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'Forbidden city' tells Germany's complex military history

Werner Borchert grinds out a cigarette with his leather boot, zips up his down jacket and unlocks a rusty door with a sign reading "Do not enter." He's entering anyway.

Borchert is stepping into the heart of the forbidden city, a huge abandoned military complex hidden inside a fenced-off pine forest in eastern Germany.

"The Kaiser, Hitler, the Soviets — all of them were militarily active here, one after the other," says Borchert, 67, a guide offering tours of the "Haus der Offiziere," or officers' complex in the Wuensdorf neighborhood of Zossen, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Berlin. He flicks a light switch in the darkness to turn on the cold, fluorescent lamps that light up seemingly endless hallways with numerous rooms branching off to the left and right.

The complex, inaugurated in 1916, has housed the military of German Kaiser Wilhelm II, served as the Nazis' military command center during World War II — and then headquartered the Soviets' military high command for East Germany during the Cold War.

"This was 'Little Moscow' on German ground," Borchert, who grew up in the area, said during a recent tour. There was a theater, a museum, shopping facilities, a swimming pool and many barracks for the about 40,000 soldiers who were stationed here.

"It was the cultural center for the Soviet Army in Germany," he said.

In 1994, several years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the last Russian soldiers left the compound, a six-square-kilometer (2.3-square-mile) area enclosed by a 17-kilometer (10.5-mile) -long concrete wall.

The complex is now under the auspices of the state of Brandenburg, but no money has been invested and no new owner has been found. The ravages of time have taken its toll. The faded yellow plastering is flaking off the facade, windows are broken, a fuse box dangles off a wall, and wild animals such as martens have left trails of excrement on the dusty floors.

The forbidden city got its name during Soviet times because German locals were rarely allowed in. Today's it's mostly off-limits for the public, though tours can be booked with Borchert's group.

Some of the vacated rooms inside the three-story officers' complex recall the glory years of Soviet power in East Germany.

One pale mural aggrandizes communism, showing a powerful hydro-electric power station and muscular workers on tractors. Outside the main building entrance gate, there's still an oversized statue of the Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.

Some 20,000 visitors come to Wuensdorf every year to check out the town's military history. Aside from the forbidden city, the area also still has traces of the Nazis' Third Reich reign — including an elaborate and secretive system of bunkers.

Known as Maybach I and Maybach II, the Nazis built the fake country houses out of concrete that were supposed to disguise underground bunkers that housed the military and army high commands, where much of the planning of WWII was developed.

Most of the Maybach complex was destroyed after the end of the war by the Soviets, but the huge underground bunker known as Zeppelin, which served as a communication hub, is still accessible.

It's also home to several above-ground air-raid bunkers known as Spitzbunker, which were rarely used but were a draw to the area for military buffs.

"This was already secretive during the Nazi times. People who lived here of course knew that it was somehow related to the military, but they didn't know the details," said Sylvia Rademacher, another tour guide, referring to the Zeppelin bunker.

"Under Russian times this was just as secretive or, one could say, exterritorial — the German territory ended at the walls," she said, adding that the Soviets, too, used the bunker for communication purposes during the Cold War.

Reflecting on what Wuensdorf's military history means to her personally, Rademacher paused for a moment looking at the destroyed Maybach bunkers and said, "For me it's a memorial, a warning that one has to teach young people that all of this shall not happen again."

Source: Fox News World

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Ammonia leak in Chicago suburb sends 37 to hospitals, including firefighters, law enforcement responders

Seven people are in critical condition and several more were hospitalized after a gas leak in a northern Chicago suburb early Thursday morning caused a toxic cloud to linger for several hours, officials said.

A tractor towing two, two-ton containers of anhydrous ammonia about 4:30 a.m. sustained a leak in one of the tanks, creating a chemical cloud that lingered over Beach Park, a suburb 40 miles north of Chicago, Lake Forest Fire Chief Mike Gallo said.

Police say about two dozen law enforcement agencies responded to the leak, causing many of them to be hospitalized.

Police and emergency personnel respond to a hazardous materials situation that blocked off roads and closed schools in Beach Park, Ill., on Thursday, April 25, 2019, (Joe Shuman/Chicago Tribune via AP)

Police and emergency personnel respond to a hazardous materials situation that blocked off roads and closed schools in Beach Park, Ill., on Thursday, April 25, 2019, (Joe Shuman/Chicago Tribune via AP)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anhydrous ammonia is a colorless gas that can cause breathing difficulties, burns, blisters and is fatal if breathed in high concentrations. Farmers use it to add nitrogen to soil.

Thirty-seven people were hospitalized after the leak, many suffering breathing problems. Eleven firefighters were among those sent to the hospital and one was listed in critical but stable condition, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

Three law enforcement officers were in good condition and several others were in serious but stable condition.

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Authorities have not released what caused the leak but said it was contained within a few hours.

During the leak, residents within a one-mile radius were urged to stay indoors and shut their windows while schools were closed for the day.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy conducts first commercial flight

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the Arabsat 6A communications satellite, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral Florida
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the Arabsat 6A communications satellite, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

April 11, 2019

By Joey Roulette

(Reuters) – The most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission on Thursday from Florida in a key demonstration for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company in the race to grasp lucrative military launch contracts.

The 23-story-tall Heavy, which previously launched Musk’s cherry red Tesla roadster to space in a 2018 debut test flight, blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center carrying its first customer payload.

“T plus 33 seconds into flight, under the power of 5.1 million pounds of thrust, Falcon Heavy is headed to space,” SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said on a livestream.

Roughly three minutes after clearing the pad, Heavy’s two side boosters separated from the core rocket for a synchronized landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 

The middle booster, after pushing the payload into space, returned nearly 10 minutes later for a successful landing on SpaceX’s seafaring drone ship 400 miles (645 km) off the Florida coast. In the 2018 test mission, Heavy’s core booster missed the vessel and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. 

Liftoff with Heavy’s new military-certified Falcon 9 boosters was crucial in the race with Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as Musk’s SpaceX, working to flight-prove its rocket fleet one mission at a time, aims to clinch a third of all U.S. National Security Space missions – coveted military contracts worth billions.

The U.S. Air Force tapped SpaceX in 2018 to launch for $130 million a classified military satellite and in February added three more missions in a $297 million contract. 

Falcon Heavy carried a communications satellite for Saudi-based telecom firm Arabsat, which will beam internet and television services over Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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Leaders of Russia, Estonia sit down for talks

The presidents of Russia and Estonia have sat down for talks at the Kremlin for the first time in nearly a decade.

Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid arrived in Moscow on Thursday to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Putin told Kaljulaid in opening remarks that the lack of high-level contacts between Russia and Estonia is "not a normal situation" and said that both countries have a lot of issues in common, including environment issues surrounding the Baltic Sea and security.

Estonia, which borders Russia's northwest and is home to a large Russian-speaking minority, was spooked by Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Estonia has since hosted scores of NATO military drills, aimed to deterring potential Russian aggression.

Source: Fox News World

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Trump Org Scraps Plans for 2 Hotel Chains, Blaming Politics

Trump Org Scraps Plans for 2 Hotel Chains, Blaming Politics

President Donald Trump's company is scrapping plans for two new hotel chains announced two years ago, casting blame in part on a hostile political environment.

The Trump Organization said Thursday that it will no longer try to open hotels under its Scion and American Idea brands catering to budget and mid-priced travelers, a departure from its focus on luxury hotels. The announcement comes as the company has posted losses at a few of its golf properties and brand experts say it has lost some of its appeal.

"We live in a climate where everything will be used against us, whether by the fake news or by Democrats who are only interested in presidential harassment and wasting everyone's time, barraging us with nonsense letters," the president's son, Eric Trump, said in an emailed statement. "We already have the greatest properties in the world and if we have to slow down our growth for the time being, we are happy to do it."

The rollout began with promises of fast success. The company said in March 2017 that nearly two dozen developers had already signed letters of intent to open mid-priced Scion hotels, and was enthusiastic about the future prospects.

"It's full steam ahead," said Eric Danziger, who oversees the hotel business for the family. "It's in our DNA."

But the avalanche of deals never materialized, as was the case for its budget-priced American Idea, which was launched a few months later at a party at the Trump Tower in New York.

The only developer willing to strike a deal was Chawla Hotels of Mississippi. It planned to open as many as four hotels in the state — but now that is off, too.

"In today's politically charged environment," hotel consultant Lee Hunter told The Associated Press recently, "everyone is cautious."

The company is also struggling with some self-imposed restraints on expanding its business.

When Trump became president, he handed day-to-day control of the company to Eric and his other adult son, Donald Jr. He also agreed his company would not pursue new deals abroad and that domestic deals would be vetted by a lawyer hired to make sure they posed no conflicts with Trump's presidency.

"We walked away from billions of dollars' worth of deals and ceased virtually all expansion," said Eric Trump in his statement. "We continue to make tremendous sacrifices and understand the bigger picture more than anyone — our father has the most important and powerful job in the world."

The Trump Organization did not dismiss the possibility that it could revive the new brands someday, perhaps when Trump leaves the presidency.

The end of the rollout follows bad news for the company in other areas.

Charities have canceled events at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, his Scottish clubs lose millions of dollars each year and several buildings have stripped the Trump names off their facades.

The Trump Organization owns or has licensed its name to 17 golf clubs and more than two dozen hotels and residential buildings around the world.

The Trump Organization has also drawn scrutiny in federal probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election and Michael Cohen's campaign finance violations. More recently, it is facing blowback from Democrats in Congress for firing long-time workers at several of its U.S. golf clubs for being in the country illegally, raising doubts about its hiring practices amid the president's vow to crack down on such workers and build a wall to keep more from coming in.

The company has said it had no choice but to fire workers once it discovered they were in the country illegally.

Source: NewsMax America

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CVS Health quarterly revenue rises 12.5 percent

FILE PHOTO: A logo of CVS Health is displayed on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York
FILE PHOTO: A logo of CVS Health is displayed on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., December 5, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

February 20, 2019

(Reuters) – CVS Health Corp reported a 12.5 percent increase in quarterly revenue on Wednesday, driven by strong pharmacy sales and its recent acquisition of health insurer Aetna.

The drugstore chain operator and pharmacy benefits manager booked a net loss of $419 million, or 37 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a net income of $3.29 billion, or $3.22 per share, a year earlier when it benefited from changes to U.S. tax laws.

Revenue rose to $54.42 billion in the quarter from $48.39 billion a year earlier.

(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Source: OANN

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Pregnant college student in Mexico’s Juarez killed by jealous ex-boyfriend as violence surges in border city, cops say

A pregnant college student in the Mexico border city of Juarez was murdered by a jealous ex-boyfriend who slashed her throat and dumped her body in a park — a slaying that prompted protests as homicides continue to rise in the city just across the U.S. border from Texas.

Dana Lizeth Lozano Chavez, a student at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, was found dead after midnight Saturday just hours after she was last seen leaving a cafe near the campus, El Paso Times reported.

Lozano, who was four to six weeks pregnant, was discovered with her throat slashed in Ciudad Juarez, a city across the border from El Paso, Texas. Investigators said the 18-year-old died of "carotid artery laceration."

MEXICAN CARTEL GUNMEN KIDNAP AND BEAT 11 POLICE OFFICERS

Andrés David H.S. was arrested Monday after investigators discovered the former boyfriend asked Lozano to meet him at the park and killed her with a knife, Mexican newspaper Norte reported. The 18-year-old's last name was withheld in accordance with the country's rule on naming suspects. He and Lozano had dated for more than three years before ending the relationship in October. Authorities said he carried out the murder out of jealousy.

Lozano was a literature student and described as a “brilliant person” with a “tireless curiosity and a sense of humor infectious with freshness and irreverence.”

MEXICO’S TOP SECURITY OFFICIAL CROSSED ILLEGALLY INTO US TWICE IN HIS YOUTH LOOKING FOR WORK

"She was a brilliant person," university professor Ricardo Vigueras wrote in a Facebook post. "She participated in class with always intelligent comments, a tireless curiosity and a sense of humor infectious with freshness and irreverence. She was one of those students who made your job easy."

Lozano’s death sparked protests and prompted the university to cancel classes for four days to hold sessions on gender and safety issues. Several students called on the school to hold self-defense workshop for women and raise awareness on violence in Juarez, which has seen more than 350 homicides so far this year, El Paso Times reported.

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More than 25 women were among those murdered.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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The Wider Image: China's start-ups go small in age of 'shoebox' satellites
LinkSpace’s reusable rocket RLV-T5, also known as NewLine Baby, is carried to a vacant plot of land for a test launch in Longkou, Shandong province, China, April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 26, 2019

By Ryan Woo

LONGKOU, China (Reuters) – During initial tests of their 8.1-metre (27-foot) tall reusable rocket, Chinese engineers from LinkSpace, a start-up led by China’s youngest space entrepreneur, used a Kevlar tether to ensure its safe return. Just in case.

But when the Beijing-based company’s prototype, called NewLine Baby, successfully took off and landed last week for the second time in two months, no tether was needed.

The 1.5-tonne rocket hovered 40 meters above the ground before descending back to its concrete launch pad after 30 seconds, to the relief of 26-year-old chief executive Hu Zhenyu and his engineers – one of whom cartwheeled his way to the launch pad in delight.

LinkSpace, one of China’s 15-plus private rocket manufacturers, sees these short hops as the first steps towards a new business model: sending tiny, inexpensive satellites into orbit at affordable prices.

Demand for these so-called nanosatellites – which weigh less than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and are in some cases as small as a shoebox – is expected to explode in the next few years. And China’s rocket entrepreneurs reckon there is no better place to develop inexpensive launch vehicles than their home country.

“For suborbital clients, their focus will be on scientific research and some commercial uses. After entering orbit, the near-term focus (of clients) will certainly be on satellites,” Hu said.

In the near term, China envisions massive constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft to tracking coal shipments. Universities conducting experiments and companies looking to offer remote-sensing and communication services are among the potential domestic customers for nanosatellites.

A handful of U.S. small-rocket companies are also developing launchers ahead of the expected boom. One of the biggest, Rocket Lab, has already put 25 satellites in orbit.

No private company in China has done that yet. Since October, two – LandSpace and OneSpace – have tried but failed, illustrating the difficulties facing space start-ups everywhere.

The Chinese companies are approaching inexpensive launches in different ways. Some, like OneSpace, are designing cheap, disposable boosters. LinkSpace’s Hu aspires to build reusable rockets that return to Earth after delivering their payload, much like the Falcon 9 rockets of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“If you’re a small company and you can only build a very, very small rocket because that’s all you have money for, then your profit margins are going to be narrower,” said Macro Caceres, analyst at U.S. aerospace consultancy Teal Group.

“But if you can take that small rocket and make it reusable, and you can launch it once a week, four times a month, 50 times a year, then with more volume, your profit increases,” Caceres added.

Eventually LinkSpace hopes to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.48 million) per launch, Hu told Reuters.

That is a fraction of the $25 million to $30 million needed for a launch on a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus, a commonly used small rocket. The Pegasus is launched from a high-flying aircraft and is not reusable.

(Click https://reut.rs/2UVBjKs to see a picture package of China’s rocket start-ups. Click https://tmsnrt.rs/2GIy9Bc for an interactive look at the nascent industry.)

NEED FOR CASH

LinkSpace plans to conduct suborbital launch tests using a bigger recoverable rocket in the first half of 2020, reaching altitudes of at least 100 kilometers, then an orbital launch in 2021, Hu told Reuters.

The company is in its third round of fundraising and wants to raise up to 100 million yuan, Hu said. It had secured tens of millions of yuan in previous rounds.

After a surge in fresh funding in 2018, firms like LinkSpace are pushing out prototypes, planning more tests and even proposing operational launches this year.

Last year, equity investment in China’s space start-ups reached 3.57 billion yuan ($533 million), a report by Beijing-based investor FutureAerospace shows, with a burst of financing in late 2018.

That accounted for about 18 percent of global space start-up investments in 2018, a historic high, according to Reuters calculations based on a global estimate by Space Angels. The New York-based venture capital firm said global space start-up investments totaled $2.97 billion last year.

“Costs for rocket companies are relatively high, but as to how much funding they need, be it in the hundreds of millions, or tens of millions, or even just a few million yuan, depends on the company’s stage of development,” said Niu Min, founder of FutureAerospace.

FutureAerospace has invested tens of millions of yuan in LandSpace, based in Beijing.

Like space-launch startups elsewhere in the world, the immediate challenge for Chinese entrepreneurs is developing a safe and reliable rocket.

Proven talent to develop such hardware can be found in China’s state research institutes or the military; the government directly supports private firms by allowing them to launch from military-controlled facilities.

But it’s still a high-risk business, and one unsuccessful launch might kill a company.

“The biggest problem facing all commercial space companies, especially early-stage entrepreneurs, is failure” of an attempted flight, Liang Jianjun, chief executive of rocket company Space Trek, told Reuters. That can affect financing, research, manufacturing and the team’s morale, he added.

Space Trek is planning its first suborbital launch by the end of June and an orbital launch next year, said Liang, who founded the company in late 2017 with three other former military technical officers.

Despite LandSpace’s failed Zhuque-1 orbital launch in October, the Beijing-based firm secured 300 million yuan in additional funding for the development of its Zhuque-2 rocket a month later.

In December, the company started operating China’s first private rocket production facility in Zhejiang province, in anticipation of large-scale manufacturing of its Zhuque-2, which it expects to unveil next year.

STATE COMPETITION

China’s state defense contractors are also trying to get into the low-cost market.

In December, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) successfully launched a low-orbit communication satellite, the first of 156 that CASIC aims to deploy by 2022 to provide more stable broadband connectivity to rural China and eventually developing countries.

The satellite, Hongyun-1, was launched on a rocket supplied by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the nation’s main space contractor.

In early April, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALVT), a subsidiary of CASC, completed engine tests for its Dragon, China’s first rocket meant solely for commercial use, clearing the path for a maiden flight before July.

The Dragon, much bigger than the rockets being developed by private firms, is designed to carry multiple commercial satellites.

At least 35 private Chinese companies are working to produce more satellites.

Spacety, a satellite maker based in southern Hunan province, plans to put 20 satellites in orbit this year, including its first for a foreign client, chief executive Yang Feng told Reuters.

The company has only launched 12 on state-produced rockets since the company started operating in early 2016.

“When it comes to rocket launches, what we care about would be cost, reliability and time,” Yang said.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer holds annual general meeting
Werner Baumann, CEO of German pharmaceutical and chemical maker Bayer AG, attends the annual general shareholders meeting in Bonn, Germany, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

April 26, 2019

By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger

BONN (Reuters) – Bayer shareholders vented their anger over its stock price slump on Friday as litigation risks mount from the German drugmaker’s $63 billion takeover of seed maker Monsanto.

Several large investors said they will not support aspirin investor Bayer’s management in a key vote scheduled for the end of its annual general meeting.

Bayer’s management, led by chief executive Werner Baumann, could see an embarrassing plunge in approval ratings, down from 97 percent at last year’s AGM, which was held shortly before the Monsanto takeover closed in June.

A vote to ratify the board’s actions features prominently at every German AGM. Although it has no bearing on management’s liability, it is seen as a key gauge of shareholder sentiment.

“Due to the continued negative development at Bayer, high legal risks and a massive share price slump, we refuse to ratify the management board and supervisory board’s actions during the business year,” Janne Werning, representing Germany’s Union Investment, a top-20 shareholder, said in prepared remarks.

About 30 billion euros ($34 billion) have been wiped off Bayer’s market value since August, when a U.S. jury found the pesticide and drugs group liable because Monsanto had not warned of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.

Bayer suffered a similar defeat last month and more than 13,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages.

Bayer is appealing or plans to appeal the verdicts.

Deutsche Bank’s asset managing arm DWS said shareholders should have been consulted before the takeover, which was agreed in 2016 and closed in June last year.

“You are pointing out that the lawsuits have not been lost yet. We and our customers, however, have already lost something – money and trust,” Nicolas Huber, head of corporate governance at DWS, said in prepared remarks for the AGM.

He said DWS would abstain from the shareholder vote of confidence in the executive and non-executive boards.

Two people familiar with the situation told Reuters this week that Bayer’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, plans to either abstain from or vote against ratifying the management board’s actions.

Asset management firm Deka, among Bayer’s largest German investors, has also said it would cast a no vote.

Baumann said Bayer’s true value was not reflected in the current share price.

“There’s no way to make this look good. The lawsuits and the first verdicts weigh heavily on our company and it’s a concern for many people,” he said, adding it was the right decision to buy Monsanto and that Bayer was vigorously defending itself.

This month, shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended investors not to give the executive board their seal of approval.

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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Sudan’s military, which ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of protests against his 30-year rule, says it intends to keep the upper hand during the country’s transitional period to civilian rule.

The announcement is expected to raise tensions with the protesters, who demand immediate handover of power.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, which is spearheading the protests, said Friday the crowds will stay in the streets until all their demands are met.

Shams al-Deen al-Kabashi, the spokesman for the military council, said late Thursday that the military will “maintain sovereign powers” while the Cabinet would be in the hands of civilians.

The protesters insist the country should be led by a “civilian sovereign” council with “limited military representation” during the transitional period.

The army toppled and arrested al-Bashir on April 11.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Small toy figures are seen in front of a displayed Huawei and 5G network logo in this illustration picture
FILE PHOTO: Small toy figures are seen in front of a displayed Huawei and 5G network logo in this illustration picture, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

April 26, 2019

By Charlotte Greenfield

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies said Britain’s decision to allow the firm a restricted role in building parts of its next-generation telecoms network was the kind of solution it was hoping for in New Zealand, where it has been blocked from 5G plans.

Britain will ban Huawei from all core parts of 5G network but give it some access to non-core parts, sources have told Reuters, as it seeks a middle way in a bitter U.S.-China dispute stemming from American allegations that Huawei’s equipment could be used by Beijing for espionage.

Washington has also urged its allies to ban Huawei from building 5G networks, even as the Chinese company, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment, has repeatedly said the spying concerns are unfounded.

In New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network that includes the United States, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in November turned down an initial request from local telecommunication firm Spark to include Huawei equipment in its 5G network, but later gave the operator options to mitigate national security concerns.

“The proposed solution in the UK to restrict Huawei from bidding for the core is exactly the type of solution we have been looking at in New Zealand,” Andrew Bowater, deputy CEO of Huawei’s New Zealand arm, said in an emailed statement.

Spark said it has noted the developments in Britain and would raise it with the GCSB.

The reports “suggest the UK is following other European jurisdictions in taking a considered and balanced approach to managing supplier-related security risks in 5G”, Andrew Pirie, Spark’s corporate relations lead, said in an email.

“Our discussions with the GCSB are ongoing and we expect that the UK developments will be a further item of discussion between us,” Pirie added.

New Zealand’s minister for intelligence services, Andrew Little, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday that he would report to parliament the conclusions of a government review of the 5G supply chain once they had been taken.

He added that the disclosure of confidential discussions on the role of Huawei was “unacceptable” and that he could not rule out a criminal investigation into the leak.

The decisions by Britain and Germany to use Huawei gear in non-core parts of 5G network makes it harder to prove Huawei should be kept out of New Zealand telecommunication networks, said Syed Faraz Hasan, an expert in communication engineering and networks at New Zealand’s Massey University

He pointed out Huawei gear was already part of the non-core 4G networks that 5G infrastructure would be built on.

“Unless there is a convincing argument against the Huawei devices … it is difficult to keep them away,” Hasan said.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The logo commodities trader Glencore is pictured in Baar
FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company’s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Glencore shares plunged the most in nearly four months on Friday after news overnight that U.S. regulators were investigating whether the miner broke some rules through “corrupt practices”.

Shares of the FTSE 100 company fell as much as 4.2 percent in early deals, and were down 3.5 percent at 310.25 pence by 0728 GMT.

On Thursday, Glencore said the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether the company and its units have violated some provisions of the Commodity ExchangeAct and/or CFTC Regulations.

(Reporting by Muvija M in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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