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Schumer Vows to Defund 'Fake' White House Panel on Climate

The U.S. Senate’s top Democrat vowed Tuesday to block the creation of a proposed White House panel of scientists to re-evaluate climate science.

New York Senator Charles Schumer said if the White House moves forward with the plan to create a “fake climate” committee, Democrats will introduce legislation to defund it. However, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hails from the coal state of Kentucky, is unlikely to allow such a bill to come to the Senate floor for a vote.

“It is long past time for President Trump and Republican leaders to admit that climate change is real, that human activity contributes to it, and Congress must take action to counter it,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.

“This is beyond willful ignorance,” Schumer said. “This is intentional, deliberate sowing of disinformation about climate science by our own government.”

Administration officials met Friday to discuss establishing a presidential committee that would assess the consensus of both scientists and the Pentagon that climate change poses a national security threat. No decision to set up the panel was reached during that meeting and additional meetings are expected, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

Source: NewsMax America

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Where’s the cat WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange kept at Ecuadorian embassy in London?

Don’t worry, the cat is feline fine.

Julian Assange was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday after the South American nation revoked the WikiLeaks founder’s political asylum, ending his nearly seven-year stay there. Ecuador accused Assange of “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.”

As Assange was whisked away by British police, questions emerged about the 47-year-old’s feline, known as the “Embassy Cat,” who had been living with Assange since at least May 2016. Assange even created Twitter and Instagram profiles -- both called “Embassy Cat” -- where he had posted updates.

Julian Assange's cat sits behind a window at Ecuador's embassy in London, Britain in February 2018.

Julian Assange's cat sits behind a window at Ecuador's embassy in London, Britain in February 2018. (Reuters)

Turns out, Assange let his beloved pet go in November so he wouldn’t be trapped at the embassy anymore, Italian newspaper La Repubblica previously reported. The “isolation became unbearable” for the embassy cat and Assange allowing the feline to run free will give it “a healthier life.”

It's unclear where the cat is now.

WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE ARRESTED AFTER ECUADOR WITHDRAWS ASYLUM

Ecuador threatened in October to take the cat away if Assange didn’t follow a set of house rules that included cleaning the bathroom and other spaces he and his guests used in the embassy.

“Mr. Julian Assange will be responsible for the well-being, food, cleanliness and proper care of his pet. If due attention is not paid to the pet, the Head of Mission will request Mr. Assange to deliver the pet to another person or an animal shelter outside the Diplomatic Mission,” the memo to Assange stated.

The embassy cat’s social media bio still states, “I live in the Ecuadorian Embassy with Julian Assange : Interested in counter-purrveillance.”

PAMELA ANDERSON BLASTS BRITAIN, US AFTER JULIAN ASSANGE ARREST: 'HOW COULD YOU U.K.?'

Assange was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for aiding Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army analyst, in breaking a password stored on a U.S. Defense Department computer connected to a U.S. government computer network for classified documents and communications, the Justice Department said.

Julian Assange was arrested after Ecuador withdrew his asylum for “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.”

Julian Assange was arrested after Ecuador withdrew his asylum for “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.” (Getty Images)

“During the conspiracy, Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions regarding Manning’s transmission of classified records to Assange,” the Justice Department said. “The discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information.  During an exchange, Manning told Assange that ‘after this upload, that’s all I really have got left.’ To which Assange replied, ‘curious eyes never run dry in my experience.’"

Assange faces a maximum of five years in prison if he’s convicted of the charge.

Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Kinzinger: Order About National Security, Not Immigration

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, after coming off deployment with the Air National Guard to the southern border over the two weeks, said he backs President Donald Trump's emergency declaration, as the situation is not a matter of immigration, but of national security.

"We saw a lot of groups coming across the border illegally, but we also saw a lot of drugs," the Illinois Republican, a pilot and lieutenant colonel who has been flying missions over the Arizona border, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" Monday. "We saw a lot of human trafficking."

The lawmaker said one of his crews pulled in 70 pounds of methamphetamine on its first mission, and that he himself found a woman abandoned in the desert.

Kinzinger said he does agree that the nation's ports of entry are an issue, but he had patrolled an area of Arizona that did not have walls, and the majority of work was done in the state's mountains to look for coyotes and drug mules, and that is the hardest place to put Border Patrol officers.

"Don't let people tell you mountains or rough terrain prevents people from coming over," he said. "The exact people bringing the drugs and human trafficking over that will use that route because they know Border Patrol has just as hard of a time."

Kinzinger said he was upset to learn while leaving the border, that the Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers had quietly pulled all guard troops out of the Tuscon sector.

"He hasn't even announced it because I don't think he has the courage to do it," said Kinzinger.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Young woman obsessed with Columbine is found dead

A Florida teenager who authorities say was obsessed with the Columbine school shooting and may have been planning an attack of her own in Colorado just days ahead of the 20th anniversary was found dead Wednesday in an apparent suicide after a nearly 24-hour manhunt.

Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader said 18-year-old Sol Pais was discovered by the FBI with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The manhunt had led to the closing of Denver-area schools as a precaution, with classes and extracurricular activities canceled for a half-million students.

During the urgent search, the FBI said Pais was "infatuated" with the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School and made threats against the Denver area ahead of Saturday's anniversary of the attack that killed 13 people.

The Miami Beach high school student flew to Colorado on Monday night and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition from a gun shop in Littleton, not far from Columbine, authorities said. The FBI described her as "extremely dangerous."

"We're used to threats, frankly, at Columbine," John McDonald, executive director of security for the Jefferson County school system, said when the manhunt was over. "This one felt different. It was different. It certainly had our attention."

Her body was found off a trail not far from the base of Mount Evans, a popular recreation area about 60 miles southwest of Denver, authorities said.

McDonald described her trip as a "pilgrimage" to Columbine and cited her purchase of the shotgun as one reason officials took her as a serious threat.

"Those two things combined with her fascination of Columbine — that's pretty clear and convincing evidence that she was a threat to the school," he said.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said after receiving word that the hunt was over that he and all Colorado parents are "hugging their children a little tighter."

Authorities said Pais was last seen not far from Columbine — in the Jefferson County foothills outside Denver — in a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots. Police were instructed to detain her for a mental health evaluation.

The sheriff said the sale of the shotgun apparently followed the state's legal process. Out-of-state residents who are at least 18 can legally buy shotguns in Colorado. Gun buyers must provide fingerprints and pass a criminal background check.

In Pais' hometown, Surfside Police Chief Julio Yero asked that the family be given "privacy and a little time to grieve."

"This family contributed greatly to this investigation from the very onset. They provided valuable information that led us to Colorado and a lot of things that assisted in preventing maybe more loss of life," he said.

Pais' parents last saw her on Sunday and reported her missing to Florida authorities on Monday night, Surfside police said.

Authorities gave no details on her threats but said she did not single out a specific school. Columbine and more than 20 other schools outside Denver reacted by locking their doors for nearly three hours Tuesday afternoon, and some canceled evening activities or moved them inside.

Jefferson County school officials said events planned to mark the anniversary this weekend will go on as scheduled, including a ceremony at Columbine on Saturday.

Two teenage gunmen attacked Columbine on April 20, 1999, killing 12 classmates and a teacher before taking their own lives. They have inspired cult-like admirers and motivated other mass shooters over the decades. Since Columbine, a growing "no notoriety" movement has urged news organizations to avoid naming the perpetrators of mass shootings to deprive them of the notoriety they seek.

Adam Charni, a Miami Beach High School senior, said Pais dressed in black and kept mostly to herself. He said he was "baffled" to learn she was the person authorities in Colorado were searching for. Another classmate, 17-year-old Drew Burnstine, described Pais as quiet and smart.

Denver-area parents struggled with how to explain to their children why they had the day off school without scaring them.

"This is definitely a challenge in their generation, and watching my kids learn how to navigate this is really hard. It is really heartbreaking," said Suzanne Kerns, of suburban Arvada, whose children are 8 and 15.

Kerns said she was angry about how easy it was for someone reported missing to come from out of state and buy a gun.

___

Associated Press writers Ellis Rua in Miami Beach, Florida and James Anderson and Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Man who claimed to be missing boy Timmothy Pitzen is held without bond

An Ohio man, accused of falsely presenting himself as long-missing child Timmothy Pitzen, is being held without bond after a Tuesday court appearance.

Brian Rini, 23, could face up to eight years in prison. He's accused of lying to federal agents and attempting to convince them he was the missing Illinois boy. He is set to appear in court again next Tuesday, when a grand jury will hear evidence against him and determine if there is enough probable cause to continue with a trial, according to Sarah Hager of Fox 19.

A judge deemed him a flight risk, as he has multiple active warrants against him, has skipped past court appearances, lacks an identifiable address and is believed to suffer from significant mental health issues, WCPO reported.

Rini appeared, battered, in Newport, Kentucky last week and told police he had been held captive for years at the hands of two men. He was taken to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital to assess his injuries, and to conduct tests to ensure that he was Pitzen, who would be about 14 years old today.

MAN WHO CLAIMED TO BE TIMMOTHY PITZEN CHARGED WITH LYING TO FBI

Rini first refused to allow officers to take his fingerprints, but later agreed to let them sample his DNA. According to reports, he maintained that he was Pitzen until he was shown the results of the DNA test, which identified him as the 23-year-old instead, and revealed that he was recently released from prison and had posed as a juvenile sex trafficking victim twice before.

Rini is said to have admitted he got the idea for a hoax after seeing a story about Pitzen on the ABC show "20/20."

The episode reopened old wounds for the Pitzen family, who have since spoken out about their heartbreak stemming from Timmothy's 2011 disappearance. The boy's aunt, Kara Jacobs, said that the emotional turmoil of learning the man was not Timmothy was "like reliving that day all over again."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Timmothy Pitzen disappeared at the age of 6 after his mother, 43-year-old Amy Fry-Pitzen, committed suicide in May 2011. The boy was last seen with his mother at a waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells, and his mother's body was later discovered in a hotel room in Illinois.

Fry-Pitzen wrote in a note that she left Timmothy with people who would care for him, but that he would never be found.

Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed reporting.

Source: Fox News National

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Roads, boats and elephants: voters gear up for India’s massive general election

An election official displays badges, key chains and mugs to be distributed among the people to encourage them to cast their vote, in Kolkata
FILE PHOTO: An election official displays badges, key chains and mugs to be distributed among the people to encourage them to cast their vote, in Kolkata, India, April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

April 7, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will hold a general election starting April 11 in the world’s largest democratic exercise, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a second straight term.

The election will be conducted in seven phases until May 19 and votes will be counted on May 23.

Here are some facts and figures of the election in the country of 1.3 billion people.

MILLIONS OF VOTERS

Around 900 million people are eligible to vote, which is nearly the combined population of the whole of Europe and Brazil. About 432 million of them are women voters.

In the last Indian election in 2014, there were more than 830 million registered voters. But only about 553 million Indians, or 66 percent of the eligible voters then, came out to vote. There were 8,251 candidates from 464 political parties.

The process is conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI), an autonomous constitutional authority, with a staff of more than 300 full-time officials at its headquarters in New Delhi.

The fight is for 543 of the 545 seats in India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha. The remaining two seats are reserved for the Anglo-Indian community, which traces part of its ancestry to Europeans who intermarried with Indians in the colonial era. These members are nominated by India’s president.

On average, each constituency had 15 candidates during the 2014 election, according to ECI data, with the highest number of hopefuls for one seat recorded at 42.

Of the 8,251 contestants in the last election, only 668 were women.

Modi had the highest winning margin of all candidates, at 570,128 votes from Vadodara in his home state of Gujarat.

BY ROAD, BOAT AND ELEPHANT

The ECI has set up about 1 million polling stations in the country, 10 percent higher than the last election. ECI guidelines say no voter should be more than 2 km away from a polling station.

For such a mammoth exercise, nearly 5 million government officials and security forces were deployed in the last election, traveling by foot, road, special train, helicopter, boat, and sometimes, elephant.

These locations are often in remote areas with few facilities. More than 80,000 stations surveyed by the ECI lacked mobile connectivity, and nearly 20,000 were located in forest or semi-forest areas, according to data released last year.

In the 2009 general election, the ECI set up a polling station in the Gir forest of western Gujarat state, home to Asiatic lions, just for one voter.

The voting takes place in multiple phases, typically taking more than a month to allow officials and security forces to re-deploy, and the counting for all 543 constituencies is done in a single day.

The cost of the entire process in 2014 was 38.7 billion rupees ($552 million), according to ECI estimates.

CONTROVERSY

Although admired for its ability to conduct the polls with few hitches, the ECI came under pressure from opposition parties in recent months for the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs). In 2014, 1.8 million of these were used to conduct the elections.

Opposition groups allege that EVMs – which were first introduced in 1982 – can be tampered with, and want the ECI to extensively use the Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system to cross-check votes.

VVPAT is a device that is attached to an EVM and prints a small slip of paper carrying the symbol, name and serial number of the candidate voted for. This is visible to the voter for a short period, and can be later used by the ECI to verify the votes.

(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Source: OANN

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Zuckerberg’s new ‘privacy-focused vision’ for Facebook is just PR and damage control

Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to rehabilitate Facebook’s image. The CEO announced his new “privacy-focused vision” for the social media platform this week – but it looks more like a PR stunt than anything else.

“Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks,”Zuckerberg wrote. Now, is there anyone who really believes Facebook was built to give people “the freedom to be themselves?”

Zuckerberg does understand, however, why people are questioning Facebook’s newfound commitment to privacy, “…because frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services.” For a company plagued with privacy scandal after privacy scandal, that seems like a bit of an understatement.

Still, reading through Zuckerberg’s grand vision for a new kind of privacy-focused Facebook, we are given the impression that the company is about to completely revamp itself from top to bottom – but the only real concrete change proposed is one that critics are already saying might not enhance privacy that much and isn’t even really motivated by privacy concerns at all.

Essentially, Zuckerberg plans to integrate Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram direct messages to build a kind of single, end-to-end messaging system (which we’ve actually known-about since January). This change is because he now believes “the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.”


Dr. Nick Begich explains how patriots and conservatives must kick down the digital doorway blocking their voice from being heard before it’s too late.

While it’s nice that Zuckerberg has suddenly realized that people value their privacy online, and end-to-end encryption for private conversations is obviously a positive step, his critics aren’t entirely buying the new image. One technology writer described the move as “a power grab disguised as an act of contrition.”

Why? Because the long-winded spiel about the importance of privacy masks the fact that Zuckerberg’s real motivation for combining the three services is to stave off efforts by US and EU regulators to force the unbundling of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and introduce new competition to the market.

Zuckerberg is now firmly on a collision course with regulators around the world. Germany’s antitrust body ruled last month that Facebook was abusing its dominant position in the market by combining the three services. Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote, has been “obsessed” with creating an “intimate environment” for WhatsApp users. But an “intimate” feeling “environment” isn’t really going to cut it. Facebook has already been fined $122 million by the EU for misleading antitrust regulators when it said its WhatsApp acquisition would not mean user information from the two platforms would be combined (which, of course, it was).

Facebook exists primarily to sell advertisements – and its entire business model rests on mining our data to do just that. So while protecting private conversations is a good thing in and of itself, it doesn’t appear that anything else fundamental about Facebook will really be changing. Facebook still has a million other ways to get hold of our data and monitor our online activity – and even with stronger messaging encryption, Facebook can still use metadata to tell who we are talking to and when, which is valuable information in itself.

This wasn’t Zuckerberg’s first effort to redeem himself and do damage control for Facebook and its multiplying privacy scandals – and it certainly won’t be his last. A blog post laying out a blueprint for a “privacy-focused” company that doesn’t actually exist doesn’t mean much. Zuckerberg has been offering apologies left, right and center for the last year.

He doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to keeping his promises, though. Plenty of privacy tools Facebook has promised in the past never came to fruition. Remember that “clear history” button that Zuckerberg promised nearly two years ago and users are still waiting for today?

Anyone who thinks Facebook is really going to put its business model at risk, as it scrambles to shield itself from regulators and maintain its monolithic status is more than likely deluded.

Source: InfoWars

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Joe Biden’s brain surgeon said his former patient is “totally in the clear” as speculation over the candidate’s health — with Biden possibly becoming the oldest president in U.S. history — is likely to become a campaign issue.

The former vice president, who had been perceived by many as the strongest potential contender for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, formally announced his candidacy Thursday.

But Biden’s age – 76 – is expected to become a source of attacks from a younger generation of Democrats not because of obvious generational differences, but possibly for actual health concerns if Biden gets into office.

WHY THE MEDIA ARE CONVINCED JOE BIDEN WILL IMPLODE

Biden himself agreed last year that “it’s totally legitimate” for people to ask questions about his health if he decides to run for president, given his medical history — which has included brain surgery in 1988.

“I think they’re gonna judge me on my vitality,” Biden told “CBS This Morning.” “Can I still run up the steps of Air Force Two? Am I still in good shape? Am I – do I have all my faculties? Am I energetic? I think it’s totally legitimate people ask those questions.”

“I think they’re gonna judge me on my vitality. …  I think it’s totally legitimate [that] people ask those questions.”

— Joe Biden

But Dr. Neal Kassell, the neurosurgeon who operated on Biden for an aneurysm three decades ago, told the Washington Examiner that Biden appears to be “totally in the clear” — and even joked that the operation made Biden “better than how he was.”

“Joe Biden of all of the politicians in Washington is the only one that I’m certain has a brain, because I have seen it,” Kassell said. “That’s more than I can say about all the other candidates or the incumbents.”

“Joe Biden of all of the politicians in Washington is the only one that I’m certain has a brain, because I have seen it.”

— Dr. Neal Kassell

BIDEN’S CLAIM HE DIDN’T WANT OBAMA TO ENDORSE TRIGGERS MOCKERY

At the same time, however, Biden hasn’t been forthcoming about his health at least since 2008 when he released his medical records as a vice presidential candidate. The disclosure that time revealed some fairly minor issues such as an irregular heartbeat in addition to detailing previous operations, including removing a benign polyp during a colonoscopy in 1996, the outlet reported.

It remains unclear if Biden had more aneurysms. Some medical experts say that people who have had an aneurysm can have another one.

An aneurysm, or a weakening of an artery wall, can lead to a rupture and internal bleeding, potentially placing a patient’s life in jeopardy.

Biden won’t be the only Democrat grappling with old age. Sen. Bernie Sanders, another 2020 frontrunner, is currently 77 years old and agreed with Biden last year that their ages will be an issue in the race.

“It’s part of a discussion, but it has to be part of an overall view of what somebody is and what somebody has accomplished,” Sanders told Politico.

“Look, you’ve got people who are 50 years of age who are not well, right? You’ve got people who are 90 years of age who are going to work every day, doing excellent work. And obviously, age is a factor. But it depends on the overall health and wellbeing of the individual.”

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Sanders released his medical records in 2016, with a Senate physician saying in a letter that the senator was “in overall very good health.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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Cambodian authorities have ordered a one-hour reduction in the length of school days because of concerns that students and teachers may fall ill from a prolonged heat wave.

Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said in an announcement seen Friday that the shortened hours will remain in effect until the rainy season starts, which usually occurs in May. The current heat wave, in which temperatures are regularly reaching as high as 41 Celsius (106 Fahrenheit), is one of the longest in memory.

Most schools in Cambodia lack air conditioning, prompting concern that temperatures inside classrooms could rise to unhealthy levels.

School authorities were instructed to watch for symptoms of heat stroke and urge pupils to drink more water.

The new hours cut 30 minutes off the beginning of the school day and 30 minutes off the end.

School authorities instituted a similar measure in 2016.

Source: Fox News World

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Explosions have rocked Britain’s largest steel plant, injuring two people and shaking nearby homes.

South Wales Police say the incident at the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot was reported at about 3:35 a.m. Friday (22:35 EDT Thursday). The explosions touched off small fires, which are under control. Two workers suffered minor injuries and all staff members have been accounted for.

Police say early indications are that the explosions were caused by a train used to carry molten metal into the plant. Tata Steel says its personnel are working with emergency services at the scene.

Local lawmaker Stephen Kinnock says the incident raises concerns about safety.

He tweeted: “It could have been a lot worse … @TataSteelEurope must conduct a full review, to improve safety.”

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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At least one person is reported dead and homes have been destroyed by a powerful cyclone that struck northern Mozambique and continues to dump rain on the region, with the United Nations warning of “massive flooding.”

Cyclone Kenneth arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai tore into central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people and displacing scores of thousands. The U.N. says this is the first time in known history that the southern African nation has been hit by two cyclones in one season.

Forecasters say the new cyclone made landfall Thursday night in a part of Mozambique that has not seen such a storm in at least 60 years.

Mozambique’s local emergency operations center says a woman in the city of Pemba was killed by a falling tree.

Source: Fox News World

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