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  • Russia unleashes missiles across Ukraine, drones hit bases deep inside Russian territory

    Russia unleashes missiles across Ukraine, drones hit bases deep inside Russian territory

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    • Air alerts sound across Ukraine, south and north hit, 4 dead
    • Russia striking Ukraine’s infrastructure since October
    • Moscow: Ukrainian drones attack air bases in Russia, 3 dead
    • Price cap of $60 for Russian oil comes into force

    KYIV, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Ukraine said Russia destroyed homes in the southeast and knocked out power in many areas with a new volley of missiles on Monday, while Moscow said Ukrainian drones had attacked two air bases deep inside Russia hundreds of miles from front lines.

    A new missile barrage had been anticipated in Ukraine for days and it took place just as emergency blackouts were due to end, with previous damage repaired. The strikes plunged parts of Ukraine back into freezing darkness with temperatures now firmly below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).

    At least four people were killed in the Russian missile attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, adding that most of some 70 missiles were shot down. Energy workers had already begun work on restoring power supplies, he said.

    Russia’s defence ministry said Ukrainian drones attacked two air bases at Ryazan and Saratov in south-central Russia, killing three servicemen and wounding four, with two aircraft damaged by pieces of the drones when they were shot down.

    Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the attacks. If it was behind them, they would be the deepest strikes inside the Russian heartland since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

    One of the targets, the Engels air base near the city of Saratov, around 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, houses bomber planes belonging to Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.

    “The Kyiv regime, in order to disable Russian long-range aircraft, made attempts to strike with Soviet-made unmanned jet aerial vehicles at the military airfields Dyagilevo, in the Ryazan region, and Engels, in the Saratov region,” the Russian defence ministry said.

    It said the drones, flying at low altitude, were intercepted by air defences and shot down. The deaths were reported on the Ryazan base, 185 km (115 miles) southeast of Moscow.

    The Russian defence ministry called the drone strikes a terrorist act aimed at disrupting its long-range aviation.

    Despite that, it said, Russia responded with a “massive strike on the military control system and related objects of the defences complex, communication centres, energy and military units of Ukraine with high-precision air- and sea-based weapons” in which it said all 17 designated targets were hit.

    Ukraine’s air force said it downed over 60 of more than 70 missiles fired by Russia on Monday – the latest in weeks of attacks targeting its critical infrastructure that have cut off power, heat and water to many parts of the country.

    “Our guys are awesome,” Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, wrote on Telegram.

    Kyiv’s forces have also demonstrated an increasing ability to hit strategic Russian targets far beyond the 1,100 km-long frontline in south and eastern Ukraine.

    Saratov is at least 600 km from the nearest Ukrainian territory. Russian commentators said on social media that if Ukraine could strike that far inside Russia, it might also be capable of hitting Moscow.

    Previous mysterious blasts damaged arms stores and fuel depots in regions near Ukraine and knocked out at least seven warplanes in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.

    [1/15] People take shelter inside the metro station amid Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 5, 2022. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

    President Vladimir Putin drove a Mercedes across the bridge linking southern Russia to Crimea on Monday, less than two months since that, too, was hit by an explosion.

    Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for any of the blasts, saying only that they were “karma” for Russia’s invasion.

    “If something is launched into other countries’ air space, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to (their) departure point,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted, tongue in cheek, on Monday.

    MISSILE FRAGMENTS HIT MOLDOVA

    Moscow has been hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October as it has been forced to retreat on some battlefronts.

    This time, police in Moldova were reported to have found missile fragments on its soil near the border with Ukraine.

    In the Zaporizhzhia region, at least two people were killed and several houses destroyed, the deputy head of the presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.

    Missiles also hit energy facilities in the regions of Kyiv and Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, Odesa in the south and Sumy in the north, officials said.

    Forty percent of the Kyiv region had no electricity, regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said, praising the work of Ukrainian air defences.

    Ukraine had only just returned to scheduled power outages from Monday rather than the emergency blackouts it has suffered since widespread Russian strikes on Nov. 23, the worst of the attacks on energy infrastructure that began in early October.

    Russia has said the barrages are designed to degrade Ukraine’s military. Ukraine says they are clearly aimed at civilians and thus constitute a war crime.

    WESTERN PRICE CAP ON RUSSIAN OIL

    A $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil took effect on Monday, the latest Western measure to punish Moscow over its invasion. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter.

    The agreement allows Russian oil to be shipped to third-party countries using tankers from G7 and European Union member states, insurance companies and credit institutions, only if the cargo is bought at or below the $60 per barrel cap.

    Moscow has said it will not abide by the measure even if it has to cut production. Ukraine wants the cap set lower: Zelenskiy said $60 was too high to deter Russia’s assault.

    A Russian oil blend was selling for around $79 a barrel in Asian markets on Monday – almost a third higher than the price cap, according to Refinitiv data and estimates from industry sources.

    Reporting by Nick Starkov and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich; Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Indonesia evacuates villagers as volcano erupts on Java island

    Indonesia evacuates villagers as volcano erupts on Java island

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    JAKARTA, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A volcano erupted in Indonesia on Sunday spewing a cloud of ash 15 km into the sky and forcing the evacuation of nearly 2,000 people, authorities said, as they issued their highest warning for the area in the east of Java island.

    There were no immediate reports of any casualties from the eruption of the Semeru volcano and Indonesia’s transport ministry said that there was no impact on air travel but notices had been sent to two regional airports for vigilance.

    “Most roads have been closed since this morning and now it is raining volcanic ash and it has covered the view of the mountain,” community volunteer Bayu Deny Alfianto told Reuters by telephone from near the volcano.

    Semeru, the tallest mountain on Java, erupted last year killing more than 50 people and displacing thousands.

    Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said 1,979 people had been moved to 11 shelters and authorities had distributed masks to residents. The eruption began at 2:46 a.m. (1946 GMT on Saturday) and rescue, search and evacuation efforts were going on.

    The volcano’s plume of ash reached a height of 50,000 feet (15 km), said Japan’s Meteorology Agency, which had initially been on alert for the possibility that the volcano could trigger a tsunami. It later ruled that out.

    The eruption, some 640 km (400 miles) east of the capital, Jakarta, follows a series of earthquakes in the west of Java, including one last month that killed more than 300 people.

    [1/7] Mount Semeru volcano spews volcanic ash during an eruption as seen from Candipuro in Lumajang, East Java province, Indonesia, December 4, 2022, in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Iwan/ via REUTERS

    Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, PVMBG, raised the level of volcanic activity to its highest level and warned residents not to approach within 8 km (5 miles) of Semeru’s eruption centre.

    Hot ash clouds had drifted nearly 12 miles (19 km) from the centre of eruption, it said.

    PVMBG chief Hendra Gunawan said a bigger volume of magma could have built up compared with previous eruptions of the volcano, in 2021 and 2020, which could mean greater danger for a bigger area.

    “Semeru’s hot clouds could reach further and at a distance where there are many residences,” he said.

    In a video sent to Reuters by police in the area, villagers were seen moving away from the slopes of the volcano, some with belongings stacked on motor bikes. A damaged bridge was covered in volcanic ash.

    With 142 volcanoes, Indonesia has the world’s largest population living close range to volcano, with 8.6 million people within 10 km (6 miles) of one.

    The deadly late-November quake that hit in West Java was 5.6 magnitude but at a shallow depth. A 6.1 quake struck at a deeper depth on Saturday sending people running from buildings but it did not cause major damage or casualties.

    Reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman and Angie Teo in Jakarta; Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto in Tokyo; Editing by William Mallard and Lincoln Feast

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Consumer inflation in Japan’s capital rises at fastest pace in 40 years

    Consumer inflation in Japan’s capital rises at fastest pace in 40 years

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    • Tokyo Nov core CPI up 3.6% vs f’cast +3.5%
    • Tokyo CPI stays above BOJ’s 2% target for 6th straight month
    • Data underscores broadening inflationary pressure

    TOKYO, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Core consumer prices in Japan’s capital, a leading indicator of nationwide trends, rose at their fastest annual pace in 40 years in November and exceeded the central bank’s 2% target for a sixth straight month, signalling broadening inflationary pressure.

    The increase, driven mostly by food and fuel bills but spreading to a broader range of goods, cast doubt on the view of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) that recent cost-push inflation will prove transitory, some analysts said.

    The Tokyo core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes fresh food but includes fuel, was 3.6% higher in November than a year earlier, government data showed on Friday. The rise exceeded a median market forecast of 3.5% and the 3.4% increase seen in October

    The last time Tokyo inflation was faster was April 1982, when the core CPI was 4.2% higher than a year before.

    While the rise was driven mostly by electricity bills and food prices, companies were also charging more for durable goods as the weak yen pushed up the cost of imports, the data showed.

    “Price hikes are broadening and suggests the weak yen could keep inflation elevated well into next year,” said Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities.

    “Core consumer inflation may stay around the BOJ’s 2% target for much of next year, which would make it hard for the bank to keep arguing that the price rises are temporary.”

    The Tokyo core-core CPI index, which excludes fuel as well as fresh food, was 2.5% higher in November than a year earlier, picking up from the 2.2% annual gain seen in October.

    BOJ AN OUTLIER

    The BOJ has kept interest rates ultra-low on the view that inflation will slow back below its target next year when the boost from fuel price gains dissipate. The central bank has therefore remained an outlier from a wave monetary tightening around the world aimed at combating soaring inflation.

    Contrary to the experience of some western economies, where wages have surged with inflation, growth in wages and services prices remain muted in Japan.

    Of the components making up the Tokyo CPI data, services prices in November were up just 0.7% on a year earlier, after a 0.8% annual increase seen in October. That compared with a 7.7% spike in durable goods prices for November, which followed October’s 7.0% annual gain.

    Separate data released by the BOJ on Friday showed the corporate service price index, which measures prices that firms charge each other for services, had been 1.8% higher in October than a year earlier. That was slower than a 2.1% annual gain seen in September.

    BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has repeatedly said that, for inflation to sustainably hit his 2% inflation target, wages must rise enough to offset the rise in goods prices.

    Slow wage growth has been among factors delaying Japan’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The world’s third-largest economy unexpectedly shrank an annualised 1.2% in the third quarter, partly because of soft consumption.

    The Tokyo CPI data heightens the chance of further rises in nationwide core consumer prices, which in October were 3.6% higher than a year earlier, also marking a 40-year high. The nationwide data for November is scheduled for release on Dec. 23.

    Reporting by Takahiko Wada and Leika Kihara; Editing by Sam Holmes and Bradley Perrett

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Putin discusses West’s oil price cap with Iraqi leader – Kremlin

    Putin discusses West’s oil price cap with Iraqi leader – Kremlin

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    Nov 24 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday discussed Western attempts to cap the price of Russian oil during a phone call with Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the new Iraqi prime minister, the Kremlin said in a readout of the call.

    It said Putin had told Sudani that a price cap would have serious consequences for the global energy market.

    “Attempts by a number of Western countries to impose restrictions on the cost of crude oil from Russia were touched upon,” the Kremlin’s statement said.

    “Vladimir Putin stressed that such actions contradict the principles of market relations and are highly likely to lead to serious consequences for the global energy market.”

    The European Union and United States have stepped up attempts in recent days to strike an agreement on where to set a price cap on their imports of Russian oil.

    Russia and Iraq are both major oil producers and members of the OPEC+ agreement, which sets oil production levels in a bid to manage world prices.

    Writing by Jake Cordell; Editing by Kevin Liffey

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Exclusive: Russians, Ukrainians met in UAE to discuss prisoner swap, ammonia, sources say

    Exclusive: Russians, Ukrainians met in UAE to discuss prisoner swap, ammonia, sources say

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    RIYADH, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap that would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.

    The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the U.N.’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer.

    However the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added.

    The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.

    The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Nov. 17 where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.

    Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.

    The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, told Reuters that “releasing our prisoners of war is part of negotiations over opening Russian ammonia exports”, adding “Of course we look for ways to do that at any opportunity”. Bodnar said he was unaware if a meeting took place in the UAE.

    Putin said on Wednesday that Russian officials would work to unblock Russian fertilisers stuck in European ports and to resume ammonia exports.

    The UAE’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

    Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Abu Dhabi remains firmly committed to help keep channels of communication open, encourage dialogue and support diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.

    “In times of conflict, our collective responsibility is to leave no stone unturned towards identifying and pursuing paths that bring about a peaceful and swift resolution of crises,” Nusseibeh said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.

    Russia and Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

    Asked if the United Nations were involved in the talks, a spokesperson for the organisation declined to comment.

    WESTERN PRESSURE

    The export of Russian ammonia would be via an existing pipeline to the Black Sea.

    The pipeline was designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia gas per year from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa for onward shipment to international buyers. It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

    The export of ammonia was not part of the renewal of the U.N.-backed grains corridor deal that restored commercial shipping from Ukraine.

    Last week, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of U.N. agency UNCTAD, who leads the negotiations on fertiliser, said she was optimistic Russia and Ukraine could agree to the terms for the export of Russian ammonia via the pipeline, without giving details.

    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly set several conditions before allowing Russia to resume its ammonia exports via the pipeline, including a prisoner swap and reopening of Mykolaiv port in the Black Sea.

    Neither Russia nor Ukraine have released official figures on how many prisoners of war they have taken since Russia invaded in February. On Oct. 29, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said that since March, Russia had freed a total of 1,031 prisoners.

    Russia and Ukraine have disclosed few details about direct meetings between representatives from the two countries following the abandonment of ceasefire talks in the first few weeks following Moscow’s invasion on February 24.

    Abu Dhabi’s efforts follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, which scored a diplomatic win by securing freedom for foreign fighters captured in Ukraine in September.

    The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is a member of the OPEC+ oil alliance that includes Russia and has also maintained good ties with Moscow despite Western pressure to help isolate Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.

    UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow last month where he discussed with President Vladimir Putin the possibility of Abu Dhabi mediating for an ammonia deal, two of the sources said.

    Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of fertilisers to global markets.

    Since July, Moscow has repeatedly said its shipments of grain and fertilisers, though not directly targeted by sanctions, are constrained because sanctions make it harder for exporters to process payments or to obtain vessels and insurance.

    Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Jonathan Saul in London, additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Jon Boyle

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • U.N. General Assembly calls for Russia to make reparations in Ukraine

    U.N. General Assembly calls for Russia to make reparations in Ukraine

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    Nov 14 (Reuters) – The United Nations General Assembly on Monday called for Russia to be held accountable for its conduct in Ukraine, voting to approve a resolution recognizing that Russia must be responsible for making reparations to the country.

    The resolution, supported by 94 of the assembly’s 193 members, said Russia, which invaded its neighbor in February, “must bear the legal consequences of all of its internationally wrongful acts, including making reparation for the injury, including any damage, caused by such acts.”

    The resolution recommends that member states, in cooperation with Ukraine, create an international register to record evidence and claims against Russia.

    General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding, but they carry political weight.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the resolution an “important” one.

    “The reparations that Russia will have to pay for what it has done are now part of the international legal reality,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

    Kyiv’s Ambassador to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya told the General Assembly before the vote that Russia has targeted everything from factories to residential buildings and hospitals.

    “Ukraine will have the daunting task of rebuilding the country and recovering from this war, but that recovery will never be complete without a sense of justice for the victims of the Russian war. It is time to hold Russia accountable,” Kyslytsya said.

    The United Nations headquarters building is pictured with a UN logo in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., March 1, 2022. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

    Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the General Assembly before the vote that the provisions of the resolution are “legally null and void” as he urged countries to vote against it.

    “The West is trying to draw out and worsen the conflict and plans to use Russian money for it,” Nebenzia said.

    Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on the Telegram messaging app that the “Anglo-Saxons are clearly trying to scrape together a legal basis for the illegal seizure of Russian assets.”

    Fourteen countries voted against the resolution, including Russia, China and Iran, while 73 abstained, including Brazil, India and South Africa. Not all member states voted.

    In March, 141 members of the General Assembly voted to denounce Russia’s invasion, and 143 in October voted to condemn Moscow’s attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine.

    Zelenskiy on Saturday said Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure in the strategic southern city of Kherson before fleeing. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, although the invasion has reduced Ukrainian cities to rubble and killed or wounded thousands.

    “It will take a broad international effort to support Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction in order to build a safe and prosperous future for the Ukrainian people,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the assembly.

    “But only one country, Russia, is responsible for the damage to Ukraine, and it is absolutely right, as this resolution sets out, that Russia pay for that damage.”

    Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON; Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Grant McCool

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • CIA boss talks nuclear weapons and prisoners with Putin’s spy chief

    CIA boss talks nuclear weapons and prisoners with Putin’s spy chief

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    • Burns to warn Russia’s spy chief not to use nuclear weapons
    • Burns also due to raise issue of U.S. prisoners
    • Kremlin confirm a U.S.-Russia meeting took place in Turkey

    LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns was expected to caution President Vladimir Putin’s spy chief at talks on Monday about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and to raise the issue of U.S. prisoners in Russia, a White House official said.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Russian news agencies that a U.S.-Russia meeting had taken place in the Turkish capital Ankara but declined to give details about the participants or the subjects discussed.

    The White House spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Burns was meeting Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service.

    It was the first known high-level, face-to-face U.S.-Russian contact since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

    “He is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.

    “He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability … He will also raise the cases of unjustly detained U.S. citizens.”

    Burns is a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who was sent to Moscow in late 2021 by President Joe Biden to caution Putin about the troop build-up around Ukraine.

    “We briefed Ukraine in advance on his trip. We firmly stick to our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.

    Putin has repeatedly said Russia will defend its territory with all available means, including nuclear weapons, if attacked. He says the West has engaged in nuclear blackmail against Russia.

    MANY OUTSTANDING ISSUES

    The remarks raised particular concern in the West after Moscow declared in September that it had annexed four Ukrainian regions that its forces partly control.

    The U.S.-Russian contact in Turkey was first reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. The SVR did not respond to a request for comment.

    Beyond the war, Russia and the United States have a host of outstanding issues to discuss, ranging from the extension of a nuclear arms reduction treaty and a Black Sea grain deal to a possible prisoner swap and the Syrian civil war.

    U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, asked at a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies in Indonesia about the meeting in Turkey, said the United Nations was not involved.

    Biden said this month he hoped Putin would be willing to discuss seriously a swap to secure the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony on drugs charges.

    Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who holds American, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian jail after being convicted of spying, a charge he denied.

    Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States, has been mentioned as a person who could be swapped for Griner and Whelan in any prisoner exchange.

    Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer in Turkey; Editing by Gareth Jones

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Three members of University of Virginia football team slain in shooting, suspect in custody

    Three members of University of Virginia football team slain in shooting, suspect in custody

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    Nov 14 (Reuters) – A suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three members of the University of Virginia football team dead was in custody on Monday, hours after he allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.

    University police said during a news conference that the suspect, student Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, was arrested hours after the shooting that unfolded at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday (0330 GMT on Monday) at the school in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended by 25,000 students.

    Minutes after the shooting, school officials issued alerts on social media telling students and staff to shelter in place with one tweet saying to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.” The sprawling campus remained on alert throughout the night and morning as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.

    University President Jim Ryan identified the slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.

    Chandler and Perry died on the scene, while Davis died of his wounds at a hospital. Two other students were wounded and taken to UVA Medical Center, where one is in good condition and another in critical condition, University Police Chief Tim Longo said.

    The shooting unfolded on a bus full of students after it pulled into a parking garage on campus, Ryan said. The students had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C.

    Jones was armed with a handgun, Longo said.

    Jones, who was apprehended off campus, was held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said. It was unclear how he was taken into custody.

    [1/6] A handout picture shows college football player Lavel Davis Jr. who was killed in a shooting attack at the University of Virginia, in this undated handout. University of Virginia/Handout via REUTERS

    ‘HEARTBROKEN’

    Jones, who was listed as a player on the school’s football team in 2018, came to the attention of the University of Virginia’s threat assessment team in the fall of 2022, according to Longo. In September 2022, the Office of Student Affairs reported to the team that it received information Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person that was unaffiliated with the university, though no threat was made.

    During an investigation, the person said they never saw the gun, and Jones’ roommate reported that he never saw the presence of a weapon.

    The investigation was later closed because the witnesses would not participate with the process, he said.

    Ryan said in a letter posted on social media hours after the shooting that he was “heartbroken,” and added that classes were canceled for the day.

    “This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” he wrote.

    The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses. The bloodshed has fueled debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.

    A 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Charlottesville, left 33 people dead, including the shooter, and 23 injured in one of the deadliest college mass shootings in U.S. history.

    (This story has been corrected to add Davis’ name in fifth paragraph)

    Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • EXCLUSIVE Russian software disguised as American finds its way into U.S. Army, CDC apps

    EXCLUSIVE Russian software disguised as American finds its way into U.S. Army, CDC apps

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    LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Thousands of smartphone applications in Apple (AAPL.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) online stores contain computer code developed by a technology company, Pushwoosh, that presents itself as based in the United States, but is actually Russian, Reuters has found.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States’ main agency for fighting major health threats, said it had been deceived into believing Pushwoosh was based in the U.S. capital. After learning about its Russian roots from Reuters, it removed Pushwoosh software from seven public-facing apps, citing security concerns.

    The U.S. Army said it had removed an app containing Pushwoosh code in March because of the same concerns. That app was used by soldiers at one of the country’s main combat training bases.

    According to company documents publicly filed in Russia and reviewed by Reuters, Pushwoosh is headquartered in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, where it is registered as a software company that also carries out data processing. It employs around 40 people and reported revenue of 143,270,000 rubles ($2.4 mln) last year. Pushwoosh is registered with the Russian government to pay taxes in Russia.

    On social media and in U.S. regulatory filings, however, it presents itself as a U.S. company, based at various times in California, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Reuters found.

    Pushwoosh provides code and data processing support for software developers, enabling them to profile the online activity of smartphone app users and send tailor-made push notifications from Pushwoosh servers.

    On its website, Pushwoosh says it does not collect sensitive information, and Reuters found no evidence Pushwoosh mishandled user data. Russian authorities, however, have compelled local companies to hand over user data to domestic security agencies.

    Pushwoosh’s founder, Max Konev, told Reuters in a September email that the company had not tried to mask its Russian origins. “I am proud to be Russian and I would never hide this.”

    Pushwoosh published a blog post after the Reuters article was issued, which said: “Pushwoosh Inc. is a privately held C-Corp company incorporated under the state laws of Delaware, USA. Pushwoosh Inc. was never owned by any company registered in the Russian Federation.”

    The company also said in the post, “Pushwoosh Inc. used to outsource development parts of the product to the Russian company in Novosibirsk, mentioned in the article. However, in February 2022, Pushwoosh Inc. terminated the contract.”

    After Pushwoosh published its post, Reuters asked Pushwoosh to provide evidence for its assertions, but the news agency’s requests went unanswered.

    Konev said the company “has no connection with the Russian government of any kind” and stores its data in the United States and Germany.

    Cybersecurity experts said storing data overseas would not prevent Russian intelligence agencies from compelling a Russian firm to cede access to that data, however.

    Russia, whose ties with the West have deteriorated since its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine this year, is a global leader in hacking and cyber-espionage, spying on foreign governments and industries to seek competitive advantage, according to Western officials.

    Reuters Graphics

    HUGE DATABASE

    Pushwoosh code was installed in the apps of a wide array of international companies, influential non-profits and government agencies from global consumer goods company Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Britain’s Labour Party.

    Pushwoosh’s business with U.S. government agencies and private companies could violate contracting and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laws or trigger sanctions, 10 legal experts told Reuters. The FBI, U.S. Treasury and the FTC declined to comment.

    Jessica Rich, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “this type of case falls right within the authority of the FTC,” which cracks down on unfair or deceptive practices affecting U.S. consumers.

    Washington could choose to impose sanctions on Pushwoosh and has broad authority to do so, sanctions experts said, including possibly through a 2021 executive order that gives the United States the ability to target Russia’s technology sector over malicious cyber activity.

    Pushwoosh code has been embedded into almost 8,000 apps in the Google and Apple app stores, according to Appfigures, an app intelligence website. Pushwoosh’s website says it has more than 2.3 billion devices listed in its database.

    “Pushwoosh collects user data including precise geolocation, on sensitive and governmental apps, which could allow for invasive tracking at scale,” said Jerome Dangu, co-founder of Confiant, a firm that tracks misuse of data collected in online advertising supply chains.

    “We haven’t found any clear sign of deceptive or malicious intent in Pushwoosh’s activity, which certainly doesn’t diminish the risk of having app data leaking to Russia,” he added.

    Google said privacy was a “huge focus” for the company but did not respond to requests for comment about Pushwoosh. Apple said it takes user trust and safety seriously but similarly declined to answer questions.

    Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London think tank Chatham House, said despite international sanctions on Russia, a “substantial number” of Russian companies were still trading abroad and collecting people’s personal data.

    Given Russia’s domestic security laws, “it shouldn’t be a surprise that with or without direct links to Russian state espionage campaigns, firms that handle data will be keen to play down their Russian roots,” he said.

    ‘SECURITY ISSUES’

    After Reuters raised Pushwoosh’s Russian links with the CDC, the health agency removed the code from its apps because “the company presents a potential security concern,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.

    “CDC believed Pushwoosh was a company based in the Washington, D.C. area,” Nordlund said in a statement. The belief was based on “representations” made by the company, she said, without elaborating.

    The CDC apps that contained Pushwoosh code included the agency’s main app and others set up to share information on a wide range of health concerns. One was for doctors treating sexually transmitted diseases. While the CDC also used the company’s notifications for health matters such as COVID, the agency said it “did not share user data with Pushwoosh.”

    The Army told Reuters it removed an app containing Pushwoosh in March, citing “security issues.” It did not say how widely the app, which was an information portal for use at its National Training Center (NTC) in California, had been used by troops.

    The NTC is a major battle training center in the Mojave Desert for pre-deployment soldiers, meaning a data breach there could reveal upcoming overseas troop movements.

    U.S. Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee said the Army had suffered no “operational loss of data,” adding that the app did not connect to the Army network.

    Some large companies and organizations including UEFA and Unilever said third parties set up the apps for them, or they thought they were hiring a U.S. company.

    “We don’t have a direct relationship with Pushwoosh,” Unilever said in a statement, adding that Pushwoosh was removed from one of its apps “some time ago.”

    UEFA said its contract with Pushwoosh was “with a U.S. company.” UEFA declined to say if it knew of Pushwoosh’s Russian ties but said it was reviewing its relationship with the company after being contacted by Reuters.

    The NRA said its contract with the company ended last year, and it was “not aware of any issues.”

    Britain’s Labour Party did not respond to requests for comment.

    “The data Pushwoosh collects is similar to data that could be collected by Facebook, Google or Amazon, but the difference is that all the Pushwoosh data in the U.S. is sent to servers controlled by a company (Pushwoosh) in Russia,” said Zach Edwards, a security researcher, who first spotted the prevalence of Pushwoosh code while working for Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit organization.

    Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications regulator, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

    FAKE ADDRESS, FAKE PROFILES

    In U.S. regulatory filings and on social media, Pushwoosh never mentions its Russian links. The company lists “Washington, D.C.” as its location on Twitter and claims its office address as a house in the suburb of Kensington, Maryland, according to its latest U.S. corporation filings submitted to Delaware’s secretary of state. It also lists the Maryland address on its Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

    The Kensington house is the home of a Russian friend of Konev’s who spoke to a Reuters journalist on condition of anonymity. He said he had nothing to do with Pushwoosh and had only agreed to allow Konev to use his address to receive mail.

    Konev said Pushwoosh had begun using the Maryland address to “receive business correspondence” during the coronavirus pandemic.

    He said he now operates Pushwoosh from Thailand but provided no evidence that it is registered there. Reuters could not find a company by that name in the Thai company registry.

    Pushwoosh never mentioned it was Russian-based in eight annual filings in the U.S. state of Delaware, where it is registered, an omission which could violate state law.

    Instead, Pushwoosh listed an address in Union City, California as its principal place of business from 2014 to 2016. That address does not exist, according to Union City officials.

    Pushwoosh used LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to two Washington, D.C.-based executives named Mary Brown and Noah O’Shea to solicit sales. But neither Brown nor O’Shea are real people, Reuters found.

    The one belonging to Brown was actually of an Austria-based dance teacher, taken by a photographer in Moscow, who told Reuters she had no idea how it ended up on the site.

    Konev acknowledged the accounts were not genuine. He said Pushwoosh hired a marketing agency in 2018 to create them in an attempt to use social media to sell Pushwoosh, not to mask the company’s Russian origins.

    LinkedIn said it had removed the accounts after being alerted by Reuters.

    Reporting by James Pearson in London and Marisa Taylor in Washington
    Additional reporting by Chris Bing in Washington, editing by Chris Sanders and Ross Colvin

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Biden and Xi clash over Taiwan in Bali but Cold War fears cool

    Biden and Xi clash over Taiwan in Bali but Cold War fears cool

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    • Biden, Xi meet for 3 hours before G20
    • Both leaders stress need to get ties back on track
    • Indonesia seeks partnerships on global economy at G20
    • Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to address G20 on Tuesday

    NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in blunt talks over Taiwan and North Korea on Monday in a three-hour meeting aimed at preventing strained U.S.-China ties from spilling into a new Cold War.

    Amid simmering differences on human rights, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and support of domestic industry, the two leaders pledged more frequent communications. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing for follow-up talks.

    “We’re going to compete vigorously. But I’m not looking for conflict, I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said after his talks with Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia.

    Beijing has long said it would bring the self-governed island of Taiwan, which it views as an inalienable part of China, under its control and has not ruled out the use of force to do so. It has frequently accused the United States in recent years of encouraging Taiwan independence.

    In a statement after their meeting, Xi called Taiwan the “first red line” that must not be crossed in U.S.-China relations, Chinese state media said.

    Biden said he sought to assure Xi that U.S. policy on Taiwan, which has for decades been to support both Beijing’s ‘One China’ stance and Taiwan’s military, had not changed.

    He said there was no need for a new Cold War, and that he did not think China was planning a hot one.

    “I do not think there’s any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan,” he told reporters.

    On North Korea, Biden said it was hard to know whether Beijing had any influence over Pyongyang weapons testing. “Well, first of all, it’s difficult to say that I am certain that China can control North Korea,” he said.

    Biden said he told Xi the United States would do what it needs to do to defend itself and allies South Korea and Japan, which could be “maybe more up in the face of China” though not directed against it.

    “We would have to take certain actions that would be more defensive on our behalf… to send a clear message to North Korea. We are going to defend our allies, as well as American soil and American capacity,” he said.

    Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said before the meeting that Biden would warn Xi about the possibility of enhanced U.S. military presence in the region, something Beijing is not keen to see.

    Beijing had halted a series of formal dialogue channels with Washington, including on climate change and military-to-military talks, after U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi upset China by visiting Taiwan in August.

    Biden and Xi agreed to allow senior officials to renew communication on climate, debt relief and other issues, the White House said after they spoke.

    Xi’s statement after the talks included pointed warnings on Taiwan.

    [1/7] U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference following his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, ahead of the G20 leaders’ summit, in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

    “The Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

    “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese and China’s internal affair,” Xi said, according to state media.

    Taiwan’s democratically elected government rejects Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over it.

    Taiwan’s presidential office said it welcomed Biden’s reaffirmation of U.S. policy. “This also once again fully demonstrates that the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait is the common expectation of the international community,” it said.

    SMILES AND HANDSHAKES

    Before their talks, the two leaders smiled and shook hands warmly in front of their national flags at a hotel on Indonesia’s Bali island, a day before a Group of 20 (G20) summit set to be fraught with tension over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “It’s just great to see you,” Biden told Xi, as he put an arm around him before their meeting.

    Biden brought up a number of difficult topics with Xi, according to the White House, including raising U.S. objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan,” Beijing’s “non-market economic practices,” and practices in “Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly.”

    Neither leader wore a mask to ward off COVID-19, although members of their delegations did.

    U.S.-China relations have been roiled in recent years by growing tensions over issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea, trade practices, and U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology.

    But U.S. officials said there have been quiet efforts by both Beijing and Washington over the past two months to repair relations.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters in Bali earlier that the meeting aimed to stabilise the relationship and to create a “more certain atmosphere” for U.S. businesses.

    She said Biden had been clear with China about national security concerns regarding restrictions on sensitive U.S. technologies and had raised concern about the reliability of Chinese supply chains for commodities.

    G20 summit host President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said he hoped the gathering on Tuesday could “deliver concrete partnerships that can help the world in its economic recovery”.

    However, one of the main topics at the G20 will be Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Xi and Putin have grown close in recent years, bound by their shared distrust of the West, and reaffirmed their partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. But China has been careful not to provide any direct material support that could trigger Western sanctions against it.

    Reporting by Nandita Bose, Stanley Widianto, Fransiska Nangoy, Leika Kihara, David Lawder and Simon Lewis in Nusa Dua, and Yew Lun Tian and Ryan Woo in Beijing; additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Kay Johnson and Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Grant McCool, Heather Timmons and Rosalba O’Brien

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Analysis: Sanctions fail to halt North Korea’s accelerating weapons programs

    Analysis: Sanctions fail to halt North Korea’s accelerating weapons programs

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    WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Economic sanctions, the primary means the United States has used for years to try to exert pressure on North Korea, have abjectly failed to halt its nuclear and missile programs or to bring the reclusive northeast Asian state back to the negotiating table.

    Instead, North Korea’s ballistic missile program has become stronger and it has carried out a record-breaking testing regime of multiple types of weapons this year – including of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland. Expectations are that it may soon end a self-imposed five-year moratorium on nuclear bomb testing.

    Now, U.S. policy makers and their predecessors can do little more than pick through the wreckage and seek to determine what went wrong, and who might be to blame.

    “We’ve had a policy failure. It’s a generational policy failure,” said Joseph DeThomas, a former U.S. diplomat who worked on North Korea and Iran sanctions and served in the administrations of Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

    “An entire generation of people worked on this. It’s failed … so alright, now we have to go to the next step, figure out what we do about it.”

    Biden administration officials concede that sanctions have failed to stop North Korea’s weapons programs – but they maintain they have at least been effective in slowing North Korea’s nuclear program.

    “I would disagree with the idea that sanctions have failed. Sanctions have failed to stop their programs – that’s absolutely true,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “But I think that if the sanctions didn’t exist, (North Korea) would be much, much further along, and much more of a threat to its neighbors to the region and to the world.”

    The State Department, U.S. Treasury and White House’s National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Former officials and experts say sanctions were never imposed robustly enough for long enough and blame faltering U.S. overtures to North Korea as well as pressures like Russia’s war in Ukraine and U.S-China tensions over Taiwan for making them ineffective and easy for North Korea to circumvent.

    North Korea has long been forbidden to conduct nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches by the U.N. Security Council.

    The Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea since 2006 to choke off funding for it nuclear and ballistic missile programs. They now include exports bans coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

    However U.N. experts regularly report that North Korea is evading sanctions and continuing to develop its programs.

    Russia and China backed toughened sanctions after North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2017, but it is not clear what U.N action – if any – they might agree to if Pyongyang conducts another nuclear test.

    CHINESE AND RUSSIAN INFLUENCE

    The senior Biden administration official told Reuters Washington believes China and Russia have leverage to persuade North Korea not to resume nuclear bomb testing. But the Biden administration has accused China and Russia of enabling North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

    Anthony Ruggiero, who headed North Korea sanctions efforts under former President Donald Trump, said they were only pursued vigorously enough from the last year of the Obama administration to early in Trump’s second year. They then dropped off in the ultimately vain hope of progress in summit negotiations between Trump and Kim.

    Some critics like sanctions expert Joshua Stanton fault both the Trump and Biden administrations for failing to exert maximum pressure to stop China allowing North Korea’s sanctions evasion. They point to the powerful option of imposing sanctions on big Chinese banks that have facilitated this.

    “The sanctions we don’t enforce don’t work, and we haven’t been enforcing them since mid-2018,” Stanton said, noting that history had shown a correlation between stronger enforcement and North Korea willingness to engage diplomatically.

    “The Biden administration’s most significant failure is its failure to prosecute or penalize the Chinese banks we know are laundering Kim Jong Un’s money,” he said.

    Some experts like DeThomas argue that taking what some call the “nuclear option” of going after Chinese banks could exclude huge Chinese institutions from the international financial system and have catastrophic consequences not just for the Chinese, but for the U.S. and global economies – something Stanton considers unfounded.

    “Going full bore against the Chinese over North Korea is always a possibility, but it’s a high-risk option,” said DeThomas, arguing that such a measure should be reserved for an even more pressing scenario, such as deterring any move by China to all-out support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    “You want them to be thinking about that. And you can’t fire that gun twice,” he said. “And even if you sanctioned the Chinese banks, you wouldn’t get the North Koreans to change.”

    Some U.S. academic experts argue that Washington should recognize North Korea for what it is – a nuclear power that is never going to disarm – and use sanctions relief to incentivize better behavior.

    “I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies told a conference in Ottawa this week.

    “I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told a conference in Ottawa this week.

    The senior Biden administration official said maintaining sanctions was not just punitive, but about the international community showing it is united.

    He rejected the idea that Washington should recognize North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.

    “There is an extraordinarily strong global consensus … that the DPRK should not, and must not, be a nuclear nation,” he said. “No country is calling for this … the consequences of changing policy, I think would be profoundly negative.”

    Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Michelle Nichols
    Editing by Alistair Bell

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • EXCLUSIVE G7 coalition has agreed to set fixed price for Russian oil -sources

    EXCLUSIVE G7 coalition has agreed to set fixed price for Russian oil -sources

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    WASHINGTON/LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – The Group of Seven rich nations and Australia have agreed to set a fixed price when they finalize a price cap on Russian oil later this month, rather than adopting a floating rate, sources said on Thursday.

    U.S. officials and G7 countries have been in intense negotiations in recent weeks over the unprecedented plan to put a price cap on sea-borne oil shipments, which is scheduled to take effect on Dec. 5 – to ensure EU and U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting Moscow’s ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine do not throttle the global oil market.

    “The Coalition has agreed the price cap will be a fixed price that will be reviewed regularly rather than a discount to an index,” said a coalition source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “This will increase market stability and simplify compliance to minimize the burden on market participants.”

    The initial price itself has not been set, but should be in coming weeks, multiple sources said. Coalition partners agreed to regularly review the fixed price and revise it as needed, the source said, without disclosing further details.

    Pegging the price as a discount to some index would have resulted in too much volatility and potential price swings, the source added.

    The coalition worried that a floating price pegged below the Brent international benchmark might enable Russian President Vladimir Putin to game the mechanism by reducing supply, a second source with knowledge of the discussions said.

    Putin could benefit from a floating price system because the price for his country’s oil would also rise if Brent spiked due to a cut in oil from Russia, one of the world’s largest petroleum producers. The downside of the agreed fixed price system is that it will require more meetings of the coalition and bureaucracy to review it regularly, the source said.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other G7 officials argue the price cap, set to begin Dec. 5 on crude and Feb. 5 on oil products, will squeeze funding to Russia without cutting supply to consumers. Russia has said it will refuse to ship oil to countries that set price caps.

    Shipping services are eager to see more details about the G7 plan which is due to take effect in a month.

    A steady price cap could enable insurers to more confidently roll over contracts and initiate new ones without fear that the price could be adjusted by the countries buying Russian oil, which could have potentially exposed insurers to sanctions.

    No immediate comment was available from Treasury or the embassies of coalition members, which include the G7 rich nations, the European Union and Australia.

    Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the United States and its allies had agreed on further details on which sales of Russian oil will face the price cap.

    Each load of seaborne Russian oil will only be subject to the price cap when first sold to a buyer on land, the countries determined. Reuters could not immediately verify the report which cited people familiar with the matter.

    Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Timothy Gardner in Washington and Noah Browning in London; editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Biden vows to ‘free Iran’ in West Coast campaign speech

    Biden vows to ‘free Iran’ in West Coast campaign speech

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    OCEANSIDE, Calif., Nov 3 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday vowed to “free” Iran, and said that demonstrators working against the country’s government would soon succeed in freeing themselves.

    “Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran. They’re gonna free themselves pretty soon,” Biden said during a wide-ranging campaign speech in California, as dozens of demonstrators gathered outside holding banners supporting Iranian protesters.

    Biden did not expand on his remarks or specify what additional actions he would take during the remarks at MiraCosta College near San Diego.

    The White House’s National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign fundraising event for U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) in San Diego, California, U.S., November 3, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

    Seven weeks of demonstrations in Iran were ignited by the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

    The protests triggered by Amini’s death on Sept. 16 have shown the defiance of many young Iranians in challenging the clerical leadership, overcoming fear that has stifled dissent in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. read more

    The United States on Wednesday said it will try to remove Iran from the 45-member U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) over the government’s denial of women’s rights and brutal crackdown on protests. read more

    Iran is just starting a four-year term on the commission, which meets annually every March and aims to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.

    Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Stephen Coates

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • U.S. Congress split on making daylight-saving time permanent

    U.S. Congress split on making daylight-saving time permanent

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    WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) – A push in the U.S. Congress to make daylight-saving time permanent, which was unanimously passed by the Senate earlier this year, has stalled in the House, with a key lawmaker telling Reuters they have been unable to reach consensus.

    In March, the Senate voted to put a stop next year to the twice-annual changing of clocks, which supporters say will lead to brighter afternoons and more economic activity.

    U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over the issue, said in a statement to Reuters the House is still trying to figure out how to move forward.

    “We haven’t been able to find consensus in the House on this yet. There are a broad variety of opinions about whether to keep the status quo, to move to a permanent time, and if so, what time that should be,” Pallone, a Democrat, said, adding that opinions break down by region, not by party.

    Legislative aides told Reuters they do not expect Congress to reach agreement before the end of the year. Supporters in the Senate would need to reintroduce the bill next year if it is not approved by the end of the year.

    Daylight-saving time has been in place in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s. Year-round daylight-saving time was used during World War Two and adopted again in 1973 in a bid to reduce energy use because of an oil embargo and repealed a year later.

    “We don’t want to make a hasty change and then have it reversed several years later after public opinion turns against it — which is exactly what happened in the early 1970s,” Pallone said.

    On Sunday, Nov. 6 at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT), the United States will resume standard time.

    Pallone previously said he backs ending the clock-switching but has not decided whether to support daylight or standard time as the permanent choice.

    Supporters also argue that if approved, the so-called Sunshine Protection Act would allow children to play outdoors later, and reduce seasonal depression. It would also prevent a slight uptick in car crashes that typically occurs around time changes — notably crashes with deer.

    They also point to studies suggesting a small increase in heart attacks and strokes soon after the time change and argue the measure could help businesses like golf courses draw more customers into the evening.

    Critics, including the National Association of Convenience Stores, say it will force many children to walk to school in darkness during the winter, since the measure would delay sunrise by an hour in some places.

    On Sunday, Mexico rolled back its clocks one last time after the passage of a law last week to abolish daylight-saving time. Some northern towns will continue to practice the time change come spring, however, likely due to their ties with U.S. cities across the border.

    The move, long sought by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was based on backing by voters as well as negligible energy savings and negative health effects from the time change, officials said.

    The White House declined to say earlier this year if Biden supports making daylight-saving time permanent.

    Since 2015, about 30 states have introduced or passed legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same.

    The bill would allow Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe daylight-saving time, to remain on standard time as well as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

    Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; additional reporting by Kylie Madry in Mexico City; editing by Diane Craft

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Putin says West sows nonsense about history

    Putin says West sows nonsense about history

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    LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Friday said the West had hammered historical nonsense into the heads of millions of people, including about the real course of World War Two and the Soviet Union’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany.

    Without citing evidence, Putin repeated a claim that Poland has not abandoned dreams of taking over parts of Ukraine.

    Poland has repeatedly denied such Russian claims, and says such statements are disinformation spread by Moscow in an attempt to sow discord between Warsaw and Kyiv.

    Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • U.S. Supreme Court’s Barrett again declines to block Biden student debt relief

    U.S. Supreme Court’s Barrett again declines to block Biden student debt relief

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    Nov 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Friday again declined to block President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, this time in a challenge brought by two Indiana borrowers, even as a lower court considers whether to lift a freeze it imposed on the program in a different case.

    Barrett denied an emergency request by the Indiana borrowers, represented by a conservative legal group, to bar the U.S. Department of Education from implementing the Democratic president’s plan to forgive debt held by qualified people who had taken loans to pay for college.

    Barrett on Oct. 20 denied a similar request by a Wisconsin taxpayers organization represented by another conservative legal group. The justice acted in the cases because she is the justice assigned to handle certain emergency requests from a group of states that includes Indiana and Wisconsin.

    The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 21 put the policy on hold in yet another conservative challenge by six Republican-led states while it considered their request for injunction pending their appeal of their case’s dismissal. That request remains pending.

    Biden’s plan, unveiled in August, was designed to forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students would have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.

    The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that more than 40 million Americans would be eligible to benefit.

    The policy fulfilled a promise Biden made during the 2020 presidential campaign to help debt-saddled former college students. Democrats hope the policy will boost support for them in Tuesday’s midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.

    Friday’s case was filed by two borrowers, Frank Garrison and Noel Johnson, represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, and claimed they would be irreparably harmed if some of their student loans were automatically forgiven because they would face increased state tax liabilities.

    Soon after they sued, the Department of Education created an opt-out option for borrowers. U.S. District Judge Richard Young on Oct. 21 dismissed the case, finding that the debt forgiveness program did not injure Garrison and Johnson.

    The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 28 declined to block the plan while Garrison and Johnson pursued an appeal, noting that the program is “not compulsory” and that the plaintiffs could avoid tax liability simply by opting out.

    Caleb Kruckenberg, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation, in a statement expressed disappointment that Barrett declined to block the plan while his clients pursued their appeal but said they will “continue to fight this program in court.”

    “Practically since this program was announced, the administration has sought to avoid judicial scrutiny,” he said. “Thus far they have succeeded. But that does not change the fact that this program is illegal from stem to stern.”

    Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O’Brien

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Nate Raymond

    Thomson Reuters

    Nate Raymond reports on the federal judiciary and litigation. He can be reached at nate.raymond@thomsonreuters.com.

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  • Twitter lays off staff, Musk blames activists for ad revenue drop

    Twitter lays off staff, Musk blames activists for ad revenue drop

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    • Musk axes around half of Twitter’s workforce
    • Employees file class action against Twitter
    • Staff lose access to systems
    • Major advertisers pull ads

    Nov 4 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc laid off half its workforce on Friday but said cuts were smaller in the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.

    Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.

    The move caps a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who tweeted on Friday that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat.

    Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation – concerns heightened ahead of potential pivotal congressional elections on Tuesday.

    After the layoffs, the groups said they were escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.

    “Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted of the layoffs, adding that everyone affected was offered three months of severance pay.

    The company was silent about the depth of the cuts until late in the day, when head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth tweeted confirmation of internal plans, seen by Reuters earlier in the week, projecting the layoffs would affect about 3,700 people, or 50% of the staff.

    Among those let go were 784 employees from the company’s San Francisco headquarters and 199 in San Jose and Los Angeles, according to filings to California’s employment authority.

    Roth said the reductions hit about 15% of his team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and other harmful content, and that the company’s “core moderation capabilities” remained in place.

    Musk endorsed the safety executive last week, citing his “high integrity” after Roth was called out over tweets critical of former President Donald Trump years earlier.

    Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape.”

    President Joe Biden said on Friday that Musk had purchased a social media platform in Twitter that spews lies across the world.

    “And now what are we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends – that spews lies all across the world… There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

    Major advertisers have expressed apprehension about Musk’s takeover for months.

    Brands including General Motors Co (GM.N) and General Mills Inc (GIS.N) have said they stopped advertising on Twitter while awaiting information about the new direction of the platform.

    Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done “everything we could” to appease the groups. Speaking at an investors conference in New York on Friday, Musk called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment.”

    [1/9] Owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. Elon Musk arrives at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

    Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

    ACCESS TO SYSTEMS CUT

    The email notifying staff about layoffs was the first communication Twitter workers received from the company’s leadership after Musk took over last week. It was signed only by “Twitter,” without naming Musk or any other executives.

    Dozens of staffers tweeted they had lost access to work email and Slack channels overnight before receiving an official layoff notice on Friday morning, prompting an outpouring of laments by current and former employees on the platform they had built.

    They shared blue hearts and salute emojis expressing support for one another, using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked, a past-tense version of a slogan employees had used for years to celebrate the company’s work culture.

    Twitter’s curation team, which was responsible for “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,” had been axed, employees wrote.

    Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter’s acting head of human rights, tweeted that the entire human rights team at the company had been sacked.

    Another team that focused on research into how Twitter employed machine learning and algorithms, an issue that was a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at Twitter.

    Senior executives including vice president of engineering Arnaud Weber said their goodbyes on Twitter on Friday: “Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I’m proud of what we accomplished.”

    Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is bolstering, were also let go. An employee with the handle “SillyRobin” who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted a previous Musk tweet saying Twitter Blue would include “paywall bypass” for certain publishers.

    “Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this,” the employee said.

    DOORS LOCKED

    Twitter said in its email to staffers that offices would be temporarily closed and badge access suspended “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”

    Offices in London and Dublin appeared deserted on Friday, with no employees in sight. At the London office, any evidence Twitter had once occupied the building was erased.

    A receptionist at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters said a few people had trickled in and were working in the floors above despite the notice to stay away.

    A class action was filed on Thursday against Twitter by several employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

    The lawsuit asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.

    Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California, and Paresh Dave in Oakland, California; Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin, Rusharti Mukherjee, Aditya Kalra, Martin Coulter, Hyunjoo Jin, Supantha Mukherjee and Arriana McLymore; Writing by Matt Scuffham and Katie Paul; Editing by Kenneth Li, Jason Neely, Matthew Lewis and William Mallard

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Paresh Dave

    Thomson Reuters

    San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.

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  • UK’s Sunak reinstates Braverman as interior minister

    UK’s Sunak reinstates Braverman as interior minister

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    LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – British lawmaker Suella Braverman was reappointed as interior minister on Tuesday by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, less than a week after she resigned from the role for breaching government rules.

    Braverman, 42, stepped down a day before former prime minister Liz Truss did after breaching email security rules, also voicing concerns about the direction of Truss’s government in her resignation letter.

    First elected to parliament in 2015, Braverman is regarded as being on the right wing of the governing Conservative Party.

    She supports Britain’s exit from the European Convention on Human Rights as what she calls the only way the country can solve its immigration problems, and says it was her “dream” to see a flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda take off.

    She has said Britain should replace the ECHR with a strengthened British Bill of Rights.

    A committed Brexit supporter, she was appointed as a minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union but resigned in protest at former prime minister Theresa May’s proposed divorce deal.

    After Boris Johnson became leader, she was later appointed Attorney General in 2020, when she was criticised by some lawyers over whether some government policies were legal.

    Reporting by William James, writing by Muvija M and Alistair Smout, editing by Elizabeth Piper

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Liberal U.S. lawmakers withdraw Ukraine letter after blowback

    Liberal U.S. lawmakers withdraw Ukraine letter after blowback

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    WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – A group of liberal U.S. Democrats withdrew a letter to the White House urging a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine, the group’s chairperson, Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal, said on Tuesday, after blowback from within their own party.

    “The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine,” Jayapal said in a statement. She added: “The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting.” read more

    The letter signed by 30 caucus members became public on Monday, leaving some other Democrats feeling blindsided just two weeks before Nov. 8 mid-term elections that will determine which political party controls Congress. And it appeared just as Republicans face concerns that their party might cut back military and humanitarian aid that has helped Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.

    Several members of the Progressive Caucus issued statements expressing support for Ukraine, noting that they had joined other Democrats in voting for billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine.

    Some said they had signed the letter months earlier and that things had changed. “Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t sign it today,” Representative Sara Jacobs said on Twitter.

    Representative Jamie Raskin, who also signed, said in a statement he was glad to learn it had been withdrawn and noted “its unfortunate timing and other flaws.”

    Ukraine’s troops have been waging a successful counteroffensive, with forces advancing into Russian-occupied Kherson province and threatening a major defeat for Moscow.

    [1/2] Ukrainian soldiers drive a captured Russian tank after re-fitting it for use in battle, in Kupiansk region of Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine, October 15, 2022. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

    ‘BLANK CHECK’

    The letter drew immediate pushback, including from within the Progressive Caucus. “Russia doesn’t acknowledge diplomacy, only strength. If we want Ukraine to continue as a free and democratic country that it is, we must support their fight,” Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego, a caucus member, said in a written comment.

    Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, told Punchbowl News in an interview this month that there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine if Republicans take over. That fed speculation that Republicans might stop aid to Kyiv, although many members of the party said that was not their intention.

    In her statement withdrawing the letter, Jayapal said that, because of the timing, the letter was being conflated as being equivalent to McCarthy’s remark.

    “Nothing could be further from the truth. Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory. The letter sent yesterday, although restating that basic principle, has been conflated with GOP opposition to support for the Ukrainians’ just defense of their national sovereignty. As such, it is a distraction at this time and we withdraw the letter,” Jayapal’s statement said.

    State Department spokesperson Ned Price said both Democrats and Republicans support continued assistance for Ukraine and he did not think the letter would put U.S. support into question.

    “In recent days, we’ve heard from Democrats, we’ve heard from Republicans, that they understand the need to continue to stand with Ukraine, to stand for the principles that are at play here,” he told a news briefing.

    Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Cynthia Osterman

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • UK justice secretary Brandon Lewis resigns – statement

    UK justice secretary Brandon Lewis resigns – statement

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    LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – British justice secretary Brandon Lewis resigned on Tuesday following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as prime minister.

    “The new PM will have my support from the back benches to tackle the many challenges we face – as a party and as a country,” Lewis said on Twitter.

    Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar, writing by William James

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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