2025-11-04 21:59

Nov 4 (Reuters) - Utility Entergy's (ETR.N) , opens new tab unit and pipeline firm Energy Transfer (ET.N) , opens new tab have signed a 20-year agreement to deliver natural gas to North Louisiana, the companies said on Tuesday. The U.S. is poised to see a record surge in power demand this year and in 2026, led by data centers' outsized energy needs, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. Sign up here. The companies said the pipeline would supply gas to Entergy's new plants and serve projects such as Meta's (META.O) , opens new tab data center in Richland Parish. Energy Transfer will initially provide 250,000 million British thermal units (MMBtu) per day of transportation service beginning in February 2028 and continuing through January 2048. The deal also provides an option to Entergy to expand delivery capacity in the region to meet future energy demand. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/entergy-energy-transfer-sign-long-term-natural-gas-transportation-deal-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 21:35

Nov 4 (Reuters) - Ukraine's military said on Tuesday it struck an oil refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow. The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces, in a post on Telegram, said the military had hit the Lukoil refinery in the town of Kstovo. It said the facility provided supplies for the Russian military. Sign up here. The extent of the damage was being assessed, it said. There was no official Russian acknowledgement of the attack, but the governor of Nizhny Novgorod region, Gleb Nikitin, said Russian air defence units had repelled an attack by 20 drones near Kstovo. The Ukrainian General Staff also said Ukrainian drones had caused "considerable damage" at a petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan in central Russia. Regional authorities in Bashkortostan, about 1,500 km (930 miles) from the Ukrainian border, said Ukrainian drones had damaged the Sterlitamak petrochemical plant, but it was still operating. https://www.reuters.com/world/ukrainian-military-says-it-struck-refinery-russias-nizhny-novgorod-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 21:33

WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The United States is providing $24 million in emergency assistance for Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas and Cuba after the countries were hit by Hurricane Melissa last week, the State Department said on Tuesday. The department deployed teams to help with the emergency response and assess humanitarian needs after the Category 5 hurricane sowed widespread devastation, cut off communities and killed at least 50 people across the Caribbean. Sign up here. The Trump administration has now authorized $12 million of assistance for Jamaica, $8.5 million for Haiti and $500,000 for the Bahamas, the State Department said in a statement. "Our teams on the ground have been assessing damage, and we're going to announce additional assistance packages over the coming days as they figure out where best to target it," a senior State Department official said, adding that they expected to announce additional aid for Jamaica and Haiti. Another $3 million was authorized for Cuba and is being distributed with the help of the Catholic Church, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a declaration of humanitarian need for the country and said Washington would seek to deliver aid directly to the country's people. President Donald Trump has taken a hard line toward the communist-run island. His administration said it would enforce a ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba while supporting an economic embargo of the country. The State Department is working with the church to ensure it is able to get access to U.S.-funded supplies to distribute to the people of Cuba, the official said. The Cuban government has not requested assistance from Washington, the official added. "Regardless of what the Cuban regime says, we care about the Cuban people, and we are heartened that so far the Cuban government has not interfered with the provision of assistance," the official said. Hurricane Melissa is the largest natural disaster to hit the region since President Donald Trump's administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year. Disaster response is now managed by the State Department, which has sent Disaster Assistance Response Teams to several countries to coordinate the aid response and deployed specialist Urban Search and Rescue teams to Jamaica. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-provide-24-million-caribbean-countries-hit-by-hurricane-melissa-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 21:19

Nov 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump's Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration's approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts. The order is a victory for the Trump administration, which argued that it had identified issues with the project's environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit. Sign up here. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said that offshore wind farms have no future under Trump, who has repeatedly called them ugly, expensive and harmful to wildlife. The order sends the matter back to Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to revisit its decision as part of Trump's broad review of U.S. offshore wind leasing and permitting. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling in a lawsuit brought by the island town of Nantucket, Massachusetts, earlier this year, challenging the agency's approval of the project. SouthCoast Wind's developer, Ocean Winds, is a joint venture between Portugal's EDP Renewables(EDPR.LS) , opens new tab and France's ENGIE(ENGIE.PA) , opens new tab. In court documents, the company said it had invested $600 million in the project. It argued that a review of its permit would cause delays and jeopardize contracts for equipment and services that are necessary well in advance of construction. In the order, Chutkan wrote that the court was not convinced that the developer was likely to suffer immediate and significant hardship as a result of the reconsideration. Ocean Winds was not immediately available for comment. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-administration-may-reconsider-southcoast-wind-project-approval-judge-rules-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 21:03

43 people confirmed dead in Haiti, 32 in Jamaica Jamaica PM sees $6-7 billion economic hit in early estimate Melissa was among the Atlantic's strongest storms Climate change fuels stronger storms across Caribbean KINGSTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Tuesday said that last week's Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit its shores, caused damage to homes and key infrastructure roughly equivalent to 28% to 32% of last year's gross domestic product. Holness told the Caribbean nation's lower house the $6 billion to $7 billion estimate was conservative, based on damages assessed so far, and short-term economic output could decline by 8% to 13%. Sign up here. Holness warned that costs would push up Jamaica's debt-to-GDP ratio and that his government would activate emergency provisions to temporarily suspend the country's fiscal rules. Holness, whose government set out credit and insurance provisions for a storm similar to last year's Hurricane Beryl, said he was seeking financial support from regional allies, development agencies and the private sector. "Experts describe Melissa to be on the very edge of what is physically possible in the Atlantic Ocean, a storm powered by record sea temperatures," he said. "Its force was so immense that seismographs hundreds of miles away registered its passage," he added. "Hurricane Melissa wasn't only a tragedy: It was a warning." Scientists say storms are intensifying faster as a result of greenhouse gas emissions warming ocean surfaces, piling up fuel for seasonal storms. Caribbean leaders have long called for reparations from wealthy heavy-polluting nations in the form of aid or debt relief. Holness pledged to rebuild infrastructure to withstand the worsening impacts of climate change, including moving parts of the electric grid underground. He also waived import taxes for some relief products such as solar panels and Starlink kits. "Every repaired bridge, re-roofed home and rebuilt road must be designed for the storms of tomorrow, not the storms of yesterday," he said. AT LEAST 75 KILLED By Tuesday, Melissa's confirmed death toll climbed to 75, as Haiti's official count climbed to 43 with 13 more missing, adding to the 32 confirmed deaths in Jamaica. Haiti was not directly hit but lashed with days of rain that flooded rivers. In one Haitian town, 25 died including 10 children. Nearly 12,000 homes were flooded, roads left impassible and communities lost access to drinking water. Both countries expect the number to climb as more bodies are recovered. Holness said more than 30 Jamaican communities likely remained cut off by damages to roads and bridges. He said response efforts were hampered by shortages in helicopters, social workers, doctors and engineers, and that this underlined the need to carefully plan ahead for future storms. Cuban authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people last week as Melissa landed near its second-largest city, Santiago. They reported no deaths, but extensive damage to homes, crops and infrastructure. Experts at U.S. forecaster AccuWeather estimated damages across the Caribbean of $48 to $52 billion. Data analytics firm Verisk estimated $2.2 billion to $4.2 billion in insured losses in Jamaica, a nation roughly the size of Connecticut. Melissa slammed into Jamaica's agricultural heartlands already battered by last year's Hurricane Beryl, which lawmakers said could push up the prices of food. It also tore through parts of the nation's key tourism corridor. Lawmakers said thousands of tourism workers were out of a job. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/hurricane-melissa-cost-jamaica-around-30-gdp-pm-estimates-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 20:42

Trump sowed confusion with Truth Social post threatening SNAP benefits White House says the administration is complying with court order to issue partial benefits Cities and nonprofits ask court to force Trump to issue full benefits Nov 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump created confusion on Tuesday when he said that food assistance aid for millions of Americans will be given out only when the federal government shutdown ends, as lawyers for cities and nonprofits urged a federal judge to force the White House to fully fund the benefits. Trump, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, said Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits "will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!" Sign up here. The Republican president's threat to withhold SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans came a day after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would use emergency funding to pay for reduced benefits in November after a judge blocked its plans to suspend payments during the shutdown. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Tuesday press briefing that the administration is fully complying with the court order and that Trump was referring to future SNAP benefits in his post. "The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to understand it's going to take some time to receive this money," Leavitt said. "We are digging into a contingency fund that is supposed to be for emergencies, catastrophes, for war, and the president does not want to have to tap into this fund in the future," she said. The prolonged government shutdown on Tuesday entered its 35th day, matching a record set during Trump's first term for the longest in history, as Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to blame each other for the standoff, which has put SNAP benefits in jeopardy. USDA WARNS OF WEEKS-LONG DELAYS U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island had given the Trump administration the option of either using $5.25 billion in emergency funding to provide partial benefits once it resolved "administrative and clerical burdens" or tapping additional funding to provide SNAP benefits in full in November. The USDA on Monday said that, in light of his ruling, it would use the contingency funding to pay SNAP recipients 50% of their typical allotment. The benefits typically cost $8 billion to $9 billion per month. But the administration declined to tap other funding and said that it could take some states, which administer SNAP on a day-to-day basis, weeks to months to calculate and distribute the unprecedented partial payments. The USDA on Monday issued guidance to states instructing them to immediately calculate the reduced benefits and notify households of the reduction. "This will be a cumbersome process, including revised eligibility systems, State notification procedures, and ultimately, delayed benefits for weeks, but we will help States navigate those challenges," said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a post on X. Lawyers for the cities and nonprofits at the liberal legal group Democracy Forward in a motion on Tuesday , opens new tab told McConnell that the USDA's statement about delays demonstrated that the administration had failed to resolve the "burdens" entailed by making only partial benefits available. "Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger," the lawyers wrote. They urged McConnell, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, to force the administration to release funding in its entirety for November SNAP benefits. McConnell scheduled a Thursday hearing to consider the request. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-snap-benefits-begin-only-when-us-government-opens-2025-11-04/