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Facebook says has made headway against abuses ahead of India election

FILE PHOTO: A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed cables in this illustration in Zenica
FILE PHOTO: A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed cables in this illustration in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

April 8, 2019

By Joseph Menn

MENLO PARK, California (Reuters) – Facebook has said it has made strides in its efforts to prevent online abuses in the Indian national election that starts this week but acknowledged that gaps remain in its “election integrity” efforts.

During a media tour of the company’s election operations center at its Menlo Park headquarters in California on Friday, company officials touted new fact-checking efforts for suppressing misinformation and technological advances such as the ability to detect when videos had been doctored.

But Katie Harbath, Facebook’s public policy director for global elections, said measures including a better system for verifying the buyers of political advertisements remained imperfect and called for more government regulation of ad-spending disclosures.

Excoriated for failing to stop Russian manipulation in the 2016 U.S. presidential vote, Facebook has ramped up efforts to prevent abuses in subsequent elections, including the 2018 American midterms and the recent Brazilian and Mexican contests. Governments in many countries, including India and the UK, are contemplating strict new regulations for social media companies.

India, where Facebook has more users than in any other country, is shaping up as a major test. On April 1, the company said it had removed more than 500 accounts and 138 pages linked to India’s opposition Congress party for “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” Facebook’s term for the use of fake accounts and other deceptive methods to promote a message.

It also took down a page with 2 million followers which, according to Facebook’s review partner Atlantic Council think tank, was “pro-BJP” (India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party) and a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Harbath said the company can now quickly detect viral, politically sensitive stories and refer them for fact-checking by outside organizations. The officials also touted heavy investment in technology for detecting doctored videos and text inside pictures, but acknowledged that that they have been unable to stop some duplicates of videos that have been identified as spurious.

Facebook has partnered with seven fact-checkers in India. If a post is found to be untrue, the company says it reduces the circulation of such fake posts by more than 80 percent, but slightly modified versions of the same images, video or text can escape detection and spread further.

Reuters earlier this month found instances of edited posts circulating on Facebook which the company’s own fact-checkers had said were false.

Deceptive political advertising has become another hot-button problem for the company. Facebook has toughened the rules in India and political ads now include “published by” and “paid by” disclaimers. Users can also access a library that allows them to search and find out more about political advertisements.

Harbath said political ad purchases in India now require either a certificate from the Election Commission or a physical address in India, as well as a phone number and group name of the entity purchasing the ad.

While Facebook will check that the address and phone number are legitimate, the company agreed that the same person could make up multiple entities at the same address, without any available record of the original source of money.

“This is a great example, we think, of where there needs to be more regulation,” Harbath said.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: OANN

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TPG Rise founder leaves firm in wake of U.S. college admissions scandal

A plaque is pictured at University of Southern California in Los Angeles
A plaque is pictured at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

March 14, 2019

By Joshua Franklin

NEW YORK (Reuters) – TPG Capital said on Thursday it had fired senior executive Bill McGlashan after he was charged in connection with a U.S. college fraud scheme that has ensnared Hollywood celebrities and corporate elite.

“We believe the behavior described to be inexcusable and antithetical to the values of our entire organization,” TPG said in a statement.

In a separate statement via a spokesman, McGlashan said he was resigning from the TPG Rise Fund and TPG Growth. McGlashan was managing co-founder and chief executive of TPG’s impact investing Rise Fund.

“I will be focused on addressing the allegations that have been presented, and there are aspects of the story that have yet to emerge that I wish I could share,” he said.

McGlashan, who was placed on indefinite administrative leave on Wednesday, was among those named in an investigation by U.S. authorities into a scheme that helped wealthy Americans cheat their children’s way into elite universities.

TPG Capital has offered investors in its Rise Fund II the chance to withdraw, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

TPG raised $2 billion for the first Rise fund in 2017, which was backed by pop star Bono and aims to generate profits while benefiting society and the environment.

TPG is aiming to raise up to $3.5 billion for its second Rise Fund, according to documents from the State Investment Council of New Jersey, which has committed up to $125 million in the fund.

The Rise Fund is a small part of the $103 billion in assets that TPG has under management, but a high-profile area of investment among a growing trend for more impact investing.

Impact investing aims to generate some benefit to society while also delivering financial returns.

TPG made the offer to investors who participated in the first close of the fund. A spokesman for TPG’s Rise Fund declined to comment. The news was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

TPG has said Jim Coulter will take over managing partner responsibilities for TPG Growth and Rise.

(Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York, editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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Fed’s Kaplan says he is getting more confident about economy: WSJ

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Kaplan stands on a stage in Stanford
FILE PHOTO - Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President, Robert Kaplan, stands on a stage at Stanford University's Hoover Institution where he is attending an annual monetary policy conference in Stanford, California, U.S., May 4, 2018. REUTERS/Ann Saphir

April 18, 2019

(Reuters) – A top Federal Reserve policymaker on Thursday said he is “getting more confident” in U.S. economic growth this year but still thinks current interest rates are appropriate.

“I’m getting more confident about solid growth this year,” Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He described the U.S. central bank’s current benchmark overnight lending rate of 2.25 percent to 2.50 percent as “appropriate” and “mildly accommodative.”

Several banks and analysts revised their forecasts for first-quarter U.S. growth higher on Thursday after data showed retail sales surging in March and the number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits falling to the lowest level in nearly 50 years last week.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: OANN

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Trump’s Fed picks draw political fire as they angle for the job

FILE PHOTO: The Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington
FILE PHOTO: The Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 10, 2019

By Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) – A political feud over President Donald Trump’s picks for the U.S. Federal Reserve Board broke into an open brawl on Tuesday even before the nominations of Herman Cain, a former restaurant chain executive, and Stephen Moore, a conservative economic commentator, have been formally submitted to the Senate.

Cain and Moore, both overt loyalists to the president, in recent days have waged unprecedented public campaigns for the Fed jobs, with both eagerly endorsing Trump’s economic policies and Moore pledging to “accommodate” those policies once he is at the Fed.

The central bank’s leadership prides itself on its nonpartisan stewardship over the world’s biggest economy, and views political independence as key to its ability to carry out monetary policy effectively.

On Tuesday, Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer and Joint Economic Committee Vice Chair Carolyn Maloney took public aim at the pair’s qualifications, with Maloney saying that Moore is “superbly underqualified for the role for which he has been nominated.”

And at least four Republican Senators indicated they could break ranks on Cain, enough to sink his chances for the required approval in the Senate.

The Trump administration is “probably going to hear from a number of our members about concerns that they have” about Cain, John Thune, the Republican whip in the Senate, told Politico.

Another Republican senator, John Cornyn, said, “Before the president starts floating names … we need to have a conversation about who is actually confirmable up here,” according to a Twitter post by New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush.

Cain and Moore are battling hard for the two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, positions that would give them a say for years on interest-rate policy and bank regulation.

In recent days they have taken to social media and the airwaves to promote themselves and lash out at critics and anyone they view as standing in the way of Trump’s agenda or his prospects for reelection.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Moore trumpeted his agenda for economic growth and again took aim at critics.

“There are a lot of people on the left that are afraid of my ideas. They realize that they couldn’t defeat me based on my ideas, because they’re popular, and they’re right, so that leads to this kind of smear campaign, which is ugly,” Moore said.

“I have a pretty populist agenda that I’m pursuing, which is more growth, higher wages, more transparency and more sunlight on how the Fed operates,” Moore said, calling those priorities “the right things to do” and saying that he wants “to talk directly to the American people.”

“NOT SO FAVORABLY INCLINED”

Cain and Moore’s open politicking is a departure from past practice, with confirmation of Fed nominees typically a sleepy process of quizzing candidates, mostly economists with doctoral degrees, about their views on monetary policy and banking oversight.

Lewis Alexander, chief U.S. economist at Nomura Securities, said it was positive “for people’s views to be known,” but he added a note of caution. “It is certainly not a part of the Federal Reserve’s mandate to promote the chances of reelection of a particular president.”

Trump has repeatedly criticized the Fed for raising rates, saying that rate hikes are holding back the economy. His pick of Moore and former Republican presidential candidate Cain has been seen by critics as a means to put pressure on the central bank to ease policy and help him politically.

Moore and Cain have kept up unusually public profiles. Cain’s has included digs against Democrats (“lunatic liberals,” he said Monday on Facebook) and gays (a Tuesday tweet linked to a piece on Floyd Brown’s Western Journal that portrays gays as unnatural).

Cain has said he would not be disappointed if he does not get the Fed job, but has repeatedly brought it up on his daily show. In a video posted Tuesday, Cain said “a lot of people … do not like the fact” that he is under consideration and are trying to discourage the administration from nominating him because of his conservative political leanings. “The decision’s going to be made basically on the facts,” he said.

Cain remains co-chair of the America Fighting Back PAC, which was co-founded by Brown to promote Trump’s reelection. Cain’s photo and name were used as recently as last month in a letter raising funds to oppose a group of 12 senators if they ever “cross” Trump.

Two of those senators are on the Senate Banking Committee, the first stop in a two-step Senate approval process for any Fed nominee. Brown, who was the founding chairman of Citizens United, said in an interview that Cain has stepped back from day-to-day involvement in the PAC. Cain did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

Moore in radio and TV interviews has praised Trump’s economic record and embraced easing monetary policy, a stance that Trump himself has vigorously promoted.

People “are not going to vote against someone who has been this successful on the economy,” Moore said on Monday, adding in another interview that day that he is “looking forward to getting over to the Fed.”

Cain’s candidacy appeared by late Tuesday to be drawing the most political fire. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told The Hill that she is “not so favorably inclined” on Cain, whose 2012 run for president was derailed by claims of sexual harassment, which he has denied.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell declined to publicly endorse him, the Washington Post reported.

It is not the first time a Fed nominee has faced political opposition. In 2011 Republicans scuttled the nomination by Democratic President Barack Obama of Peter Diamond, a Nobel laureate in economics and MIT professor, for what Republican Senator Richard Shelby then said was a lack of experience and appropriate policy preferences.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Source: OANN

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Crane ships begin raising Norwegian navy ship damaged by oil tanker

The shipwrecked Norwegian frigate
The shipwrecked Norwegian frigate "KNM Helge Ingstad" is seen during a salvage operation near Bergen, Norway February 26, 2019. Vidar Ruud/NTB Scanpix/via REUTERS

February 26, 2019

OSLO (Reuters) – Two crane ships early on Tuesday began raising a submerged Norwegian navy frigate which collided with an oil tanker in November and has remained stranded off Norway’s west coast since, the armed forces said.

The accident injured eight people and caused the temporary closure of a North Sea crude export terminal, Norway’s top gas processing plant and several offshore fields.

Raising the Helge Ingstad, one of Norway’s five frigates, is expected to take five to six days and will require calm weather.

“The work must be synchronized, so the cranes must be completely stable, next to each other,” Norway’s armed forces said in a statement.

The armed forces have said they are evaluating whether it is possible to repair the 5,290 ton Helge Ingstad or whether they will need to order a replacement frigate.

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche and Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Jason Neely)

Source: OANN

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Florida may send a big message to sanctuary cities

MIAMI — Florida has one of the largest illegal immigrant populations in the country and its new governor wants to make sure they don't have protection from local authorities.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing for a ban on sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Several bills making their way through the state legislature would effectively make it against the law for police departments to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials. If a law enforcement official refuses, they could be fined or fired.

“This problem that we have right now, is a problem that has been festering in the United States because it has not been solved by the federal government for the past 40 years,” said Florida Republican Rep. Blaise Ingoglia. “Quite frankly, you know since the last mass amnesty, if you will, in 1986 under Ronald Reagan, we were always promised that we would have some sort of... legal immigration reform and it never came.”

Lawmakers are grappling with fixing what they call America’s broken immigration system

Lawmakers are grappling with fixing what they call America’s broken immigration system

It's all an effort by the Republican-led state lawmakers, buoyed by DeSantis, to toughen the rules on illegal immigration. The sanctuary city ban, which passed the Senate Infrastructure and Security Committee, will be voted on by both chambers before May 3.

Florida is home to 775,000 illegal immigrants out of 10.7 million present in the United States, ranking the state third among all states.

Latest estimates show Florida’s illegal immigrant population at 775,000

Latest estimates show Florida’s illegal immigrant population at 775,000 (Elina Shirazi/Fox News)

Nine states have enacted state laws requiring law enforcement to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.

Groups who oppose the anti-sanctuary city bill targeting these illegal immigrants say it's unnecessary because the state doesn't even have sanctuary cities.

Groups who oppose the bill dispute that Florida has sanctuary cities

Groups who oppose the bill dispute that Florida has sanctuary cities

“Anyone who says that there is a sanctuary city in the state of Florida, especially if they're a policymaker, that would be very concerning to me because it simply does not exist,” said Melissa Taveras, spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

Republican lawmakers don’t agree. They call a handful of cities — including Orlando and West Palm Beach — “pseudo-sanctuary” cities, because they prevent law enforcement officials from asking about immigration status when they make arrests. The City of Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina also criticized the bill, going so far as saying he might quit if he had to check someone’s legal status before helping them.

“There are still people here in the state of Florida, police chiefs that are just refusing to contact ICE, refusing to detain somebody that they know is here illegally. So while the actual county municipality doesn't have an actual adopted policy, they still have people in power within their sheriff's department or police department that refuse to do it anyway,” said Ingoglia.

Critics also say the bill would make municipalities lose their autonomy.

“This set of bills reverses some of these traditional principles and says federal government should have primacy over state and local governments and that state and local governments need to cooperate with the federal government even if they disagree,” Touchton said.

Some lawmakers claim the bill is pro-law-enforcement. Those against the bill disagree.

“Federal immigration agents should be doing the work of federal immigration agents. Local police should be tasked with securing public safety,” said Taveras.

The Miami-Dade Police Department said it considered the issue a federal matter, not a local one.

“We remind the community that the enforcement of immigration laws is the responsibility of the federal government and those specific federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which are delegated such authority,” the department said in a statement to Fox News.

The Miami-Dade police department gave a statement to Fox News in response to the anti-sanctuary city bill

The Miami-Dade police department gave a statement to Fox News in response to the anti-sanctuary city bill

Taveras said the bills will cause people to be afraid of reporting crimes, causing public safety issues.

“The fear with passage of a bill that requires cooperation with ICE is that many community members will feel absolutely desperate when they finally come into contact with law enforcement, and they'll be fearful to integrate into the community or to report crimes to call for help to testify as a witness, and that the intention of making the state more law abiding with regard to undocumented immigrants, will make it more lawless as large portions of communities hide themselves.

Regardless of how people feel about the bills, both sides said there is a need to fix a broken system.

“I think the message that we could send to the nation is that we really require comprehensive immigration reform be what we're seeing happening at the state level is really not going to help frankly from our immigrant communities and it's happening to help the public at large. You really need comprehensive immigration reform at this point,” said Taveras.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Trump Honors the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day: CNN and Liberal Media Complain about a Tweet Instead!

Trump Honors the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day: CNN and Liberal Media Complain about a Tweet Instead! Seems Trump Also Tweeted about it today but a lot of people had something to say about it Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at […]

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

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

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

WHY THE MEDIA ARE CONVINCED JOE BIDEN WILL IMPLODE

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

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

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

— Joe Biden

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

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

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

— Dr. Neal Kassell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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German carmaker Daimler endured a weak start to the year, echoing troubles at other major manufacturers, as sales in the big Chinese market stuttered.

The company said Friday that its net income fell to 2.1 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in the first quarter from 2.3 billion euros during the same period a year earlier, while revenue dipped to 39.7 billion euros from 39.8 billion euros.

Vehicle sales fell 4% to 773,800 units, with a double-digit percentage drop in China offsetting gains in other markets like the U.S. and Europe.

The company said there were also problems with high inventories and bottlenecks in the supply chain.

Chairman Dieter Zetsche said that “we cannot and will not be satisfied with this — as expected — moderate start to the year.”

Source: Fox News World

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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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