UGHELLI, Nigeria – Nigeria's president says security forces should be "ruthless" ahead of the country's postponed election and that anyone who tries to disturb the vote "will do so at the expense of his own life."
President Muhammadu Buhari spoke Monday as both Nigeria's ruling party and top opposition party condemned the last-minute decision to delay Saturday's vote until Feb. 23.
The president's comments brought an outcry from some Nigerians since he signed a pledge last week to contribute to a peaceful election.
But a ruling party chieftain in Rivers state, Eze Chukwuemeka, said the comments didn't endorse "jungle justice, as some people are putting it. As leader, you don't sit down and watch while your nation is going down the drain."
The electoral commission has allowed election campaigning to resume.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, left, and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, right, are acknowledged on the House floor at the Illinois State Capitol, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019, in Springfield, Ill. Illinois legislators moved quickly to deliver one of Pritzker's top campaign promises, a gradual hike in the statewide minimum wage from $8.25 to $15 an hour, more than double the pay floor that most of its Midwestern neighbors require. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP)
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a measure gradually hiking the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the highest in the Midwest.
It was one of the new Democratic governor’s top campaign promises. He signed the six-year plan Tuesday at the Governor’s Mansion.
“For nine long years, there were many forces that were arrayed against giving a raise to the people who work so hard to provide home care for seniors, child care for toddlers, who wash dishes at the diner, and who farm our fields,” Pritzker said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Today is a victory for the cause of economic justice.”
Illinois is on track to be the first state in the Midwest to push its base wage to $15. The pay jump increases from $8.25 by $1 on Jan. 1, and jumps to $10 on July 1, 2020. Then, it increases $1 each Jan. 1 until 2025.
Currently there are an estimated 1.4 million Illinois residents making less than $15 an hour.
Business groups opposed the plan. They wanted a longer phase-in and a regionalized approach with lower minimum wage levels for areas outside Chicago.
Pritzker noted there are payroll tax credits in the law to ease the transition for employers.
The move is also opposed by the state’s Republican Party, which on Tuesday called the minimum wage signing “only the beginning of J.B. Pritzker’s war on taxpayers and small business.”
“This is only the beginning of J.B. Pritzker’s war on taxpayers and small business,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider said in a statement. “Nearly doubling the minimum wage will destroy entry-level jobs, raise prices for consumers, and bust budgets at every level of government. Pritzker pledged to govern differently and listen to all parties and stakeholders, but those turned out to meaningless words.”
BEDFORD, NH – Newly declared presidential candidate Rep. Seth Moulton is accusing Republican President Trump of “dereliction of duty” over what the Massachusetts Democrat calls his administration’s unwillingness to address the threat of Russian tampering with America's presidential elections.
And Moulton – one of the ringleaders in last year’s failed effort by a small group of congressional Democrats to prevent Nancy Pelosi from regaining the House speakership – argued that his party “frankly…made a mistake by waiting until now” to consider impeachment.
The long-shot for the Democratic presidential nomination made his comments during an appearance Wednesday morning at ‘Politics and Eggs,’ a must stop in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state of New Hampshire.
The Marine veteran who served four tours of duty in the Iraq war is making defense and national security top issues in his White House bid. He told the audience that “I’m going to confront President Trump on these issues of safety and security of leadership around the globe where I think he’s weakest.”
And spotlighting his unsuccessful bid to keep Pelosi from regaining the speaker’s gavel, Moulton touted “my willingness to challenge the Washington establishment will make me a much stronger nominee against Donald Trump.”
Pointing to last week’s release of a Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, Moulton told reporters “the one unmistakable conclusion of this report is that Russian interfered in this election to undermine our democracy and that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to get elected president.”
And he slammed the White House, saying “this administration has been completely unwilling to address this major national security threat to the United States” and accused Trump of “a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the commander in chief.”
“He's more concerned about his own personal reputational security than the security of the United States of America,” he charged.
Moulton joined his 2020 rivals in arguing that Trump obstructed justice and called for impeachment hearings. That’s at odds with Pelosi, who said on Tuesday that she was "not there yet" in supporting the initiation of impeachment proceedings.
Moulton said “we should be advancing articles of impeachment and debating them. We should be putting on paper the charges against the president and then having debate across the aisle with hearings, with witnesses, with subpoenas and documents, about whether or not the president deserves to be impeached under these charges. …That’s the job of Congress. That’s our constitutional responsibility as a check on the executive.”
And Moulton took aim at House Democratic leaders, saying “I think we should have started this a while ago. Both sides of the aisle here failing to step up and do this.”
“I understand there’s a debate right now within my party and it’s a very divisive debate. People think this isn’t the right time or what not. They think it’s not good for our politics is basically the argument for not doing it right now. But we have a higher calling than our politics. It’s called the Constitution,” he spotlighted.
For his part, Trump on Wednesday blasted Democrats ramping up their investigations into him in the wake of the Mueller report. “I say it’s enough. Get back to infrastructure, get back to cutting taxes, lowering drug prices. Really, that’s what we should be doing,” Trump said.
Moulton also took aim at the single-payer "Medicare-for-all" health care proposal being pushed by many of his rivals for the nomination.
“I don’t think it’s right to take every American, many of whom are happy with the health care that they have, and force them on some government plan designed in 1963,” Mouton told reporters.
Moulton’s appearance at ‘Politics and Egg’s was his last stop in a two-day swing through New Hampshire.
The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, described Moulton as a mere “2020 wannabe.”
RNC spokesperson Mandi Merritt told Fox News that Moulton’s “desire to raise taxes, implement the socialist Green New Deal, and diminish New Hampshire’s voice by scrapping the Electoral College makes him just another out-of-touch Democrat who will ultimately fall short.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognised as the country's rightful interim ruler, attends a rally in San Antonio, Venezuela, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
March 30, 2019
By Deisy Buitrago and Shaylim Valderrama
CARACAS (Reuters) – Thousands of Venezuelan opposition sympathizers protested on Saturday against recurring blackouts that crippled much of the country this month and have aggravated the OPEC nation’s economic and social crisis.
Electricity has slowly been restored following a blackout on Monday that left most of Venezuela’s 24 states without power. That followed a massive week-long national outage on March 7.
President Nicolas Maduro has said the situation was caused by “terrorist attacks” on the Guri hydroelectric dam that powers much of the country.
Critics including opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized by most Western nations as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state, blame the electricity problems on corruption and mismanagement.
“We all know who is responsible for the blackout – Maduro,” Guaido said at a rally in the Caracas suburb of Los Teques on Saturday. “We must accelerate the process to remove this corrupt and thieving regime.”
Maduro has said Guaido is seeking to lead a coup against him, with the help of Washington.
The United States has levied crippling sanctions against Maduro’s government in efforts to push him from power, but he has hung on in large part thanks to continued loyalty by top military commanders.
He has also won diplomatic backing from Russia and China, which accuse Washington of meddling in the country’s affairs.
Government supporters also marched in Caracas on Saturday to protest against “imperialism” by the U.S. government, which Maduro accuses of causing the blackouts by attacking generation and transmission systems.
“It’s easy to see that (Guaido) doesn’t understand the country’s situation,” said Antonio Ponce, 56, a bus driver. “He’s been put there by the ultra-right, he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for.”
The outages have left hospitals without power, worsened the already precarious supply of drinking water and left many stores without functioning point-of-sale terminals – which are crucial in the hyperinflationary economy where cash is in short supply.
“Enough of all this humiliation, we do not deserve to live like this,” complained Yuderkis Varela, 46, in the western city of San Cristobal near the border with Colombia. “We don’t have power, we don’t have water, we don’t have gas.”
After Monday’s outage, the government shuttered businesses for three days and schools for four.
The blackout also halted operations at the main oil export terminal of Jose, which had restarted operations by Friday.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Shaylim Valderrama, Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal; Writing by Diego Oré; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
ATHENS, Greece – An anarchist group has claimed responsibility for a hand grenade that caused minor damage to the Russian Consulate in Athens.
A group calling itself Revenge Plot, Mikhail Zhlobitsky Cell said the explosive was intended as "revenge" for a suicide bomb attack by a Russian teenager last year.
A post on a Greek left-wing site said the teen, Mikhail Zhlobitsky, was an anarchist who died in an attack on the Akhrangelsk office of Russia's domestic security agency that injured three people.
No one was hurt by the grenade that was thrown at the Russian Consulate on March 22. Police said at the time that cameras captured two people on a motorbike throwing a small object at the fence by a security guard's post.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – An attorney says an Egyptian man who authorities say was falsely accused of trying to kidnap a young girl at a West Virginia shopping mall has returned home.
Public defender Michelle Protzman told The Herald-Dispatch Mohamed Fathy Hussein Zayan returned to his home in Alexandria, Egypt, on Sunday. The 54-year-old engineer had been in West Virginia for work.
Protzman says Barboursville police drove Zayan to the Charleston airport Saturday as a courtesy.
On Friday, Santana Renee Adams was charged with falsely reporting an emergency incident.
Adams initially told police a man grabbed her 5-year-old daughter by the hair inside a clothing store April 1 and tried to pull her away but stopped when Adams produced a gun. Adams later changed her account. Police said Zayan may have simply been patting the girl on the head.
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Information from: The Herald-Dispatch, http://www.herald-dispatch.com
Cameras facing passengers are embedded in inflight entertainment (IFE) screens, three major airlines are confirming.
However, United, American, and Singapore Airlines also claim they have no plans to use the camera that is reportedly a standard feature of the IFE manufacturer, but a privacy watchdog says it shouldn’t be there.
“If airlines aren’t using the cameras, they shouldn’t be there,” said the director of Big Brother Watch. “Passengers shouldn’t have to worry about whether secret cameras are on or off, whether they’re being recorded, or whether the cameras could be hacked.”
“It appears that these airlines haven’t considered the privacy and security risks to their customers, or justified the presence of these cameras.”
The outcry began a week ago after a Singapore Airlines passenger noticed the eye-level lens and asked the carrier what it was doing there.
Just found this interesting sensor looking at me from the seat back on board of Singapore Airlines. Any expert opinion of whether this a camera? Perhaps @SingaporeAir could clarify how it is used? pic.twitter.com/vy0usqruZG
Responding to the tweet, the airline said the camera is part of a new system provided by the manufacturer and there are “no plans to enable or develop any features using the cameras.”
Correspondingly, American and United Airlines issued separate but similar statements on the matter.
“This is a standard feature that manufacturers of the system have included for possible future purposes such as video conferencing,” said a United spokesperson. “However, our cameras have never been activated on United aircraft and we have no plans to use them in the future.”
The maker of the IFE system, Panasonic Avionics, acknowledged the outrage by saying they were in compliance with the EU’s data protection law called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Prior to the use of any camera on a Panasonic Avionics system that would affect passenger privacy, Panasonic Avionics would work closely with its airline customer to educate passengers about how the system works and to certify compliance with all appropriate privacy laws and regulations, such as GDPR,” said a spokesperson.
Interestingly, Panasonic is tied to the creation of a floor lamp that sparked privacy concerns due to the security camera it possesses.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – 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.
LONDON – 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.”
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)
JOHANNESBURG – 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.
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)
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