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Trump, Merkel, queen all targets for German Carnival floats

Groups and clubs in Germany are putting the final touches to their elaborate floats with outrageous caricatures depicting political themes for this year's Carnival celebrations.

In Mainz on Tuesday, an artist worked studiously on a float featuring a bull with "USA" emblazoned on the side, with a horned Donald Trump's head, a cowbell carrying the Twitter logo, and a rear end expelling flatulence on the globe.

Other offerings that will be part of the city's parade next Monday included Chancellor Angela Merkel atop a horse labeled "coalition" collapsed with exhaustion — a nod to fatigue in her longtime government — and Queen Elizabeth II jumping over a border crossing with a German asylum application in hand and faithful corgi at her side to escape her nation's Brexit squabbles.

Source: Fox News World

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A Very British Lesson for the American Left

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Does the bolt of eight members of Parliament from the British Labour Party out of frustration with its left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, have anything to teach Democrats in the United States?

There's a case for saying no, since Corbyn is well to the left of anyone bidding to lead the Democratic Party. That would include Sen. Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist who announced Tuesday that he's again seeking the presidency. The independent from Vermont is a lefty for sure, but his worldview is rooted in less radical forms of socialism than Corbyn's, and his foreign policy views are somewhat more conventional than the Labour leader's.

Competing with Sanders for support from the democratic left is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. She proudly insists that she's a capitalist, a boast that would make Corbyn shudder.

Moreover, a core beef of the center-left British rebels has to do with Corbyn's handling of Brexit, an issue that -- mercifully -- the United States does not have to deal with.

Most Labour Party moderates, and the vast majority of its members, want their leadership to push hard for a second referendum to reverse the country's narrow 2016 decision to leave the European Union. But Corbyn is well-known to be, at best, ambivalent about membership in the EU (he opposed it in the past as a capitalist club) and has, up to now, not made a second referendum central to his strategy.

Corbyn's critics like to say he's had a "bad Brexit," by which they mean that he has failed to take advantage of Prime Minister Theresa May's chaotic performance. Her complex approach to leaving the EU has suffered one parliamentary defeat after another and split her Conservative Party.

Indeed, the revolt of the pro-Europe center broadened on Wednesday when three Conservative MPs quit their own party to join the new Independent Group.

Yet Corbyn-led Labour has not opened anything like the large advantage in the polls that an opposition ought to have in these circumstances.

A particular flashpoint is Corbyn's lack of real energy or clarity in confronting an outbreak of left-wing anti-Semitism. This was the prime motivation behind MP Luciana Berger's decision to leave the party. Berger, who is Jewish, has been treated barbarously by some on the "Brocialist" left.

"I cannot remain in a party that I have come to the sickening conclusion is institutionally anti-Semitic," Berger said. On Tuesday, an eighth Labour parliamentarian, Joan Ryan, joined the flight, citing a "culture of anti-Jewish racism" in the party she's belonged to for four decades.

So why should Democrats in the United States care about any of this?

Begin with the fact that Labour and the Democrats have historically had a lot in common as reformist center-left parties. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were close allies in creating a middle-of-the-road politics that sought to accommodate the left to the market rhythms of the Reagan and Thatcher Eras. Blair's "New Labour" in the mid-1990s echoed Clinton's "New Democrats" from a few years earlier.

But the "neo-liberalism" the left associates with Clinton and Blair came under fierce progressive assault after the 2008 economic implosion for being too financier-friendly, insufficiently attentive to rising inequality, and too confident in the benefits of free trade and deregulation. The backlash in Britain was particularly vigorous in response to Blair's strong support for President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Again, whatever Republicans may claim, Democrats are a long way from embracing Corbynism. But the bitterness of the growing divide between the left and center-left in Britain is a warning of how debilitating intra-progressive strife could become in Congress and in the 2020 primaries.

Given that the defeat of Donald Trump is the absolutely necessary first step toward a more humane politics, more moderate and more adventurous Democrats can ill afford to concentrate their fire on each other. The stakes are too high for self-indulgent sectarianism.

And differences in approach over how to guarantee everyone health coverage or how to fight climate change are less important than agreeing that both problems are urgent and need solving. Remembering that your opponents would prefer to do nothing at all on these issues is a good way to put such disagreements into perspective.

It's an irony of recent Labour Party history that both Blair and Corbyn invoked a commitment to stand up for "the many, not the few" as the battle cry of their very different campaigns. Nothing makes the privileged few happier than a left that becomes too maximalist to win, and then tears itself apart.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

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Huawei first-quarter revenue grows 39 percent to $27 billion amid heightened U.S. pressure

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2018 in Shanghai
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2018 in Shanghai, China June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song

April 22, 2019

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Huawei Technologies said on Monday its first-quarter revenue jumped 39 percent to 179.7 billion yuan ($26.81 billion), in the Chinese technology firm’s first-ever quarterly results.

The Shenzhen-based firm, the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker, also said its net profit margin was around 8 percent for the quarter, which it added was slightly higher than the same period last year. Huawei did not disclose its actual net profit.

The limited results announcement comes at a time when Washington has intensified a campaign against unlisted Huawei, alleging its equipment could be used for espionage and urging U.S. allies to ban it from building next-generation 5G mobile networks.

Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations and launched an unprecedented media blitz by opening up its campus to journalists and making its typically low-key founder, Ren Zhengfei, available for media interviews.

The Chinese firm, which is also the world’s No. 3 smartphone maker, said last week the number of contracts it has won to provide 5G telecoms gear increased further despite the U.S. campaign.

By the end of March, Huawei said it had signed 40 commercial 5G contracts with carriers, shipped more than 70,000 5G base stations to markets around the world and expects to have shipped 100,000 by May.

Huawei’s network business saw its first drop in revenue in two years in 2018. But Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with CNBC earlier this month that network equipment sales rose 15 percent while sales of the consumer business increased by more than 70 percent in the first quarter.

“These figures show that we are still growing, not declining,” Ren said.

Guo Ping, rotating chairman of the company, has said he expects all three business groups – consumer, carrier and enterprise – to post double-digit growth this year.

Huawei also said on Monday it had shipped 59 million smartphones in the first quarter. It did not disclose year-ago comparable figures, but according to market research firm Strategy Analytics, Huawei shipped 39.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2018.

(Reporting by Sijia Jiang and Julia Fioretti; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Source: OANN

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AOC calls new campaign finance complaint ‘bogus’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Fox News Wednesday that new claims of campaign finance violations by her and her campaign manager were "bogus."

According to a complaint filed earlier Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Ocasio-Cortez and her then-campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti created a "shadowy web" of political action committees (PACs) allowing them to raise more money than they otherwise could have mustered.

"I mean, it’s conservative interest groups just filing bogus proposals," Ocasio-Cortez said while heading to a meeting of the House Financial Services Committee.

OCASIO-CORTEZ HIT WITH ETHICS COMPLAINT OVER BOYFRIEND'S EMAIL ACCOUNT

The complaint also alleges that Chakrabarti, now Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, established a limited liability company (LLC) that offered Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic candidates political consulting services at below-market rates, something the complaints says is in violation of FEC rules. At the same time, the complaint says, Chakrabarti served as Ocasio-Cortez's campaign manager, sat on the board of the Justice Democrats PAC and co-founded the Brand New Congress PAC.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti are seen in this July 2018 photo. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti are seen in this July 2018 photo. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

"While I agree with everyone from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to [Rep.] Mark Meadows [R-N.C.] that super PACs should be banned, for years I’ve noted that creating an LLC to funnel political money is worse than a super PAC because you never learn the donors to an LLC," says John Pudner, a former George W. Bush campaign and the executive director of the conservative campaign finance reform group Take Back Our Republic.

OCASIO-CORTEZ DE-LISTED FROM BOARD OF JUSTICE DEMOCRATS AFTER CONTROVERSY

According to a July 2018 post on the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets blog, Ocasio-Cortez received $5,000 from each of two left-wing PACs --Justice Democrats and MoveOn.org -- following her primary win over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley.

Wednesday's complaint is the second filed against Ocasio-Cortez in less than a month by conservative Virginia attorney Dan Backer. His previous complaint alleged that Ocasio-Cortez's campaign funneled at least $6,000 to her boyfriend through the Brand New Congress PAC.

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A separate complaint filed last month alleges that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti redirected $885,000 in campaign contributions from Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC to Brand New Campaign LLC and Brand New Congress LLC. The PACs claimed at the time that the payments were for "strategic consulting."

A couple of weeks after the initial complaints were filed, Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti were removed from the board of Justice Democrats.

Fox News' Andrew Keiper, Gregg Re, Perry Chiaramonte and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Oil near 2019 highs amid OPEC cuts, sanctions on Iran and Venezuela

FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary
FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada, July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo

February 21, 2019

By Henning Gloystein

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil prices hovered just below 2019 highs on Thursday, bolstered by OPEC-led supply cuts and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and Iran.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were at $57.30 per barrel at 0046 GMT, up 14 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their last settlement and not far off their 2019 high of $57.55 reached the previous day.

International Brent crude futures had yet to trade, but also hit a 2019 peak the day before, at $67.38 per barrel.

Hopes that talks between Washington and Beijing would soon resolve the trade disputes between the world’s biggest economies also supported markets.

Prices have been driven up this year by supply cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

OPEC as well as some non-affiliated producers such as Russia agreed late last year to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to prevent a large supply overhang from growing.

Another price driver has been U.S. sanctions against oil exporters Iran and Venezuela.

“Although there is no lack of resources, there is an increasing lack of access to them,” Britain’s Barclays bank said of the sanctions on Wednesday.

The main factor keeping oil prices from rising even further is soaring U.S. oil production, which rose by more than 2 million bpd last year, to a record 11.9 million bpd.

The swelling output has resulted in rising U.S. oil inventories.

U.S. crude oil stocks rose by 1.3 million barrels in the week to Feb. 15 to 448.5 million, according to a weekly report by the American Petroleum Institute on Wednesday.

Official oil inventory and production data is due to be published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) after 1800 GMT on Thursday.

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford)

Source: OANN

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Trump tax returns center stage at Capitol Hill hearings

President Trump’s tax returns were front and center on Tuesday during a number of hearings on Capitol Hill.

Following the formal request by House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., for copies of the last six years of the president’s tax returns, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig visited Capitol Hill, where they faced questions about when – and if – Trump’s returns would be handed over the Congress.

Fielding questions from the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, Retting said that the final decision came down to him – with Mnuchin’s supervision.

WHAT DID TRUMP ATTORNEY SAY IN LETTER OPPOSING DEMS' TAX RETURN DEMAND?

Rettig told a House panel Tuesday that the IRS was preparing a response to last week's letter from Neal.

During the 2016 campaign, Rettig defended Trump's decision to break with decades of tradition by refusing to release his tax filings. Under questioning at his confirmation hearing last August, Rettig pledged to uphold the political independence of the IRS.

Earlier in the day, Mnuchin told the House Appropriations Committee that his department intends to "follow the law" and is reviewing the request to hand over the returns.

Mnuchin also revealed that Treasury Department lawyers have talked to the White House counsel's office about releasing Trump's returns, telling lawmakers that the consultations occurred before the request arrived last week. Mnuchin said the conversations were "purely informational," and he has not been briefed on their content.

But Mnuchin told a House panel that he has had no communication with the president or his top staff about the department's decision on whether to provide Trump's tax returns.

"It is our intent to follow the law and that is in the process of being reviewed," Mnuchin told a House Appropriations subcommittee with responsibility for his budget.

NEW YORK DEMOCRATS LAUNCH FRESH BID TO DIG UP TRUMP'S TAX RETURNS

Tuesday’s hearings come just two days after acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told "Fox News Sunday" in an exclusive interview that Democrats would "never" see President Trump's tax returns.

"That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t and they elected him anyway."

Mulvaney added that Democrats know they won't get the returns, and "just want attention on the issue because they don’t want to talk to us about policy." A fundamental purpose of tax law, Mulvaney continued, is to protect the privacy of tax filers.

"If they don't get what they want in the Mueller report, they're going to ask for the taxes," Mulvaney said. "If they don't get what they want in the taxes, they're going to ask for something else. It doesn't surprise anybody."

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In framing his request for the filings, Neal relied on a 1924 statute that says the Treasury Department "shall furnish" them when requested. The IRS is part of Treasury.

Trump has broken with tradition by not voluntarily releasing his tax returns. He routinely says — as he did Friday — that he's under routine audit and therefore won't release his returns. But IRS officials have said that taxpayers under audit are free to release their filings anyway.

Fox News’ Gregg Re and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Former adviser: Reagan would be 'angry' over Ocasio-Cortez's insuration he was racist

A former adviser to President Ronald Reagan said Tuesday he was appalled and enraged over an insinuation by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that the popular two-term president was racist. And, he added, Reagan would have felt pretty much the same way.

“I was appalled and I was angry, and Reagan would have been angry, too,” Mark Weinberg said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”

Guest host Sandra Smith asked Weinberg why her comments had stirred up such a strong reaction.

OCASIO-CORTEZ ACCUSES STUNNED WELLS FARGO CEO OF FINANCING THE 'CAGING OF CHILDREN'

“Because it isn’t true, It couldn’t be more untrue. And it took a lot to get Reagan angry -- but this charge is one that would have made him so,” Weinberg said.

While appearing at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas., freshman lawmaker Ocasio-Cortez spoke about Reagan and Reaganism, among other issues. She said he pitted the “white working class” against the “brown and black working class.”

“One perfect example, I think a perfect example of how special interests and the powerful have pitted white working-class Americans against brown and black working-class Americans in order to just screw over all working-class Americans ... is Reaganism in the '80s, when he started talking about welfare queens,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

"So you think about this image of welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was ... this, like, really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were 'sucks' on our country.”

Many conservatives criticized the New York congresswoman for her comments, while some progressives applauded them.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Weinberg says Reagan was raised to look past color; he called Ocasio-Cortez’s comments “dishonest.”

“He was raised from being a little boy to treat people equally and not to look at people on the basis of color, and for anyone to suggest otherwise is wrong, is dishonest and is just not true,” Weinberg said about his former boss.

Fox News' Martha MacCallum contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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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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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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