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Over 1,000 Jet Airways pilots not to fly from Monday due to unpaid salaries

FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways planes parked at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai
FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircraft parked at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas -/File Photo

April 14, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – More than a thousand pilots of India’s debt-laden Jet Airways will not fly from Monday as they have not been paid salaries for the past three months, President of the National Aviators Guild said on Sunday.

Saddled with more than $1.2 billion of bank debt, the airline has been teetering for weeks and has yet to receive a loan of about $217 million from its lenders as part of a rescue deal agreed in late March.

“Pilots haven’t been paid for the last three months,” Capt Karan Chopra told Reuters.

The crisis at Jet has deepened in recent weeks as lessors have started applying to deregister planes, signaling the planned bailout had failed to assuage their concerns.

An urgent meeting to discuss the Jet situation was held at the prime minister’s office on Friday, which was also attended by the country’s aviation secretary, Pradeep Singh Kharola.

After the meeting, Kharola said the carrier had money to operate 6-7 planes over the weekend and after that the lenders would have to decide how many jets it could fly after Monday afternoon, news channel ET Now reported late on Friday.

Kharola said the company will meet bankers on Monday for infusion of funds in the interim, the TV channel said.

According to a Business Standard newspaper report on Sunday, Jet’s lenders, led by the State Bank of India, are considering a proposal to infuse 10 billion rupees ($144.55 million) to keep the airline afloat.

The money is expected to be disbursed after the Jet management submits an operational plan on how it intends to use the money till May 7, the report said.

The lenders, who have been seeking a new investor to take a stake of up to 75 percent in the airline, hope to complete the selection of bidders by May 7.

Initial bids were to be submitted by the end April 10, but SBI extended the deadline to April 12.

Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, which owns a 24-percent stake in the airline, private equity fund TPG Capital, government owned sovereign fund National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and ousted chairman Naresh Goyal are among those to have submitted bids, the Business Standard reported.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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Facebook apps down for some users across the globe

FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration
FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

March 14, 2019

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Wednesday some users around the world were facing trouble in accessing its widely used Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook apps, making it one of the longest outages the company has suffered in the recent past.

The Menlo Park, California-based company took to Twitter to inform users that it was working to resolve the issue, which had been plaguing some users for over 10 hours, as soon as possible and confirmed that the matter was not related to a DDoS attack.

Social media users in parts of United States, Japan and some parts Europe were affected by the outage, according to DownDetector’s live outage map https://downdetector.com/status/facebook/map.

Facebook users, including brand marketers, expressed their outrage on Twitter with the #facebookdown hashtag.

“Ya’ll, I haven’t gotten my daily dosage of dank memes and I think that’s why I’m cranky. #FacebookDown,” a user Mayra Mesina tweeted. http://bit.ly/2TDCYDK

Facebook, which gets a vast majority of its revenue from advertising, told Bloomberg that it was still investigating the overall impact “including the possibility of refunds for advertisers.”

A Facebook spokesman confirmed the outage, but did not provide an update.

(Reporting by Mekhla Raina in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

Source: OANN

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Philippine police: 4 wives of Abu Sayyaf commanders arrested

Philippine police say they have captured four wives of Abu Sayyaf commanders who take care of their financial transactions, help procure guns and bomb parts and arrange the travels of foreign militants to the country.

Police say the women were arrested Tuesday in raids on houses in southern Zamboanga city where authorities seized two grenades, a bag of suspected ammonium nitrate and electrical parts that can be used in making bombs.

Police say the women work under Abu Sayyaf leader Hajan Sawadjaan, who is the main suspect in the Jan. 27 bombing of a Roman Catholic cathedral during a Mass that killed 23 people in nearby Sulu province. The cathedral attack by two suspected suicide bombers sparked the latest military offensive against the Abu Sayyaf.

Source: Fox News World

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Fla. Mayor Eyes 2020; Wants to Wipe Out Student Loan Debt

Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam, who will likely run for the Democratic nomination for president, wants to use his campaign to call for canceling over $1.5 trillion in student debt.

Messam announced his forming a presidential exploratory committee on Wednesday, saying in a telephone interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that the panel will help “ensure that once a decision” on running for president “is officially made, that we’re off to a sharp and a quick start.”

“The mayor firmly believes you cannot just move to debt free college when student loan debt is stifling the American dream today,” an aide to the mayor, who was re-elected to earlier this week, told BuzzFeed News. “We’re declaring it as an issue that threatens the economic security of this country. We don’t have to walk into another Great Recession.”

“We must resolve the 1.5 trillion in student loan debt and give Americans a chance at the American Dream,” the aide added to explain the mayor’s position. “Americans struggling to make ends meet should be the priority.”

Messam, a 44-year-old businessman who started a construction company before entering politics, was first elected mayor in 2015, and was the first African-American mayor in the city’s history. Earlier this week he won re-election with 86 percent of the vote, although only 8 percent of the city’s eligible voters actually voted, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Motor racing: Leclerc aiming for a first in a thousand

Formula One - F1 - Chinese Grand Prix - Shanghai, China
Formula One - F1 - Chinese Grand Prix - Shanghai, China - April 15, 2018 - Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel leads the race. REUTERS/Aly Song

April 10, 2019

By Abhishek Takle

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The first Formula One win is special for every driver but Charles Leclerc will feel it magnified by a thousand if he triumphs in China this weekend after being denied by cruel misfortune in Bahrain.

Sunday’s race is the 1,000th in world championship history and the Ferrari driver, who took pole position and set the fastest race lap at Sakhir two weeks ago, can write his name on it with a first victory.

“I hope the car will be as good as it was in Bahrain, so that I can continue to go for the results we deserve,” said the 21-year-old Monegasque.

The same engine that Leclerc used in Bahrain will again be available after Ferrari engineers found a short-circuit in the car’s injection system control unit had robbed him of victory.

Five times world champion Lewis Hamilton, winner in Bahrain after Leclerc slowed while leading, has been more successful than anyone in China and will be aiming to win the race for a sixth time.

Champions Mercedes have won the first two races of the season one-two but against the odds, with Ferrari looking ominously quick in Bahrain until Leclerc’s loss of power.

Despite Mercedes taking five Chinese wins from the last seven races, they have a fight on their hands and they know it.

“We are happy but we are also conscious and aware of how lucky we were today to come away with a one-two,” Hamilton said after the race in Bahrain.

“We all worked so hard through the weekend as we do every weekend but we underperformed.”

Team mate Valtteri Bottas, who leads Hamilton by one point in the standings after winning the opener in Australia, should also be a contender.

The Finn was on course for victory in Shanghai last year until a virtual safety car handed it to then-Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, who has yet to score a point this season for Renault, instead.

Ferrari, however, are expected to have the edge down the Shanghai circuit’s main straight, which is over a kilometer long.

“If they are able to maintain those power levels…on a power sensitive circuit like Shanghai, they are the favorites, clearly,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. “The lap time benefit might even be more than in Bahrain.”

Red is seen as a lucky color in China and Leclerc, who hung on for third in Bahrain and a first podium finish, could do with a slice of good fortune after the disappointment in the desert.

Four-time champion team mate Sebastian Vettel, who spun and was outpaced by Leclerc two weeks ago, will also be fired up to re-establish his number one status and close the points gap to Mercedes.

The German has won just once in China, when he handed Red Bull their maiden victory in 2009, before the current V6 turbo hybrid era.

Red Bull will be on the lookout for any opportunity to repeat last year’s success on the 10th anniversary of that first win.

“Overall, Shanghai provides you with a lot of opportunities to fight and set up overtakes,” said Max Verstappen, who botched his chances of victory and a possible one-two last year with scrappy attempts to overtake Hamilton and Vettel.

“I’m looking forward to hopefully having an exciting race there.”

(Editing by Alan Baldwin/Greg Stutchbury)

Source: OANN

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Bereaved families blame Boeing after Ethiopia crash report

Dried flowers are seen at a family grave site for victims of the Ethiopian Airlines ET 302 plane crash in Nakuru County
Dried flowers are seen at a family grave site for victims of the Ethiopian Airlines ET 302 plane crash in Nakuru County, Kenya April 5, 2019. REUTERS/George Nganga

April 5, 2019

By Jason Neely and Duncan Miriri

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia/NAKURU, Kenya (Reuters) – Mourning families of Ethiopian Airlines passengers who died in last month’s crash are asking awkward and angry questions of U.S. planemaker Boeing after closely following a preliminary report into the disaster.

Though Ethiopian investigators’ remit was not to find blame, they implicitly pointed at Boeing by recommending it fix a faulty system and saying pilots followed pre-established procedures, before the 737 MAX crashed killing all 157 on board.

Konjit Shafi, who lost her 31-year-old brother Sintayehu, listened to the Ethiopian transport minister’s press conference live on Thursday and wondered why lessons were not learned from a similar MAX disaster in Indonesia last October.

“Boeing – they knew the problem already,” she said, referring to an automatic anti-stall system in the MAX model that tipped the jets down in both cases due to faulty sensors.

“If they could have announced the problem to the airlines first, the accident may not have happened,” she told Reuters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Boeing has expressed condolences and promised a software fix. It will also have awkward questions of its own – over whether the Ethiopian crew correctly followed guidance not to restore power to the anti-stall system following sensor damage, and why the plane was also at unusually high thrust.

For Konjit, the report’s release on Thursday brought back her last words with her brother, who called after takeoff to say hello as the family lived in the flight path.

“He asked me to go outside and see the plane because he was just above our home,” she said, sitting in a dimly lit front room in front of a portrait from Sintayehu’s university graduation and a row of burned candles.

“I called him again and asked how the network was working and he answered ‘I don’t know, it’s just working until now’ and then ‘good bye’. I think it’s at that time that the accident happened.”

Flight 302 had taken off late, at 8:38 a.m., and contact was lost six minutes later. It crashed into a dusty plain under still blue skies with such force that much of the wreckage was buried in the dry earth.

“PROFITS BEFORE LIVES”?

Among those on board were three generations of one Kenyan family – grandmother Anne Wangui Karanja, her daughter and her three young grandchildren.

In the back yard of the family home in the central Kenyan town of Nakuru, bunches of white roses were wilting on a newly-built stone memorial, emblazoned with photos, dates of birth and words of remembrance.

“From the report, we gather that the manufacturer is the problem,” said Quindos Karanja, who lost his mother, sister, nieces and nephew. “My anger comes in because they (Boeing) were putting profits before lives.”

The family read the crash report online as soon as it was published, and have followed news coverage with the aid of a stream of lawyers arriving at their home.

“It is good that the CEO of Boeing came out and owned up, but all we want, before these planes go back into the skies, is that they make sure everything is taken care of,” Karanja said.

“We don’t want to have such a tragedy because it is very painful,” he said.

Boeing has not admitted liability, but its boss Dennis Muilenburg said on Thursday the company was working to eliminate the risk of “erroneous activation” of the so-called MCAS anti-stall system via a software update and pilot training.

The 737 MAX fleet has been grounded worldwide as a precaution. If culpability is found, it could open the world’s biggest planemaker to a slew of lawsuits.

Relatives of an American woman killed in the crash, Samya Stumo, filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. victim in Chicago. The complaint targeted Boeing and Rosemount Aerospace Inc, the manufacturer of the sensor at the heart of the inquiry.

Stumo is the niece of consumer activist Ralph Nader, who has called for a boycott of the 737 MAX.

“We as passengers need to demand that planes be safe so that noone else dies,” said her mother Nadia Milleron.

“Profits should not come before safety, and we are making this effort here to help prevent a third crash.”

(Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

Source: OANN

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EU sugar rises as regional market tightens, world prices languish

A farmer harvests a sugar beet field in Puits-la-Vallee
A farmer harvests a sugar beet field in Puits-la-Vallee, northern France, November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

April 8, 2019

By Maytaal Angel

LONDON (Reuters) – Spot sugar prices in the European Union are recovering from last year’s record lows as world prices languish, prompting a pick-up in imports to one of the few global regions where output is slumping.

The EU sugar market is restructuring, with Europe’s biggest sugar refiner Suedzucker planning to shut five plants next season in a bid to combat overproduction, which soared in 2017/18 after the EU scrapped output and export quotas.

Spot EU white sugar prices were at 422 euros ($474) a tonne in late March, according to price provider S&P Global Platts, while global white sugar prices on ICE are currently at around $330 a tonne, not far off the 2018 decade low of $307.50.

(Graphic: EU versus global white sugar prices – https://tmsnrt.rs/2WKQfre)

The rise in spot EU prices is not captured in official European Commission data, which shows average prices at end-January at 312 euros a tonne based on invoices paid by buyers who booked their purchases at the start of the season.

“Commission price data is lagged. At sugar conferences at the moment people talk of low European prices, but in the real world prices have firmed up quite a bit and should continue to do so,” said John Stansfield, a sugar analyst at Group Sopex.

The rise in prices follows a poor EU harvest that has left output for the 2018/19 season at around 18 million tonnes, down some 3 million tonnes from 2017/18. The 2019/20 EU harvest is also seen at around 18 million tonnes following reduced beet plantings.

EU sugar stocks meanwhile slumped to 12.7 million tonnes at the end of January from 15.2 million a year earlier, European Commission data shows.

(Graphic: EU sugar stocks – https://tmsnrt.rs/2CUZYDQ)

“The EU market is gradually turning into a balanced situation, which is encouraging. Nobody is making money at these prices,” said Julian Price, consultant at julianprice.com and former trader at ED&F Man.

Suedzucker, which plans to reduce output by 700,000 tonnes per year starting next season, expects to make another operating loss in its sugar segment of 200-300 million euros in 2019/20. France’s Tereos, the world’s second-largest sugar maker, expects a full-year loss for 2018/19.

Agritel analyst Francois Thaury said the EU spot price rise was for now hurting regional sugar makers, many of which sold forward expecting a bumper crop and have been left scrambling for spot supplies to fill sales obligations.

They should eventually benefit, he said, but noted that EU sugar imports were also rising, meaning prices were capped and could come off the boil.

Sugar imports into the EU were at 163,000 tonnes in January, around double the year-earlier level, European Commission data shows. Although the imports are capped by a tariff regime, allocated tariff-free flows can still work to cool the market.

(Graphic: EU sugar imports – https://tmsnrt.rs/2WOOs4D)

For the non-EU market, reduced output in a key consuming region such as Europe comes as welcome relief to exporters scrambling for new markets.

Analysts expect the global sugar market to record a deficit of 1.9 million tonnes in 2019/20, but following years of surplus, stockpiles are plentiful, keeping prices stubbornly range-bound near decade lows.

(Graphic: World sugar market balance – https://tmsnrt.rs/2CWQVCh)

(Reporting by Maytaal Angel; Editing by Nigel Hunt and Dale Hudson)

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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