It's a bird; it's a plane; it's Ultra-N Man!

Our desktop dictionary defines an ultranationalist as: one who has extreme devotion to or advocacy of the interests of a nation, especially regardless of the effect on any other nations.
  
This is how Reuters correspondents systematically characterize Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman (when they are not referring to him as "fiery").  It is, of course, a form of name calling, a well-worn propaganda device intended to slap down a public figure with a cheap label and thus elicit a negative emotional reaction to that person from an unsuspecting audience.

Jerusalem Bureau Editor-in-Charge Jeffrey Heller continues the Reuters tradition in a story about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to comments made by Lieberman regarding Israel's relations with Turkey and prospects for a peace deal with the Palestinian Arabs:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to keep his coalition intact before a vote this week on Israel's budget, has opted to play the diplomat in a flare-up with his fiery foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
Commentators accused Netanyahu of kowtowing to the ultranationalist Lieberman at the expense of Israel's international image, but agreed a coalition crisis had been averted for now and predicted the budget would pass.
In blunt public remarks on Sunday, Lieberman said Israel would not apologize to Turkey over the killing of nine Turks by Israeli commandos during a raid on a Turkish ship trying to break a Gaza blockade in May.
Pouring scorn on the stalled peace process with the Palestinians, Lieberman told a meeting of Israeli diplomats a permanent peace agreement was impossible and the best option would be "Plan B," a long-term interim accord.
The comments seemed at odds with Netanyahu's stated desire to patch up relations with Turkey and U.S. efforts to keep alive a peace effort that has foundered on his refusal to extend a partial freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

Note how Heller attempts to shift responsibility for his own editorializing with a reference to anonymous "commentators" allegedly doing the name calling, a violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism.  Heller then editorializes further, characterizing Lieberman's suggestion for an alternative interim accord with the Palestinians as "pouring scorn on the stalled peace process".  We've not seen Heller employ similar language to describe recent talk by Palestinian leaders of their "Plan B".

Heller blames Netanyahu, and by implication, Israel, for the failure of peace talks by pointing to the expired ten-month building moratorium for Jews in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") when it was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who filibustered on negotiations for over nine months and walked away entirely when the moratorium ended in September.

Only in the Orwellian realm of Reuters Jerusalem Bureau can Palestinians like Abbas, Saeb Erekat, and Nasser Al Kidwa, who demonstrate the most uncompromising positions on national rights, be caressed as political "moderates" and "pragmatists" while Israelis like Lieberman are blackened with the "ultranationalist" tag.

"Nearly 500,000 Jews live on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war"

The above quote is from a Reuters story written by Mohammed Assadi and Ori Lewis.  We cite it because it is typical of the many propaganda mantras Reuters correspondents embed in their stories to portray Jews in a negative light and advance Palestinian Arab interests.

While it is true that approximately 500,000 Jews live in the eastern portion of Jerusalem and the last unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, in its relentless effort to persuade its audience that Jews are interlopers and colonizers of Arab land, Reuters employs the language of conquest to "explain" how the Jews got to living there.  Per Reuters' vision you see, there happened to have been a war in 1967 fought by Israel -- against whom and for what reasons, we are never told -- that resulted in Israel capturing land purportedly the property of the Palestinian Arabs and the subsequent illegal influx of 500,000 Jewish settlers to the area.

In none of its stories on the matter, does Reuters inform its readers that Jews had settled the same area over three-thousand five hundred years ago; that Jews built Jerusalem as a sovereign and sacred city; that the area was repeatedly invaded and conquered by other tribes and nation-states with many millions of Jews killed and ethnically cleansed; that despite this long and bloody history, Jews maintained a continuous presence on the land for over three millennium culminating in their constituting a majority of the Jerusalem population by 1840; that both the League of Nations and the United Nations granted Jews the right, under international law, to settle anywhere in Palestine west of the Jordan River; that local Arab mobs ruthlessly sought to prevent Jews from exercising this right by perpetrating regular pogroms and massacres against the Jewish community; that the Arab states invaded the nascent state of Israel in 1947 in a declared war of annihilation successfully conquering the remaining portion of Palestine and the Old City of Jerusalem from whence the Jews were once again ethnically cleansed; and that the Jews only once again, recovered their rights and land in the area following that "1967 war" instigated by the Arabs in yet another attempt to eradicate the state of Israel.

Provided with the historical facts rather than peremptory propaganda, Reuters readers would be much better served and able to understand and assess the Middle East conflict in an informed and non-coercive manner.

Obfuscation

As we have previously noted, Reuters documents the Middle East conflict as if it were a one-sided tennis match.  The Palestinian Arabs launch a rocket or mortar attack on an Israeli village and Reuters frequently fails to cover the story unless and until Israeli forces retaliate.  When the latter occurs, you can be sure that Reuters will be the first wire service out of the gate with full coverage and an unambiguous headline akin to:

Israel bombs Gaza tunnel near Egypt

Now compare the above with the following headline appearing in a story written by Reuters correspondent Douglas Hamilton about a Palestinian rocket exploding within 30 feet of an Israeli kindergarten and nursery schools causing injury to a teenage girl:

Kindergarten near-miss highlights Gaza risks

Note how Hamilton willfully obfuscates the facts, failing to cite either the nature of the incident (a rocket attack) or the perpetrator (Palestinians).  It's not until the 8th paragraph down in his story that Hamilton finally gets around to informing readers that the attack was claimed by the Palestinian group Army of Islam, although even here, Hamilton refuses to use the word "Palestinian".  Indeed, Hamilton immediately follows this apparently inconsequential piece of information identifying the perpetrator with the unsupported and ridiculous assertion that:

Hamas leaders have tried to curb rocket fire at Israel from Gaza in recent years, but smaller groups continue to carry out attacks.

Hamilton has been conducting PR on behalf of the Palestinians for years and here he does the same for the genocidal Hamas.

Finally, note the embedded photo which depicts not the subject of the story, the Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli kindergarten, but the damage resulting from the retaliatory Israeli strike in Gaza.

All in a day's work for the propagandists at Reuters.

Reuters cites Saudi-funded HRW to demonize Israel

As we noted here, Reuters correspondent Ori Lewis follows the company line when it comes to systematic violations of the Reuters Handbook and the use of propaganda devices in an effort to delegitimize Israel.

In his latest project, Lewis trumpets his story with the headline:

Israel deprives Palestinians in West Bank 

Lewis has a nasty habit of asserting claims from NGOs, particularly discredited NGOs, as fact and only later in his stories explaining that these are merely disputed claims.  And the Reuters correspondent apparently never does his own fact-checking on these claims, nor does he provide readers with background material on the NGO making accusations which might otherwise cast doubt on the credibility of the organization behind the claims.

So, we'll do Lewis' job for him.

The NGO cited by Lewis in this story is Human Rights Watch (HRW) which, as we have documented, solicits and receives a portion of its funding from groups and nation-states which are openly hostile to Israel's very existence.  HRWs own founder, Robert L. Bernstein, has condemned the NGO for irrational anti-Israel bias.  HRW directors were last seen objecting to Israel's call for full transparency with respect to their funding sources.

Now let's have a look at the material aspect of HRWs claims against Israel:

"Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements," the New York-based organization said...

... Carroll Bogert, a spokeswoman for the group, said Israel was carrying out "systematic discrimination merely because of (Palestinians') race, ethnicity and national origin, depriving them of electricity, water, schools and access to roads."

These are serious charges which, as a purportedly objective reporter for the largest news agency in the world, Lewis should be investigating rather than simply parroting.  Had he done so, Lewis would have discovered (and presumably reported) that first, Israel is not responsible for providing "basic necessities" to Palestinians living in the "West Bank".  Those Palestinians classified as "refugees" are supported by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) which is funded to the tune of over a billion dollars annually, coming mainly from US and European taxpayers.  Indeed, the Palestinians receive more aid money than any other refugees in the world.  As well, Palestinians not classified as refugees are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and work for their basic necessities, as do Israelis.  The government of Israel is not "depriving" anyone.

With respect to infrastructure like electricity and water, Israel has spent billions of dollars since 1967 building and supplying electrical power and clean drinking water to both Jewish and Arab communities in the territory.  That HRW cites a single Arab village with 150 denizens which cannot apparently get connected to the electrical grid (for security reasons) is hardly evidence of, "systematic discrimination... because of (Palestinians') race, ethnicity and national origin", which after all, is the same as that of millions of other Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank who are connected to the power grid.

Reuters relocates capital of Israel

On AlertNet, "the world's humanitarian news site", Reuters provides news along with free and unfettered story publication rights for hundreds of NGOs, many of which are partisan and heavily politicized.  Today, we noticed that the Reuters AlertNet website has recently undergone a face-lift and on the profile page for Israel, we learn that the capital of the country is... wait for it... Tel Aviv.

Related country profile

Israel  
Capital:Tel Aviv
Currency:Shekel (ILS)
Time zone:GMT +2

Of course, Israel's capital city is not Tel Aviv, but Jerusalem.

Perhaps Reuters Jerusalem Bureau is actually in Tel Aviv as well.

UPDATE DECEMBER 16, 2010: Reuters has had a sudden change in heart and Israel's capital is now indicated as "in dispute".

Word has it that Reuters considers Israel's existence as falling into the same category.

Police brutality!

Reuters often accompanies its stories on the Middle East conflict with video footage, carefully edited and narrated to influence its audience to adopt the news agency's political views.  Then again, Reuters sometimes misses the opportunity to provide exemplary video when it might otherwise distract from the agency's biased messaging.  Take for example, this story by Reuters correspondent Jihan Abdalla on Palestinian Arab children throwing rocks at Jews driving through the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem.  Abdalla reports that:

Seemingly heedless of the risk they pose their targets and themselves, the youngsters also goad local Israeli security forces determined to keep order...

There are no flags, posters or political slogans in these encounters, but a lot of youthful bravado suggesting that even juveniles feel they must confront "the occupying power."...

In October, tensions spiked again after a Silwan settler leader -- who later said he had simply panicked -- drove his car right into a group of rock-throwing boys, knocking one over.

What Abdalla doesn't tell her readers, is that in many cases, these "youngsters" are being groomed and directed to engage in rock-throwing by adults, often members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.  And that reporters and photographers are being invited to record the incidents so as to provide propaganda fodder for the Palestinians.  Have a look at this independent documentary video of the incident Abdalla describes above:



Abdalla then attempts to make the case (with lots of help from B'Tselem) that Israeli police are being too tough on Palestinian minors by detaining and handcuffing them following such incidents.  Afforded video evidence however, Reuters' audience might come away with a somewhat different view.

Parroting lies

In an Op-ed "Analysis" on the latest failure in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, Reuters curly-haired perfume peddler, Crispian Balmer uncritically quotes former Yasser Arafat propaganda minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo on the failure of the United States to broker a deal between the warring parties:

If the United States could not get Israel to halt settlement "for a limited period," how would it be able "to make Israel accept a balanced solution on the foundation of international resolutions and the two-state solution?," he asked.

But of course, the US did get Israel to formally halt settlement building in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") for ten months and, on a de facto basis, for the same ten months in Jerusalem as well.  The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, refused to enter into negotiations with Israel based on that unilateral and unprecedented concession until three weeks remained in the moratorium.

How about the notion then, that Israel has failed to "accept a balanced solution on the foundation of international resolutions and the two-state solution"?

Well, let's see...

Israel's Prime Minister accepted the internationally-sanctioned "two-state solution" in June of 2009.

And Israel has, for over 43 years, repeatedly demonstrated its good faith efforts to comply with international resolutions by withdrawing from captured land and attempting to return captured land while securing for itself "territorial integrity and political independence" along with the "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" as stipulated by UNSC Resolution 242.

So Rabbo's statement is false, and Balmer merely parrots when his lede suggests he should be analysing.

Reuters cannot find Sanremo on the map

In addition to being a lovely holiday resort on the Italian Riviera, Sanremo is the spot where Allied Powers of World War I met in 1920 to disposition (not really a verb but apropos here) the territory of the vanquished Ottoman Empire.  The resolution arising from the San Remo conference called for the recognition of sovereign states of Syria and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and a Jewish national home in Palestine.  It mandated that:

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

The San Remo resolution became international law on July 24, 1922 when it was adopted by the League of Nations and subsequently grandfathered across to the League's successor, the United Nations. 

In 1947, the British abandoned their responsibility as Administrator of the Palestine Mandate and the UN recommended partition of the remaining land (78 percent had already been given away to the Hashemite Arabs) between Jews and Arabs living west of the Jordan River.  The Arabs violently rejected partition and the rest, as they say, is history.

For Tom Perry and the babes at Reuters however, history only begins in 1967:

Israel has settled the territory extensively since 1967, when it captured and occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The international community for the most part deems the [Jewish] settlements illegal. 

Settler leaders claim a biblical right to the West Bank.

It is undoubtedly true that many Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") feel the 3,500 year history of Jewish civilization and culture in the territory, as documented in both the Bible and the archaeological record, well-qualifies them to live there.  At the end of the day however, it is contemporary international law, embodied in San Remo and still on the books at the United Nations, which guarantees that right.

Every trick in the book

In a story on Israel's announcement of homes to be built in the community of Pisgat Zeev, Reuters correspondent Ori Lewis incorporates a variety of propaganda devices, deceptions, apologetics, racism -- oh, and a libelous information source -- to damn Israel in the minds of readers:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Wednesday revealed plans to build new homes on West Bank land it has annexed as part of its Jerusalem boundaries, a move likely to further hamper any resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Lewis repeatedly violates the Reuters Handbook of Journalism in this piece by referring to the last unallocated portion of the original Palestine Mandate with its Arab-designated term, "West Bank" while failing to balance this with Israel's appellation for the disputed territory, Judea and Samaria.  He then goes a step further by employing the ahistorical and racist term, "Arab East Jerusalem", to describe the eastern portion of the city of Jerusalem abutting the community of Pisgat Zeev.

Lewis then scoffs:

Pisgat Zeev, founded 25 years ago, is one of its largest Jewish "neighbourhoods," as Israel refers to it, with some 50,000 inhabitants.

because Israel doesn't accept Reuters' utterly bizarre view that a community of 50,000 people living on land adjoining Jerusalem, an area the archeological record shows was a producer of wine and oil for use in the Jewish Temple in the city, is anything other than, (gracious!), a neighborhood.

Lewis continues:

Israel has insisted that building in the urban areas it annexed to Jerusalem following their capture in a 1967 Middle East war were never included in the freeze.

Why cast doubt with use of the heavily biased term "insisted"?  It's a matter of record that Israel's unilateral concession to halt residential building in Judea and Samaria was never going to include communities like Pisgat Zeev.

Of course, Reuters is always happy to cite the ostensibly neutral but in reality, wickedly libelous "rights group" Peace Now to serve up an unsupported allegation:

A spokeswoman for the Israeli rights group Peace Now, which monitors Jewish settlement building, has estimated that settlers hold some 13,000 construction permits throughout the West Bank issued before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the 10-month freeze a year ago.

And as we noted in our post just below, somehow, someway, Israel is always to blame for the Palestinian failure to make peace:

Netanyahu announced the freeze to coax Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into direct talks but these ground to a halt after Israel refused to extend it despite diplomatic pressure from its main U.S. ally.

No mention that it took nine and a half months of the ten-month freeze for Abbas to finally agree to come into the negotiating tent and only two weeks later for him to pack up the tent.

Fisher-Ilan: Israel always to blame

Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan is always certain of two things: 1) astrology holds the key to her future, and 2) Israel is to blame for Palestinian intransigence.

Absent a crystal ball, we cannot confirm or deny #1 above but it is child's play to demonstrate the fatuousness of #2.  Here's Fisher-Ilan in a transparent bid to make Israel the scapegoat for the breakdown in negotiations with the Palestinians:

The negotiations which President Barack Obama said at their launch were destined to reach a final peace deal within a year, faltered when a temporary Israeli settlement freeze expired late in September and Israel refused to renew it.

No.  Negotiations faltered when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to continue with them after squandering nine and a half months of the ten-month settlement freeze originally conceded by Israel.

For Fisher-Ilan, the facts on Israel's side are always mere "accusations":

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from a pro-settler ruling coalition to reject another freeze, has accused the Palestinians of setting preconditions for peace talks, which they had not done in the past.

Hmmm... let's see:

Palestinians had, for years, negotiated with Israel while Jewish building was taking place in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and its capital city Jerusalem.  Check.

Palestinians now refuse to negotiate with Israel unless Jewish building in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and its capital city Jerusalem is quashed.  Check.

Notwithstanding Fisher-Ilan's incessant efforts to infantilize the Palestinians and demonize the Israelis, the facts speak for themselves.

Reuters shocked to the core with revelation that Abbas supported Israel in Gaza War

In the hundreds of stories Reuters has run on the 2008-09 Gaza War between Israel and Hamas, the news agency has always gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its president Mahmoud Abbas from claims that they supported and assisted Israel in its war efforts.  This, despite reports published in the main stream media as long ago as February of 2009 that the PA knew about the impending Israeli attack and indeed, "cooperated with the Israelis in hunting down Hamas commanders":

Hamas officials say their allegation is based on interrogation of suspected [Fatah] collaborators accused of helping to pinpoint Hamas' hideouts and weapons caches for Israeli targeting. The objective, say Hamas officials, was to help Israel decimate the Islamists in the hope of reestablishing Fatah control in Gaza.

Now come the WikiLeaks documents confirming what Time Magazine had reported almost two years ago: that Abbas' Fatah party had both knowledge of, and participated in the Israeli effort to rid Gaza of its Hamas rulers.  Yet, Reuters correspondent Dan Williams is simply shocked to the core with the "news":

But for Abbas to be portrayed as having known in advance about the opening aerial assault, timed for a mid-morning on a Saturday in order to hit the maximum number of Palestinians and Hamas arsenals in Israel's target book, was unprecedented.

Of course, the Palestinian Authority is denying the WikiLeaks disclosure:

"Nobody consulted with us, and that is the truth," chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said. "Israel doesn't consult before going to war," he said.

And one could never doubt the veracity of Saeb Erekat.

Orwellian terms of war

Language is everything to the propagandist.  Symbols are carefully selected and manipulated to deceive and lead the audience to swallow the propagandist's message.  No contrary message is offered or tolerated.

Take for example, Reuters lexicon of war.  Whereas Reuters has a policy strictly proscribing use of the word terrorism except when quoting directly from a source (unless the source is Israeli, in which case Reuters takes the liberty of censoring the quote), the agency has no compunction adopting Arab rhetoric intended to conceal and sanitize their genocidal mission and methods:

Armed struggle has a powerful appeal among the inhabitants of the occupied territory, where the rival Fatah faction has been extending influence since a civil war with Hamas in 2007, [Hamas leader Khaled] Meshaal told a conference in the Syrian capital...

"The resistance is facing huge challenges, especially in the West Bank," Meshaal told a meeting of leading pro-Hamas politicians, writers and thinkers opposed to the U.S.-supervised peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.

"Our inalienable rights are threatened with extinction if the scene in the West Bank does not change by launching the resistance against the Israeli occupation and the settlements," he added...

Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, said only armed resistance would keep the Palestinian cause alive, despite Western aid to Abbas and his forces.

Note how Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis serves as a mouthpiece for Meshaal, citing full, detailed quotes including the use of incongruous language drawn from WWII (resistance) absent quotation marks around that term.  Oweis himself, parrots the term resistance sans inverted commas.

The story contains no explanation of, or reference to the Hamas Charter with its explicit call for the liquidation of Israel and the genocide of all its Jewish inhabitants.  For Oweis, this would undermine his effort to portray the Palestinians as a people simply seeking their national rights and Hamas, their champion.

Racism rampant@Reuters

As we've noted dozens of times, Reuters correspondents have an obvious and odious agenda which manifests relentlessly in their stories on the Middle East conflict.  That agenda is to use the bully pulpit as the largest news agency in the world to advance Palestinian Arab interests by delegitimizing Israel and Jewish claims to the city of Jerusalem and surrounding territory.

Their primary technique in furthering that agenda is propaganda, which Smith (1989) defines as any conscious attempt "to influence the beliefs of an individual or group, guided by a predetermined end and characterized by the systematic use of irrational and often unethical techniques of persuasion".

Central to Reuters' efforts in this respect is to persuade its readers to accept the notion that Jerusalem is, was, and rightfully always should be, an Arab city.  And the most direct way to accomplish this is to hypnotically suggest Arab ownership by employing an epithet, repeatedly, when referring to the city.  As in Arab East Jerusalem.

That term originated following the Israeli-Arab war in 1947-48 and the Arab Legion's ethnic cleansing of the entire Jewish community from the city of Jerusalem.  A community whose ancestors founded the city over three thousand years ago, built its walls, roads, and Temples.  A community that represented the majority religio-ethnic group in the city from at least the 1840s in the modern era.  And a community that was forcefully pushed out, homes gutted, synagogues destroyed, and cemeteries desecrated.  All perpetrated by the Arabs to whom Reuters now attempts to grant ownership of the city.

In repeatedly referring to "Arab East Jerusalem", Reuters correspondents are thus endorsing ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community between 1948 and 1967 (the latter year in which Israel liberated the city following the Six-Day War).  Further, they are engaging in a willful deception -- a racist, willful deception -- to lead readers to believe that the eastern part of Jerusalem is by rights or tradition, exclusively Arab when in fact, this was only the case for a period of 19 years of a history stretching over three millennium. 

Now imagine the public outcry if a Reuters correspondent referred today to Rosewood Florida as "Caucasiantown"or identified Tulsa Oklahoma as "White South Tulsa" decades after African-Americans returned to their homes in these cities following violent riots and expulsion in the 20th century.

How long would that correspondent retain his Reuters press credentials?

Reuters assumes its readers are idiots

Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi, whose reporting is accurate less often than a broken clock, trumpets for his audience:

Hamas would honor referendum on peace with Israel

Then again, there is the fine print:

"We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees," [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh said, referring to the year of Middle East war in which Israel captured East Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

As noted on this site many times, there are no 1967 borders.  There are only Armistice Lines drawn in green ink following the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 demarcating the point where the Arab Legion and Israeli forces suspended fighting.   These Armistice Lines allowed Jordan to bifurcate and occupy the city of Jerusalem for 19 years, destroy synagogues, and pave the streets with Jewish headstones until Israel liberated and reunified the city in 1967.  This is what Hamas is accepting.

Haniyeh's statement is valuable however, for what it tells us about Reuters' attitude toward its readers.  Note that despite Reuters attempts ad nauseam, to maintain the fiction of two cities ("East Jerusalem", and presumably "West Jerusalem"), Hamas is more forthright, as well as accurate, in referring to the city it demands for the Palestinian Arab capital as simply "Jerusalem".

No sophistry or condescension here, two of Reuters specialties.