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New clues of New Zealand shooter Tarrant’s ties to far right groups emerge

Flowers and signs are seen at a memorial site for victims of the mosque shootings, at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch
FILE PHOTO - Flowers and signs are seen at a memorial site for victims of the mosque shootings, at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Edgar Su

April 4, 2019

By Byron Kaye and Tom Allard

SYDNEY (Reuters) – From its clubhouses in Melbourne and Sydney, the Lads Society promotes drug-free living and exercise, as well as “white resistance” and Islamophobia, according to online statements and interviews with two of its leaders.

One of Australia’s most high profile extremist groups, its members last year infiltrated the youth arm of the National Party, part of the ruling coalition government, before being exposed and ejected due to their far right views.

Now, the group has come to prominence again – and to the attention of security agencies – after a gunman shot 50 people dead at two New Zealand mosques.

In the hours after the shootings, the Lads Society’s private Facebook page lit up as its members discussed the attack and the man arrested and charged with murder, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, according to five screenshots of the Facebook messages which were provided by a person with access to the group and reviewed by Reuters.

“He had been on the scene for a while,” said Tom Sewell, founder of the Lads Society, according to the previously undisclosed messages on the Lads Society’s Facebook page.

“He made heaps on Bitcoin and paid for his own holidays, I spoke to him back in 2017 when he was donating money to everyone,” added Sewell.

In a later public statement, Sewell said he and Lads Society leaders were interviewed about the Christchurch attacks by the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s domestic spy agency.

ASIO said it does not comment on specific individuals, intelligence or operational matters but was alert to the threat from people with “extreme right-wing ideologies”. The Australian Federal Police also declined to comment when asked about any ties Tarrant had to the Lads Society.

Sewell declined to comment on Tarrant or whether he knew him, and his messages provided no further details.

Tarrant, who is now in custody and has said he plans to represent himself, was not available for comment.

The Lads Society’s page was shut down after Facebook targeted white nationalists in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Reuters was unable to verify the claims on the since-deleted Facebook page.

    However, Sewell’s messages to the private group on the Lads Society Facebook page, which carried the same profile photo as a photo posted on Sewell’s Instagram account, add to evidence Tarrant was engaged with Australia’s far right.

On the 8Chan message board minutes before the attack, Tarrant posted links to a livestream video of the attack and said: “You are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for.” Cobber is Australian slang for friend, and a term popular among Australian white nationalists.

As Australia confronts the uncomfortable truth that Tarrant was one of its own, the country has been gripped by acrimonious debate about both its past race policies and whether recent political discourse about immigration and Islam had any role to play in his radicalisation.

In the space of a few minutes outside a Sydney mosque the day after the Christchurch shootings, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison encapsulated the country’s contradictory identity.

“We are a tolerant, multicultural society, the most successful immigration country on the planet,” he said, before pivoting to a darker undercurrent. “These white supremacist, white separatist views, are not new. I mean, these sentiments have sadly existed in Australia for hundreds of years.”

OFF THE RADAR

Tarrant grew up in the small Australian city of Grafton, where he worked as a gym instructor and developed a passion for gaming and computers, according to local media reports citing the gym owner and his grandmother.

In a “manifesto” distributed online just before the attack, Tarrant said he formed his racist beliefs on the internet and downplayed his links to Australia, saying he was radicalised abroad.

He acted alone, the manifesto said, although he said he had donated to far-right groups from an inheritance and a cryptocurrency windfall.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz last week confirmed his country’s far-right Identitarian Movement had received 1,500 euros ($1,690) from Tarrant.

Most of his past nine years was spent traveling across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Tarrant was “on nobody’s radar, anywhere,” said Morrison, spending only 45 days in the past three years in Australia.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing archives of the deleted Facebook account of the United Patriots Front (UPF), another Australian far-right group, Tarrant described one of that group’s leaders, Blair Cottrell, as “Emperor”. Reuters was unable to independently verify that detail.

Cottrell – a muscle-bound, blond-haired carpenter – founded the UPF alongside Sewell. Sewell later started Lads Society in 2017, with Cottrell’s promotional support. Cottrell, described by sources as the movement’s main figurehead in Australia, still heads UPF and appears in Lads Society photos and videos but holds no formal position in that group.

Cottrell told Reuters that, as best he could tell, Tarrant had donated only once to groups he was associated with – A$50 to the UPF.

“I don’t believe I influenced Tarrant much at all. Maybe three years ago, he was in support of our specific opposition to that mosque development in Bendigo.”

In 2017, Cottrell and two other UPF members were found guilty of inciting contempt of Muslims after they filmed a mock beheading outside council offices to protest a mosque development in the small Victorian city.

GOING MAINSTREAM

White extremists gained momentum in 2014 after an Islamist gunman took a group of hostages in a Sydney cafe, analysts and members of the movement say.

The following year, thousands of people attended rallies arranged by anti-Islam group Reclaim Australia, and some far-right politicians spoke at the events.

Suspicions about the presence of Lads Society members in the youth wing of the National Party first emerged after officials of the rural-based party noted an influx of new members from cities.

After ties to the Lads Society were revealed in local media, the National Party expelled 19 people, saying in a statement in November it “would not rest until every last one of these extremists have been identified and removed.”

In Australia’s latest census, about 90 percent nominated their ancestry as Australian or European, while 2.5 percent were recorded as Muslims.

Just under a quarter of Australians have a “negative attitude” to Muslims, according to a 2018 report from the Scanlon Foundation, a group that tracks social cohesion.

FAR-RIGHT SENATOR

In the wake of the Christchurch attacks, Australia’s Islamophobes flooded social media with memes and messages in support of Fraser Anning, the Australian senator who blamed the bloodshed on “an immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand”.

In an interview with Reuters, Anning said he was “completely opposed” to the attacks in Christchurch.

However, he echoed the “replacement theory” embraced by Tarrant and the global white supremacist movement. Muslims, he said, “are going to outbreed us very quickly”.

Anning has picked up 28,600 Facebook followers in the past four weeks, data provided by his office shows, and now has more than 122,000 followers.

Sewell and Cottrell in statements and interviews with Reuters and other media, also said they were appalled by the attacks on the mosques.

“Politically motivated violence is not in the interest of our organization or our community,” Sewell said in his since-deleted Facebook statement on March 20.

In his interview with Reuters, Sewell said further that Tarrant’s violence had caused governments to become “extremely reactionary”, passing legislation “without thinking it through”.

New Zealand moved swiftly to ban the kinds of semi-automatic weapons used in the attacks.

“We have a new level of totalitarian thought crime legislation across New Zealand and shortly here in Australia too,” Sewell added.

(Reporting by Byron Kaye, Tom Allard and Jonathan Barrett. Editing by John Chalmers and Lincoln Feast.)

Source: OANN

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No. 1 seed Virginia rallies to dominate Gardner-Webb

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-First Round-Virginia vs Gardner-Webb
Mar 22, 2019; Columbia, SC, USA; Gardner Webb Runnin Bulldogs guard Jose Perez (5) dunks the ball during the second half of the game against the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at Colonial Life Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

March 22, 2019

No. 1 seed Virginia used a dominant second half to cruise by 16th-seed Gardner-Webb 71-56 on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament’s South Region at Columbia, S.C.

Sophomore De’Andre Hunter scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the second half as the Cavaliers rallied and allowed just 20 points in the game’s final 20 minutes.

Virginia advances to the round of 32, and it will face No. 9 seed Oklahoma on Sunday.

The Cavaliers (30-3) flexed their muscles early and often in the second half and used a 25-5 run to put the game away after trailing by six at halftime. Virginia shot 53 percent in the second half and overcame its largest halftime deficit of the season to notch the win.

Mamadi Diakite scored 17 points while Ty Jerome added 13 to complement Hunter on the offensive end. Despite making 15 turnovers, Virginia outrebounded Gardner-Webb 35-21 and shot 51.9 percent for the game.

The Bulldogs (23-12) were held to 44 percent shooting after connecting on 54 percent of their attempts in the first half. Jose Perez led three Bulldogs in double figures with 19 points while David Efianayi and DJ Laster added 12 and 10 points, respectively.

After tying the score at 4-4 early, Virginia trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half as Gardner-Webb turned eight turnovers into nine points.

The Bulldogs used four early 3-pointers to cushion their lead, led by two apiece from Perez and Efianayi. Gardner-Webb led 36-30 at halftime.

Virginia was beat on the defensive end multiple times but shot 50 percent to cut the deficit to six as Kyle Guy scored all eight of his points in the first half.

Gardner-Webb shot just 32 percent in the second half and made 12 turnovers.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Exclusive: FAA says oversight needs to ‘evolve’ after Boeing crashes

An aerial photo shows several Boeing 737 MAX airplanes grounded at Boeing Field in Seattle
FILE PHOTO: An aerial photo shows several Boeing 737 MAX airplanes grounded at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

March 26, 2019

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The acting head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will tell a congressional panel on Wednesday that the agency’s oversight approach must “evolve” after two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes since October, according to written testimony viewed by Reuters.

Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell will tell a Senate Commerce subcommittee that the airplane will return to service “only when the FAA’s analysis of the facts and technical data indicate that it is appropriate.”

Elwell’s testimony discloses that Boeing first submitted its proposed anti-stall software upgrade to the FAA for certification on Jan. 21 of this year and that the FAA has tested “this enhancement to the 737 MAX flight control system in both the simulator and the aircraft.”

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment but is expected as early as Wednesday to unveil more details of the software upgrade.

Elwell will tell the panel that the FAA “will go

wherever the facts lead us, in the interest of safety.” He defended the FAA’s aircraft certification system, but acknowledged it faces challenges.

“As the aerospace system and its components become increasingly more complex, we know that our oversight approach needs to evolve to ensure that the FAA remains the global leader in achieving aviation safety,” Elwell’s testimony will say.

Separately, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt will tell the panel in written testimony that the board is “examining the U.S. design certification process to ensure any deficiencies are captured and addressed, potentially up to and including NTSB safety recommendations.”

Federal prosecutors and the Transportation Department’s inspector general are investigating the 737 MAX certification.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Source: OANN

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Surveillance clips show Chinese billionaire with accuser

An attorney for JD.com founder Richard Liu said Monday that surveillance video showing the Chinese businessman in an elevator and walking arm-in-arm with a woman who has accused him of rape provides a different account of what happened that night.

Two edited videos of Liu and his accuser were posted Monday to a Chinese social media site. One video shows the pair leaving a group dinner in Minneapolis on Aug. 30, with the woman getting up to leave after Liu gets up, then following him out the door. The other video shows the woman holding onto Liu's arm as they walk to her apartment, where she says he raped her as she begged him to stop.

Liu, founder of the Beijing-based e-commerce site JD.com, was arrested Aug. 31 in Minneapolis on suspicion of felony rape, but prosecutors announced in December that he would face no criminal charges because the case had "profound evidentiary problems" and it was unlikely they could prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The woman, Jingyao Liu, a Chinese college student at the University of Minnesota, sued the businessman and his company last week. She alleged she was groped in Richard Liu's limousine and raped in her apartment after a dinner at Origami, a Japanese restaurant in Minneapolis, in which she felt pressured to drink as Liu and other executives toasted her. At one point, Richard Liu said she would dishonor him if she did not join in, the lawsuit says.

Richard Liu and Jingyao Liu are not related.

It's not clear who posted the videos, which were posted on Weibo under an account for Mingzhou Events. The clips are short and the content is edited, but Richard Liu's attorneys in China confirmed their authenticity. The videos do not contain audio, and they do not show what happened in his limousine or in the woman's apartment.

Jill Brisbois, Richard Liu's attorney in Minnesota, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the clips "further dispel the misinformation and false claims that have been widely circulated and clearly support the Hennepin County Attorney's Office decision not to file charges against our client."

Brisbois said the videos speak for themselves and show events as they are happening. While the woman has alleged she was impaired and coerced to drink, she appears to be walking without assistance and linking her arm with the businessman.

The law firm of Florin Roebig, which is representing the woman, said the clips that have been posted online, as well as the full surveillance videos, are consistent with what the woman alleged in her lawsuit and with what she told law enforcement. The lawsuit says the woman went to her apartment building with Liu to be polite and respectful, and believed he was simply walking her to the door.

The clip in Jingyao Liu's apartment complex shows Richard Liu and the woman walking through multiple lobbies and taking multiple elevators. Initially, Richard Liu's female assistant is with them and the woman leads the way. At one point, the assistant does not get on an elevator with Richard Liu and the woman, and when they exit the elevator, she has her hand through his arm and he has his hands in his pockets.

She leads him up a short stairway, then through another set of doors and continues to link her hand through his arm. As they get off another elevator, she leads him down a hallway to an apartment. She opens the door and goes in, and Richard Liu follows.

The other clip features surveillance video from the end of the dinner at Origami. It shows Jingyao Liu seated at a table with other men, and Richard Liu is a few seats away, appearing to have an animated conversation with others at the table. One man at the dinner party is slumped over and appears to be passed out. The woman is seen talking to the man next to her, and when Liu gets up to leave, she gets up and appears to follow him. They walk out next to each other. Video from outside the restaurant shows her leaving with Richard Liu and his assistant.

Richard Liu walks ahead and it appears the woman and Liu's assistant have a brief conversation, then she follows Liu.

Text messages previously reviewed by The Associated Press and portions of the woman's interviews with police show the woman alleges Liu pulled her into a limousine and made advances and groped her despite her protests. The lawsuit says Liu forcibly raped her at her apartment, again over her protests and resistance. She texted a friend: "I begged him don't. But he didn't listen."

The alleged attack happened while Richard Liu was in Minneapolis for a weeklong residency as part of the University of Minnesota's doctor of business administration China program. The four-year program in the university's management school is geared toward high-level executives in China and is a partnership with Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.

Jingyao Liu is a Chinese citizen studying at the university on a student visa and was a volunteer in the doctorate program while Richard Liu was there. The Associated Press does not generally name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent, but the Florin Roebig law firm has said she agreed to be named. She was 21 at the time of the alleged attack.

Richard Liu, known in Chinese as Liu Qiangdong, is a prominent member of the Chinese tech elite, with a fortune of $7.5 billion. He is part of a generation of entrepreneurs who have created China's internet, e-commerce, mobile phone and other technology industries since the late 1990s. The son of peasants, Liu built a Beijing electronics shop into JD.com, China's biggest online direct retailer, selling everything from clothes to toys to fresh vegetables.

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Source: Fox News National

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Malaysia backtracks on plans to abolish death penalty

Malaysia's government backtracked Wednesday on abolishing capital punishment, saying instead that the death penalty would no longer be mandatory for selected offenses. Rights groups slammed the reversal and urged it to reconsider.

Deputy Law Minister Hanipa Maidin made the announcement in parliament but didn't give any reasons for the change. He was quoted by the country's Bernama news agency as saying the death penalty would not be mandatory for 11 offenses but courts would have discretion to impose such sentences for those crimes.

N. Surendran, adviser to rights group Lawyers for Liberty, said it was a "complete U-turn" from the government's announcement in October that it planned to abolish the death penalty for all of the nearly three dozen offenses for which it was applicable.

The total abolition plan had been widely praised internationally and he said the sudden reversal was "shocking, unprincipled and embarrassing." He said it appeared to be motivated by fear of a political backlash and slammed the government for "moral cowardice."

"In short, the government sacrificed principle on the altar of political expediency," he said in a statement. He urged the government to reconsider its decision. He said the death penalty is not a deterrent for serious crime and noted that a wrongful conviction is irreversible.

The Malaysian Coalition Against the Death Penalty echoed the call for the government to review its decision. The group voiced concern that there are no protections for the vulnerable and no sentencing guidelines for the court to consider in deciding whether to hand down a death sentence.

"So long as the death penalty exists within our system, there is no guarantee that an innocent or vulnerable person will not be wrongly sentenced and executed," it said.

The two groups also urged the government to maintain its current moratorium on all executions and review the case of every prisoner on death row.

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This story has been edited to correct that courts will be given discretion to hand down the death sentence for the 11 offenses.

Source: Fox News World

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Turkey convicts Australian-born IS militant on terror charge

A Turkish court has convicted an Australian-born Islamic State militant of belonging to a terror group and sentenced him to more than seven years in prison.

Neil Prakash has been in a Turkish prison since 2016 when he was arrested near the Syrian border for attempting to cross with fake documents.

Delivering its verdict Friday, the court found Prakash guilty of IS membership and sentenced him to seven years and six months in prison. The court said he could be released in two-and-a-half years under Turkish law, however.

Prakash expressed remorse, telling the court: "I used to be a member of Daesh but I am no longer."

Australia has stripped Prakash of his citizenship. It has also requested his extradition.

Source: Fox News World

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Uber back on the road in Slovakia after court ban

FILE PHOTO: The logo of taxi company Uber is seen on the roof of a private hire taxi in Liverpool
FILE PHOTO: The logo of taxi company Uber is seen on the roof of a private hire taxi in Liverpool, Britain, April 15, 2019. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo

April 25, 2019

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – Uber resumed operations in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava on Thursday, a year after a court ban, the ride-hailing company said.

A Slovak court ordered Uber to suspend its operations in March 2018 amid taxi drivers’ protests that the service represented unfair competition.

Slovakia has since passed legislation that allows Uber to operate legally if its drivers and cars meet requirements that professional taxi drivers must meet.

Uber’s re-launch in the central European country comes as Bratislava gears up to host the World Championships in ice hockey next month, an event expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors.

(Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; editing by Jason Neely)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Initial optimism over first-quarter results from Starbucks Corp was waning fast on Wall Street on Friday, as analysts questioned the longer-term prospects of its new sales push given subdued overall customer traffic numbers especially in China.

The company on Thursday beat brokerage estimates for quarterly same-store sales on the back of demand for its new Cloud Macchiato, Matcha tea and cold brews in the United States.

However, BTIG’s Peter Saleh was one of a number of sector analysts who said while customers forking out for higher-priced new drinks had helped drive growth in same-store sales, “anemic” traffic at cafes remained a concern.

He and others pointed to a 1 percent decline in footfall at cafes in the Chinese market, viewed as crucial to the chain’s growth for the foreseeable future.

More broadly, transaction numbers, the substitute analysts use for customer traffic, were unchanged in all three of the company’s global regions.

Shares in the company, which hit a record high after the results on Thursday, fell 1 percent in morning trade.

“We remain cautious given near-term headwinds surrounding China, including cannibalization, increasing competition (and) a slowing economy,” Wedbush analyst Nick Setyan said.

Starbucks has also poured money into beefing up its delivery network in China as it battles with local startup Luckin Coffee, whose speedy growth led it to file for an IPO in the United States earlier this week.

New menu items and partnerships with delivery services, the heart of the company’s strategy to win back customers lost to artisanal coffee shops and cheaper fast-food rivals, did help Starbucks’ sales in its home market.

However, analysts said growth in China may continue to be subdued.

Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog said she expects store expansion in China to take priority over comparable sales growth.

She downgraded her rating on Starbucks’ to “market perform” from “outperform”, arguing that the company facing tough sales comparisons later on in 2019 from last year and the current rich valuation of shares meant the stock had limited room to rise.

“Investors will be hesitant to invest new money in a stock with a topline that, while still strong, is unlikely to meaningfully accelerate,” Herzog said.

Still, the company’s solid same-store growth in the United States, improving profit margins and a lower tax rate for the rest of the year led at least 6 Wall Street brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock to as high as $81.

11 of 29 brokerages rate Starbucks “buy” or higher, 17 “hold” and 1 “sell” or lower. Their median price target is $75.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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A man accused of fatally beating a 4-month-old boy after finding out the infant wasn’t his son had been previously deported from the United States five times, most recently in late 2016, immigration officials said.

Carlos Zuniga-Aviles, a 33-year-old Honduran national, has used multiple aliases, including the fake name of Jose Agurcia-Avila he gave police in Memphis, Tennessee, following his arrest in the boy’s death earlier this month, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told WMC-TV.

ICE officials have since filed an immigration detainer against Zuniga-Aviles, who was initially deported back to Honduras in February 2010. He was also returned to the Central American country in 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE NEW YORK POST

“ICE will seek to take him into custody to reinstate his removal order following the resolution of the criminal charges he currently faces,” the statement reads. “Mr. Zuniga-Aviles has been removed from the US five prior times: his most recent removal by ICE to Honduras took place in December 2016.”

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WITH CRIMINAL HISTORY ARRESTED IN CALIFORNIA WOMAN’S MURDER

Zuniga-Aviles later returned to the U.S. following his removal, a felony under federal law, immigration officials said. It’s unclear exactly when he returned, but he was living with his girlfriend and the woman’s 4-month-old son in Memphis at the time of his arrest, WREG reports.

DAD OF MAN KILLED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT BLASTS CALIFORNIA GOV. NEWSOM’S TRIP TO CENTRAL AMERICA: ‘IT’S DISGUSTING’

The infant, Alexander Lizondro-Chacon, was pronounced dead at a hospital from blunt force trauma to the head after his mother, Mercy Lizondro-Chacon, called police on April 12 to report that the boy was having trouble breathing, according to an affidavit of complaint obtained by the Commercial Appeal.

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