FILE PHOTO: The Airbnb logo is seen on a little mini pyramid under the glass Pyramid of the Louvre museum in Paris, France, March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
April 9, 2019
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Airbnb said on Tuesday that it would not implement the planned delisting of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, but added that the company would donate proceeds from such bookings to international humanitarian aid organizations.
Heeding calls from Palestinians who want the West Bank for a future state, Airbnb had said in November that it would remove the listings of around 200 settlement homes. That decision was deplored by Israel and challenged in some U.S. jurisdictions.
FILE PHOTO: A view of an office building of German airline Lufthansa in Frankfurt, Germany March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
April 10, 2019
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s Lufthansa has made the first formal step toward selling its catering unit LSG, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.
“With this step, potential investors are being invited to make their bids,” the spokesman said, adding that Lufthansa planned to sell its unit to a strategic investor in the catering sector.
Austria’s Do&Co and Switzerland’s Gategroup are expected to make offers for the European LSG operations, people familiar with the matter said in March.
Lufthansa’s LSG unit employs 35,000 staff and generated revenues of 3.2 billion euros last year.
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach, writing by Tassilo Hummel, editing by Thomas Escritt)
Richard Harris, Australian member of the Thai cave rescue team shakes hands with Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, next to Craig Challen after receiving the Member of the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn award at the Government House in Bangkok, Thailand, April 19, 2019. Thailand Government House/Handout via REUTERS
April 19, 2019
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Two Australian cave divers who were instrumental in the rescue last year of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave received on Friday a royal honor from King Maha Vajiralongkorn in a ceremony in Bangkok.
The “Wild Boars” soccer team, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach became trapped on June 23 while exploring the cave complex in the northern province of Chiang Rai when a rainy season downpour flooded the tunnels.
A 17-day effort to rescue them gripped the world with experts from various countries volunteering to help.
Richard Harris and Craig Challen were members of the main rescue team, made up of 13 foreign divers and five Thai navy divers, that brought the boys and their coach out to safety.
They received the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn at Bangkok’s Government House before meeting Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in their first trip back to Thailand since the rescue.
They will travel to Chiang Rai and return to the Tham Luang cave on Monday to meet the boys and their coach.
“That’s really exciting for us to go and see them and make sure they’re well and see how they’re doing after the rescue,” Harris said.
Harris, a physician specializing in anesthesia, was responsible for sedating the boys before they were brought out one-by-one on a rescue stretcher through flooded tunnels.
The pair were in January named Australians of the Year, one of Australia’s highest honors.
King Vajiralongkorn has conferred various honors on 187 people in connection with the rescue, 113 of them foreigners including Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk, who were involved in the effort, according to the Royal Gazette in March.
A former Thai navy diver died during the rescue.
(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., announced he is endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president.
Khanna’s announcement means Sanders is the first 2020 candidate to pick up an endorsement from a member of Congress outside their home state, Roll Call noted.
He wrote on Thursday: “I am excited to endorse @BernieSanders for our next President of the United States. Bernie has spent his career fighting for working people and standing up to corporations and special interests. He has the grassroots energy and the vision to inspire voters across America.”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Khanna will serve as one of the national co-chairs for the Sanders’ campaign.
A Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Illinois is honoring McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner, who was killed in the line of duty on Thursday. (Texas Roadhouse in Rockford, Illinois)
Deputy Jacob Keltner, of the McHenry County Sheriff's Office, was killed in the line of duty on Thursday. He was trying to arrest Floyd Brown, 39, on a burglary warrant at a hotel in Rockford, but Brown allegedly shot him in the head.
The restaurant decided to honor McHenry at their location in Rockford.
"In honor of Deputy Jacob Keltner, our Fallen Hero table will remain set this way until he is laid to rest," the Roadhouse wrote on Facebook Sunday. "We send many prayers to his family friends, and colleagues."
The table includes normal plate settings, in addition to a candle and a red rose. It was unclear whether McHenry was a regular guest at the restaurant.
The Illinois state government building flew U.S. and state flags at half-staff on Tuesday in honor of McHenry, who tried to arrest Brown as part of a U.S. Marshals task force.
McHenry leaves behind a wife and two young children. Sheriff Bill Prim called the deputy a "great guy" and a "fine man." Keltner was the first officer in the department to die in the line of duty in three years, according to the sheriff.
FILE PHOTO: Former Nissan Motor Chairman Carlos Ghosn sits inside a car as he leaves his lawyer's office after being released on bail from Tokyo Detention House, in Tokyo, Japan, March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
April 8, 2019
YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co Ltd Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa began an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Monday by apologising for the scandal involving ousted boss Carlos Ghosn and said the issue could not be fixed overnight.
Saikawa told shareholders he first needed to stabilize the company and prepare it for future generations, and then pass the baton.
The shareholders meeting was called to formally remove ex-chairman Ghosn from the company following his arrest in Japan over financial misconduct charges.
(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Writing by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Charlton Heston’s character in the iconic 1973 movie “Soylent Green” famously didn’t take well to the news that the ubiquitous green food reflected in the film’s title was composed of human beings.
Now, Washington is poised to be the first American state to test public reaction to turning human beings into compost that could provide nutrients for various food products.
With bipartisan majorities, the state Senate and House of Representatives on Friday approve bill 5001, titled “concerning human remains,” the Seattle Times reported.
The law would take effect May 1 if it is signed by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Wes McMahan, a retired cardiovascular intensive-care nurse, testified in favor of the bill, saying he is “very much in favor of the composting of human bodies.”
“When I’m done with this body that served me very well for the past 64 years, do I want to poison it with formaldehyde and other embalming chemicals? No,” McMahan said, according to the Times. “Burned? Not my first choice. But what about all the bacteria I’ve worked with so long in this body — do I want to give them a chance to do what they do naturally? I believe in doing things as naturally as possible.”
Alex Jones breaks down how vaccines are used to trigger deadly amounts of fluoride and glyphosate already present inside your body, from tap water and agricultural produce, and weaken the blood brain barrier’s blockade of these killer chemicals.
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.
News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.
The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.
“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.
“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.
British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.
Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.
“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”
Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.
There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.
(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
President Trump on Friday said “no money” was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, after reports that the U.S. received a $2 million hospital bill from Pyongyang for the late American prisoner’s care.
“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else. This is not the Obama Administration that paid 1.8 Billion Dollars for four hostages, or gave five terroist[sic] hostages plus, who soon went back to battle, for traitor Sgt. Bergdahl!” Trump tweeted Friday.
The Washington Post first reported that North Korean authorities insisted the U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier, 21, who was a student of the University of Virginia, sign a pledge to pay the bill before allowing Warmbier’s comatose body to return to the United States. Sources confirmed the bill and the amount to Fox News on Thursday.
Sources told the post that the envoy signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions from the president, but a source told Fox News that the U.S. did not ever pay money to North Korea.
The White House declined to comment when asked on the bill, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders saying in a statement that: “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”
Meanwhile, the president added: “’President[sic] Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.’ Cheif[sic] Hostage Negotiator, USA!”
Warmbier was on tour in North Korea when he allegedly stole a propaganda sign from a hotel. He was arrested in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016. Warmbier, for unknown reasons, fell into a coma while in custody and was held in that condition for an additional 17 months.
North Korean officials did not tell American officials until June 2017 that Warmbier had been unconscious the entire time. He died less than a week after he returned to the U.S. North Korean officials, though, have repeatedly denied accusations that Warmbier was tortured, instead claiming that he had suffered from botulism and then slipped into a coma after taking a sleeping pill.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages – money that the Hermit Kingdom will probably never pay.
While the Warmbiers blamed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has said he believes Kim’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.
Trump and Kim have met in two separate summits. The most recent, held in February, ended without an agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Fox News: “Otto Warmbier was mistreated by North Korea in so many ways, including his wrongful conviction and harsh sentence, and the fact that for 16 months they refused to tell his family or our country about his dire condition they caused. No, the United States owes them nothing. They owe the Warmbier family everything.”
Last year, the Trump administration was also able to save three American prisoners held by North Korea. Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, and Kim Hak Song were all detained in North Korea. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the three Americans home last May, and said they were all in “good health.”
Fox News’ John Roberts, Rich Edson, Nicholas Kalman, and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
April 26, 2019
SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.
Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.
Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.
Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.
Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.
Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.
A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.
The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States over safety issues in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – American Airlines Group Inc cut its 2019 profit forecast on Friday, saying it expected to take a $350 million hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes after cancelling 1,200 flights in the first quarter.
The company said it now expects its 2019 adjusted profit to be between $4.00 per share and $6.00 per share.
Analysts on average had expected 2019 earnings of $5.63 per share, according to Refinitiv data.
The No. 1 U.S. airline by passenger traffic said net income rose to $185 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $159 million, or 34 cents per share, a year earlier.
Total operating revenue rose 2 percent to $10.58 billion.
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage
April 26, 2019
By James Oliphant
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – Four years ago, Donald Trump campaigned in small towns like Marshalltown, Iowa, vowing to restore economic prosperity to the U.S. heartland.
In his bid to replace Trump in the White House, Pete Buttigieg is taking a similar tack. The difference, he says, is that he can point to a model of success: South Bend, Indiana, the revitalized city where he has been mayor since 2012.
The Democratic presidential contender has vaulted to the congested field’s top tier in recent weeks, drawing media and donor attention for his youth, history-making status as the first openly gay major presidential candidate and a resume that includes military service in Afghanistan.
But Buttigieg’s main argument for his candidacy is that he is a turnaround artist in the mold of Trump, although the Democrat does not expressly invoke the comparison with the Republican president.
“I’m not going around saying we’ve fixed every problem we’ve got,” Buttigieg, 37, said after a house party with voters in Marshalltown. “But I’m proud of what we have done together, and I think it’s a very powerful story.”
Critics argue improving the fortunes of a Midwestern city of 100,000 people does not qualify Buttigieg, who has never held national office, for the presidency of a country of 330 million. Others say South Bend still has pockets of despair and that minorities, in particular, have failed to benefit from its growth.
Buttigieg has told crowds in Iowa and elsewhere that his experience in reviving a struggling Rust Belt community allows him to make a case to voters that other Democratic candidates cannot. That may give him the means to win back some of the disaffected Democratic voters who turned their backs on Hillary Clinton in 2016 to vote for Trump.
Watching Buttigieg at a union hall in Des Moines last week, Rick Ryan, 45, a member of the United Steelworkers, lamented how many of his fellow union workers voted for Trump. The president turned in the best performance by a Republican among union households since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Ryan said he hoped someone like Buttigieg could return them to the Democratic fold.
“He’s aware of the decline in the labor force in America, not just in Indiana or Des Moines or anywhere else,” Ryan said. “Jobs are going overseas. We need a find to way to bring that back.”
Randy Tucker, 56, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Trump appealed to union members “desperate for somebody to reach out to them, to help them, to listen to their voice.”
Buttigieg could do the same, he said. “In my heart right now, he’s No. 1.”
PAST VS. FUTURE
Buttigieg stresses a key difference in his and Trump’s approaches.
Trump, he tells crowds, is mired in the past, promising to rebuild the 20th century industrial economy. Buttigieg argues the pledge is misleading and unrealistic.
Buttigieg says his focus is on the future, and he often talks about what the country might look like decades from now.
“The only way that we can cultivate what makes America great is to look to the future and not be afraid of it,” Buttigieg said in Marshalltown.
Buttigieg knows his sexual preference may be a barrier to winning some blue-collar voters. But he notes that after he came out as gay in 2015, he won a second term as mayor with 80 percent of the vote in conservative Indiana.
Earlier this month, he announced his presidential bid at the hulking plant in South Bend that stopped making Studebaker autos more than 50 years ago. After lying dormant for decades, the building is being transformed into a high-tech hub after Buttigieg and other city leaders realized it would never again attract a large-scale industrial company.
“That building sat as a powerful reminder. We hoped we would get back that major employer that would fix our economy,” said Jeff Rea, president of the regional Chamber of Commerce.
Buttigieg is praised locally for spurring more than $100 million in downtown investment. During his two terms, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent from 11.8 percent.
But a study released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Prosperity Now said not all of the city’s residents had shared in its rebound. The median income for African-Americans remained half that of whites, while the unemployment rate for blacks was double.
Regina Williams-Preston, a city councilor running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, credits him for the revitalized downtown. But she said he had a “blind spot” when it came to focusing on troubled neighborhoods like the one she represents and only grew more engaged after community pressure.
“He understands it now,” she said. “The next step is figuring out how to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.”
‘ONE OF US’
Trump touts the fact that the United States added almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs last year as evidence he made good on his promise to restore the industrial sector. But that growth still left the country with fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2008.
The robust U.S. economy is likely the president’s greatest asset in his re-election bid, particularly in states he carried in 2016 such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Buttigieg’s home state by 19 points over Clinton in 2016.
Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Buttigieg would be well positioned to compete with Trump in the Midwest.
“People love the fact that he’s a mayor,” said Bagniewski, who has not endorsed a candidate in the nominating contest. “If you can talk about a positive future, and if you actually have experience that can do it, that’s a compelling vision in Iowa.”
Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, which faces many of the same challenges as South Bend, agreed.
“He’s one of us,” Whaley said. “That helps.”
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
Click below to consent to the use of the cookie technology provided by vi (video intelligence AG) to personalize content and advertising. For more info please access vi's website.