FILE PHOTO - British Prime Minister Theresa May is seen outside Downing Street in London, Britain, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
April 8, 2019
By Kylie MacLellan and William James
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to argue for a Brexit delay while her ministers hold crisis talks with Labour to try to break the deadlock in London.
Britain’s departure from the EU has already been delayed once but May is asking for yet more time as she courts veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, whose opposition Labour Party wants to keep Britain more closely tied to the bloc after Brexit.
“The Prime Minister has not yet moved off her red lines so we can reach a compromise,” Corbyn said ahead of further talks between his team and government ministers on Tuesday.
While May travels to Berlin and Paris ahead of an emergency EU summit in Brussels on Wednesday, British lawmakers will hold a 90-minute debate on her proposal to delay Britain’s EU departure date to June 30 from April 12.
The debate has been forced on the government by parliament passing a law on Monday which will give lawmakers the power to scrutinize and even make legally binding changes to May’s request to extend the Article 50 negotiating period again.
Labour’s demands include keeping Britain in a customs union with the EU, something which is hard to reconcile with May’s desire for Britain to have an independent trade policy.
The Telegraph reported Labour and the government were still discussing both a customs union and the idea of holding a confirmatory referendum on any deal they agree.
Both ideas are anathema to many in May’s party, whose rebels have helped trigger three parliamentary defeats of the withdrawal deal she negotiated with the EU last year.
“I’ve said many times before, we can be more, much more ambitious in our future relationship with the UK,” EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told a news conference with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Monday.
BREXIT DELAY?
The 2016 referendum revealed a United Kingdom divided over much more than EU membership, and has sparked impassioned debate about everything from secession and immigration to capitalism, empire and what it means to be British.
Yet, more than a week after Britain was originally supposed to have left the EU, nothing is resolved as May, the weakest British leader in a generation, battles to get a divorce deal ratified by a profoundly divided parliament.
If Britain’s exit is delayed beyond May 22, the EU has said it will have to take part in European Parliament elections. The British government on Monday took the legal steps necessary to take part in that vote.
“It does not make these elections inevitable, as leaving the EU before the date of election automatically removes our obligation to take part,” a government spokesman said.
EU leaders, fatigued by the serpentine Brexit crisis, must decide on Wednesday whether to grant May a further delay. The decision can be vetoed by any of the other 27 member states.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it was “crucial to know when and on what basis (the) UK will ratify the Withdrawal Agreement” as the EU considers May’s request to delay.
Without an extension, Britain is due to leave the EU at 2200 GMT on Friday, without a deal to cushion the economic shock.
While the EU is not expected to trigger such a potentially disorderly no-deal exit, diplomats said all options were on the table – from refusing a delay to granting May’s request or pushing for a longer postponement.
But May is boxed in at home.
Brexiteers in her cabinet insisted on at most a short delay, while Mark Francois, deputy chief of the Conservatives’ hardline eurosceptic faction in parliament, demanded she resign and called on the party to vote on forcing her out – even though there is no formal provision to do so before December.
YANON, Myanmar – Myanmar's Information Ministry says nine policemen were killed in an attack in the western state of Rakhine by the increasingly active Arakan Army rebel group.
The ministry's website said 60 Arakan Army insurgents on Saturday night attacked the police post, which was safeguarding question and answer sheets from the national high school matriculation examination.
The Arakan Army, which is aligned with Rakhine's Buddhist population, seeks autonomy for the region. Rakhine is better known as the site of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by the military against the Muslim Rohingya minority, causing more than 700,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Attacks on police by Rohingya insurgents triggered the crackdown.
The government declared the Arakan Army a terrorist organization after it killed 13 police officers and wounded nine in Jan. 4 attacks.
FILE PHOTO: Slabs of marked steel wait in a yard before going into production at the Novolipetsk Steel PAO steel mill in Farrell, Pennsylvania, U.S., March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk
March 12, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is working on a plan that lifts steel and aluminum tariffs off Mexican and Canadian products while preserving the gains of those tariffs overall, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Tuesday.
“What I’m trying to do is a have a practical solution to a real problem … get rid of tariffs on these two, let them maintain their historic access to the U.S. market which I think will allow us to still maintain the benefit of the steel and aluminum program,” he told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee at a hearing about the World Trade Organization.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Alexandra Alper; editing by Grant McCool)
FILE PHOTO: Chinese and U.S. flags are arranged during the third annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) at the State Department in Washington May 9, 2011. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
April 6, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China and the United States made “new progress” in the round of trade talks that wrapped up on Friday in Washington, China’s official CCTV broadcaster reported late on Saturday.
The two sides discussed draft agreement text on issues including technology transfer, protection of intellectual property rights, services, agriculture, the bilateral trade balance, and an implementation system, and will continue to talk on remaining issues, the state broadcaster reported.
(Reporting by Yawen Chen and Tony Munroe; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
MSNBC anchors Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle were frustrated by Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler saying climate change isn’t an immediate threat.
Ruhle declared, “The Trump administration has managed to downplay the impact of climate change again. Andrew Wheeler, the new EPA administrator, insisted the effects of manmade global warming are not here yet.”
In an interview with CBS correspondent Major Garrett on Wednesday, Wheeler explained his position on climate change.
“When you hear Democrats running for nomination in 2020 say we’re in a catastrophic situation, is there anything unreasonable about those impressions or that rhetoric?” Garrett asked.
Wheeler responded, “Yes, I think it is unreasonable. On the climate change, it is an important issue that we have to be addressing, and we are addressing it, but most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out.”
Ruhle responded to Wheeler’s comment, saying, “Well, for facts sake, climate change is here, happening right now. Like the historic record-breaking flooding that ripped through the Midwest. You know when what happened? This week.”
Speaking with former Obama administration EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Velshi complained, “It’s sort of beyond frustrating that an EPA administrator would say that a matter 50 to 75 years out is not important.”
McCarthy said the Trump administration is acting like “they’re blind and all of these things are happening around them that threaten our lives, that threaten our public health, that are destroying communities, destroying farmland, that are killing and impacting millions of people across the world…”
The issue is that McCarthy never explains what “these things” are.
FILE PHOTO: An employee counts U.S. dollar bills at a money exchange office in central Cairo, Egypt, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
March 29, 2019
By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar’s share of currency reserves reported to the International Monetary Fund fell in the fourth quarter, down for the third straight quarter, while the euro’s share of reserves grew to the largest in four years, data released on Friday showed.
Reserves held in U.S. dollars fell to $6.62 trillion, or 61.69 percent of allocated reserves, in the fourth quarter, from $6.63 trillion, or 61.94 percent, in the third quarter.
Total allocated reserves increased to $10.73 trillion in the third quarter from $10.71 trillion in the previous quarter.
Global reserves are assets of central banks held in different currencies, primarily used to support their liabilities. Central banks sometimes use reserves to help support their respective currencies.
While the dollar share of foreign exchange reserves contracted, the euro, the yen and the Chinese yuan’s share all increased.
Graphic: Currency composition of FX reserves – https://tmsnrt.rs/2V2VgLt
The U.S. dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency but central banks around the globe appeared to continue to diversify their reserves away from the greenback.
“In terms of official flows, central banks’ building up reserves, there has been a move toward diversification and that has primarily been led by greater usage of other currencies in international payments,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto.
“The renminbi is moving up the rankings. If you look at SWIFT payments data you can see it is increasingly used as a payments currency. The euro, of course, continues to stabilize after the euro crisis,” he said.
The euro’s share of global allocated currency reserves rose to 20.69 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 to the largest since the fourth quarter of 2014.
The share of allocated currency reserves held in yuan, also known as renminbi, rose to 1.89 percent, the highest since the IMF began reporting its share of central bank holdings in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The Chinese currency rose 0.1 percent on a spot basis against the dollar in third quarter even as Washington and Beijing continued to spar on trade-related issues.
The yen’s share of reserves rose to 5.20 percent in the fourth quarter to the largest since the second quarter of 2002.
Sterling’s share of global allocated FX reserves fell to 4.43 percent in the fourth quarter to the smallest since the second quarter of 2017, the data showed.
The British currency, which has been plagued by volatility in recent months amid uncertainty around the Brexit process, fell 2 percent during the fourth quarter of 2018.
(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)
ALGIERS, Algeria – Police are deployed around Algeria's capital to deter protesters arriving for an eighth straight Friday of demonstrations against the country's leadership.
Protest organizers are encouraging Algerians to come out in Algiers or other cities to show that they're not satisfied with the departure of longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and want wholesale political change.
Anger is mounting over military chief Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, who was instrumental in Bouteflika's departure but then threw his support behind interim President Abdelkader Bensalah, seen as part of the old regime.
Bensalah was named interim president this week and announced new elections for July 4. Protest appeals online call for both Bensalah and the military chief to step down.
Police are lining plazas and checking all vehicles entering Algiers.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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