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Ukraine blasts Austria after barring its reporter

Ukraine has defended its decision to deny entry to an Austrian journalist, claiming that Austria has been too friendly to Russia.

Austria has strongly protested Ukraine's move to bar Christian Wehrschuetz, the bureau chief for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF, as a "threat to national security." It criticized the ban as an "unacceptable act of censorship."

Ukrainian officials have made conflicting statements on the issue. Ukraine's security agency initially said the reporter was barred for his own safety after facing threats from ultranationalists.

But on Wednesday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kateryna Zelenko declared that the journalist was denied entry for "disrespect for Ukrainian law." She also charged that Austria maintains exceedingly warm ties with Russia, adding that "cozying up to the aggressor doesn't fit with Austria's claim of neutrality."

Source: Fox News World

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Sports Direct says other Debenhams investors back making Ashley boss

FILE PHOTO: People walk past a Debenhams store in Stockport
FILE PHOTO: People walk past a Debenhams store in Stockport, Britain January 4, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo

April 1, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Sports Direct, the sportswear group that is seeking control of Debenhams, said it has been contacted by other shareholders in the department store group expressing their support to install Mike Ashley as Debenhams CEO.

Sports Direct, which has a near 30 percent stake in Debenhams, did not say how many Debenhams shareholders were backing it or name any of them.

Last year Sports Direct bought department store chain House of Fraser out of administration and has been trying to wrest control of Debenhams for months.

Sports Direct said it has set up a template letter on its website to enable any shareholders in Debenhams to make their views known.

On Friday Debenhams secured 200 million pounds ($261.4 million) in new funds but warned shareholders still faced being wiped out unless Sports Direct gave its support.

Debenhams said Sports Direct needed to either make a firm offer for the group, underwrite a rights issue, or provide debt funding if it wanted to prevent Debenhams’ ownership falling into the hands of lenders.

Sports Direct said last week it was considering a 61.4 million pound offer.

(Reporting by James Davey, editing by Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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Fake News Alert! Watch MSM Rush To Judgement Over Jussie Smollett Hate Crime Hoax

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Source: InfoWars

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China Development Bank provides over $190 billion for Belt and Road projects

The sign of an international forum on the
FILE PHOTO: The sign of an international forum on the "Belt and Road" Legal Cooperation is pictured in Beijing, China July 2, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

March 27, 2019

BOAO, China (Reuters) – China Development Bank has provided financing of more than $190 billion for projects of the “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan, bank president Zheng Zhijie told the Boao Forum on Wednesday.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) lies at the heart of China’s foreign policy strategy. It was incorporated into the ruling Communist Party constitution in 2017, reflecting President Xi Jinping’s desire for China to take a global leadership role.

(Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

Source: OANN

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Assange, Ecuador had relationship akin to a testy telenovela

The relationship between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Ecuadorians who granted him asylum had the ups and downs of a telenovela.

Once close allies, the silver-haired Australian and leaders of the South American nation grew increasingly embittered as feuds emerged over everything from his alleged meddling in the nation's foreign affairs to the hygiene of his cat.

They finally broke for good on Thursday when President Lenin Moreno allowed British authorities to forcibly remove Assange from Ecuador's small embassy in a tony part of London.

How did their diplomatic liaison take such a dark turn?

Ecuador emerged a safe haven for Assange in 2012 as his legal options to evade extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations dried up in the United Kingdom. On a June day, he moved into the small country's embassy near the upscale Harrods department store for what most thought would be a short stay.

Instead, the cramped quarters, where a small office was converted into a bedroom, became a permanent address that some likened to a de facto jail.

At the time, Ecuador was governed by Rafael Correa, a leftist with an anti-United States bent who championed the cause of Assange, who had infuriated Washington by publishing a vast trove of confidential U.S. government documents on his WikiLeaks site.

For Correa, granting Assange asylum allowed him to stake a moral high ground, associating himself with a man whose followers see him as a digital-age Robin Hood crusading against big governments and corporations, even as the president faced accusations of clamping down on human rights back home.

"Welcome to the club of those who are persecuted!" Correa said during a televised interview with Assange before the asylum bid.

The embassy has just a few rooms and Assange's new home was far from luxurious. Stuck inside, he used a treadmill to stay in shape, sat beneath a sun lamp to compensate for the lack of natural light and received both visitors and pizza deliveries.

The roster of guests at No. 3 Hans Crescent included stars like Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson.

"It's not quite the Hilton," Gavin MacFayden, a supporter and investigative journalism school director, said in the early months of Assange's stay.

Assange's mother expressed concerns about her son's health, but the creator of the online whistle-blowing organization remained steadfast in staying.

"While this immoral investigation continues, and while the Australian government will not defend the journalism and publishing of WikiLeaks, I must remain here," he said in a rare address outside the embassy about six months into his residence.

The first major public squabble with Ecuadorian officials came four years later, in 2016, when Ecuador's government cut off his internet access after WikiLeaks published a trove of damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

In targeting Clinton, Assange may have run up against Correa's own preference for the Democratic candidate and his effort to repair testy relations with Washington. WikiLeaks accused Ecuador of bowing to pressure from then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a charge it denied.

A year later, Assange emerged as a thorn in Ecuador's side again.

During the country's 2017 presidential election, the activist's protracted embassy stay became a campaign issue. Conservative banker Guillermo Lasso said he'd evict him within 30 days if elected. Lenin Moreno, Correa's hand-picked successor, said he'd let him stay — and narrowly won.

Following the vote, Assange took to Twitter to take a jab at Lasso.

"I cordially invite Lasso to leave Ecuador within 30 days (with or without his tax haven millions)," he wrote, alluding to allegations the banker had money abroad.

The remarks rattled Moreno, who warned Assange to stay out of the country's politics.

Within months of taking office, Moreno's government scolded Assange again for meddling in international affairs by voicing his support for Catalan secessionists from the Ecuadorian Embassy. Relations grew so prickly that a year later, Ecuador imposed a stricter set of rules outlining what he could and couldn't do inside the embassy.

Under the new protocol, Assange would have to pay for his internet and clean up after his cat, an evident source of tension between both sides. The rules said that if the feline wasn't properly fed and cleaned up after, it would be sent to the pound.

Assange tried challenging the restrictions in court, to no avail.

Correa said Thursday he thinks the final straw for Moreno was WikiLeaks' decision to spread information about a purported offshore account controlled by the president's brother. Personal photographs of Moreno lying in bed, as well as images of close family members dancing, were also leaked, incensing him.

Correa, who has had a very public falling out with Moreno, accused him of acting "cowardly."

"This will never be forgotten by all of humanity," Correa wrote on Twitter.

Interior Minister María Paula Romo said Assange's behavior had become intolerable, and accused him even of spreading fecal matter on embassy walls. In a video shared on Twitter, Moreno described Assange as "discourteous and aggressive."

"The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit," he said.

Moreno was also likely under increasingly U.S. pressure to surrender Assange, though he said Thursday that he had only made his decision after Great Britain guaranteed he would not be extradited "to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty."

Shortly after Moreno's election, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, traveled to Quito in the company of Chinese investors. Moreno's aides said that Assange's name never came up and the visit, which was first revealed in U.S. court documents.

But some have speculated it was the start of backchannel coordination between U.S., Ecuadorian and U.K. officials, and it was followed months later with a rare visit to Quito by Vice President Mike Pence, who has since become one of Moreno's biggest boosters.

Pence said that he discussed Assange with Moreno during his visit but provided no details.

On the streets of Ecuador's capital, some rejoiced that they'd no longer be seeing Assange's face pop up so frequently in the nation's headlines.

"It's good they've thrown him out," said Manuel Benavides, a designer. "He's ungrateful and arrogant. You can't bite the hand that has fed you all these years."

___

Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange here: https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks

Source: Fox News World

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Strong U.S. economy boosts Walmart holiday-quarter sales, shares gain

FILE PHOTO: Walmart's logo is seen outside one of the stores in Chicago
FILE PHOTO: Walmart's logo is seen outside one of the stores in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., November 20, 2018. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski/File Photo

February 19, 2019

By Nandita Bose

(Reuters) – A strong U.S. economy boosted Walmart Inc’s holiday-quarter sales growth to the best in a decade, lifted by consumer spending in key categories like groceries and increased e-commerce purchases.

Shares of the world’s larger retailer rose nearly 4 percent on Tuesday and were up 7 percent so far this year.

Walmart’s performance and rival Target Corp’s strong holiday sales growth reflected the health of the U.S. consumer as spending remained robust due to a strong labor market and cheaper gasoline prices.

“We still feel pretty good about the consumer. We haven’t seen much of a change,” Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs told Reuters. “The data we are seeing still looks pretty healthy. Gas prices are down year over year, which helps.”

The retailer’s performance assuaged fears about an impending slowdown in spending this year. U.S. retail sales recorded their biggest drop in more than nine years in December, the government reported last week, as receipts fell across the board, suggesting a sharp slowdown in economic activity at the end of 2018.

Overall sales for the 2018 U.S. holiday shopping season hit a six-year high as shoppers were encouraged by early discounts, according to a Mastercard report in late December.

Walmart sales at U.S. stores open at least a year rose 4.2 percent, excluding fuel, in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 31. The gain exceeded analysts’ expectations of 2.96 percent, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Sales were also boosted after federal officials distributed food stamp aid early, during the partial government shutdown. The demise of retailer Toys R Us helped Walmart gain toy market share, the company said.

Adjusted earnings per share increased to $1.41 per share, beating expectations of $1.33 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. But the retailer’s gross margins declined for the seventh consecutive quarter due to higher transportation costs and e-commerce investments.

Online sales jumped 43 percent in the quarter, in line with the previous quarter’s rise, helped by the expansion of Walmart’s online grocery pickup and delivery services and a broader assortment on its website.

But the company reiterated that it expected e-commerce losses to increase this year due to ongoing investments. Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said on a conference call the company was focused on getting return customer visits and strengthening product assortment.

The company has expanded a program that allows customers to order groceries online and pick them up at its U.S. stores, a move the retailer said helped expand market share in the category. It said it will have the service at 3,100 stores by next January. At the end of the fourth quarter it was offered at more than 2,100 stores.

Walmart will offer grocery deliveries to about 800 more stores by the end of the year, bringing the total to 1,600 stores.

Grocery sales currently make up 56 percent of total revenue for the retailer. Amazon.com Inc is trying to crack the food category, especially since it bought organic supermarket chain Whole Foods.

Walmart is partnering with third-party couriers and working with so-called gig, or freelance, drivers, who are cheaper than full-time employees, to push down costs, Reuters recently reported.

Google-backed Deliv, a Walmart delivery partner in Miami and San Jose, ended its relationship with the retailer, Reuters reported last week.

The U.S. retailer, which overtook Apple Inc to become the third largest e-commerce retailer last year, is likely to capture a 4.6 percent share of the U.S. e-commerce market, behind eBay Inc and Amazon, according to research firm eMarketer.

Walmart repeated its forecast that fiscal year 2020 earnings per share would decline in the low single digits in percentage terms, compared with last year. Excluding the acquisition of Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart, it sees an increase in the low- to mid-single-digits.

McMillon said the company was disappointed in India’s revised e-commerce regulations, which ban companies from selling products via firms in which they have an equity interest and also bar them from making deals with sellers to sell exclusively on their platforms.

He said the Indian government didn’t consult with Walmart and other U.S. companies before it changed the rules. “We hope for a collaborative regulatory process going forward, which results in a level playing field,” he said.

Walmart expects fiscal year 2020 comparable sales growth of 2.5 percent to 3 percent, excluding fuel and online sales growth of 35 percent.

Total revenue increased 1.9 percent to $138.8 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $138.65 billion. Walmart has recorded 18 quarters, or over four straight years of U.S. comparable sales growth, unmatched by any other retailer.

The stock rose 3.9 percent to $103.93. Target and Costco Wholesale Corp were both up more than 1 percent.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: OANN

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McCain’s widow, daughter punch back at Trump’s Twitter tirade

Late senator John McCain is honored during the 2018 Iran Uprising Summit in New York
Late senator John McCain is honored during the 2018 Iran Uprising Summit in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 22, 2018. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

March 20, 2019

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The widow and daughter of John McCain on Wednesday criticized President Donald Trump and his online supporters for repeated attacks on the former U.S. senator, Republican presidential nominee and Vietnam War hero who was tortured during five and a half years spent as a prisoner of war.

Speaking on Wednesday to an employee at an Ohio factory that makes military tanks, Trump again hammered McCain.

“So I have to be honest, I’ve never liked him much,” Trump said. “I really probably never will. But there are certain reasons for it.”

Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late senator, spent the last few days defending her father and politely criticizing Trump. On Wednesday she said the president had reached “a new, bizarre low – attacking someone who is not here is a new low.”

She also said, “If I had told my dad … he would think it is so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death.”

Barely six months after McCain’s death, Trump started the latest exchange between himself and the McCain clan on Sunday in a blast of Tweets, including one that attacked “‘last in his class’ (Annapolis) John McCain.”

A spokeswoman for Meghan McCain said she was not immediately available for further comment.

Cindy McCain, the senator’s widow, sarcastically urged her Twitter followers to “see how kind and loving a stranger can be” and shared with them an online message from someone who described John McCain as a “traitorous piece of warmongering shit and I’m glad he’s dead.”

On Tuesday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office while sitting next the president of Brazil, Trump added: “I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.”

The tweets and soundbites triggered a swirl of anti-McCain attacks and pro-McCain appeals on social media, like the one Cindy McCain shared, and cable TV discussion.

Without rebuking Trump, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a Tweet: “Today and every day I miss my good friend John McCain. It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate.”

Republican Senator Johnny Isakson was more critical. In an interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting on Wednesday, he called Trump’s remarks about McCain “deplorable.”

The White House had no comment on Trump’s latest attacks.

Trump on Wednesday expressed concern about McCain’s role in the handling of a “dossier,” compiled before the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a former British spy and paid for by lawyers for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The dossier alleged Russian financial dealings with Trump and included salacious personal details that remain unconfirmed. After the election, a copy of the dossier was given to McCain, who gave it to the FBI, according to court documents that were made public last week.

Trump and his supporters have aggressively attacked the document ever since its contents became public.

“John McCain received a fake and phony dossier … He got it, and what did he do? He didn’t call me,” Trump said during his visit to the Ohio factory. “He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy and that’s not the nicest thing to do.”

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Dan Grebler and Nick Carey)

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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