In the military, they call it "firing for effect."
An artillery battery is fired at a suspected target to see if the enemy moves out of hiding, and how heavily the fire is returned. It's a way to quickly assess battle lines and enemy strength without too much reconnaissance, but only works if it's worth giving away one’s own position.
Over the last week, as Donald Trump has launched broadsides on health care and the border, Republicans are increasingly describing the president’s salvos in similar terms.
Only in their view, his go-it-alone approach and failure to coordinate on both the health care and border fronts resulted in friendly fire casualties, causing Trump just days later to beat an awkward and hasty retreat, weakening all Republicans’ strategic positioning in the process.
Always aggressively on the advance, Trump is in the White House today precisely because he doesn’t cede ground to opponents, operating in constant combat mode. The bold, forceful approach is something Democrats found lacking in President Obama’s all-too-sublime — sometimes even aloof — approach to political strategy and working with other party leaders and Capitol Hill.
And there have been times in which Trump has successfully smoked out Democrats’ weaknesses by tossing political grenades their way, usually on Twitter after seeing reports on cable news. As David Marcus has noted in the Federalist, Trump isn’t just watching TV and surfing Twitter, as critics assert; he’s researching and influencing.
“He is seeing what attacks of his are landing, and what attacks against himself he can expect,” Marcus wrote, giving the president credit for being his own comms director and dominating the political narrative like no politician before.
For example, after Nancy Pelosi disinvited Trump from the State of the Union while the government shutdown continued, he grounded her Middle East trip, literally sending the airport-bound speaker and her delegation home to unpack. The move was a burst from a political flamethrower, to be sure, and it set Twitter on fire – with plenty of his supporters among those joining the fray.
What’s more, even some of Trump’s biggest GOP critics, who had been busy lighting him up over the shutdown, took a moment to delight in the gutsy counterpunch.
This past week was not one of those times. At a time when Trump and his base were celebrating the no-indictment conclusion to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, the president squandered his own reset: the opportunity to rally Republicans to his side and build a more united front heading into the 2020 campaign.
The 400-page Mueller report, which will be released soon, will undoubtedly fill the headlines once again, with Democrats arguing that the obstruction evidence and other details are far more damaging than Attorney General William Barr let on. The past two weeks were a short window of opportunity for uniting the party, which many Republicans say was botched.
As he’s demonstrated time and time again, Trump is skilled at tapping into public anger over the Washington status quo but less adept at channeling it. After all, governing and building coalitions is dull, tedious work.
Instead of focusing on Democrats’ internal conflicts, their leftward lurch on socialism, the improbable Green New Deal and late-term abortions, which Republicans in Congress were working overtime to highlight, this week Trump launched a foray on an issue – health care -- Republicans had already tried and failed to wrest from Democrats, and he created a new border-related crisis that divided his own party.
The administration went on the Obamacare attack last week when the Justice Department joined a lawsuit to invalidate all of the Affordable Care Act – even the popular protections for pre-existing conditions. Trump then promised a GOP replacement plan before the 2020 election – one he tasked Senate Republicans with formulating to make the GOP the “party of health care.”
His fellow Republicans collectively groaned. The Senate couldn’t repeal and replace the ACA when it only had a third of sitting Republicans up for re-election leading into 2018, compared to Democrats. The GOP will have to defend nearly twice as many seats as Democrats in 2020, guaranteeing gridlock and division on the Republican side of the aisle on health care and other hot-button issues.
It took a few days, but Trump saw the light and publicly agreed that it would be better to work on health care after the election, not before. Still, the damage was done and the political seams were revealed for all to see -- and Democrats to attack, which they have done with gusto.
In fact, when House Democrats on Wednesday brought a resolution to the floor condemning Trump for asking the courts to throw out Obamacare, eight Republicans voted with them.
Then came a new ultimatum over the border. Early this week Trump said that he was “100 percent” certain he would shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to block a rising influx of immigrants crossing into the country illegally. And he renewed his threat to Congress.
“If we don’t make a deal with Congress, the border’s going to be closed,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “100 percent.”
His fellow party members immediately pushed back.
As with the earlier government shutdown over funding a border barrier, Sen. Majority Whip John Thune said he doesn’t believe shutting the border does anything to force Democrats to the table on immigration reform or to help stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the country.
“One, I don’t think it accomplishes the purpose,” he told RealClearPolitics. “It forces people to the unsecured areas coming across, but they are still going to be coming.
“Two, it makes it very hard to conduct bilateral trade, and that’s awfully important for agriculture and other sectors of the economy.”
Thune, however, said he understands the president’s frustrations with Democrats’ intransigence on immigration reform, which he called a “huge crisis.”
Mitch McConnell didn’t even try to play along with the president. “Closing down the border would have a potentially catastrophic economic impact on our country, and I would hope we would not be doing that sort of thing,” the Senate majority leader said, although he stressed that he agrees with the president that there is “a border crisis.”
When Trump doubled down by deeming national security more important than trade, administration officials who were obviously not consulted struggled to offer some reasonable solution. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic adviser, suggested to reporters that both national security and trade are “essential” – not one more than the other.
He suggested that the administration was exploring the possibility of keeping one lane of trucking traffic open at the border to “help supply-chain issues” – but one can imagine the serpentine lines and truck-by-truck checks such a scenario would require.
“If you ask me the mechanics of it, I’m not the guy, but that is possible and that will help the supply-chain issues,” Kudlow said, trying to change the subject to negotiations over the U.S.-Mexico Canada Agreement on trade.
By Thursday, the president had let Kudlow and other surrogates off the hook to find some type of workaround by backing off the immediate threat to close the border and instead turned to tariff threats. He said Mexico must step up its enforcement, and over the next year must prove it is stopping the flow of drugs coming into the U.S.
“If Mexico doesn’t give the help, that’s okay. We’re going to tariff their cars coming in to the United States.”
It was a second time in a week Trump decided to reverse course on an issue he had raised, leading Republicans to publicly and privately grouse about getting caught, without warning, in the crossfire of the president’s “fire for effect” impulses.
Many congressional Republicans also decided to distance themselves from the administration by cutting off U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen. The House on Thursday approved a previously passed Senate measure to break U.S. ties with that conflict. The White House vowed to veto the bill.
Even though he reversed course on his border threat, Trump still plans to head to Calexico, California on Friday to inspect a recently completed section of border wall. His supporters believe the pre-planned event will show him in a position of strength, spotlighting action on his signature 2016 campaign promise. It will also highlight Democrats’ refusal to address what President Obama’s homeland security secretary recently deemed an undeniable immigration crisis.
Kudlow and other aides said Trump’s shutdown threat may have caused an intra-party skirmish, but it got Mexico’s attention. The Mexican government in recent days has agreed to help prevent immigrants from crossing into the United States by adding more checkpoints and allowing people to remain in that country while seeking asylum.
“We want help from Mexico, and by the way, it appears we are getting more help from Mexico, which is a good thing, a great thing,” Kudlow told reporters Wednesday.
“The Mexican government is doing better than some on the Hill,” he added.
Kudlow explained the threat as “an exclamation point that shows [Trump’s] seriousness. … He’s flagging to the American people just how committed he is to restoring law and order down there.”
Trump, before departing for California Friday, again said he is looking at imposing an “economic penalty” against Mexico in response to drug trafficking and boasted about the number of migrants Mexican authorities had apprehended in the last four days.
“They’re apprehending everybody,” he said. “It’s never happened like that in 35 years.”
After a week of scrambling, Trump appeared to be back on solid, predictable ground, and his fellow Republicans are no doubt thankful for the reprieve – however long it lasts.
Susan Crabtree is a veteran Washington reporter who has spent two decades covering the White House and Congress.
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past branches of ASDA and Sainsbury's in Stockport, Britain April 30, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo
March 9, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Walmart-owned British supermarket chain Asda said it will remove single kitchen knives from sale in all its stores by the end of April.
Britain’s knife-crime rate is soaring and, following a wave of fatal stabbings in recent weeks, many involving teenagers, Prime Minister Theresa May has convened a meeting of ministers and community leaders to discuss ways of tackling the problem.
“We know single knives are the most common knife products to be stolen and that is why we have chosen to remove these items from our stores,” Asda Senior Vice President Nick Jones said in a statement.
It is illegal to sell knives to under-18s in Britain.
(Reporting by John Stonestreet; Editing by Ros Russell)
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has turned his panel into “a propaganda organ of the Democrat Party,” according to Arizona Republican Rep. Rick Crawford.
“I’m sure people like Adam Schiff lay awake at night going, ‘What can we do next to make sure we can’t move past this? What do I have to do I do to perpetuate this Russia collusion hoax?'” Crawford said in an interview with “Breitbart News Daily” on SiriusXM.
“The Intelligence Committee is supposed to be about protecting the country, and what Adam Schiff has turned it into, it’s an arm of the DCCC. It is a propaganda organ of the Democrat Party and what can we do to smear the president sufficiently to deny him a second term.”
Crawford and his fellow Republicans on the House intelligence panel wrote a letter on Thursday requesting Schiff’s resignation.
“We unanimously expressed our discontent with the comments he’s made — that he’s never substantiated — [over] the two years that he has spent making false claims … and accusing the president of X, Y, and Z related to collusion, and there was a laundry list of quotes that I submitted for the record.”
He added, “Basically, the letter is essentially saying, “We’ve lost faith in your ability to lead.’ This is basically a no-confidence letter, and we’re asking him to resign his position. Under his leadership, the Intelligence Committee is weaker and by extension the intelligence community we rely on for national security is weaker because of him.”
President Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks with reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, March 22, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
As economic worries wane, approval of President Trump’s job performance remains just two points shy of his record, according to the latest Fox News Poll. Still, a majority disapproves.
Forty-six percent approve of the job Trump is doing, while 51 percent disapprove. He received his best ratings, 48-47 percent, in February 2017, just after he took office.
Almost all 2016 Trump voters (92 percent), Republicans (89 percent), and very conservatives (86 percent) approve of the president.
Plus, his approval hit high points among some groups that aren’t typically his biggest fans, such as women (43 percent), college graduates (46 percent), and suburban voters (46 percent).
A key number in the poll is the spread between those who are nervous about the economy and those who are confident. It was 31 percentage points in March 2016 when 61 percent felt nervous and 30 percent were confident.
The poll released Sunday finds more voters feel nervous (43 percent) than confident (37 percent) about the economy by just six points. A year ago, that gap was seven points. At the same time, those having “mixed” feelings about the economy went from 6 percent in 2016 to 11 percent last year to 17 percent today.
In addition, the 43 percent feeling nervous is a new low. The question was first asked in September 2010 and, at that time, 70 percent felt nervous.
President Trump receives his only net positive job rating on the economy, as 50 percent of voters approve, while 42 percent disapprove.
Outside the economy, the news isn’t as good.
Approval of how Trump is handling North Korea dropped four points to 42 percent after his recent Vietnam summit with Kim Jong Un, down from 46 percent in February. Forty-four percent disapprove.
By a narrow margin, voters think North Korea is farther (27 percent) from giving up its nuclear weapons program since Trump took office rather than closer (24 percent) to giving it up, with the largest number, 41 percent, feeling things are unchanged.
Support for the border wall ticked down a couple points, as 44 percent favor building it, while 51 percent oppose it. In February, it was 46-50.
Meanwhile, more than half disapprove (59 percent) of the president declaring a national emergency on the southern border as a way to bypass Congress and fund the wall, while 36 percent approve.
About 9 in 10 Democrats oppose the emergency declaration, while about 7 in 10 Republicans favor it. Republicans (86 percent) are more than 12 times as likely as Democrats (7 percent) to favor the wall.
A dozen Senate Republicans sided with Senate Democrats March 14 in voting for a resolution to end the president’s border-wall emergency declaration. Trump vetoed the bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a March 26 vote in the House to try to override the veto.
Forty-one percent of voters approve of how Trump is handling immigration, while 54 percent disapprove. That is mostly unchanged since January, when it was 42-54 percent.
Pollpourri
After news of the college bribery scandal, the poll shows twice as many voters see the admissions process as rigged as consider it fair: 49 percent rigged vs. 25 percent fair.
Those with a college degree and those without a degree are equally likely to call the process rigged (both 49 percent). Black voters (65 percent) are more likely than Hispanics (49 percent) and whites (47 percent) to feel that way.
In general, 56 percent feel things in the country are rigged to favor the wealthy, while 40 percent believe -- if they work hard -- they have a fair shot at getting ahead. The admissions scandal does not seem to be changing minds, as a Fox News poll last September found almost exactly the same results.
Republicans (70 percent) think people who work hard can get ahead, while Democrats (82 percent) and independents (62 percent) say things are rigged.
The Fox News Poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,002 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) (formerly named Anderson Robbins Research) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from March 17-20, 2019. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.
An armed father shot a carjacker in Florida after his vehicle was stolen with his six-year-old boy inside.
The incident began at a home in West Palm Beach on Saturday, when the car thief happened upon a car with the engine on.
The father says he’d turned on the vehicle and went inside to say bye to friends.
The armed dad pursued the thief, Lamar Thurman, 29, in another vehicle and was able to catch up to him after he crashed.
But Thurman again attempted to take off when the dad tried to rescue the boy.
That’s when the dad opened fire “in an attempt to stop him from fleeing further with his child in the car,” according to Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Teri Barbera.
Thurman crashed the vehicle a second time about 200 yards away, police say, and needed to be hospitalized in critical condition.
BEIJING – China plans to grow crops specifically for wild elephants to graze on in an effort to spare the livelihoods of local farmers.
The southwestern province of Yunnan will set up the special farm in a habitat area in Menghai county where 18 of the animals frequently raid the crops of farmers from villages in the area.
The 51-hectare (126-acre) farm located in a habitat protection area will grow corn, sugarcane, bamboo and bananas.
The official Xinhua News Agency on Sunday quoted an unidentified official with the local forestry bureau as saying protecting local residents was key to Asian elephant conservation
Wild Asian elephants are a protected species in China, and conservation efforts have allowed their numbers in the country to rise to about 300.
FILE PHOTO: A visitor reads a pamphlet at the Goldcorp gold mining company booth during the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada March 4, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo
April 4, 2019
(Reuters) – Goldcorp shareholders approved Newmont Mining Corp’s $10 billion takeover offer on Thursday, removing one of the last remaining hurdles to create the world’s largest gold producer.
While some Goldcorp shareholders had voiced concerns in recent weeks, in the end there was little push back against blessing the biggest-ever corporate takeover in the gold sector’s history, according to Refinitiv data.
The deal, which would create a company with assets in the Americas, Africa and Australia, will be voted on by Newmont shareholders next Thursday. If approved, the deal is expected to close by June.
About 97 percent of Goldcorp’s outstanding shares that were voted at a special meeting were cast in favor of the deal, the company said in a statement. Newmont had offered 0.328 of its shares and 2 cents for each Goldcorp share.
“We appreciate Goldcorp shareholders’ vote of confidence, which moves us one step closer to creating the world’s leading gold business,” Newmont Chief Executive Gary Goldberg said in a statement.
Vancouver-based Goldcorp shares rose slightly on Thursday afternoon to C$15.39 in Toronto, and shares of Denver-based Newmont rose slightly to $36.02 in New York. The benchmark S&P/TSX Global Gold Index gained 0.8 percent.
The new company, to be called Newmont Goldcorp, will overtake current market leader Barrick Gold Corp in annual production, churning out 6 million to 7 million ounces of gold annually over the next 10 years, compared with Barrick’s forecast of 5.1 million to 5.6 million ounces for 2019.
The $1 billion to $1.5 billion of assets the combined company is expected to shed, combined with mines Barrick plans to sell in the wake of its acquisition of Randgold Resources earlier this year, is expected by analysts to fuel further sector deals.
That is a change from the last several years, when miners focused on cutting costs instead and investors lost confidence in the industry after years of dilutive share issuances and pricey acquisitions.
Thursday’s vote comes after a tense start to the year for the gold industry, sparked by Barrick’s hostile bid for Newmont two months ago, a proposal that would have required the Goldcorp deal be scrapped.
While that was resolved through the creation of a joint venture of Barrick and Newmont’s Nevada assets, Newmont investors raised concerns about Goldcorp receiving too much of the benefits from the joint venture, which the company responded to with an 88-cent special dividend.
(Reporting By Ernest Scheyder and Nichola Saminather; editing by Diane Craft)
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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