as he pursues a global expansion stretching from ports to the power sector.
In a shock move late on Wednesday, Adani called off the share sale as a stocks rout sparked by Hindenburg’s criticisms intensified, despite it being fully subscribed a day earlier.
“Adani may have started a confidence crisis in Indian shares and that could have broader market implications,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior market analyst at Swissquote Bank.
Adani Enterprises shares tumbled 27% on Thursday, closing at their lowest level since March 2022.
Other group companies also lost further ground, with 10% losses at Adani Total Gas (ADAG.NS), Adani Green Energy (ADNA.NS) and Adani Transmission (ADAI.NS), while Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone shed nearly 7%.
Since Hindenburg’s report on Jan. 24, group companies have lost nearly half their combined market value. Adani Enterprises – described as an incubator of Adani’s businesses – has lost $26 billion in market capitalisation.
Adani is also no longer Asia’s richest person, having slid to 16th in the Forbes rankings of the world’s wealthiest people, with his net worth almost halved to $64.6 billion in a week.
The 60-year-old had been third on the list, behind billionaires Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault.
His rival Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) is now Asia’s richest person.
[1/4] Indian billionaire Gautam Adani addresses delegates during the Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata, India April 20, 2022. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri
Reuters Graphics
BROADER CONCERNS
Adani’s plummeting stock and bond prices have raised concerns about the likelihood of a wider impact on India’s financial system.
India’s central bank has asked local banks for details of their exposure to the Adani Group, government and banking sources told Reuters on Thursday.
CLSA estimates that Indian banks were exposed to about 40% of the $24.5 billion of Adani Group debt in the fiscal year to March 2022.
Dollar bonds issued by entities of Adani Group extended losses on Thursday, with notes of Adani Green Energy crashing to a record low. Adani Group entities made scheduled coupon payments on outstanding U.S. dollar-denominated bonds on Thursday, Reuters reported citing sources.
“We see the market is losing confidence on how to gauge where the bottom can be and although there will be short-covering rebounds, we expect more fundamental downside risks given more private banks (are) likely to cut or reduce margin,” said Monica Hsiao, chief investment officer of Hong Kong-based credit fund Triada Capital.
In New Delhi, opposition lawmakers submitted notices in parliament demanding discussion of the short-seller’s report.
The Congress Party called for a Joint Parliamentary Committee be set up or a Supreme Court monitored investigation, while some lawmakers shouted anti-Adani slogans inside parliament, which was adjourned for the day.
ADANI VS HINDENBURG
Adani made acquisitions worth $13.8 billion in 2022, Dealogic data showed, its highest ever and more than double the previous year.
The cancelled fundraising was critical for Adani, which had said it would use $1.33 billion to fund green hydrogen projects, airports facilities and greenfield expressways, and $508 million to repay debt at some units.
Hindenburg’s report alleged an improper use of offshore tax havens and stock manipulation by the Adani Group. It also raised concerns about high debt and the valuations of seven listed Adani companies.
The Adani Group has denied the accusations, saying the allegation of stock manipulation had “no basis” and stemmed from an ignorance of Indian law. It said it has always made the necessary regulatory disclosures.
Adani had managed to secure share sale subscriptions on Tuesday even though the stock’s market price was below the issue’s offer price. Maybank Securities and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority had bid for the anchor portion of the issue, investments which will now be reimbursed by Adani.
Late on Wednesday, the group’s founder said he was withdrawing the sale given the share price fall, adding his board felt going ahead with it “will not be morally correct”.
Reporting by Chris Thomas, Nallur Sethuraman, Tanvi Mehta, Ira Dugal, Aftab Ahmed, Sumeet Chatterjee, Anshuman Daga, Summer Zhen, Ross Kerber and Bansari Mayur Kamdar; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Jason Neely and Alexander Smith
Moody’s warns will find it harder to raise capital
NEW DELHI, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Financial contagion fears spread in India on Friday as the Adani Group’s crisis worsened, with ratings agency Moody’s warning the conglomerate may struggle to raise capital and S&P cutting the outlook on two of its businesses.
Chaotic scenes in both houses of India’s parliament led to their adjournment on Friday as some lawmakers demanded an inquiry after a dramatic meltdown in the stock market values of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s companies.
The crisis was triggered by a Hindenburg Research report last week in which the U.S.-based short-seller accused the Adani Group of stock manipulation and unsustainable debt.
Adani Group, one of India’s top conglomerates, has rejected the criticism and denied wrongdoing in detailed rebuttals, but that has failed to arrest the unabated fall in its shares.
In the latest sign of the crisis widening, India’s ministry of corporate affairs has begun a preliminary review of Adani Group’s financial statements and other regulatory submissions made over the years, two government officials told Reuters.
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Although shares in Adani companies recovered after sharp falls earlier on Friday, the seven listed firms have still lost about half their market value, totalling more than $100 billion since Hindenburg published its report on Jan. 24.
Moody’s warned the share plunge could hit the Adani Group’s ability to raise capital, although fellow credit ratings agency Fitch saw no immediate impact on its ratings.
“These adverse developments are likely to reduce the group’s ability to raise capital to fund committed capex or refinance maturing debt over the next 1-2 years. We recognise that a portion of the capex is deferrable,” Moody’s said.
For Adani, a former school drop-out from Gujarat, the western home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the crisis presents the biggest reputational and business challenge of his life, as his firm struggles to assuage investor concerns.
Amid fears the turmoil could spill over into the broader financial system, some Indian politicians have called for a wider investigation, and sources have told Reuters the central bank has asked lenders for details of exposure to the group.
“Contagion concerns are widening, but still limited to the banking sector,” Charu Chanana, a market strategist with Saxo Markets in Singapore, said on Friday.
The Reserve Bank of India said the country’s banking system remains resilient and stable. State Bank of India said it was not concerned about the exposure to Adani Group, but further financing to its projects would be “evaluated on its own merit”.
Adani Enterprises shares closed 1.4% higher, after earlier slumping 35% to hit their lowest since March 2021. That low took its losses to nearly $33.6 billion since last week, a 70% fall.
Shares fell 5% in Adani Total Gas (ADAG.NS), a joint venture with France’s TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), which said its exposure to Adani companies was limited.
Traffic moves past the logo of the Adani Group installed at a roundabout on the ring road in Ahmedabad, India, Feb. 2, 2023. REUTERS/Amit Dave
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSE.NS) was up 8%, while Adani Transmission (ADAI.NS) and Adani Green Energy (ADNA.NS) were both down 10%.
“There is a risk that investor concerns about the group’s governance and disclosures are larger than we have currently factored into our ratings,” S&P said, as it cut its outlook on Adani Ports and Adani Electricity to negative from stable.
India’s divestment secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey told Reuters that Life Insurance Corp (LIC) shareholders and customers should not be concerned about its exposure to the Adani Group.
State-run LIC (LIFI.NS) has a 4.23% stake in the flagship Adani Enterprises, while its other exposures include a 9.14% stake in Adani Ports.
Reuters Graphics
‘ONE INSTANCE’
Adani, 60, has in recent years forged partnerships with, and attracted investment from, foreign giants as he pursued global expansion in industries from ports to power.
The market and financial crisis means foreign investors, many already underweight on India as they consider its stock market overpriced, are reducing exposure.
“One instance, however much talked about globally it may be … is not going to be indicative of how well Indian financial markets are governed,” Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Network18 when asked about the market weakness.
Reuters Graphics
Hindenburg’s report said key listed Adani companies had “substantial debt” and shares in the seven listed firms had a downside of 85% due to what it called sky-high valuations.
The Adani Group has called the report baseless and said over the past decade, its companies have “consistently de-levered”.
The listed Adani firms now have a combined market value of $107.5 billion, versus $218 billion before the report.
That has forced Adani to cede the crown of Asia’s richest person to Indian rival Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd (RELI.NS), and he has slid to 17th in Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people.
He had ranked third, behind Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault.
Reporting by Aditya Kalra, Chris Thomas, Ankur Banerjee, Bansari Mayur Kamdar, Shivam Patel, Tanvi Mehta and Rae Wee in Singapore; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Mark Potter and Alexander Smith
BUCHAREST, Feb 2 (Reuters) – The woman from Moldova thought it was love. Internet celebrity Andrew Tate had offered her a new life. They’d even discussed marriage. He asked for only one thing: absolute loyalty.
“You must understand that once you are mine, you will be mine forever,” Tate told her on Feb. 4 last year in one of dozens of WhatsApp messages cited by Romanian prosecutors who allege he trafficked and sexually exploited several women.
Tate, an influencer with millions of online followers, urged the Moldovan woman to join him in Romania. “Nothing bad will happen,” he reassured her on Feb. 9. “But you have to be on my side.”
The following month, Romanian prosecutors say, Tate raped the woman twice in the country while seeking to enlist her in a human-trafficking operation focused on making pornography for the online platform OnlyFans, a site that allows people to sell explicit videos of themselves.
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The allegations and messages are included in a previously unpublished court document, dated Dec. 30 and reviewed by Reuters, which paints the most detailed picture yet of the illicit business allegedly run by Tate, a former kickboxing world champion, and his brother Tristan.
They came to light following the arrest of the brothers on Dec. 29 on charges of forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
British-American Andrew Tate, 36, who’s been based mainly in Romania since 2017, and his 34-year-old brother have denied all the allegations against them. Reuters was unable to reach them in police detention for comment.
In response to questions, their attorney Eugen Vidineac said he couldn’t publicly confirm or deny information about the case while the investigation was ongoing. Romania’s anti-organized crime unit also said its prosecutors couldn’t comment on the probe.
Reuters translated the WhatsApp exchanges with the Moldovan women – which appear in Romanian in the court document – back into English, their original language. While accurate, the translation of the Romanian version provided by prosecutors may not be identical to the initial wording.
The brothers used deception and intimidation to bring six women under their control and “transform them into slaves”, prosecutors said in the document. The 61-page file, produced by Bucharest court officials, comprises minutes of a hearing when a judge extended the Tates’ detention plus evidence submitted by the prosecution.
Attorney Vidineac said the brothers’ alleged victims weren’t mistreated, but “lived off the backs of the famous Tates”, according to the court document. “They were joyful and nobody was forcing them to do these things,” he added.
Vidineac acknowledged in the document that Andrew Tate and the Moldovan woman had sex but he said it was consensual and accused her of fabricating the rape claims.
Reuters couldn’t independently corroborate the version of events provided by prosecutors or the defence lawyer, and was unable to reach the six women named in the document for comment. The news organization does not typically identify alleged victims of sexual crimes unless they have chosen to release their names.
Two of the women told Romanian TV station Antena3 on Jan. 11 that they’re not victims and the Tates are innocent. The station identified them only by first names, Beatrice and Iasmina.
“You cannot list me as a victim if I say I am not one,” Beatrice told the station. The four other women, including the Moldovan woman, haven’t publicly commented.
ONLYFANS: WE’VE MONITORED TATE
The allegations facing Tate have put intense focus on a self-described misogynist who has built an online fanbase, particularly among young men, by promoting a lavish, hyper-macho image of driving fast cars and dating beautiful women.
In 2022, he was the world’s eighth-most Googled person, outranked only by figures such as Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Vladimir Putin, according to Google’s analysis.
Prosecutors say the Tates controlled the victims’ OnlyFans’ accounts and earnings amounting to tens of thousands of euros, underlining concerns among some human rights groups about the potential for the exploitation of women on such platforms.
Reuters couldn’t verify the existence of the alleged victims’ OnlyFans accounts.
UK-based OnlyFans has 150 million users who pay “creators” monthly fees of varying amounts for their content, much of it erotic or pornographic, but also in areas such as fitness training and music.
The company, whose 1.5 million creators can earn anything from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands a month, says on its website it’s “the safest digital media platform”. It was founded in 2016 and grew rapidly during COVID-19 lockdowns.
An OnlyFans spokesperson told Reuters that Andrew Tate “has never had” a creator account or received payments. They said OnlyFans had been monitoring him since early 2022 and taken “proactive measures” to stop him posting or monetizing content, without elaborating on the reasons for the scrutiny or the steps taken.
The spokesperson added that creators as a whole underwent extensive identification checks and that all content was reviewed by the platform, which worked closely with law enforcement. Vidineac declined to comment about the measures taken by OnlyFans against Tate.
HOW I GET WOMEN TO LOVE ME
Andrew Tate’s image has been stoked by a series of contentious comments. He’s compared women to dogs and said they bear some responsibility for being raped. His remarks got him banned from Facebook, Instagram and other leading social media platforms last year.
A spokesperson for Meta said Tate was banned in August 2022 from its Facebook and Instagram platforms for violating its policies, which forbid “gender-based hate, any threats of sexual violence, or threats to share non-consensual intimate imagery”.
Tate said on a podcast in 2021 that he had started a webcam business in Britain that had peaked with 75 women working for him earning $600,000 a month – a sum Reuters was unable to independently verify. He didn’t elaborate in the podcast on what the women did.
Up until last month, his website offered a course costing more than $400 that promised to teach “every step to building a girl who is submissive, loyal and in love with you”.
“THAT IS MY SKILL. To extremely efficiently get women in love with me,” he said on the website. The pages about the course, reviewed by Reuters, were removed in January.
In a separate YouTube video aimed at men who want to make money by putting women on OnlyFans, Tate called the platform “the greatest hustle in the world”. The original date of the video, which was uploaded multiple times, is unclear.
In the court document, lawyer Vidineac said Tate’s online persona was a “virtual character” constructed to gain followers and make money, and had “nothing to do with the real man”.
Tate’s Twitter account, reinstated in November, one month after billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, protests his innocence to his 4.8 million followers. “They have arrested me to ‘look’ for evidence … which they will not find because it doesn’t exist,” said a Jan. 15 post.
AMERICAN WOMAN ‘VERY AFRAID’
Tate first met the Moldovan woman virtually on Instagram in January 2022 before they met in person in London the following month, and by March she was in Romania, prosecutors said in the court document, which includes WhatsApp exchanges between Feb. 4 and Apr. 8.
Authorities moved on the brothers on Apr. 11, when police raided one of their properties in Bucharest on suspicion that an American woman was being held there against her will.
According to prosecutors, the American woman – another of the alleged six victims – met Tristan Tate online in November 2021, then in person in Miami the following month. They said he lured her to Romania by expressing “false feelings” for her and promising a serious relationship, paid for her plane ticket and said he could help her earn “100K a month” on OnlyFans.
Tristan Tate picked her up at Bucharest airport in a Rolls-Royce on April 5 2022, and took her back to his house, which had two armed guards, the court document said.
He told her she wasn’t a prisoner but said the guards wouldn’t let her outside without his permission, it added. He said it was dangerous for her to leave “because he had enemies”.
There were cameras all over the house, which Tristan Tate monitored remotely, prosecutors said in the document. He once messaged the American to say he could see where she was and what she was doing, they said.
When she moved to another house with four of Andrew Tate’s “girlfriends” she was allowed outside but only if accompanied by other women, said the prosecutors, adding that she was “very afraid” of the brothers.
In the document, Tate’s lawyer said the American woman had a mobile phone, internet access and the freedom to leave the house as she pleased.
The woman has not spoken publicly about the Tates or the prosecutors’ allegations.
Romanian prosecutors said on Jan. 15 that as part of their probe into the suspects they had seized assets worth almost $4 million, including a fleet of luxury cars from Andrew Tate’s compound on the outskirts of Bucharest.
‘SEXUALLY EXPLOITATIVE CONTENT’
The detention of the Tates, along with two Romanian women accused of working for them, has been extended to Feb. 27. Their appeal against that detention was rejected by a court on Wednesday. A judge can order their detention for up to 180 days while the investigation is ongoing, which means it could stretch into late June.
The suspected accomplices, Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu, controlled the six victims’ OnlyFans and TikTok accounts on behalf of the Tates, skimming off half the revenue and fining women for being late or sniffling on camera, said prosecutors.
The pair threatened to beat the women up if they did not do their job, according to the court document.
Naghel and Radu have denied all the allegations against them. Vidineac, who also represents Naghel, and Radu’s lawyer said they couldn’t comment on the case.
The Tates’ operation put women on TikTok to drive traffic to OnlyFans because of its lucrative subscriptions, prosecutors said. Reuters couldn’t independently verify the existence of the TikTok accounts in question.
TikTok said in a statement that Andrew Tate was banned from its platform, and that it had been taking action against videos and accounts related to him that violated its prohibition against “sexually exploitative content”.
The company declined to comment further, citing Romania’s ongoing investigation.
Reporting by Luiza Ilie, Octav Ganea and Andrew R.C. Marshall. Editing by Jason Szep and Pravin Char
MONTEREY PARK, Calif., Jan 23 (Reuters) – Investigators collected 42 bullet casings from the scene of one of California’s bloodiest mass shootings as they sought clues on Monday to what drove an elderly gunman to open fire in a dance hall he had frequented, killing 11 people, before taking his own life.
Police identified Huu Can Tran, 72, as the lone suspect in a massacre that unfolded Saturday night in the midst of a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in the town of Monterey Park, a hub of the Asian-American community just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Authorities said he drove to another dance hall where a second, would-be attack was thwarted and later shot himself to death in his parked getaway vehicle as police closed in to make an arrest on Sunday, ending an intense manhunt some 12 hours after the rampage.
Ten people were killed and 10 others wounded when Tran opened fire at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, a venue popular with older patrons of Asian descent, then drove off. One of the victims hospitalized in critical condition died of his wounds on Monday, Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese told reporters.
All of the dead, six women and five men, were in their 50s, 60s and 70s, the coroner’s office said.
Even as Los Angeles-area police worked through a second full day of their investigation, seven people were reported slain in a separate, mass shooting in the northern California coastal town of Half Moon May on Monday. read more
In another incident, one person died and seven were injured in Oakland, near San Francisco, in a shooting between several individuals, Oakland Police Department reported.
At a news briefing on Monday, Hilda Solis, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, called Saturday’s Monterey Park gun violence the deadliest mass shooting on record in Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States and home to some 10 million residents.
About 20 minutes after the attack, Tran barged into a second dance club, the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in the neighboring community of Alhambra, where an employee wrestled away the intruder’s semi-automatic assault-style pistol before any shots could be fired, officials said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna credited Brandon Tsay, the operator of the family-owned club, as a “hero” for single-handedly disarming the gunman and preventing further bloodshed.
“That moment, it was primal instinct,” Tsay recounted in a New York Times interview, saying that the gunman fled the scene after a 90-second struggle. “Something happened there. I don’t know what came over me.”
Tran was not seen again until Sunday morning, when he had shot himself behind the wheel of his van, found parked in the city of Torrance, south of Los Angeles, as police surrounded his vehicle.
Luna said investigators, assisted by the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), had recovered 42 spent shell casings and a large-capacity ammunition magazine from the Star studio.
[1/17] People mourn outside the entrance of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio after a mass shooting during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Monterey Park, California, U.S. January 23, 2023. REUTERS/David Swanson
GUNS AND AMMO SEIZED
He said the search of the suspect’s mobile home in a gated senior-living community in the town of Hemet, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, turned up a rifle, various electronic devices and items “that lead us to believe the suspect was manufacturing homemade” weapons silencers.
Police also seized hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the dwelling, and a handgun was recovered from the white cargo van where the suspect took his own life, Luna said.
Authorities on Monday said a motive for the shooting remained a mystery.
Wiese said authorities were aware of unconfirmed reports that the violence may have been precipitated by jealousy or relationship issues, adding, “it’s part of what our investigators are diligently looking into.”
The sheriff said there was no immediate evidence that the gunman was related to any of his victims. Luna told reporters Tran had a “limited” past criminal history, including a 1990 arrest for unlawful possession of a firearm.
Hemet police said in a statement on Monday that Tran had come to the department twice in early January alleging “past fraud, theft and poisoning allegations involving his family” dating back 10 to 20 years, and had promised to return with documentation of his claims but never did.
Tran had an active trucking license and had owned a company called Tran’s Trucking Inc with a post office box address in Monterey Park, according to online records.
He had lived in the Los Angeles area since at least the 1990s and moved to the mobile home in Hemet in 2020, address records showed. A neighbor in his gated community described him as “meek” in an interview Monday.
But Adam Hood, who rented a home from Tran in the Los Angeles area, told Reuters he knew his landlord to be an aggressive, suspicious person with few friends.
But Hood said Tran, with whom he often conversed in Mandarin, enjoyed ballroom dancing, and was a longtime patron of the Star Ballroom, though he complained that others there were talking behind his back.
“He was a good dancer in my opinion,” Hood said. “But he was distrustful of the people at the studio, angry and distrustful. I think he just had enough.”
The coroner’s office on Monday confirmed the names of four victims, Valentino Alvero, 68 and three women – My Nhan, 65, Lilan Li, 63, and Xiujuan Yu, 57.
Reporting by Tim Reid in Monterey Park; Writing by Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Rich McKay, Brendan O’Brien, Brad Brooks, Jonathan Allen, Joseph Ax, Dan Whitcomb, Gabriella Borter and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Stephen Coates, Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio
U.S. providing Abrams tanks, Germany to send Leopard tanks
Biden: Tanks pose ‘no offensive threat’ to Russia
Russian-backed leader: Wagner force advancing on Bakhmut
WASHINGTON/BERLIN/KYIV, Jan 26 (Reuters) – The United States and Germany have announced plans to arm Ukraine with dozens of battle tanks in its fight against Russia, which denounced the decisions as an “extremely dangerous” step.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised the commitments and urged allies to provide large quantities of tanks quickly.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” he said in a nightly video address on Wednesday. “We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks to give its troops the firepower to break Russian defensive lines and reclaim occupied territory in the south and east. Ukraine and Russia have been relying primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
The promise of tanks comes as both Ukraine and Russia are expected to launch new offensives in the war and as fighting has intensified in Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east.
Ukrainian forces destroyed 24 drones, including 15 over Kyiv, that Russia launched in overnight attacks, the military said on Thursday, adding there was major danger of more Russian air raids. An alert had been declared over most of the country.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to supply 31 M1 Abrams tanks hours after Berlin said it would provide Leopard 2 tanks – the workhorse of NATO armies across Europe.
Maintaining Kyiv’s drumbeat of requests for more aid, Zelenskiy said he spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and called for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine’s allies have already provided billions in military support including sophisticated U.S. missile systems.
The United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams but had to change tack to persuade Germany to send to Ukraine its more easily operated Leopards.
Biden said the tanks pose “no offensive threat” to Russia and that they were needed to help the Ukrainians “improve their ability to manoeuvre in open terrain”.
Germany will send an initial company of 14 tanks from its stocks and approve shipments by allied European states.
The Abrams can be tricky, but the Leopard was designed as a system that any NATO member could service and crews and repair specialists could be trained together on a single model, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
“If we have been brought into this club by providing us with these vehicles, I would say our prospects look good.”
‘DANGEROUS DECISION’
[1/17] Spanish army tank Leopard 2 of NATO enhanced Forward Presence battle group fires during the final phase of the Silver Arrow 2022 military drill on Adazi military training grounds, Latvia September 29, 2022. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
Russia reacted with fury to Germany’s decision to approve the delivery of the Leopards.
“This extremely dangerous decision takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation,” said Sergei Nechayev, Russia’s ambassador to Germany.
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, Russia has shifted its rhetoric on the war from an operation to “denazify” and “demilitarise” its neighbour to casting it as a face-off between it and the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
Senior U.S. officials said it would take months for the Abrams to be delivered and described the decision to supply them as providing for Ukraine’s long-term defence.
Germany’s tanks would probably be ready in three or four months, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said.
Pledges to Ukraine from other countries that field Leopards have multiplied with announcements from Poland, Finland and Norway. Spain and the Netherlands said they were considering it.
Britain has offered 14 of its comparable Challenger tanks and France is considering sending its Leclercs.
BAKHMUT FIGHTING
The Kyiv government acknowledged on Wednesday its forces had withdrawn from Soledar, a small salt-mining town close to Bakhmut in the east, that Russia said it captured more than a week ago, its biggest gain for more than six months.
The area around Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of 70,000, has seen some of the most brutal fighting of the war.
Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces were attacking in the direction of Bakhmut “with the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region and regardless of its own casualties”.
The Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said earlier that units of Russia’s Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighbourhoods recently held by Ukraine.
Analyst Kevlyuk said losing Bakhmut would not change much in terms of the tactical scheme of things but that he was more concerned by Russian efforts to regroup and concentrate resources in the Luhansk region.
Donetsk and Luhansk make up the Donbas region. Russian forces control nearly all of Luhansk, while Russians and their proxies say they control about half of Donetsk.
Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.
The 11-month war has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to rubble.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; writing by Cynthia Osterman and Himani Sarkar; editing by Grant McCool, Robert Birsel
Alireza Akbari was a former Iranian deputy defence minister
Arrested in 2019, he was accused of spying for Britain
UK’s Sunak calls it ‘a callous and cowardly act’
Britain had said Iran must not follow through with sentence
DUBAI/LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, its judiciary reported on Saturday, defying calls from London for his release after he was handed the death sentence on charges of spying for Britain.
Britain, which had declared the case against Alireza Akbari as politically motivated, condemned the execution and said it would not stand unchallenged.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people”.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported the execution early on Saturday, without saying when it had taken place. Late on Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had said Iran must not follow through with the sentence – a call echoed by Washington.
“Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and extensive action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government’s intelligence service … was executed,” Mizan said.
The report accused Akbari, arrested in 2019, of receiving payments of 1,805,000 euros, 265,000 pounds, and $50,000 for spying.
In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.
Sunak said on Twitter he was “appalled by the execution”. Cleverly said in a statement it would “not stand unchallenged”. “We will be summoning the Iranian Charge d’Affaires to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions.”
British statements on the case have not addressed the Iranian charge that Akbari spied for Britain.
Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran which authorities blamed at the time on Israel.
In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh.
Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.
Reuters could not establish the authenticity of the state media video and audio, or when or where they were recorded.
Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was defence minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy.
‘3,500 HOURS OF TORTURE’
Reflecting Iran’s worsening ties with the West, London-Tehran relations have deteriorated in recent months as efforts have stalled to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, to which Britain is a party.
Britain has also been critical of the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on anti-government protests, sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in September.
A British foreign office minister said on Thursday that Britain was actively considering proscribing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation but has not reached a final decision.
Iran has issued dozens of death sentences as part of the crackdown on the unrest, executing at least four people.
In the audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian, Akbari said he had made false confessions as a result of torture.
“With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will. They drove me to the brink of madness… and forced me to make false confessions by force of arms and death threats,” he said.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom and Michael Holden in London; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by William Mallard and Angus MacSwan
Wagner Group spearheaded assault on Ukraine’s Soledar
Mercenary chief, in PR push, claims credit for Wagner
Success hailed by some, played down by others
LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) – In the twilight of the Soviet Union, Yevgeny Prigozhin was languishing in prison for theft. Now as the founder of Russia’s most powerful mercenary group, he is vying for Vladimir Putin’s favour by claiming a rare battlefield win in Ukraine.
His aim is to leverage the success that Wagner Group, his mercenary outfit, had this week in pushing Ukrainian forces out of the salt mining town of Soledar, a move that revives Russian plans to seize more of eastern Ukraine after multiple defeats.
Russia claimed victory on Friday but Ukraine said its troops were still fighting in the town. Reuters could not immediately verify the situation.
Prigozhin, 61, who is sanctioned in the West and casts himself as a ruthless patriot, had posed in combat gear with his men in a salt mine beneath Soledar and said they were fighting alone, an assertion initially contradicted by defence officials.
The Kremlin on Thursday spoke of the “absolutely heroic selfless actions” of those fighting in Soledar. The defence ministry on Friday attributed victory to its airborne units, missile forces and “artillery of a grouping of Russian forces”.
Prigozhin said Russian officials were not giving his forces due credit.
“They constantly try to steal victory from the Wagner PMC (private military company) and talk about the presence of other unknown people just to belittle Wagner’s merits,” he complained.
The defence ministry responded hours later with a new statement “to clarify” the situation which acknowledged that Wagner fighters, whose actions it hailed as “courageous and selfless,” had been the ones to storm the town.
Some commentators have said Prigozhin could one day be made defence minister, but it is not fully clear how much influence the businessman from St Petersburg has gained with Putin, who tends to balance factions with a strategy of divide and rule.
‘A NEW HERO’
Prominent Putin supporters, some with access to the Russian leader, have contrasted Prigozhin’s progress with what they say has been a less impressive performance by the regular military.
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, has hailed the shaven-headed mercenary chief as “a new hero.”
“Prigozhin has flaws too. But I won’t tell you about them. Because Prigozhin and Wagner are now Russia’s national treasure. They are becoming a symbol of victory,” Markov wrote on his blog, saying they should be given more resources by the state.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state-controlled RT channel and close to the Kremlin, thanked Prigozhin for Soledar.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speech writer, suggested on his blog that Prigozhin was manoeuvring in case Putin removed Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, 67, his long-standing ally.
Prigozhin has played down the idea he is seeking official elevation in the past, while not emphatically ruling it out. His press service, and the Kremlin, did not immediately reply to requests for fresh comment.
Putin has said Wagner does not represent the state and is not breaking Russian law and has the right to work and promote its business interests anywhere in the world.
One of the military bloggers who help shape Russians’ view of the conflict likened Prigozhin to a Roman centurion licensed to operate above and outside the law to achieve Putin’s goals.
“A couple more successful Wagner operations and online votes proposing Prigozhin for Minister of Defence will cease to be fantasy,” said Zhivov Z.
Yet Igor Girkin, a Russian nationalist and former Federal Security Service officer who helped launch the original Donbas war in 2014 and is under U.S. sanctions, has said Prigozhin is careless with the lives of his men. He has also said capturing Soledar and nearby Bakhmut would not be militarily significant.
Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s Chef” by Western media because he once ran a floating restaurant in St Petersburg where Putin ate, has plenty to gain or lose.
He has his own future to consider at a time of tumult as well as the commercial interests of Wagner, which Russian officials say has military and mining contracts in Africa and is active in Syria. He also has a vast catering company serving state entities, as well as troll farms and media outlets.
“In essence, he is a private businessman who is highly dependent on how his relations with the authorities are structured. This is a very vulnerable position,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R.Politik analysis firm.
The attendance on a Wagner training course this month of the governor of Russia’s Kursk region bordering Ukraine looked like another way for Prigozhin to enhance his connections, she said.
‘UNSPECIFIED SAFEGUARDS’
Russia has allowed Prigozhin to recruit tens of thousands of convicts from its prisons for Wagner, which U.S. officials say is a 50,000-strong force, and let him equip them with tanks, aircraft and missile defence systems.
It has also stood by while he flung sometimes profane criticism at the top brass, although some Western military analysts suggested the appointment of the most senior general to lead the war in Ukraine was designed to balance his influence.
Before Russia’s invasion, something Moscow calls “a special military operation”, Prigozhin had denied his Wagner connection. In September, he said he had founded the mercenary group in 2014.
Despite its sometimes publicly strained ties with the Russian defence ministry, some Western military analysts suspect Wagner is closely affiliated with it.
Leonid Nevzlin, an Israel-based former executive at oil major Yukos which he says was illegally appropriated by the Russian state, something it denies, said this week there was a risk Wagner could throw off Kremlin control.
One source close to the Russian authorities, who declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the Kremlin viewed Prigozhin as a useful operator but maintained unspecified safeguards over leaders of armed groups.
“There is a ceiling (of growth) and mechanisms in place,” said the source, who declined to provide more details.
Reporting by Andrew Osborn; editing by Philippa Fletcher
ATLANTA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – At least nine people died in tornadoes that destroyed homes and knocked out power to tens of thousands in the U.S. Southeast, local officials said on Friday, and the death toll in hard-hit central Alabama was expected to rise.
The storms on Thursday stretched from Mississippi to Georgia. At least five tornadoes touched down in central Alabama, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Jessica Laws. One of those twisters potentially tracked about 150 miles (241 km) from southwest Selma, Alabama, to the Georgia-Alabama state line, she said.
Rescue teams were searching for missing people in Alabama’s Autauga County, where seven deaths have been reported, emergency management director Ernie Baggett said on MSNBC. He credited schools for saving more lives by not releasing students early.
County coroner Buster Barber told Reuters the number of casualties would rise.
“We are finding more bodies as we speak,” he said in a phone interview. “We’ve got search teams out in the area.”
Storms damaged as many as 50 properties in Autauga County, according to the local sheriff’s office.
In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp confirmed two people had died in Thursday’s storms. A 5-year-old child was killed after a tree fell on a car, leaving an adult passenger in critical condition as they were driving home, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said.
A state employee also was killed while responding to the storm, Kemp said.
Images from the severe storms showed widespread damage in Selma, a pivotal site of the U.S. civil rights movement. A tornado tore off rooftops and hurled debris. Multiple businesses and homes were destroyed, and trees were ripped from their roots.
[1/5] Whole rooms are seen without walls on the second floor of a home the day after a tornado struck Dallas County near Selma, Alabama, U.S. January 13, 2023. Mickey Welsh/USA Today Network via REUTERS
Residents were visibly shaken by the experience, and some counted themselves lucky to be alive.
One woman began to cry as she described riding out the storm in her bathtub. She said the winds picked up her trailer, destroying everything inside.
Ray Hogg said he found shelter inside a country club.
“You could hear the roar, glass going everywhere,” he said. “You could hear the roof literally being torn off right over our heads.”
Officials confirmed four tornadoes touched down in Georgia, largely southeast of Atlanta but causing damage across the state, with winds peeling off roofs, knocking down houses and uprooting trees.
Just southeast of Atlanta, a freight train had three of its cars blown off the tracks, blocking traffic. No injuries from that incident were reported, officials said.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey on Thursday declared a state of emergency for the six counties of Autauga, Chambers, Coosa, Dallas, Elmore and Tallapoosa.
Nearly 20,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us. The storm also led to power outages in neighboring states of Mississippi and Georgia.
Tornado sirens in Monroe County in northeast Mississippi, where a twister made landfall, failed to activate as the storm moved through the area, local news reported.
Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta
Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Matthew Lewis and Josie Kao
Jan 13 (Reuters) – The fast-spreading Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is estimated to account for 43% of the COVID-19 cases in the United States for the week ended Jan. 14, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Friday.
The subvariant accounted for about 30% of cases in the first week of January, higher than the 27.6% the CDC estimated last week.
XBB.1.5, which is related to Omicron, is currently the most transmissible variant. It is an offshoot of XBB, first detected in October, which is itself made from a combination of two other Omicron subvariants.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier this week XBB.1.5 may spur more COVID-19 cases based on genetic characteristics and early growth rate estimates.
While it is unclear if XBB.1.5 can cause its own wave of global infections, experts say the current booster shots continue to protect against severe symptoms, hospitalization and death.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted last week the subvariant has been on the rise globally and has been identified in over 25 countries.
The rise in the new variant correlated with an uptick in COVID-19 cases in United States over the last six weeks.
Increased prevalence of XBB.1.5 cases has eclipsed the previously dominant Omicron subvariant BQ.1.1 and BQ.1, which were offshoots of BA.5. The two strains together accounted for 44.7% of cases in the United States in the week ended Jan. 14, compared with 53.2% a week ago, the CDC said.
Reporting by Khushi Mandowara and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Shounak Dasgupta
LOS ANGELES, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Singer Lisa Marie Presley will be laid to rest at Graceland, the Memphis mansion she inherited from her father Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a representative for her daughter said on Friday.
Presley died on Thursday at the age of 54 after being rushed to a Los Angeles area hospital after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest at her home.
“Lisa Marie’s final resting place will be at Graceland, next to her beloved son Ben,” said a representative for her 33-year-old daughter Riley Keough, an actress. She is also survived by twin 14-year-old daughters Finley and Harper.
Two days earlier, Lisa Marie Presley had appeared with her mother Priscilla Presley at the Golden Globe Awards, where actor Austin Butler won the best actor award for portraying her father in the film “Elvis” and paid tribute to both women in his acceptance speech.
“My heart is completely shattered for Riley, Finley, Harper and Priscilla at the tragic and unexpected loss of Lisa Marie,” Butler said in a statement on Friday.
“I am eternally grateful for the time I was lucky enough to be near her bright light and will forever cherish the quiet moments we shared. Her warmth, her love and her authenticity will always be remembered.”
Benjamin Keough died in 2020 at age 27, a death ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner.
Lisa Marie Presley remembered her son in an essay this year for People magazine that she posted on Instagram, describing herself as “destroyed” by his death.
As the only daughter of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie became the owner of her father’s Graceland mansion, a popular tourist attraction in the city. She was nine when Elvis died there of heart failure in August 1977, aged 42.
Elvis Presley and other members of his family are buried at Graceland’s Meditation Garden.
Tributes to Lisa Marie Presley continued to pour in on Friday.
“Over the last year, the entire Elvis movie family and I have felt the privilege of Lisa Marie’s kind embrace,” Baz Luhrmann, the director of “Elvis”, said on Instagram.
“Her sudden, shocking loss has devastated people all around the world.”
In the celebrity spotlight since her birth, Lisa Marie began her own music career with a 2003 debut album “To Whom It May Concern.”
That was followed by 2005’s “Now What,” and both hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart. A third album, “Storm and Grace,” was released in 2012.Singer Billy Idol posted a picture of them together on Twitter and said she had been “very loving 2 me”, adding, “In Memphis in the 90’s she gave me a viewing of the private sections of Graceland which was very special.”
Lisa Marie Presley is survived by her mother, daughter Riley Keough, and 14-year-old twin daughters Harper and Finley Lockwood.
Additional reporting by Lisa Richwine and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by David Gregorio and Clarence Fernandez
WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will allow retail pharmacies to offer abortion pills in the United States for the first time, the agency said on Tuesday, even as more states seek to ban medication abortion.
The regulatory change will potentially expand abortion access as President Joe Biden’s administration wrestles with how best to protect abortion rights after they were sharply curtailed by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and the state bans that followed.
Pharmacies can start applying for certification to distribute abortion pill mifepristone with one of the two companies that make it, and if successful they will be able to dispense it directly to patients upon receiving a prescription from a certified prescriber.
The FDA had first said it would be making those changes in December 2021 when it announced it would relax some risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, on the pill, that had been in place since the agency approved it in 2000 and were lifted temporarily in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The changes included permanently removing restrictions on mail order shipping of the pills and their prescription through telehealth.
The agency finalized the changes on Tuesday after reviewing supplemental applications from Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, the two companies that make the drug in the United States.
“Under the Mifepristone REMS Program, as modified, Mifeprex and its approved generic can be dispensed by certified pharmacies or by or under the supervision of a certified prescriber,” the agency said on its website on Tuesday.
Mifeprex is the brand name version of mifepristone which, in combination with a second drug called misoprostol that has various uses including miscarriage management, induces an abortion up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy in a process known as medication abortion.
Abortion rights activists say the pill has a long track record of being safe and effective, with no risk of overdose or addiction. In several countries, including India and Mexico, women can buy them without a prescription to induce abortion.
“Today’s news is a step in the right direction for health equity,” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.
“Being able to access your prescribed medication abortion through the mail or to pick it up in person from a pharmacy like any other prescription is a game changer for people trying to access basic health care,” Johnson added.
NO EQUAL ACCESS
The regulatory change will, however, not provide equal access to all people, GenBioPro, which makes the generic version of mifepristone, said in a statement.
Abortion bans, some targeting mifepristone, have gone into effect in more than a dozen states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to terminating pregnancies when it scrapped the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling last year.
Women in those states could potentially travel to other states to obtain medication abortion.
The president of anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said the latest FDA move endangers women’s safety and the lives of unborn children.
“State lawmakers and Congress must stand as a bulwark against the Biden administration’s pro-abortion extremism,” she said in a statement.
FDA records show a small mortality case number associated with mifepristone. As of June 2021, there were reports of 26 deaths linked with the pill out of 4.9 million people estimated to have taken it since it was approved in September 2000.
Retail pharmacies will have to weigh whether or not to offer the pill given the political controversy surrounding abortion, and determine where they can do so.
A spokesperson for CVS Health (CVS.N) said the drugstore chain owner was reviewing the updated REMS “drug safety program certification requirements for mifepristone to determine the requirements to dispense in states that do not restrict the dispensing of medications prescribed for elective termination of pregnancy.”
A spokesperson for Walgreens (WBA.O), one of the largest U.S. pharmacies, said the company was also reviewing the FDA’s regulatory change. “We will continue to enable our pharmacists to dispense medications consistent with federal and state law.”
Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Additional reporting by Eric Beech in Washington, Shivani Tanna, Rahat Sandhu, and Kanjyik Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar
Washington-based correspondent covering U.S. healthcare and pharmaceutical policy with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies it oversees such as the Food and Drug Administration, previously based in Iraq and Egypt.
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