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As end looms for coal, German mining region shifts right

The Welzow-Sued opencast lignite mine operated by Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG is pictured in Welzow, Germany
The Welzow-Sued opencast lignite mine operated by Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG (LEAG) is pictured in Welzow, Germany, March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Joseph Nasr

April 11, 2019

By Joseph Nasr

SPREMBERG, Germany (Reuters) – A German far-right party is using a simple message to attract voters in a mining region threatened by government plans to phase out coal: jobs are more important than the environment.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s aim to wean Europe’s biggest economy off fossil fuels is the main issue in a September election in the state of Brandenburg, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is almost neck-and-neck with her conservatives.

“People are counting on us to stop this nonsense,” Steffen Kubitzki, an AfD candidate seeking a seat in the Brandenburg assembly, told supporters at a campaign event last month in Spremberg, a town of 23,000 near the Polish border.

“We won’t get a second chance. We will go from village to village, door to door, and tell people to vote for us,” he added, drawing applause from the 50 men and five women gathered at a restaurant in the mining town. “Jobs are on the line.”

As the migrant crisis that propelled it into the national parliament two years ago fades, the AfD has positioned itself as the only party opposed to Germany’s switch to renewable energy.

It is organizing town hall meetings with supporters and leading protests against the phase-out of fossil fuels in the 58 towns and villages that make up Brandenburg’s brown coal region of Lusatia, or Lausitz in German, south of Berlin.

Merkel’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) – who rule in a loveless coalition at the national level – are expected to lose support to the AfD on Sept. 1 in Brandenburg, one of three eastern states voting this Autumn.

The SPD, which governs Brandenburg with the far-left Die Linke, could face calls from its own ranks to quit the federal coalition with Merkel if it loses control of the state.

The AfD is expected to almost double its share of the vote in Brandenburg to around 20 percent, putting it level with the SPD and Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

The AfD is polling on 25 percent in Saxony, where it is expected to emerge as the second-biggest party behind the CDU in an election there on the same day as in Brandenburg.

Germany’s major political parties refuse to work with the AfD, accusing some of its leaders of racism and playing down Nazi crimes.

‘COAL OR DIE OUT’

But in a region where many fear the economy will collapse without the more than 16,000 jobs dependent on coal, the AfD’s climate change scepticism seems to be winning more voters than government pledges of funds to help the Lausitz exit from fossil fuels.

“My father was a miner, my grandfather was a miner and they both told me: ‘coal brought the Lausitz to life and without coal the Lausitz will die out’,” said Uwe Neumann, 58, the owner of a landscaping business who was at the AfD event.

A long-time CDU supporter, Neumann voted AfD in a national election two years ago and will do the same in the regional vote in September.

Many of the million people living in the Lausitz fear the end of open-cast mining would be disastrous in a region where unemployment is almost twice the national average.

The Czech-controlled Lausitz Energie Kraftwerke AG that operates the mines and power stations here is the region’s largest employer, with 8,000 workers.

“If those jobs go, thousands more will follow,” said Neumann. “Everyone here depends on those jobs for a living. The baker, the hairdresser, the plumber, everyone.”

The Lausitz has four lignite mines that feed three power stations producing about 7 percent of Germany’s annual power generation, about 38 percent of which comes from coal.

Plans to exit coal by 2038 and abandon nuclear by 2022 are part of Germany’s costly transition to renewables, known as the Energiewende.

‘IDEOLOGICAL PROJECT’

The AfD says that without coal and nuclear Germany will become dependent on energy imports as renewables cannot fill the gap. It also says prices will rise in a country with the highest electricity bills in Europe.

“It is an ideological project that has nothing to do with reality,” said AfD national lawmaker Steffen Kotré. “We have a plan and the plan is to stick to coal.”

The AfD’s critics accuse it of playing on people’s fears to win votes.

“This feeds scepticism about the coal exit,” said Heide Schinowsky, a Greens lawmaker in the Brandenburg parliament, whose party is forecast to double its share of the vote in September, just like the AfD.

A government-appointed commission in January proposed at least 40 billion euros ($45 billion) in aid over two decades for regions affected by the coal phase-out, with a large chunk for the Lausitz.

“For the last 30 years we have relied on the coal sector but we have little else,” said Christine Herntier, the mayor of Spremberg who represented the Lausitz in the commission.

“This is our opportunity to develop the Lausitz away from coal with government help,” she said. “It will put us on the map.”

The commission said a priority for the Lausitz is to boost its transport infrastructure, set up research and development centers and invest in modern energy storage facilities.

The problem for the SPD-led government in Brandenburg trying to act on those recommendations is that many in the state prefer sticking with coal than embracing change.

“The AfD is realistic in its approach to the Energiewende even though it is giving a simple answer to a complex question,” said Dirk Suessmilch, who runs the SPD’s office in Spremberg.

“But for us as SPD, how can we say we are the party of the workers when we are supporting a plan that will lead to thousands of job losses?”

‘SAYING IT AS IT IS’

The SPD is struggling to woo voters who handed the party its worst result since 1949 in the 2017 national election. It is polling about 16 percent nationally, behind the conservatives and the Greens.

Merkel, who is to step down in 2021, has acknowledged the risk of pushing people into the arms of far-right parties if their fears of her drive to renewables are not allayed.

“It’s no wonder that people in the coal-producing regions are voting for extremist parties and that’s because they feel disenfranchised,” she said last month. “This means that we have to execute the structural transformation in a way that is acceptable to people.”

Her government’s commitment of 240 million euros in initial assistance for the mining regions could fall short.

In Spremberg, electrician Horst Hannusch, 53, who was a miner for 10 years, agreed with the AfD on the coal exit but won’t vote for the party.

“The AfD is telling it like it is: ‘we have coal and we should use it,” said the former SPD voter. He is tempted to stay at home on election day.

Mayor Herntier fears abstentions will only help the AfD, which in 2017 won almost 30 percent in the Lausitz.

“Many people are voting AfD in protest,” she said. “If voting trends continue this way, people have to ask themselves which foreign company is going to invest here. This is our chance and we better not blow it.”

(Additional reporting by Markus Wacket and Vera Eckert; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: OANN

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There is Absolutely No Reason Why Black People Should Blame White People for Slavery

There is Absolutely No Reason Why Black People Should Blame White People for Slavery By Waylon Allen, Author: The Black and White of Racism / March 2019 When the underlying assertion between two people is “Your people enslaved my people and now you need to pay me back for it”, there is an obvious and […]

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Russian air force planes land in Venezuela carrying troops: report

An airplane with the Russian flag is seen at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas
An airplane with the Russian flag is seen at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela March 24, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

March 24, 2019

CARACAS (Reuters) – Two Russian air force planes landed in Venezuela’s main airport on Saturday carrying a Russian defense official and nearly 100 troops, according to a local journalist, amid strengthening ties between Caracas and Moscow.

A flight-tracking website showed that two planes left from a Russian military airport bound for Caracas on Friday, and another flight-tracking site showed that one plane left Caracas on Sunday.

The report comes three months after the two nations held military exercises on Venezuelan soil that President Nicolas Maduro called a sign of strengthening relations, but which Washington criticized as Russian encroachment in the region.

Reporter Javier Mayorca wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the first plane carried Vasily Tonkoshkurov, chief of staff of the ground forces, adding that the second was a cargo plane carrying 35 tonnes of material.

An Ilyushin IL-62 passenger jet and an Antonov AN-124 military cargo plane left for Caracas on Friday from Russian military airport Chkalovsky, stopping along the way in Syria, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

The cargo plane left Caracas on Sunday afternoon, according to Adsbexchange, another flight-tracking site.

A Reuters witness saw what appeared to be the passenger jet at the Maiquetia airport on Sunday.

It was not immediately evident why the planes had come to Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Russia’s Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry did not reply to messages seeking a comment. The Kremlin spokesman also did not reply to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has levied crippling sanctions on the OPEC nation’s oil industry in efforts to push Maduro from power and has called on Venezuelan military leaders to abandon him. Maduro has denounced the sanctions as U.S. interventionism and has won diplomatic backing from Russia and China.

In December, two Russian strategic bomber aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons landed Venezuela in a show of support for Maduro’s socialist government that infuriated Washington.

Maduro on Wednesday said Russia would send medicine “next week” to Venezuela, without describing how it would arrive, adding that Moscow in February had sent some 300 tonnes of humanitarian aid.

Venezuela in February had blocked a convoy carrying humanitarian aid for the crisis-stricken country that was coordinated with the team of opposition leader Juan Guaido, including supplies provided by the United States, from entering via the border with Colombia.

(Reporting by Carlos Garcia, Carlos Jasso, Diego Ore and Brian Ellsworth in Caracas, and Maria Tsvetkova and Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Source: OANN

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The College Admissions Scandal Is A Perfect Example Of How Deeply Corrupt America Has Become

By now you have probably heard that dozens of people have been arrested for participating in a multi-million dollar college admissions scam.

Enormous amounts of money were paid out in order to ensure that children from very wealthy families were able to get into top schools such as Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas and the University of Southern California.  We should certainly be disgusted by these revelations, but we shouldn’t be surprised.  Such corruption happens every single day on every single level of society in America.  At this point our nation is so far gone that it is shocking when you run into someone that actually still has some integrity.

The “mastermind” behind this college admissions scam was a con man named William Rick Singer.  He had been successfully getting the kids of wealthy people into top colleges for years using “side doors”, and he probably thought that he would never get caught.

But he did.

There were four basic methods that Singer used to get children from wealthy families into elite schools.  The first two methods involved bribes

Bribing college entrance exam administrators to allow a third party to facilitate cheating on college entrance exams, in some cases by posing as actual students,’ is the first.

Bribing university athletic coaches and administrators to designate applicants as purported athletic recruits – regardless of their athletic abilities, and in some cases, even though they did not play the sport,’ is the second.


Huawei is being used by China to spy on America even prompting the Pentagon to remove all products that the military may be using. Alex Jones calls in from the road to break down how foreign governments use the left to destroy America.

Because many of these kids didn’t even play the sports they were being “recruited” for, in some cases Photoshop was used to paste their faces on to the bodies of real athletes

In order to get non-athletic kids admitted to college as athletes, Singer often had to create fake profiles for them. Sometimes this involved fabricating resumes that listed them having played on elite club teams, but to finish the illusion Singer and his team would also use Photoshop to combine photos of the kids with actual athletes in the sport.

A number of college coaches became exceedingly wealthy from taking bribes to “recruit” kids that would never play once they got to school, but now a lot of those same coaches are probably going to prison.

The third and fourth methods that Singer used involved more direct forms of cheating

‘Having a third party take classes in place of the actual students, with the understanding that the grades earned in those classes would be submitted as part of the students’ application,’ is the third.

The fourth was ‘submitting falsified applications for admission to universities … that, among other things, included the fraudulently obtained exam scores and class grades, and often listed fake awards and athletic activities.’

Of course the main thing that the media is focusing on is the fact that some celebrities are among those being charged in this case, and that includes Lori Loughlin from “Full House”

It was important to “Full House” star Lori Loughlin that her kids have “the college experience” that she missed out on, she said back in 2016.

Loughlin, along with “Desperate Housewives” actress Felicity Huffman, is among those charged in a scheme in which parents allegedly bribed college coaches and insiders at testing centers to help get their children into some of the most elite schools in the country, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Despite how cynical I have become lately, I never would have guessed that Lori Loughlin was capable of such corruption.

After all, she seems like such a nice lady on television.

But apparently she was extremely determined to make sure that her daughters had “the college experience”, and so Loughlin and her husband shelled out half a million dollars in bribes

Loughlin and Giannulli ‘agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team – despite the fact that they did not participate in crew – thereby facilitating their admission to USC,’ according to the documents.

As bad as this scandal is, can we really say that it is much worse than what is going on around the rest of the country every single day?

Of course not.

We are a very sick nation, and we are getting sicker by the day.

William Rick Singer had a good con going, and he should have stopped while he was ahead

William “Rick” Singer said he had the inside scoop on getting into college, and anyone could get in on it with his book, “Getting In: Gaining Admission To Your College of Choice.”

“This book is full of secrets,” he said in Chapter 1 before dispensing advice on personal branding, test-taking and college essays.

But Singer had even bigger secrets, and those would cost up to $1.2 million.

But like most con men, Singer just had to keep pushing the envelope, and in the end it is going to cost him everything.

The ironic thing is that our colleges and universities are pulling an even bigger con.  They have convinced all of us that a college education is the key to a bright future, but meanwhile the quality of the “education” that they are providing has deteriorated dramatically.  I spent eight years in school getting three degrees, and so I know what I am talking about.  For much more on all this, please see my recent article entitled “50 Actual College Course Titles That Prove That America’s Universities Are Training Our College Students To Be Socialists”.

I know that it is not fashionable to talk about “morality” and “values” these days, but the truth is that history has shown us that any nation that is deeply corrupt is not likely to survive for very long.

Our founders understood this, and former president John Adams once stated that our Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious people”

Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Today, we are neither moral or religious.

What we are is deeply corrupt, and America will not survive if we keep going down this path.

Source: InfoWars

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India alleges P&G kept more than $35 million in tax benefits: source

The logo for Procter & Gamble Co. is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The logo for Procter & Gamble Co. is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., June 27, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

April 24, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian tax authorities have alleged U.S. consumer goods maker Procter & Gamble did not pass on more than $35 million in tax benefits which were meant to have gone to its customers, a senior government official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Separately, the authorities are also investigating South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the official added.

India’s National Anti-Profiteering Authority, a quasi-judicial body set up following the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax in 2017, found P&G had not reduced its prices on many products after a cut in tax rates on those items, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

P&G told Reuters it denied the allegation.

“We have passed the net benefit and communicated the same via advertising in mass media. As a responsible corporate, P&G has always been committed to passing the net benefit of GST rate reduction to the consumers,” it said in a statement.

Samsung said it had acted in accordance with the rules.

“Samsung reduced its sales price according to GST (Goods and Services Tax) reduction with effect from January 1, 2019. We are cooperating with DGAP (Directorate General of Anti Profiteering) on this matter,” the company said in a statement.

Under Indian law, companies had to pass on the benefits to customers after the government reduced the tax rate to 18 percent from 28 percent, and to 5 percent from 12 percent on many consumer durables and FMCGs (fast-moving consumer goods).

“P&G has been issued a notice to submit its reply on April 29 and explain why action should not be taken against it,” the official, with direct knowledge of the inquiry, told Reuters.

The authority will pass a final order in the next three months, the official added.

After an initial investigation, companies are given an opportunity to defend themselves before the authority passes a final order, which can be challenged in India’s higher courts.

($1 = 69.9510 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar in NEW DELHI, Sankalp Phartiyal in MUMBAI and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in BENGALURU; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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Fewer Americans seeing crucial Social Security document due to budget cuts

FILE PHOTO: Sign is seen on the entrance to a Social Security office in New York
FILE PHOTO: A sign is seen on the entrance to a Social Security office in New York City, U.S., July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 24, 2019

By Mark Miller

CHICAGO (Reuters) – (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

It is one of the most important retirement documents you will ever receive – but fewer Americans are reviewing their Social Security benefit statement nowadays due to cost-cutting and a government push to online services that is falling short.

Until about a decade ago, all workers eligible for Social Security received a paper statement in the mail that provided useful projections of their benefits at various ages, along with reminders on the availability of disability benefits and Medicare enrollment information.

But the Social Security Administration (SSA) decided in 2010 to save money by eliminating most mailings of benefit statements. Instead, we would all be encouraged to obtain this information online.

It is now abundantly clear that this is not working out.

The number of workers accessing their statements online has been just a fraction of those who once were reached by paper statements. And the cost-benefit tradeoff is poor.

Forty-two million Americans have created online accounts with the SSA since they were first offered seven years ago, the agency says, compared with the 155 million paper statements that were mailed in 2010, before the cost-cutting began. Meanwhile, the number of online account-holders who accessed their statements fell dramatically in fiscal 2018, from 96 percent to 43 percent, according to a report issued in February by the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

The report does not speculate on reasons for the fall-off, and the SSA declined to offer its own analysis. “We’ll leave the hypothesizing to others,” said Mark Hinkle, acting press officer.

If you have an online account with the SSA, you will receive an email message three months before your birthday reminding you to review your statement. But the process of logging on can be challenging, partly due to security protections aimed at preventing identity theft and fraud. The security is necessary, but the setup process requires users to go through multiple layers of authentication to prove identity.

Meanwhile, the level of comfort with online technology among older people lags the general population, according to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center. For example, 51 percent of adults aged 65 or older have home broadband, compared with 73 percent of all adults. “We’ve seen the gaps close somewhat, but for the most part the differences haven’t changed much over the past five or six years,” said Monica Anderson, a senior researcher with Pew.

BROADER SHIFT TO ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE

The SSA’s shift to online accounts is part of a broader agency strategy to handle most of its business with the public online by 2025. Yet the statement adoption rates underscore the problem with that strategy. Social Security is a near-universal program, and that means the agency serves many people who are less tech-savvy.

Differences in tech adoption also vary quite a bit by income, education levels and race. Eighty-seven percent of seniors living in households earning more than $75,000 annually told Pew they have home broadband, compared with just 27 percent of seniors whose annual household income is below $30,000.

But the relatively low engagement with statements also might be due to human behavior. “I logged on and set it up the first year it was offered,” said Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a leading research and policy expert on Social Security.

“But do I log on regularly to check my account? Absolutely not – and I’m much more interested in Social Security than most people,” she said. “But that seems deeply normal to me – people are busy and once they’ve logged on once, they don’t bother to do it again. It goes on the back burner.”

Currently, the only people receiving paper statements by mail are those who are over age 60, have not claimed benefits and do not have an online account. That was roughly 13 million people in fiscal 2017, according to the OIG report.

People who review their statements tend to make more optimal decisions claiming benefits. The statement projects your benefit at various ages – and people who review the numbers are far less likely to claim at earlier ages, and more likely to stay in the workforce longer, one recent research paper found. (https://bit.ly/2IzFZPH)

The statement also provides an opportunity to safeguard against the threat of identity theft and fraud by checking your earning history to make sure it looks accurate. “The best way to prevent fraud is for everyone to look every year at the earnings statement to see if everything looks right,” Romig said.  (You can sign up for an account here: http://bit.ly/socialsecurityaccount)

How much does the agency save by shifting to online accounts? About $46 million last year, according to the OIG report. That sounds like big money, but it is not significant in the context of the SSA’s overall budget, which is $12.9 billion in fiscal 2019.

The SSA budget has been cut repeatedly over the past decade. That has led to large staff reductions and closing of field offices. Wait times for the public have soared at field offices and on the agency’s toll-free line; there also have been big backups in disability appeals hearings and back-office paperwork processing. (https://nyti.ms/2VXaNge)

For fiscal 2020, the agency has requested a budget of $13.3 billion – a 3.3 percent increase. Notably, the separate budget request from the White House for the agency was to keep the budget nearly flat.

Indeed, Romig argues that the diminished number of people receiving and reviewing Social Security statements is just part of a bigger set of problems besetting the agency. “It’s a good example of why the Social Security Administration needs more money.”

(Reporting and writing by Mark Miller in Chicago; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Source: OANN

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Five million lost jobs in India between 2016 and 2018: report

The Wider Image: Thousands laid off as India pushes biggest tax reform
FILE PHOTO: A scrap dealer dismantles a winding machine at a weaving factory, that was shut a year ago, in Panipat in the northern state of Haryana, India, August 29, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

April 17, 2019

By Manoj Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – At least five million Indians lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018, and young urban men are being hit hardest, a Bengaluru-based private university said in a report on Tuesday.

The report by the Azim Premji University comes as Indians are voting in a staggered general election, which is due to end on May 19, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government keen to defend its economic record, including on jobs.

“In addition to rising open unemployment among the higher educated, the less educated (and likely informal) workers have also seen job losses and reduced work opportunities since 2016,” said Amit Basole, an economist and lead author of the report.

The report did not say how many jobs were created during the period.

Modi’s abrupt withdrawal of high value currency notes from circulation in November 2016, with the aim of curbing tax evasion and promoting digital transactions, disrupted small businesses and sparked layoffs.

The introduction of a national sales tax the following year compounded difficulties for some businesses.

The unemployed were mostly higher educated and young people, in the 20-24 age range, according to the study titled “State of Working India 2019”.

“Among urban men, for example, this age group accounts for 13.5 percent of the working age population but 60 percent of the unemployed,” it said.

Modi has faced criticism for not doing enough to create jobs for millions of unemployed young people despite official annual economic growth of about 7 percent for the past five years.

An official survey that the government withheld showed unemployment rose to its highest level in at least 45 years in 2017/18, the Business Standard newspaper reported in February.

The unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in February 2019, its highest since September 2016, and up from 5.9 percent in February 2018, according to data compiled by the private research house, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

The report suggested the next government should consider an urban employment guarantee scheme to create jobs, build infrastructure and provide services.

India has a rural jobs guarantee program, launched in 2006, which offers work to about 70 million rural people at the minimum wage for 100 days a year.

“India is at a crucial juncture in its economic development where timely public investment and public policy can reap huge rewards,” Basole said.

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Martin Howell)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

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The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

CLICK HERE FOF THE FOX NEWS APP

After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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