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U.S. lawmakers to grill Trump’s EPA on enforcement drop-off

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sign is seen on the podium at EPA headquarters in Washington
FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sign is seen on the podium at EPA headquarters in Washington, U.S., July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Ting Shen/File Photo/File Photo

February 26, 2019

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers will grill the Environmental Protection Agency’s top pollution enforcement official on Tuesday after the agency’s recent annual report showed a big decline in civil penalties and site inspections.

The hearing comes as Democrats, now in control of Congress after last November’s elections, heap scrutiny on the Trump administration over its efforts to unwind environmental regulation to favor business.

The EPA’s annual report https://bit.ly/2Sn0z6h released earlier this month showed it leveled $69 million in civil penalties against polluters and conducted 10,612 site inspections in the 2018 fiscal year, the lowest in at least a decade for both measures.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone said the Democrats’ first oversight hearing on EPA enforcement will focus on how low staffing in the agency’s compliance division was impacting the agency.

“The problem is the Trump administration has actually diminished the number of staff people that work at EPA that do enforcement, and this results in less protection of people’s health and safety and less protection of the environment,” Pallone said in a video announcing the hearing.

The EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance saw a net loss of 131 full-time employees, 17.8 percent of its staff, over the last two years, according to EPA data.

Susan Bodine, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said last month that EPA was using “all the tools at its disposal” to deter misconduct by polluters. She will testify at Tuesday’s hearing.

An EPA official did not provide further comment.

The Environmental Integrity Project, led by former EPA civil enforcement director Eric Schaeffer, said the decline in enforcement and inspections posed a disproportionate threat to poor communities located near big infrastructure like refineries and power plants.

“Those cutbacks are leaving communities – including those with high poverty levels and African-American or Latino neighborhoods – exposed to public health risks, while letting polluters off the hook for serious violations of the law,” Schaeffer said. He will also testify at the hearing on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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David Einhorn’s Greenlight says Tesla ‘on the brink’ of failure – client letter

FILE PHOTO: Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves Manhattan federal court
FILE PHOTO: Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves Manhattan federal court after a hearing on his fraud settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in New York City, U.S., April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

April 12, 2019

By Lawrence Delevingne

NEW YORK (Reuters) – David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital renewed criticism of Elon Musk and his Tesla Inc, saying the electric car company again appeared to be on the “brink” of failure, according to a letter sent to clients of the hedge fund on Friday.

The letter cited a lack of demand, “desperate” price cuts, layoffs, “closing-and-then-not-closing” stores, closing service centers, slashing capital expenditures, rushed product announcements and “a new effort to distract investors from the demand problem with hyperbole over TSLA’s autonomous driving capabilities.”

“We believe that right here, right now, the company appears to again be on the brink,” the letter said. Greenlight is short Tesla stock, recently a profitable bet.

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Greenlight said its funds gained 11 percent over the first three months of 2019, slightly below the gain of the S&P 500 Index. Despite the gains so far this year, “it continued to be a challenging environment for our investment style with growth stocks performing much better than value stocks,” the letter said. “In the context of this headwind and a sizable short portfolio, we are pleased with the quarterly result.”

Greenlight noted that last summer, Musk promised Tesla would be profitable and cash flow positive in every quarter going forward. “He repeated that forecast as recently as the end of January,” Greenlight pointed out. “That promise has failed to materialize. The question at hand is: in a few months will Musk be again bragging that he saved the company from the brink of failure, or will TSLA in fact fail this time?”

Greenlight Capital and its founder Einhorn first rose to prominence for making a prescient call on Lehman Brothers’ accounting troubles before the firm’s collapse. Late last year, Greenlight compared Tesla to Lehman.

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan and Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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Exclusive: Cockpit voice recorder of doomed Lion Air jet depicts pilots’ frantic search for fix – sources

Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of a Lion Air JT610 that crashed into Tanjung Karawang sea is seen inside a special container after it was found under the sea, during a press conference at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta
Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of a Lion Air JT610 that crashed into Tanjung Karawang sea is seen inside a special container after it was found under the sea, during a press conference at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 14, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

March 20, 2019

By Cindy Silviana, Jamie Freed and Tim Hepher

JAKARTA/SINGAPORE/PARIS (Reuters) – The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scoured a handbook as they struggled to understand why the jet was lurching downwards, but ran out of time before it hit the water, three people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said.

The investigation into the crash, which killed all 189 people on board in October, has taken on new relevance as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators grounded the model last week after a second deadly accident in Ethiopia.

Investigators examining the Indonesian crash are considering how a computer ordered the plane to dive in response to data from a faulty sensor and whether the pilots had enough training to respond appropriately to the emergency, among other factors.

It is the first time the voice recorder contents from the Lion Air flight have been made public. The three sources discussed them on condition of anonymity.

Reuters did not have access to the recording or transcript.

A Lion Air spokesman said all data and information had been given to investigators and declined to comment further.

The captain was at the controls of Lion Air flight JT610 when the nearly new jet took off from Jakarta, and the first officer was handling the radio, according to a preliminary report issued in November.

Just two minutes into the flight, the first officer reported a “flight control problem” to air traffic control and said the pilots intended to maintain an altitude of 5,000 feet, the November report said.

The first officer did not specify the problem, but one source said airspeed was mentioned on the cockpit voice recording, and a second source said an indicator showed a problem on the captain’s display but not the first officer’s.

The captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook, which contains checklists for abnormal events, the first source said.

For the next nine minutes, the jet warned pilots it was in a stall and pushed the nose down in response, the report showed. A stall is when the airflow over a plane’s wings is too weak to generate lift and keep it flying.

The captain fought to climb, but the computer, still incorrectly sensing a stall, continued to push the nose down using the plane’s trim system. Normally, trim adjusts an aircraft’s control surfaces to ensure it flies straight and level.

“They didn’t seem to know the trim was moving down,” the third source said. “They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about.”

Boeing Co declined to comment on Wednesday because the investigation was ongoing.

The manufacturer has said there is a documented procedure to handle the situation. A different crew on the same plane the evening before encountered the same problem but solved it after running through three checklists, according to the November report.

But they did not pass on all of the information about the problems they encountered to the next crew, the report said.

The pilots of JT610 remained calm for most of the flight, the three sources said. Near the end, the captain asked the first officer to fly while he checked the manual for a solution.

About one minute before the plane disappeared from radar, the captain asked air traffic control to clear other traffic below 3,000 feet and requested an altitude of “five thou”, or 5,000 feet, which was approved, the preliminary report said.

As the 31-year-old captain tried in vain to find the right procedure in the handbook, the 41-year-old first officer was unable to control the plane, two of the sources said.

The flight data recorder shows the final control column inputs from the first officer were weaker than the ones made earlier by the captain.

“It is like a test where there are 100 questions and when the time is up you have only answered 75,” the third source said. “So you panic. It is a time-out condition.”

The Indian-born captain was silent at the end, all three sources said, while the Indonesian first officer said “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is greatest”, a common Arabic phrase in the majority-Muslim country that can be used to express excitement, shock, praise or distress.

The plane then hit the water, killing all 189 people on board.

French air accident investigation agency BEA said on Tuesday the flight data recorder in the Ethiopian crash that killed 157 people showed “clear similarities” to the Lion Air disaster. Since the Lion Air crash, Boeing has been pursuing a software upgrade to change how much authority is given to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, a new anti-stall system developed for the 737 MAX.

The cause of the Lion Air crash has not been determined, but the preliminary report mentioned the Boeing system, a faulty, recently replaced sensor and the airline’s maintenance and training.

On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air’s full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report.

The report also did not include data from the cockpit voice recorder, which was not recovered from the ocean floor until January.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesian investigation agency KNKT, said last week the report could be released in July or August as authorities attempted to speed up the inquiry in the wake of the Ethiopian crash.

On Wednesday, he declined to comment on the cockpit voice recorder contents, saying they had not been made public.

(Reporting by Cindy Silviana in Jakarta, Jamie Freed in Singapore and Tim Hepher in Paris; writing by Jamie Freed; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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Koepka comfortable to be in chasing pack at Masters

Third round play of the Masters at Augusta National
Golf - Masters - Augusta National Golf Club - Augusta, Georgia, U.S. - April 13, 2019 - Brooks Koepka of the U.S. hits off the 2nd tee during third round play. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 14, 2019

By Frank Pingue

AUGUSTA Ga. (Reuters) – Brooks Koepka relinquished his share of the Masters lead on Saturday but the American is not about to panic given the increased self-belief that helped him bag two of the last three majors.

On a day when Augusta National, which had been softened by rain earlier in the week, was yielding low scores Koepka could only muster a three-under-par 69 that left him alone in fourth place and three shots back of leader Francesco Molinari.

“I’m pretty comfortable being in, being up there on the leaderboard in a major come Sunday,” said Koepka, whose roller-coaster round included an eagle, five birdies and four bogeys. “So I enjoy it, it’s fun, getting definitely more comfortable with it as every major goes by.

“I feel good and I like my chances tomorrow.”

Koepka, who does not have a top-10 finish in three previous starts at the Masters and missed the event in 2018 due to a wrist injury, was chugging along at one-under on the day when he stepped up to the par-five 15th and gave his Green Jacket hopes a boost.

The three-times major champion launched his drive 332 yards up the fairway and then made an eagle after his approach shot settled 10 feet from the cup.

That hole not only salvaged his round but could go a long way to determining if he is to slip into a Green Jacket after Sunday’s final round, which is starting a 7:30 a.m. ET (1130 GMT).

Due to an ominous weather forecast, golfers will go off from the first and 10th tees in threesomes and Koepka will be followed around the course by the final grouping of Molinari, Tiger Woods and Tony Finau.

Koepka has said all week he was focused on his own game and not worrying about what anyone else is doing, but that could prove tough come Sunday with the leaders playing right behind him.

“I can’t control anything that they’re doing with ‑‑ whatever they’re going to do, they’re going to do,” said Koepka. “So just need to go out there and hopefully they can see something on the board where it’ll make them a little nervous.”

(Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Source: OANN

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Pelosi Downplays AOC’s Success: ‘Glass of Water’ With a ‘D’ Could Win Her District

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says that a ‘glass of water’ could be elected in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) district if it ran as a Democrat.

The House Speaker seemed to downplay the young congresswoman’s success in toppling longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in what was regarded by many as one of the biggest upsets in the 2018 midterm elections.

“When we won this election, it wasn’t in districts like mine or Alexandria’s,” Pelosi told an audience at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “She’s a wonderful member of Congress, I think all of our colleagues would attest.”

“But those are districts that are solidly Democratic,” Pelosi said while picking up a water glass from the table. “This glass of water would win with a ‘D’ next to its name in those districts.”


Pelosi clarified that she didn’t mean to “diminish” the “exuberance and personality” of Ocasio-Cortez and her contemporaries, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — all first-term congresswomen who represent an insurgency of radical socialists within the party.

Pelosi’s remarks came immediately following an interview with 60 Minutes in which she rejected the young revolutionaries as a threat to her power.

“You have these wings — AOC and her group on one side…” said host Lesley Stahl, in reference to new factions forming in the Democrat Party.

“That’s like five people,” Pelosi interjected.

And days before, in an interview with USA Today, Pelosi took a thinly-veiled shot at Ocasio-Cortez’s popularity on social media, saying, “While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what’s important is that we have a large number of votes on the floor of the House.”



Watch as the Democrats and MSM talking heads go into a death spiral now that they know their game is up.

Dan Lyman:

Source: InfoWars

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Illinois man pleads not guilty in deputy's fatal shooting

An Illinois man has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing him of fatally shooting a sheriff's deputy who was trying to serve an arrest warrant at a hotel.

Floyd E. Brown of Springfield appeared in Rockford federal court Wednesday, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing green jail scrubs. He didn't speak except to tell a judge "yes" when asked if he understood the charges against him. Brown's public defender entered not guilty pleas on Brown's behalf.

A grand jury Tuesday indicted the 39-year-old on murder and weapons charges in the death of 35-year-old McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner .

Authorities say Brown shot Keltner March 7 before fleeing in a vehicle. Investigators say the vehicle crashed along a central Illinois interstate, sparking an hours-long standoff that ended with Brown's arrest.

Source: Fox News National

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Julian Assange arrested by British police at Ecuadorean embassy

FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London
FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Britain, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

April 11, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after they were invited into the Ecuadorean embassy where he has been holed up since 2012.

“Julian Assange, 47, has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador,” police said.

Police said they arrested Assange after being “invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorean government’s withdrawal of asylum.”

(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Kate Holton, editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Source: OANN

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

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

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

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

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

School authorities instituted a similar measure in 2016.

Source: Fox News World

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Ryan Woo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEED FOR CASH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STATE COMPETITION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bayer is appealing or plans to appeal the verdicts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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