World News

By Steve Scherer

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada is suspending random COVID-19 testing at all its airports for the rest of June to ease the long wait times that travelers have encountered in recent weeks, a government statement said on Friday.

The random testing will be discontinued from Saturday and will resume “off-site” on July 1, the statement said.

Random testing was blamed by some industry officials for lengthening already long wait times at airports. Toronto’s Pearson airport has had planes stuck at gates and hours-long security lines because of staffing shortages.

The government “recognizes the impact that significant wait times at some Canadian airports are having on travelers,” the statement said, adding that it would continue to “implement solutions to reduce delays as we approach the summer peak season.”

Reuters previously reported the testing suspension, citing a government source.

The country’s largest carrier Air Canada canceled almost 10% of flights from Pearson during the first week of June, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

Suzanne Acton-Gervais, interim president of the National Airlines Council of Canada (NACC) which represents Air Canada and privately held WestJet Airlines, said the move “will improve conditions at Canada’s airports and reduce complexity for travelers.”

Officials at Pearson had no immediate comment.

Airlines around the globe that faced a travel slump during the pandemic have been counting on a strong summer. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) has hired 865 screening officers since April to help manage an increase in travelers.

Canada’s opposition Conservative Party has said Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been slow to act to remedy airport congestion.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal;Editing by Chris Reese and Grant McCool)

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(Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda accused each other of firing rockets across their shared border on Friday, including a strike that killed two Congolese children, a spokesperson for the Congolese army said.

The alleged attacks are part of an escalating dispute between the Central African neighbours linked to a fresh offensive by the M23 rebel group that Congo accuses Rwanda of supporting.

The spokesman for the Congolese Army in the eastern North Kivu province said troops had been battling M23 rebels in a mountain area close to the border with Rwanda and Uganda, when five rockets fired from Rwanda landed in Congolese territory away from the area of fighting.

“We recorded two children killed and one seriously wounded and also a school which was thoroughly damaged,” spokesperson Guillaume Ndjike Kaiko said.

Reuters could not independently verify the report. The Rwandan authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Rwandan Defence Ministry meanwhile accused Congolese forces of firing two 122mm calibre rockets into Rwanda from the Bunagana area, where they were fighting M23 rebels.

“There were no casualties but the local population is terrified,” it said in a statement.

Kaiko denied the accusation and said Congolese forces had not been using rockets of that calibre in the area.

The dispute centres on Congo’s accusation that Rwanda is actively supporting M23, which has been waging its most sustained offensive in Congo’s eastern borderlands since capturing vast swathes of territory in 2012-2013.

Rwanda denies this and in turn accuses Congo of fighting alongside the FDLR, an armed group run by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide.

It has accused Congolese forces of firing rockets across the border in two previous incidents in March and May.

(Reporting by Djaffar Al Katanty; Additional reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana in Kigali; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank may soon get a taste of the military rule that Palestinians have been living under for 55 years.

If Israel’s parliament does not act, a special legal status accorded to the settlers will expire at the end of the month, with wide-ranging consequences. Lawyers who live in the settlements, including two members of Israel’s Supreme Court, will no longer be allowed to practice law. Settlers would be subject to military courts usually reserved for Palestinians and would lose access to some public services.

While few expect things to reach that point, the looming deadline has put Israel’s government on the brink of collapse and drawn dire warnings.

“Without this law, it would be a disaster,” said Israel Ganz, governor of the Benyamin Regional Council, a cluster of settlements just outside Jerusalem. “The Israeli government will lose any control here. No police, no taxes.”

For over half a century, Israel has repeatedly renewed regulations that today extend a legal umbrella to nearly 500,000 settlers — but not to the more than 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank. After failing to pass on Monday, the bill will be brought for another vote in the Knesset next week in a last-ditch effort to save the governing coalition — and the legal arrangement.

The law underpins separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank, a situation that three major human rights groups say amounts to apartheid. Israel rejects that allegation as an attack on its legitimacy.

“This is the piece of legislation that enables apartheid,” said Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which provides legal aid to Palestinians.

“The whole settlement enterprise depends on them enjoying all the rights and benefits of being Israelis even though they are in occupied territory.”

An overwhelming majority in the Knesset support maintaining the separate systems. The main reason the bill didn’t pass was that the nationalist opposition — which strongly supports it — paradoxically refused to vote in favor in an attempt to bring down Israel’s broad-based but fragile coalition government. In a similar vein, anti-settlement lawmakers voted in favor of the legislation to keep the coalition afloat.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built more than 130 settlements there, many of which resemble small towns, with apartment blocks, shopping malls and industrial zones. The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the main part of their future state. Most countries view the settlements as a violation of international law.

Israel refers to the West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, and considers it the heartland of the Jewish people. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett supports settlement expansion and is opposed to Palestinian statehood. Israel officially views the West Bank as disputed territory whose fate is subject to negotiations, which collapsed more than a decade ago.

The emergency regulations, first enacted in 1967 and regularly renewed, extend much of Israeli law to West Bank settlers — but not to the territory itself.

“Applying the law to the territory could be considered as annexing the territory, with all the political consequences that Israel did not want to have,” said Liron Libman, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former top Israeli military prosecutor.

Failure to renew the bill by the end of this month would have far-reaching consequences.

The Israel Bar Association requires lawyers and judges to reside in the country. Without the law’s carve-out, settlers would not be able to practice law in Israeli courts. That would include two Supreme Court justices, one of whom recently upheld an order to forcibly relocate hundreds of Palestinians.

The bill’s lapse could also result in more settlers who run afoul of the law being tried in military courts — something Israel authorities have long tried to reserve for Palestinian suspects.

The settlers could lose their ability to use national health insurance for treatment inside the West Bank, and the ability to update their status in the population registry and get national ID cards — something routinely denied to Palestinians.

The law also provides a legal basis for Israel to jail thousands of Palestinians who have been convicted by military courts in prisons inside Israel, despite international law prohibiting the transfer of prisoners out of occupied territory. The law’s lapse could force Israel to move those prisoners back to the West Bank, where there is currently only one Israeli prison.

The various consequences are seen as so catastrophic that many Israelis expect the bill to pass or the government to be replaced. It’s also possible that Israeli authorities, who often bend to the settlers’ demands, will find workarounds to blunt the worst effects.

“I’m not worried,” said Ganz, the settler leader. “It’s like when you owe the bank 1 million dollars, you are worried about it, but when you owe 1 billion, the bank manager is worried.”

Asked if the separate legal systems amount to apartheid, Ganz said: “I agree with you, 100%.”

His preferred solution is that Israel annex what’s known as Area C, the 60% of the West Bank where, under interim peace accords, Israel already exercises complete control. Area C includes the settlements, as well as rural areas that are home to some 300,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N.

Most Palestinians live in Areas A and B — scattered, disconnected population centers where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule.

“It’s strange that different populations in the same area have different laws,” Ganz said. “So we have to bring Israeli law to everyone here in Area C.”

Two years ago, Israel’s then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu flirted with annexation before putting it on hold as part of an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to normalize relations.

The Palestinians, and much of the international community, view annexation as a violation of international law that would deal a fatal blow to any hope for a two-state solution, still widely seen internationally as the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu, now opposition leader, and his allies strongly support the West Bank bill but hope its defeat will speed his return to power. The coalition cannot pass it on its own because a handful of lawmakers — mainly Palestinian citizens of Israel — refuse to vote for it.

The law may have been designed with an eventual partition in mind. But many Palestinians see its longevity as proof that Israel was never serious about a two-state solution.

“They could have easily undone the occupation by just not passing this law, time and again,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and former adviser to the Palestinian Authority. “It gets passed by the left and it gets passed by the right. That’s why this idea of two states is such a fiction.”

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Associated Press reporter Alon Bernstein in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds into its fourth month, officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of “war fatigue” could erode the West’s resolve to help the country push back Moscow’s aggression.

The U.S. and its allies have given billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine. Europe has taken in millions of people displaced by the war. And there has been unprecedent unity in post-World War II Europe in imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin and his country.

But as the shock of the Feb. 24 invasion subsides, analysts say the Kremlin could exploit a dragged-out, entrenched conflict and possible waning interest among Western powers that might lead to pressuring Ukraine into a settlement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy already has chafed at Western suggestions he should accept some sort of compromise. Ukraine, he said, would decide its own terms for peace.

“The fatigue is growing, people want some kind of outcome (that is beneficial) for themselves, and we want (another) outcome for ourselves,” he said.

An Italian peace proposal was dismissed, and French President Emmanuel Macron was met with an angry backlash after he was quoted as saying that although Putin’s invasion was a “historic error,” world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia, so when the fighting stops, we can build a way out together via diplomatic paths.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said such talk “can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.”

Even a remark by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Ukraine should consider territorial concessions drew a retort from Zelenskyy that it was tantamount to European powers in 1938 letting Nazi Germany claim parts of Czechoslovakia to curb Adolf Hitler’s aggression.

Kyiv wants to push Russia out of the newly captured areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as retaking Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and parts of the Donbas under control of Kremlin-backed separatists for the past eight years.

Every month of the war is costing Ukraine $5 billion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, political analyst with the Penta Center think tank, and that “makes Kyiv dependent on the consolidated position of the Western countries.”

Ukraine will need even more advanced weaponry to secure victory, along with Western determination to keep up the economic pain on Russia to weaken Moscow.

“It is obvious that Russia is determined to wear down the West and is now building its strategy on the assumption that Western countries will get tired and gradually begin to change their militant rhetoric to a more accommodating one,” Fesenko said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The war still gets prominent coverage in both the United States and Europe, which have been horrified by images of the deaths of Ukrainian civilians in the biggest fighting on the continent since World War II.

The U.S. continues to help Ukraine, with President Joe Biden saying last week that Washington will provide it with advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable it to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield.

In a New York Times essay on May 31, Biden said, “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions.”

Germany, which had faced criticism from Kyiv and elsewhere for perceived hesitancy, has pledged its most modern air defense systems yet.

“There has been nothing like it, even in the Cold War when the Soviet Union appeared most threatening,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

While he doesn’t see a significant erosion in the “emphatic support for Ukraine,” Gould-Davies said “there are hints of different tensions over what the West’s goals should be. Those have not yet been clearly defined.”

Europe’s domestic concerns are nudging their way into the discourse, especially as energy prices and raw materials shortages start to take an economic toll on ordinary people who are facing higher electricity bills, fuel costs and grocery prices.

While European leaders hailed the decision to block 90% of Russian oil exports by the end of the year as “a complete success,” it took four weeks of negotiations and included a concession allowing Hungary, widely seen as the Kremlin’s closest EU ally, to continue imports. Weeks more of political fine-tuning are required.

“It shows that unity in Europe is declining a bit on the Russian invasion,’’ said Matteo Villa, an analyst with the ISPI think tank in Milan. “There is this kind of fatigue setting in among member states on finding new ways to sanction Russia, and clearly within the European Union, there are some countries that are less and less willing to go on with sanctions.’’

Wary of the economic impact of further energy sanctions, the European Commission has signaled it won’t rush to propose fresh restrictive measures targeting Russian gas. EU lawmakers are also appealing for financial aid for citizens hit by heating and fuel price hikes to ensure that public support for Ukraine doesn’t wane.

Italy’s right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, who has been seen as close to Moscow, told foreign journalists this week that Italians are ready to make sacrifices, and that his League supports the sanctions against Russia.

But he indicated that backing is not unlimited, amid signs the trade balance under sanctions has shifted in Moscow’s favor, hurting small business owners in northern Italy who are part of his base.

“Italians are very available to make personal economic sacrifices to support Ukraine’s defense and arrive at a cease-fire,’’ Salvini said.

“What I would not like is to find us back here in September, after three months with the conflict still ongoing. If that is the case, it will be a disaster for Italy. Beyond the deaths, and saving lives, which is the priority, economically, for Italy, if the war goes on, it will be a disaster,” he said.

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Barry reported from Milan. Angela Charlton in Paris, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, and Aya Batrawy in Davos, Switzerland, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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(Adds latest reports from frontline, British defence ministry)

By Pavel Polityuk and Abdelaziz Boumzar

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in intense street fighting and under day and night shelling in Sievierodonetsk, officials said, as Russia pushes to control the bombed-out city, key to its objective of controlling eastern Ukraine.

Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk, on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river, are the last Ukrainian-controlled parts of Luhansk province, which Russia is determined to seize as one of its principal war objectives.

Ukraine’s Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Thursday the situation in Sievierodonetsk was “extremely complicated” and Russian forces were focusing all of their might in the area.

“They don’t spare their people, they’re just sending men like cannon fodder … they are shelling our military day and night,” Danilov told Reuters in an interview.

Ukraine says its only hope to turn the tide in its favour in the small industrial city is more artillery to offset Russia’s massive firepower.

In a rare update from the city, the commander of Ukraine’s Svoboda National Guard Battalion, Petro Kusyk, said Ukrainians were drawing the Russians into street fighting to neutralise their artillery advantage.

“Yesterday was successful for us – we launched a counteroffensive and in some areas we managed to push them back one or two blocks. In others they pushed us back, but just by a building or two,” he said in a televised interview.

But he said his forces were suffering from a “catastrophic” lack of counter-battery artillery to fire back at Russia’s guns, and getting such weapons would transform the battlefield.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

In the south, where Russia is trying to impose its rule on a tract of occupied territory spanning Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had captured new ground in a counter-attack in Kherson province.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an evening address that Ukraine had “some positive developments in the Zaporizhzhia region, where we are succeeding in disrupting the occupiers’ plans”. He did not provide details.

Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson. Russian-installed proxies in both provinces say they are planning referendums to join Russia.

Thousands of people have been killed and millions have fled since Russia launched its “special military operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbour on Feb. 24. Ukraine and its allies call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.

Speaking in Moscow to mark the 350th anniversary of Russian Tsar Peter the Great’s birth, President Vladimir Putin drew a parallel between what he portrayed as their historic quests to win back what he called Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned (what was Russia’s),” Putin said.

‘WE ARE STAYING’

Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said about 10,000 civilians were still trapped in the city – roughly a tenth of its pre-war population.

To the west of Sievierodonetsk, Russia is pushing from the north and south, trying to trap Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, comprising Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province.

Russia shelled more than 20 towns in Donetsk and Luhansk on Thursday, destroying or damaging 49 homes, several manufacturing plants, farm buildings and a rail station, said the Ukraine military. Two civilians were killed, it said.

Russia says it does not target civilians.

“Sabotage groups attempts to infiltrate the area have increased. But we see them and prevent them from entering the area,” said Ivan, a Ukrainian soldier on the frontline in New York, Donetsk.

In Soledar, a salt-mining town near Bakhmut close to the front line, buildings had been blasted into craters.

Remaining residents, mostly elderly, were sheltering in a crowded cellar. Antonina, 65, had ventured out to see her garden. “We are staying. We live here. We were born here,” she sobbed. “When is it all going to end?”

The devastated eastern port of Mariupol, under siege by Russian troops for months until it fell, is now at risk of a major cholera outbreak, Britain’s defence ministry said on Friday.

There is likely a critical shortage of medicines in Kherson, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a Twitter update https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1535130749774479363. Russia is struggling to provide basic public services to the population in Russian-occupied territories, it added.

GRAIN

In the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine, a court sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan who were captured while fighting for Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

Britain condemned the court’s decision as a “sham judgment” with no legitimacy.

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain and food oil exporters, and international attention has focused in recent weeks on the threat of international famine seen as caused by Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

“Millions of people may starve if the Russian blockade of the Black Sea continues,” Zelenskiy said in televised remarks.

Russia blames the food crisis on Western sanctions restricting its own grain exports. It says it is willing to let Ukrainian ports open for exports if Ukraine removes mines and meets other conditions. Ukraine calls such offers empty promises.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Robert Birsel and Kim Coghill)

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By Riham Alkousaa

BAD AROLSEN, Germany (Reuters) -Authorities had yet to establish a motive on Thursday for a 29-year-old German-Armenian man who rammed his car into a group of schoolchildren in Berlin, killing a teacher and leaving another fighting for his life, but said he had no known link to terrorism.

Investigators, with the help of a translator, were trying to make sense of the “at times confused statements he was making” during questioning, Berlin’s mayor, Franziska Giffey, told RBB inforadio, describing a “dark day in the history of Berlin”.

The crash injured around 30 people, including 14 students, seven of whom were severely hurt and rushed to hospital after the car veered onto a pedestrian area of Berlin’s busy shopping district of Charlottenburg, according to police.

Families were in mourning for the teacher who was killed while taking schoolchildren on an end of term trip to the German capital from the small town of Bad Arolsen, in the state of Hesse.

The suspect, who was naturalised as a German citizen in 2015, was previously known to the police in connection with incidents of bodily harm and trespassing, said Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior affairs minister.

Police had searched his home. State prosecutor Sebastian Buechner told reporters, “as part of the searches, medication was found and the man through his lawyers released his doctors from the secrecy obligation… so quite a lot points to paranoid schizophrenia.”

The incident took place near the site of a fatal attack in 2016, when a truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market.

A witness at the scene said the driver had immediately shown remorse when confronted after the crash.

“He was surrounded by five or six men, not detained but surrounded (gestures) so that he couldn’t flee,” Markus Leppmeier said. “He too was injured, he had a laceration on his head, a very large bump and he kept on saying ‘sorry, sorry, I did not want that, sorry.’”

FLOWERS, CANDLES AND HEAVY HEARTS

Residents of Bad Arolsen fought back tears over an incident that brought back memories of an attack in the neighbouring town of Volkmarsen, when a man rammed his car into a carnival parade in 2020, injuring dozens, including 20 children.

“It brings back lots of pictures from Volkmarsen,” said Ellen Schreck, 45, whose son went to the school the group was from. She described the situation as an “absolute horror”.

“It’s usually a quiet little town … you always think you’re in a safe bubble here. But that’s not the case anymore.”

People laid flowers and candles at the Kaulbach school, which was closed on Thursday. Parents and a team from the school have travelled to Berlin to help look after the children.

“We’re all deeply saddened,” said Almut Will-Olivieri, who owns a pizzeria by the school. “The town is simply in shock.”

Of the students who had gone to Berlin, 17 have returned to Hesse, some with their parents and others in a specially organised bus. Along with police, a team of mental health workers was working at the school to give the children support.

“This is a very difficult day for us and we have really heavy hearts,” said the state premier Boris Rhein during a visit to the school.

“It will continue to have an effect for a long time to come.”

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Writing by Matthias Williams and Rachel More; Editing by Robert Birsel, Miranda Murray, Alex Richardson, Alexandra Hudson)

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Bandits on motorcycles killed 32 people and set fire to houses in several villages in the Kajura area of Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state on Sunday, authorities said on Thursday.

Armed gangs are rife across Nigeria’s northwest where they rob or kidnap for ransom, and violence has increasingly spread to other areas.

The attackers hit the villages of Dogon Noma, Ungwan Sarki and Ungwan Maikori, the statement from the state’s ministry of internal security and home affairs said.

“An Air Force helicopter … dispatched to the location, had earlier scanned the first two locations and sighted burnt houses and properties on fire,” it added.

“The helicopter intercepted the bandits at the last location (Ungwan Maikori) and engaged them as they retreated, before the arrival of ground troops.”

At the end of March, bandits blew up a train between the state’s capital, Kaduna, and the national capital Abuja, killing eight passengers, injuring 26 and holding others for ransom.

(Reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja, Writing by Julia Payne, Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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(Reuters) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa suspended the country’s top anti-corruption official to pave way for an inquiry by a parliamentary group into her ability to hold office, the government said on Thursday.

Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, a constitutionally mandated anti-graft official, was appointed in 2016 by Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma. She is seen as allied to Zuma’s faction within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, which is opposed to Ramaphosa’s faction, a claim she has denied.

Her tenure has been marred by allegations she drove an anti-Ramaphosa campaign and she has been widely criticised for losing several high-profile court judgements.

The development comes after the president asked Mkhwebane in March to provide him with reasons not to suspend her, after a parliamentary committee decided to continue with its motion to remove her.

On Wednesday, a statement issued by the Public Protector said Mkhwebane had received unfair criticism and has also been accused by the media and politicians of “targeting” certain members of the executive branch of government and getting involved in party politics.

The South African parliament had in 2020 begun proceedings to oust her amid criticism of her record in office.

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by James Macharia Chege and Chris Reese)

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By Trevor Hunnicutt, Daina Beth Solomon and Matt Spetalnick

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday a proposed new U.S. economic partnership with Latin America aimed at countering China’s growing clout as he kicked off a regional summit marred by discord and snubs over the guest list.

Hosting the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Biden sought to assure the assembled leaders about his administration’s commitment to the region despite nagging concerns that Washington, at times, is still trying to dictate to its poorer southern neighbors.

The line-up of visiting heads of state and government in attendance was thinned down to 21 after Biden excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, prompting Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and several other leaders to stay away in protest.

“We have to invest in making sure our trade is sustainable and responsible in creating supply chains that are more resilient, more secure and more sustainable,” Biden told a gala opening ceremony.

Biden is seeking to present Latin American countries with an alternative to China that calls for increased U.S. economic engagement, including more investment and building on existing trade deals.

However, his “Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity,” which still appears to be a work in progress, stops short of offering tariff relief and, according to a senior administration official, will initially focus on “like-minded partners” that already have U.S. trade accords. Negotiations are expected to begin in early fall, the official added.

Biden outlined his plan as he launched the summit, which was conceived as a platform to showcase U.S. leadership in reviving Latin American economies and tackling record levels of irregular migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But his agenda has been undermined by the partial boycott by leaders upset at Washington’s decision to cut out its main leftist antagonists in the region.

As a result, Biden found himself welcoming a larger-than-normal contingent of foreign ministers sitting in for their national leaders as the arriving dignitaries walked one-by-one up a red carpet flanked by a military honor guard.

U.S. officials hope the summit and a parallel gathering of business executives can pave the way for greater cooperation as governments grappling with higher inflation work to bring supply chains stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic closer to home.

Biden also used his speech to preview a summit declaration on migration to be rolled out on Friday, calling it “a ground-breaking, integrated new approach” with shared responsibility across the hemisphere. But he provided few specifics.

Even as Biden deals with priorities such as mass shootings, high inflation and the Ukraine war, the U.S. official said the president is seeking to press the administration’s competitive goals against China with the launch of the new partnership for the region.

The U.S. plan also proposes to revitalize the Inter-American Development Bank and create clean energy jobs

Still, the administration appeared to be moving cautiously, mindful that an initiative that promotes jobs abroad could face U.S. protectionist pushback.

CHINA’S CHALLENGE

The challenge from China is clearly a major consideration.

China has widened the gap on the United States in trade terms in large parts of Latin America since Biden came into office in January 2021, data show.

An exclusive Reuters analysis of U.N. trade data from 2015-2021 shows that outside of Mexico, the top U.S. trade partner, China has overtaken the United States in Latin America and increased its advantage last year.

“The best antidote to China’s inroads in the region is to ensure that we are forwarding our own affirmative vision for the region economically,” the administration official said.

Biden’s aides have framed the summit as an opportunity for the United States to reassert its leadership in Latin America after years of comparative neglect under his predecessor Donald Trump.

But diplomatic tensions broke into the open this week when Washington opted not to invite the three countries it says violate human rights and democratic values.

Rebuffed in his demand that all countries must be invited, Lopez Obrador said he would stay away, deflecting attention from the U.S. administration’s goals and toward regional divisions.

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters the choice by some leaders not to attend reflected their own “idiosyncratic decisions” and that substantive work would still be accomplished.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the United States lacked “moral authority” to lecture on democracy and thanked Lopez Obrador for his “solidarity.”

The leaders of Guatemala and Honduras, two of the countries that send most migrants to the United States, also stayed home, raising questions about the significance of the coming joint migration declaration.

Still, leaders from more than 20 countries, including Canada, Brazil and Argentina, are attending the summit, hosted by the United States for the first time since its inaugural session in 1994.

Biden will use a meeting on Thursday with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to talk about climate change and will also discuss the topic of “open, transparent and democratic elections” in Brazil.

Bolsonaro, a populist admirer of Trump who has had chilly relations with Biden, has raised doubts about Brazil’s voting system, without providing evidence, ahead of October elections that opinion polls show him losing to leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Daina Beth Solomon, Matt Spetalnick, Dave Graham, Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Dave Sherwood; writing by Matt Spetalnick and Dave Graham; Editing by Grant McCool and Richard Pullin)

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Parts of Shanghai began imposing new lockdown restrictions on Thursday, with residents of sprawling Minhang district forced to stay home for two days in a bid to control COVID-19 transmission risks.

Minhang, home to more than 2 million people, will conduct nucleic acid tests for all residents on June 11, and restrictions will be lifted once the testing is completed, the government said on its WeChat account.

Shanghai reported four new confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, all in zones already under quarantine. None of the new cases were in Minhang district.

Shanghai emerged from a two-month city-wide lockdown last week, but some residential compounds have been sealed off again as authorities continue to pursue a “dynamic zero-COVID” policy aimed at shutting down transmission chains as soon as possible.

Several street-level government authorities have issued notices saying residents will be subject to two days of confinement and another 12 days of rigorous testing starting from Thursday.

According to notices from at least three neighbourhoods in Shanghai, residents will be subject to five rounds of compulsory tests ending on June 23, and will be kept indoors until Saturday.

Zhao Dandan, the vice-head of Shanghai’s health commission, told a briefing on Tuesday that the city would continue to implement restrictions even in areas that had not been identified as “high risk”.

“Based on the assessment of the epidemic prevention and control trends, related measures will be adjusted dynamically,” he said. “We hope the public will continue to understand and cooperate.”

The restrictions have triggered protests among residents, and business groups have also said the ongoing preoccupation with “zero-COVID” could lead foreign companies to reconsider their presence in Shanghai.

“One of the major issues facing foreign business is the level of uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 restrictions,” said Alexandra Hirst, senior policy analyst with the British Chamber of Commerce in China.

“This unpredictability, and increased risk, is resulting in many businesses delaying, reducing or withdrawing entirely from the Chinese market,” she said.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Martin Pollard in Beijing; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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