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Facebook ‘Accidentally’ Scrubs Years Of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Old Posts

Facebook ‘accidentally’ deleted old posts by CEO Mark Zuckerberg during pivotal periods in the company’s history, reports Business Insider.

Zuck’s old posts – which were even reported on by news outlets at the time – have vanished, including every comment he made in 2007 and 2008.

“The most drastic deletions involved entire years. Throughout both 2006 and 2009, Zuckerberg was regularly active on the social network — but there are no posts visible of any kind for the two full years in between. The spokesperson confirmed that all the posts during 2007 and 2008 were deleted.” -Business Insider

The company says the posts were “mistakenly deleted” due to “technical errors.”

“A few years ago some of Mark’s posts were mistakenly deleted due to technical errors. The work required to restore them would have been extensive and not guaranteed to be successful so we didn’t do it,” reads a statement by a spokesperson.

“We agree people should be able to find information about past announcements and major company news, which is why for years we’ve shared and archived this information publicly — first on our blog and in recent years on our Newsroom.”

“These disappearances, along with other changes Facebook has made to how it saves its archive of announcements and blog posts, make it much harder to parse the social network’s historical record. This makes it far more difficult to hold the company, and Zuckerberg himself, accountable to past statements — particularly during a period of intense scrutiny of the company in the wake of a string of scandals.”

“The very nature of the issue means it is extremely challenging to make a full accounting of what exactly what has gone missing over the years. The spokesperson said they didn’t know how many posts in total were deleted.” -Business Insider

One such deleted post which was widely reported (and now no longer works) was an important document in Facebook’s history, as Zuckerberg promised during the April 2012 acquisition of Instagram that “we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently,” – a commitment the company never stuck to, while Instagram’s two co-founders departed last year amid clashes with the 34-year-old billionaire CEO.

Harder to search the archives

According to the report, Facebook has also made it more difficult to navigate its dedicated announcement blog – after launching their new “Newsroom” for key announcements – the ability to search for old posts has all but been disabled.

“Now, when you click on a link to a blog post included in an old news story, it redirects you to the Newsroom. The Newsroom doesn’t have copies of many of these old blog posts, meaning there’s no easy way to access them.”

“They do still exist in one form — as a “note” saved to Facebook’s public “Facebook” page on the social network. But until today there was no centralized archive through which to browse them, like what was available for the Facebook blog, or like what exists today for Newsroom posts.”

“Instead, to read a specific one, you had to either know about it already and search for keywords on Google, or scroll back through the Facebook page’s thousands of posts over the years”. -Business Insider

Facebook added a “notes” tab to the Facebook page to access the old entries after BI contacted them for the story – which notes that “The net effect of this change to the archives was to drastically obfuscate Facebook’s historical record — making it far harder to find past statements and announcements from the company about itself.”

In April 2018, controversy erupted when TechCrunch reported that messages sent by Zuckerberg were being deleted in other people’s inboxes without their knowledge or consent. The feature was not available to other users at the time.

Meanwhile The Verge noted in November 2016 that Zuckerberg’s public posts about the media and Facebook’s role in the 2016 US election had disappeared.


The volume of censorship now taking place in America is unprecedented as well as ominous. Alex explains that now is the time for patriots to stand up before Big Tech fully turns America into China.

Source: InfoWars

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EU Commission lashes out at Orban over campaign posters

A top European Union official has lashed out at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over election campaign posters alleging that EU headquarters has purposely weaken the bloc's external borders to let in more migrants and provide easy visas.

Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said Tuesday when it comes to spinning the truth in political campaigning "this is something in a completely different universe."

In Hungary, posters have gone up focusing on EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Hungarian-American financier George Soros, saying that "they want to weaken the border protection rights of the member states; they would facilitate immigration with migrant visas."

Timmermans said the EU and Juncker were actually at the forefront of reinforcing the EU's external borders.

Orban's zealous anti-immigration policies have won him populist admirers across Europe.

Source: Fox News World

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Alex Jones Breaks Down NZ Killer’s Manifesto

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Louisiana mom arrested after posting viral video of school fight for ‘notoriety’: cops

A Louisiana mom faces charges in connection to a school fistfight — though it’s unclear if she was present for the brawl, according to officials.

Maegan Adkins-Barras, 32, was arrested Wednesday for sharing a viral video showing a fight between two students at Acadiana High School in Lafayette, the Scott Police Department said.

The mom admitted to authorities the footage was from her son’s cellphone. After receiving the video, she posted the clip on social media where it was “shared repeatedly,” according to police.

The footage showed a student throwing a punch that caused another boy to fall and strike his head on a concrete bench before collapsing to the ground. The altercation landed the juvenile in the hospital, officials said.

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Police say Adkins-Barras may not have thrown any punches, but she had a responsibility to report the crime.

“Parents who receive information concerning criminal activity on school campuses are urged to contact their local police department or school administration,” police said Wednesday. “Posting videos and photos of illegal activity on social media is against the law in the State of Louisiana.”

Click for more from The New York Post

Source: Fox News National

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Ambush north of Baghdad kills 3 Iraqi soldiers, wounds 5

Iraqi security and hospital officials say three soldiers have been killed and five wounded in an ambush on an army patrol north of Baghdad.

The officials say a group of militants opened fire on the patrol Tuesday in the town of Tarmiyah, a former insurgent stronghold about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, blamed the Islamic State group, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The shooting was the latest in a string of attacks along roads and in villages in areas north and west of Baghdad, many of them claimed by the extremist group. Iraq declared victory over IS in 2017 after a devastating four-year war.

Source: Fox News World

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Exclusive: Cockpit voice recorder of doomed Lion Air jet depicts pilots’ frantic search for fix – sources

Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of a Lion Air JT610 that crashed into Tanjung Karawang sea is seen inside a special container after it was found under the sea, during a press conference at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta
Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of a Lion Air JT610 that crashed into Tanjung Karawang sea is seen inside a special container after it was found under the sea, during a press conference at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta, Indonesia, January 14, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

March 20, 2019

By Cindy Silviana, Jamie Freed and Tim Hepher

JAKARTA/SINGAPORE/PARIS (Reuters) – The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scoured a handbook as they struggled to understand why the jet was lurching downwards, but ran out of time before it hit the water, three people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said.

The investigation into the crash, which killed all 189 people on board in October, has taken on new relevance as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators grounded the model last week after a second deadly accident in Ethiopia.

Investigators examining the Indonesian crash are considering how a computer ordered the plane to dive in response to data from a faulty sensor and whether the pilots had enough training to respond appropriately to the emergency, among other factors.

It is the first time the voice recorder contents from the Lion Air flight have been made public. The three sources discussed them on condition of anonymity.

Reuters did not have access to the recording or transcript.

A Lion Air spokesman said all data and information had been given to investigators and declined to comment further.

The captain was at the controls of Lion Air flight JT610 when the nearly new jet took off from Jakarta, and the first officer was handling the radio, according to a preliminary report issued in November.

Just two minutes into the flight, the first officer reported a “flight control problem” to air traffic control and said the pilots intended to maintain an altitude of 5,000 feet, the November report said.

The first officer did not specify the problem, but one source said airspeed was mentioned on the cockpit voice recording, and a second source said an indicator showed a problem on the captain’s display but not the first officer’s.

The captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook, which contains checklists for abnormal events, the first source said.

For the next nine minutes, the jet warned pilots it was in a stall and pushed the nose down in response, the report showed. A stall is when the airflow over a plane’s wings is too weak to generate lift and keep it flying.

The captain fought to climb, but the computer, still incorrectly sensing a stall, continued to push the nose down using the plane’s trim system. Normally, trim adjusts an aircraft’s control surfaces to ensure it flies straight and level.

“They didn’t seem to know the trim was moving down,” the third source said. “They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about.”

Boeing Co declined to comment on Wednesday because the investigation was ongoing.

The manufacturer has said there is a documented procedure to handle the situation. A different crew on the same plane the evening before encountered the same problem but solved it after running through three checklists, according to the November report.

But they did not pass on all of the information about the problems they encountered to the next crew, the report said.

The pilots of JT610 remained calm for most of the flight, the three sources said. Near the end, the captain asked the first officer to fly while he checked the manual for a solution.

About one minute before the plane disappeared from radar, the captain asked air traffic control to clear other traffic below 3,000 feet and requested an altitude of “five thou”, or 5,000 feet, which was approved, the preliminary report said.

As the 31-year-old captain tried in vain to find the right procedure in the handbook, the 41-year-old first officer was unable to control the plane, two of the sources said.

The flight data recorder shows the final control column inputs from the first officer were weaker than the ones made earlier by the captain.

“It is like a test where there are 100 questions and when the time is up you have only answered 75,” the third source said. “So you panic. It is a time-out condition.”

The Indian-born captain was silent at the end, all three sources said, while the Indonesian first officer said “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is greatest”, a common Arabic phrase in the majority-Muslim country that can be used to express excitement, shock, praise or distress.

The plane then hit the water, killing all 189 people on board.

French air accident investigation agency BEA said on Tuesday the flight data recorder in the Ethiopian crash that killed 157 people showed “clear similarities” to the Lion Air disaster. Since the Lion Air crash, Boeing has been pursuing a software upgrade to change how much authority is given to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, a new anti-stall system developed for the 737 MAX.

The cause of the Lion Air crash has not been determined, but the preliminary report mentioned the Boeing system, a faulty, recently replaced sensor and the airline’s maintenance and training.

On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air’s full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report.

The report also did not include data from the cockpit voice recorder, which was not recovered from the ocean floor until January.

Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesian investigation agency KNKT, said last week the report could be released in July or August as authorities attempted to speed up the inquiry in the wake of the Ethiopian crash.

On Wednesday, he declined to comment on the cockpit voice recorder contents, saying they had not been made public.

(Reporting by Cindy Silviana in Jakarta, Jamie Freed in Singapore and Tim Hepher in Paris; writing by Jamie Freed; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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AP, HBO, NBC could be next outlets sued over coverage of Covington Catholic student: co-counsel

The Associated Press and television networks NBC and HBO could be the next three entities sued over their handling of the viral video featuring Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, his co-counsel told Fox News on Tuesday.

Todd McMurtry revealed the potential upcoming legal targets during an interview with Fox News just one day after a massive $275 million suit was filed against CNN due to its coverage of the January confrontation between Sandmann -- wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat -- and Native American activist, Nathan Phillips.

“Our plan is to come out with an additional lawsuit every few weeks or months. We have to issue opportunities for these news organizations to provide retractions,” McMurtry told the "Todd Starnes Radio Show." "But right now we're looking very carefully at NBC, AP, HBO. And again, HBO is primarily because they carry Bill Maher's disgusting comments about Nicholas Sandmann. So those probably are the next three defendants."

SANDMANN, FAMILY SUE CNN FOR $275M IN COVINGTON CATHOLIC CONTROVERSY

Maher referred to Sandmann as a “little pr---” during the Jan. 27 episode of his show, “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

"I don't blame the kid, the smirk-face kid," Maher said. "I blame lead poisoning and bad parenting. And, oh yeah, I blame the f---ing kid, what a little pr---. Smirk face, like that's not a d--- move at any age to stick your face in this elderly man.”

COVINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT'S LEGAL TEAM SUES WASHINGTON POST

Maher then made a crude joke about the abuse of children that has taken place in the Catholic Church, saying: “You know, I don't spend a lot of time, I must tell you, around Catholic school children, but I do not get what Catholic priests see in these kids.”

In addition to the CNN suit, Sandmann’s legal team also launched legal action against the Washington Post.

McMurtry told Fox News the goal of the suits is to change the “mainstream media’s” behavior.

”Clearly what we want to do is stop them from behaving in a way that discards all journalistic integrity,” he said. “Here they didn’t investigate. They took something off of Twitter and put it right out into the media.”

CONSERVATIVE LEADERS DEMAND APOLOGY FOR MEDIA TREATMENT OF COVINGTON STUDENTS

The suit against CNN charges that the network "elevated false, heinous accusations of racist conduct" against Sandmann and failed to adhere to "well-established journalistic standards and ethics."

The lawsuit against The Washington Post accuses that outlet of practicing "a modern-day form of McCarthyism" by targeting Sandmann and "using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles...to smear a young boy who was, in its view, an acceptable casualty in their war against the president."

The Post has since published an editor’s note admitting subsequent information either contradicted or failed to confirm accounts relayed in its initial article about the video. The editor’s note was not satisfactory to Sandmann’s legal team, however.

DAD OF COVINGTON STUDENT NICK SANDMANN BACKS KENTUCKY'S ANTI-DOXXING BILL IN EMOTIONAL TESTIMONY

Sandmann, a junior at Covington in Kentucky, became a target for outrage after the January video surfaced. The 16-year-old was one of a group of students from Covington attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., while Phillips was attending the Indigenous Peoples' March on the same day.

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Sandmann and the Covington students were initially accused of initiating the confrontation, but other videos and the students' own statements showed that they were verbally accosted by a group of black street preachers who were shouting insults at them and the Native Americans. Sandmann and Phillips have both said they were trying to defuse the situation.

Fox News' Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Cambodian authorities have ordered a one-hour reduction in the length of school days because of concerns that students and teachers may fall ill from a prolonged heat wave.

Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said in an announcement seen Friday that the shortened hours will remain in effect until the rainy season starts, which usually occurs in May. The current heat wave, in which temperatures are regularly reaching as high as 41 Celsius (106 Fahrenheit), is one of the longest in memory.

Most schools in Cambodia lack air conditioning, prompting concern that temperatures inside classrooms could rise to unhealthy levels.

School authorities were instructed to watch for symptoms of heat stroke and urge pupils to drink more water.

The new hours cut 30 minutes off the beginning of the school day and 30 minutes off the end.

School authorities instituted a similar measure in 2016.

Source: Fox News World

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Explosions have rocked Britain’s largest steel plant, injuring two people and shaking nearby homes.

South Wales Police say the incident at the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot was reported at about 3:35 a.m. Friday (22:35 EDT Thursday). The explosions touched off small fires, which are under control. Two workers suffered minor injuries and all staff members have been accounted for.

Police say early indications are that the explosions were caused by a train used to carry molten metal into the plant. Tata Steel says its personnel are working with emergency services at the scene.

Local lawmaker Stephen Kinnock says the incident raises concerns about safety.

He tweeted: “It could have been a lot worse … @TataSteelEurope must conduct a full review, to improve safety.”

Source: Fox News World

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The Wider Image: China's start-ups go small in age of 'shoebox' satellites
LinkSpace’s reusable rocket RLV-T5, also known as NewLine Baby, is carried to a vacant plot of land for a test launch in Longkou, Shandong province, China, April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 26, 2019

By Ryan Woo

LONGKOU, China (Reuters) – During initial tests of their 8.1-metre (27-foot) tall reusable rocket, Chinese engineers from LinkSpace, a start-up led by China’s youngest space entrepreneur, used a Kevlar tether to ensure its safe return. Just in case.

But when the Beijing-based company’s prototype, called NewLine Baby, successfully took off and landed last week for the second time in two months, no tether was needed.

The 1.5-tonne rocket hovered 40 meters above the ground before descending back to its concrete launch pad after 30 seconds, to the relief of 26-year-old chief executive Hu Zhenyu and his engineers – one of whom cartwheeled his way to the launch pad in delight.

LinkSpace, one of China’s 15-plus private rocket manufacturers, sees these short hops as the first steps towards a new business model: sending tiny, inexpensive satellites into orbit at affordable prices.

Demand for these so-called nanosatellites – which weigh less than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and are in some cases as small as a shoebox – is expected to explode in the next few years. And China’s rocket entrepreneurs reckon there is no better place to develop inexpensive launch vehicles than their home country.

“For suborbital clients, their focus will be on scientific research and some commercial uses. After entering orbit, the near-term focus (of clients) will certainly be on satellites,” Hu said.

In the near term, China envisions massive constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft to tracking coal shipments. Universities conducting experiments and companies looking to offer remote-sensing and communication services are among the potential domestic customers for nanosatellites.

A handful of U.S. small-rocket companies are also developing launchers ahead of the expected boom. One of the biggest, Rocket Lab, has already put 25 satellites in orbit.

No private company in China has done that yet. Since October, two – LandSpace and OneSpace – have tried but failed, illustrating the difficulties facing space start-ups everywhere.

The Chinese companies are approaching inexpensive launches in different ways. Some, like OneSpace, are designing cheap, disposable boosters. LinkSpace’s Hu aspires to build reusable rockets that return to Earth after delivering their payload, much like the Falcon 9 rockets of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“If you’re a small company and you can only build a very, very small rocket because that’s all you have money for, then your profit margins are going to be narrower,” said Macro Caceres, analyst at U.S. aerospace consultancy Teal Group.

“But if you can take that small rocket and make it reusable, and you can launch it once a week, four times a month, 50 times a year, then with more volume, your profit increases,” Caceres added.

Eventually LinkSpace hopes to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.48 million) per launch, Hu told Reuters.

That is a fraction of the $25 million to $30 million needed for a launch on a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus, a commonly used small rocket. The Pegasus is launched from a high-flying aircraft and is not reusable.

(Click https://reut.rs/2UVBjKs to see a picture package of China’s rocket start-ups. Click https://tmsnrt.rs/2GIy9Bc for an interactive look at the nascent industry.)

NEED FOR CASH

LinkSpace plans to conduct suborbital launch tests using a bigger recoverable rocket in the first half of 2020, reaching altitudes of at least 100 kilometers, then an orbital launch in 2021, Hu told Reuters.

The company is in its third round of fundraising and wants to raise up to 100 million yuan, Hu said. It had secured tens of millions of yuan in previous rounds.

After a surge in fresh funding in 2018, firms like LinkSpace are pushing out prototypes, planning more tests and even proposing operational launches this year.

Last year, equity investment in China’s space start-ups reached 3.57 billion yuan ($533 million), a report by Beijing-based investor FutureAerospace shows, with a burst of financing in late 2018.

That accounted for about 18 percent of global space start-up investments in 2018, a historic high, according to Reuters calculations based on a global estimate by Space Angels. The New York-based venture capital firm said global space start-up investments totaled $2.97 billion last year.

“Costs for rocket companies are relatively high, but as to how much funding they need, be it in the hundreds of millions, or tens of millions, or even just a few million yuan, depends on the company’s stage of development,” said Niu Min, founder of FutureAerospace.

FutureAerospace has invested tens of millions of yuan in LandSpace, based in Beijing.

Like space-launch startups elsewhere in the world, the immediate challenge for Chinese entrepreneurs is developing a safe and reliable rocket.

Proven talent to develop such hardware can be found in China’s state research institutes or the military; the government directly supports private firms by allowing them to launch from military-controlled facilities.

But it’s still a high-risk business, and one unsuccessful launch might kill a company.

“The biggest problem facing all commercial space companies, especially early-stage entrepreneurs, is failure” of an attempted flight, Liang Jianjun, chief executive of rocket company Space Trek, told Reuters. That can affect financing, research, manufacturing and the team’s morale, he added.

Space Trek is planning its first suborbital launch by the end of June and an orbital launch next year, said Liang, who founded the company in late 2017 with three other former military technical officers.

Despite LandSpace’s failed Zhuque-1 orbital launch in October, the Beijing-based firm secured 300 million yuan in additional funding for the development of its Zhuque-2 rocket a month later.

In December, the company started operating China’s first private rocket production facility in Zhejiang province, in anticipation of large-scale manufacturing of its Zhuque-2, which it expects to unveil next year.

STATE COMPETITION

China’s state defense contractors are also trying to get into the low-cost market.

In December, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) successfully launched a low-orbit communication satellite, the first of 156 that CASIC aims to deploy by 2022 to provide more stable broadband connectivity to rural China and eventually developing countries.

The satellite, Hongyun-1, was launched on a rocket supplied by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the nation’s main space contractor.

In early April, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALVT), a subsidiary of CASC, completed engine tests for its Dragon, China’s first rocket meant solely for commercial use, clearing the path for a maiden flight before July.

The Dragon, much bigger than the rockets being developed by private firms, is designed to carry multiple commercial satellites.

At least 35 private Chinese companies are working to produce more satellites.

Spacety, a satellite maker based in southern Hunan province, plans to put 20 satellites in orbit this year, including its first for a foreign client, chief executive Yang Feng told Reuters.

The company has only launched 12 on state-produced rockets since the company started operating in early 2016.

“When it comes to rocket launches, what we care about would be cost, reliability and time,” Yang said.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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At least one person is reported dead and homes have been destroyed by a powerful cyclone that struck northern Mozambique and continues to dump rain on the region, with the United Nations warning of “massive flooding.”

Cyclone Kenneth arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai tore into central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people and displacing scores of thousands. The U.N. says this is the first time in known history that the southern African nation has been hit by two cyclones in one season.

Forecasters say the new cyclone made landfall Thursday night in a part of Mozambique that has not seen such a storm in at least 60 years.

Mozambique’s local emergency operations center says a woman in the city of Pemba was killed by a falling tree.

Source: Fox News World

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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

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