Upcoming shows
Real News

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Story Time

1:00 am 6:00 am



Maga First News

Upcoming Shows

Join The MAGA Network on Discord

0 0

Hong Kong forges ahead with new extradition law despite opposition

Demonstrators march during a protest to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong
FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators march during a protest to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China March 31, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

April 3, 2019

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s leaders launched laws on Wednesday to change extradition rules to allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial, standing fast against growing opposition to a move that many fear could further erode the city’s legal protections.

Thousands took to Hong Kong streets to protest the laws at the weekend, joining an unusually broad chorus of concern from international business elites to rights’ groups and even some pro-establishment figures.

But Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said her government would make no further amendments before introducing the laws to the city’s parliament.

Small groups of protestors supporting the government’s bill briefly faced off against opponents outside the Legislative Council but later dispersed without incident. Opponents of the changes fear further erosion of freedoms and legal protections in the free-wheeling financial hub – rights which were guaranteed under the city’s handover from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

According to the laws presented to the Council on Wednesday, the Chief Executive would have the right to order the extradition of wanted offenders to China, Macau and Taiwan as well as other countries not covered by Hong Kong’s existing extradition treaties.

(Reporting By Greg Torode and Jessie Pang; additional reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Michael Perry)

Source: OANN

0 0

Indonesians wrestle with voting choices, giant ballot papers

When Indonesians vote in presidential and legislative elections next week, they'll be wrestling with choices affecting their country's future, and ballot papers as big as giant posters.

The super-sized documents, some too big to fit unfolded inside the voting booths, are causing complaints as well as worries that elderly voters will struggle with them.

The voting paper for the Senate covered more than half the body of a woman who held it up at a polling simulation exercise held by the election commission on Wednesday.

A Jakarta woman, Siti Nuria, said, "Why can't this vote be made simpler? It will be very troublesome for the elderly to vote and in folding them back up."

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Sanders: Dems Leaving Trump ‘No Choice’ on Border Security

President Donald Trump is "not threatening" to shut down the Mexican border, but is taking his job as commander in chief very seriously when it comes to protecting the American people, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday.

"Democrats in Congress are leaving us no choice," Sanders told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "This is not the path the president wants to take. They're leaving us no choice because they're unwilling to fix the problem. They're too busy playing politics."

Mexico, however, has been taking a "greater sense of responsibility" to help stop people from coming across the border by stopping them in Mexico and offering them asylum there while they wait for their claim to be processed in the United States, said Sanders.

Sanders also discussed a push by House Democrats for the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted report, saying it shows again what "sore losers" they are.

"They got beaten in 2016 because we had the candidate with a better message," said Sanders. "Now we're seeing they've gotten beat again when it comes to the Mueller report. They were convinced, they went out and lied about what they expected the Mueller report to tell America. They got it wrong. They got it wrong in 2016."

Also on Tuesday, Sanders responded to Trump's comments that there will not be a vote on Obamacare until after the 2020 election.

"The president wants to see healthcare return to the power of the patient," she said. "He wants the people that are receiving the care to get to make decisions about it."

Source: NewsMax Politics

0 0

Dems Ignore Pelosi, Vow To Move Forward With Impeachment Against Trump

House Democrats have vowed to move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Trump despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proclamation against it.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Al Green (D-Texas), John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) all bucked Pelosi, declaring they would push for Trump’s impeachment ahead of the 2020 election regardless of what she said.

“These are really, really serious criminal activity that [Trump] has been allegedly doing out of the Oval Office. That’s something we should be investigating,” Tlaib reportedly said Tuesday.

Yarmuth went further, saying Trump’s impeachment was inevitable and only a matter of time.

“I don’t think right now there’s any way that we could 218 votes on the floor of the House for an impeachment resolution, but I think that’s not a matter of whether, it’s a matter of when,” Yarmuth said.

Socialist AOC expressed disappointment in Pelosi’s comments and hinted that Democrats may ignore her.

“I happen to disagree with that take,” Ocasio-Cortez said in response to Pelosi’s remarks. “But you know, she’s the speaker…I think we’ll see.”

According to Green, Pelosi is putting “political expediency ahead of moral imperative,” which is why he still plans to force articles of impeachment against Trump for the third time.

“There will be another vote on impeachment,” Green said in a C-SPAN interview. “If you desire to stop me, you but only have to change the rules so that I can’t bring a vote on impeachment.”

Waters, who backed Green’s last two impeachment efforts, said Pelosi’s comments were “not new.”

“Everybody knows what I’ve said. Everybody knows that I’ve been for impeachment. None of this is new,” she said.

Pelosi made clear that she had no intention of overseeing impeachment against Trump unless something “overwhelming and bipartisan” surfaces to compel such a move.

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it,” Pelosi told The Washington Post Monday.

Pelosi tried mitigating the political fallout caused by overzealous Democrats eager to impeach Trump after Democrats regained control of the House in January, such as when Tlaib declared she would “impeach the motherfucker” only days after being sworn into Congress.

But conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh have said Pelosi is simply delaying impeachment until Trump is reelected in 2020.

Just last week, a Quinnipiac University National Poll found the majority of Americans don’t want Trump impeached.


Twitter: 

Adam Schiff now says he will hold off on impeaching President Trump, because the Mueller probe will most likely show no Russian collusion.

Owen exposes the hypocrisy of those that have pushed the fake Russian collusion narrative.

Source: InfoWars

0 0

Venezuelan power struggle creates diplomatic duel abroad

When Lorena Delgado approached the Venezuelan consulate in Colombia's capital on a recent afternoon hoping to extend the life of her expiring passport, she found the metal gates to the languishing building shuttered.

Days earlier, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro had severed ties with the neighboring Andean nation where over a million of his compatriots have fled in recent years, recalling all his diplomats and leaving the consulate and embassy buildings closed.

The man challenging Maduro's claim to the presidency had appointed a new ambassador, but he was at a loss about how to help her. Despite the fact that Colombia recognizes Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president, the ambassador he sent does not have access to the consulate or the ability to issue passport extensions.

"You feel trapped," said Delgado, 32, who needs to travel abroad to apply for a work visa. "We're in limbo."

As Venezuela's power struggle stretches on, a parallel dispute for control of embassy buildings in the countries recognizing Guaido as Venezuela's true president has taken root. While new opposition-appointed diplomats are being recognized around the world, the United States is the only nation where they control a consulate building. In no country do Guaido's envoys have the ability to carry out basic tasks like issuing a passport, as Venezuela's civil registration agency remains under the control of Maduro.

The diplomatic duel has left the estimated 3.4 million Venezuelans who now live abroad stuck between two administrations. In most countries holdover consular employees continue to carry out tasks like registering births abroad while new, Guaido-appointed ambassadors remain outside embassy walls, symbols of their movement's lagging advance.

"At this moment, we don't have a solution from either side," said Paola Soto, 25, who is trying to reunite with her 5-year-old son in Chile.

The battle for diplomatic recognition is largely taking place behind closed doors, but it has occasionally spilled out into public.

In February, the Guaido-appointed ambassador to Costa Rica, Maria Faria, announced she had taken control of the embassy in San Jose, proudly posting on Twitter a photograph of herself standing in front of a Venezuelan flag inside the building. A shouting match erupted outside when the Maduro-appointed diplomats tried to get in.

Costa Rica's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, despite recognizing Faria as Venezuela's ambassador, issued a statement deploring her actions, saying she'd broken an established protocol allowing Maduro appointees 60 days to leave.

In March, a similarly confusing incident took place in Lima, Peru when workers were spotted at night removing chairs and even a stately bust of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar from the Venezuelan embassy. The furniture was put back inside after anti-government protesters decried them.

"You've robbed enough in Venezuela!" one angry woman shouted.

More recently, on Monday, Guaido's U.S. ambassador announced he was taking control of the New York consulate and two military-owned buildings in Washington where images of Maduro have now been replaced with portraits of Guaido.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza accused the United States of violating articles of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that require host countries to protect foreign embassy buildings even when ties are severed.

He warned that if the U.S. doesn't fulfill its international obligations, the Venezuelan government could pursue legal action and retaliate with reciprocal action - a not so veiled threat that they might occupy the recently vacated U.S. Embassy in Caracas. The U.S. withdrew all embassy personnel from Caracas due to safety concerns after Maduro severed ties with the U.S. over its support for Guaido.

Gustavo Marcano, an exiled Venezuelan mayor who now works for the Guaido-backed Venezuelan embassy in the U.S., said the building acquisition is one of several attempts to ensure Venezuela's assets abroad are protected. The U.S. is also working to transfer other prized belongings, like Houston-based CITGO, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state oil company, to Guaido.

"This is the first step toward ending usurpation," he said from inside the Manhattan consulate, where photos of the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez still hung on the walls.

He added that while they cannot issue documents like passports, the Guaido-led consulate does plan to look for other remedies to help the increasingly large number of Venezuelans who possess no valid form of identification. One idea being floated is the creation of a consular-issued identification card that would be recognized by the host nation.

In other countries, the Guaido-named ambassadors are taking a gentler approach, choosing to slowly work toward eventually taking control of consulates in conjunction with the host nation's foreign relations ministry - or avoiding the topic altogether.

Humberto Calderon, the appointed ambassador to Colombia, said he's focused more on tending to Venezuelan migrants, viewing occupying the buildings as a potential agitator that could harm Colombians living in Venezuela.

"It's our decision," he said. "We haven't wanted to do it."

Calderon once served as Venezuela's energy minister and is working from a hotel. He said that when Maduro severed diplomatic relations with Colombia, nearly all the consular staff left, boarding a government-sent plane and flying home. He's had no access to anything they left behind in the buildings.

In other countries, some Maduro employees have stayed on, gingerly sidestepping the higher-voltage political fight.

In Peru, five Maduro-appointed envoys will remain in place to carry out consular functions, according to a high-ranking Venezuelan official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation. He said that after talks with Peru's foreign ministry, an agreement was reached allowing them to remain in the country and continue working in the embassy, even though the nation recognizes Guaido's ambassador.

"The objective is to maintain consular relations," he said. "Not diplomatic ones."

That's a scenario that's likely to play out in most countries: Even as more than 50 heads of state declare their allegiance to Guaido, necessity will inevitably compel them to maintain a range of ties to the Maduro government.

"Ultimately it's not in any country's real interest to maintain an embassy that's run by staff that have no ability to advance commercial or consular interests," said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America.

He pointed to the case of the Netherlands, which despite backing Guaido, has pledged to keep the Maduro consular staff intact in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao, which stands about 40 miles from Venezuela's coast. The Netherlands has joint ventures with Venezuela's giant state-run oil company at stake.

"It's very much a dual diplomacy situation for many of these countries," Ramsey said.

Soto said she doesn't know how to explain the standoff to her son, who left by plane from Venezuela with his father over a year ago. Ever since she's been trying to meet up with him in Chile but has gotten stuck in Colombia.

"There's no solution," she said. "Not here, not in Venezuela, nowhere."

_

Associated Press writer Claudia Torrens contributed to this report.

_

Follow Christine Armario on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cearmario

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Kremlin says talks with Japan over territorial dispute could take years

A seagull flies near Kunashir Island
FILE PHOTO: A seagull flies above the waters of the Pacific Ocean near the Island of Kunashir, one of four islands known as the Southern Kuriles in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev

March 12, 2019

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that talks with Japan aimed at clinching a World War Two peace treaty between the two countries and ending a territorial dispute over a chain of islands in the Pacific could go on for years and were complex.

Japan has been mounting a push to resolve the dispute over four islands – known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kuriles in Russia – which has prevented Moscow and Tokyo from formally ending their World War Two hostilities.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been holding regular talks with President Vladimir Putin to end the decades-old dispute, but so far without a breakthrough.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth/Katya Golubkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Source: OANN

0 0

Mueller ‘Strzok Out’ With His Whitewash Report

COMMENTARY

X

Story Stream

recent articles

It’s almost as though the Mueller Report was written by Democrats for Democrats. Oh, wait -- that’s exactly what it is! Which is why the left-wing media was so drunkenly exuberant on Thursday when the report was released.

The entire framework of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was to buttress the Democratic argument that President Trump is an unqualified boob who doesn’t deserve to be president — and there is not even the slightest acknowledgement of the by-now blatantly obvious fact that Trump was the victim of a virtual coup.

Indeed, you cannot help but get the feeling that the Mueller Report is the death benefit of that “insurance policy” that Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andy McCabe took out way back in August 2016.

You will recall that FBI agent Strzok sent his Justice Department girlfriend Page a text message that hinted at nefarious Deep State involvement in the presidential election:

“I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe's] office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Well, the “unlikely event” of Donald Trump being elected president happened, and therefore the insurance policy went into effect — namely the creation of a diversionary narrative of Russian collusion to weaken the new president and ultimately to overthrow him.

But somehow, Bob Mueller and his team of “Angry Democrats” were unable to penetrate this conspiracy in plain sight — perhaps because they were so busy being part of it.

On page 323 of the report, the special counsel acknowledges that he is aware of the origin of the Russia hoax because he quotes the president's Aug. 24, 2018, tweet asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele and "his phony and corrupt Dossier." But somehow neither Sessions, nor Mueller, nor anyone else has been able to put 2 + 2 together and come up with the correct answer.

Indeed, if you want to gauge the complete inadequacy of the Mueller Report, consider this: President Trump’s tweet is the only mention in the report of Ohr, whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. It is the only mention of Strzok. It is the only mention of Page. Considering their central role in framing the president, that is the equivalent of the Warren Report somehow relegating Lee Harvey Oswald to a single footnote.

The tweet is not the only mention of McCabe, because he had investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and later became acting director of the FBI after the firing of James Comey, but there is no evidence that Mueller probed McCabe's role with Strzok and Page in setting up the "insurance policy" that Strzok said was in place in case Trump got elected president.

The fact that there is no mention of Steele at all in Volume 1 of the report (which covers Russian interference in the 2016 election) is shocking since it was his unverified dossier that promoted the lie that the Russians had control of Trump because they possessed compromising material on the real estate tycoon. Steele’s participation with Russian sources is the most direct evidence of Russian interference in the election, but Mueller showed no interest in it because it implicated Democrats.

Volume 2 (which covers obstruction) does on page 235 acknowledge Steele's existence as the source of what even Mueller calls the "unverified allegations" published by BuzzFeed in January 2017. It also notes on pages 239 and 240 that Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the phony dossier on Jan. 6, 2017, and that the briefing was subsequently leaked to the public.

Moreover, page 246 acknowledges that the president wanted the FBI to investigate Steele's allegations on Jan. 27, 2017, but that Comey talked him out of it. If the president had gotten his wish, the entire Mueller investigation would never have taken place at all because it would have been quickly established that Steele was working at the behest of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Oh, yes, and Comey would have kept his job because he was working for the president instead of against him.

The mention of Steele on page 315 does prove that the Mueller team was well aware of allegations of a Democratic/Deep State plot against Trump but chose not to investigate it. This mention is in reference to the July 2017 reporting about the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and several Russians.

The New York Times quoted a statement from Trump legal spokesman Mark Corallo that the Trump Tower meeting "might have been a setup by individuals working with the firm that produced the Steele reporting." If Mueller's team knew this and still didn't bother to investigate the suspicious circumstances of the meeting, then they have lost all credibility.

Most telling perhaps is that there is no direct reference to GPS Fusion in the entire report other than that anonymous reference by Corallo to "the firm that produced the Steele reporting." Nor for that matter is there any reference to the Perkins Coie law firm that was the go-between that hired GPS Fusion on behalf of the DNC to generate the phony Steele dossier.

Clearly, the Mueller Report is the result of a one-sided investigation that did not seek to get at the truth, but only single-mindedly sought — if at all possible — to indict the president. This realization thoroughly vindicates attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has long said that to avoid a political outcome of the investigation, the country needed a bipartisan “blue ribbon panel” such as the 9/11 Commission.

It’s too late for that now, but if Attorney General William Barr has any intestinal fortitude (and I think he does) we will soon get a new investigation that exposes the partisan origins of the Russia hoax and asks many current and former federal officials, up to and including President Obama, “What did you know, and when did you know it.”

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book — “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” — is available at Amazon. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter @HeartlandDiary.

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Story Time

1:00 am 6:00 am



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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer holds annual general meeting
Werner Baumann, CEO of German pharmaceutical and chemical maker Bayer AG, attends the annual general shareholders meeting in Bonn, Germany, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

April 26, 2019

By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger

BONN (Reuters) – Bayer shareholders vented their anger over its stock price slump on Friday as litigation risks mount from the German drugmaker’s $63 billion takeover of seed maker Monsanto.

Several large investors said they will not support aspirin investor Bayer’s management in a key vote scheduled for the end of its annual general meeting.

Bayer’s management, led by chief executive Werner Baumann, could see an embarrassing plunge in approval ratings, down from 97 percent at last year’s AGM, which was held shortly before the Monsanto takeover closed in June.

A vote to ratify the board’s actions features prominently at every German AGM. Although it has no bearing on management’s liability, it is seen as a key gauge of shareholder sentiment.

“Due to the continued negative development at Bayer, high legal risks and a massive share price slump, we refuse to ratify the management board and supervisory board’s actions during the business year,” Janne Werning, representing Germany’s Union Investment, a top-20 shareholder, said in prepared remarks.

About 30 billion euros ($34 billion) have been wiped off Bayer’s market value since August, when a U.S. jury found the pesticide and drugs group liable because Monsanto had not warned of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.

Bayer suffered a similar defeat last month and more than 13,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages.

Bayer is appealing or plans to appeal the verdicts.

Deutsche Bank’s asset managing arm DWS said shareholders should have been consulted before the takeover, which was agreed in 2016 and closed in June last year.

“You are pointing out that the lawsuits have not been lost yet. We and our customers, however, have already lost something – money and trust,” Nicolas Huber, head of corporate governance at DWS, said in prepared remarks for the AGM.

He said DWS would abstain from the shareholder vote of confidence in the executive and non-executive boards.

Two people familiar with the situation told Reuters this week that Bayer’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, plans to either abstain from or vote against ratifying the management board’s actions.

Asset management firm Deka, among Bayer’s largest German investors, has also said it would cast a no vote.

Baumann said Bayer’s true value was not reflected in the current share price.

“There’s no way to make this look good. The lawsuits and the first verdicts weigh heavily on our company and it’s a concern for many people,” he said, adding it was the right decision to buy Monsanto and that Bayer was vigorously defending itself.

This month, shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended investors not to give the executive board their seal of approval.

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Current track

Title

Artist