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Brazil ex-President Temer charged in graft case linked to meatpacker JBS

FILE PHOTO: Former Brazil's President Michel Temer gestures during a ceremony to launch the new program of the Brazilian state development lender BNDES at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia
FILE PHOTO: Former Brazil's President Michel Temer gestures during a ceremony to launch the new program of the Brazilian state development lender BNDES at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/File Photo

March 29, 2019

By Eduardo Simões

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Former Brazilian President Michel Temer has been formally charged with corruption on allegations of using a middleman to procure a suitcase full of cash from the world’s largest meatpacker, JBS SA, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

Temer, who was president from 2016 until the end of 2018, was arrested last week as part of a separate investigation and accused of running a vast criminal enterprise that sought bribes for public works projects.

He denies all charges and was freed this week after a petition by his lawyers.

In 2017, Rodrigo da Rocha Loures was caught on video by security cameras running out of a Sao Paulo restaurant carrying a bag with 500,000 reais ($128,166) in cash that prosecutors said was a bribe from the owners of JBS.

Plea-bargain testimony by two executives of JBS holding company J&F Investimentos SA implicated Temer and other politicians in corruption and led prosecutors to accuse Rocha Loures of being a middleman for Temer, which the former president denied. Rocha Loures, who has also denied the charges, is awaiting trial.

On Thursday, Temer was officially charged by federal prosecutors with having received bribes paid by a JBS official and delivered by a J&F executive.

Temer’s lawyer, Eduardo Carnelós, said in a statement that the charges were part of a “sordid operation aiming to depose the former president of the republic.” He added that the charges were “devoid of any foundation.”

(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes)

Source: OANN

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Factbox: New revelations from the Mueller report

The Muller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election is pictured in New York
The Mueller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election is pictured in New York, New York, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

April 18, 2019

(Reuters) – There are several aspects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election campaign that were not previously known until the release of his report on Thursday.

TRUMP’S REACTION TO APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL

U.S. President Donald Trump believed the appointment of a special counsel to take over an active federal investigation would spell the end of his presidency, according to Mueller’s report.

When then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Trump of Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017, the report said, Trump slumped back in his chair and said: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”

Trump asked Sessions, whom he had berated for months for recusing himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the election: “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” and told Sessions he had let him down.

Trump told Sessions he should resign, and Sessions agreed to do so. When Sessions delivered his resignation letter to Trump the following day, Trump put the letter in his pocket but said he wanted Sessions to stay on the job.

That alarmed chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior advisor Steve Bannon, who worried Trump would use the letter to control the Department of Justice, and they tried to return it to Sessions.

Trump took the letter with him on a trip to the Middle East, where he showed it to several senior advisers and asked them what he should do about it. On May 30, he finally returned the letter to Sessions with a note saying: “Not accepted.”

THE PRESIDENTIAL INTERVIEW THAT WASN’T

Mueller tried for more than a year to interview Trump, but in the end Trump refused. Trump provided written answers on some Russia-related topics, but did not agree to answer questions about possible obstruction of justice or events that took place during the presidential transition.

Mueller said he thought he had the legal authority to order Trump to testify before a grand jury, but he decided not to take that course because of the “substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation.”

TRUMP’S EFFORTS TO FIRE MUELLER

Trump tried to get Mueller fired in June 2017, shortly after he was appointed, according to the 448-page report. Trump called then-White House counsel Don McGahn twice and directed him to order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller on the grounds that he had conflicts of interest.

McGahn felt “trapped,” but did not carry out the order, deciding that he would rather resign, Mueller said.

Other White House advisers later talked McGahn out of resigning, and Trump did not follow up to ask whether McGahn had fulfilled his directive.

Trump pressured McGahn to deny that these events took place when they surfaced in news accounts in January 2018, but McGahn refused, according to Mueller’s report, some of which was blacked out to protect some sensitive information.

TRUMP’S EFFORTS TO LIMIT THE INVESTIGATION

Trump also enlisted his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowksi, to try to narrow the investigation’s scope. The report said Trump asked Lewandowski in June 2017 to tell Sessions that he should publicly announce that the Russia probe was “very unfair” to the president, say Trump had done nothing wrong, and limit Mueller’s probe into interference in future elections, not the one that had put him in the White House.

A month later, Trump asked Lewandowski about the status of his request and Lewandowski assured Trump he would deliver the message soon. Trump then publicly criticized Sessions in a New York Times interview and a series of Twitter messages.

Mueller says Lewandowski did not want to deliver the message to Sessions, so he asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to speak to him. Dearborn also did not want to carry out the task. Ultimately, the message never reached Sessions.

MANAFORT’S EFFORTS TO MONETIZE THE CAMPAIGN

Mueller found that campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s efforts to work with his former business partners in Ukraine were greater than previously known, as he tried to use his insider status on the campaign to collect on debts owed for his past work by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Shortly after he joined the campaign in the spring of 2016, Manafort directed his deputy Rick Gates to share internal polling data and other campaign materials with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Ukrainian business partner, with the understanding that it would get passed on to Deripaska, the report said.

During an August 2016 meeting in New York, Manafort told Kilimnik about the campaign’s efforts to win the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the report said. Trump ended up winning three of those states in the November election.

Manafort worked with his Ukrainian allies until the spring of 2018, after he had been indicted by Mueller, to promote a peace plan that would have split the country in two. These efforts did not constitute coordination between the campaign and Russian efforts to disrupt the election, Mueller found.

Manafort urged Gates not to plead guilty after they were both indicted by Mueller, apparently believing that they would be pardoned by the president if they did not cooperate with investigators. Trump’s numerous sympathetic statements before and during Manafort’s criminal trial could be interpreted as an effort to sway the outcome, but they also could be interpreted as a sign that he genuinely felt sorry for Manafort, Mueller said.

PLAN FOR U.S.-RUSSIA RECONCILIATION

Relations between Washington and Moscow had deteriorated under two previous administrations and the United States had imposed sanctions on Russia. Following Trump’s election victory, Russian financier Kirill Dmitriev worked on a proposal to improve ties with Rick Gerson, a hedge fund manager who is friends with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dmitriev runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and reports directly to Putin.

Gerson gave the plan to Kushner before Trump was sworn in, Mueller’s report said, and Kushner gave copies to Bannon and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

After Trump took office in January 2017, Dmitriev told Gerson that his “boss” – an apparent reference to Putin – wanted to know if there was a reaction to the proposal, which called for cooperation on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and economic matters. When Putin and Trump spoke by phone, Dmitriev told Gerson that their plan had “played an important role.”

Gerson told Mueller’s team that he acted as an intermediary between Trump and Russia on his own initiative, not at the request of Trump’s aides.

(Compiled by Andy Sullivan; editing by Grant McCool)

Source: OANN

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Late Brazil cane harvest may catch sugar traders off-guard

A combine harvester cuts sugar cane in a field at the Sao Martinho sugar mill in Pradopolis
FILE PHOTO: A combine harvester cuts sugar cane in a field at the Sao Martinho sugar mill in Pradopolis, Brazil September 13, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

March 26, 2019

By Marcelo Teixeira

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A likely delay in the start of Brazil’s center-south cane harvest may catch some New York sugar futures players on the wrong foot, forcing those operators to cover positions, according to analysts and commodity traders.

Although Brazil’s 2019/20 center-south cane crop officially starts in April, many mills begin crushing earlier if their cane is ready. However, fields this year are developing late, after a dry spell in December and January, followed by ample March rain.

The late rainfall may lead some mills to hold off crushing to let the cane turn that moisture into better agricultural yields.

“If that happens, we will see traders running to deal with that lack of available sugar,” said Arnaldo Corrêa, a sugar industry analyst at Archer Consulting.

Last Friday, U.S. government data showed speculators had reduced their net short position in raw sugar on the ICE futures exchange, surprising many in the market.

Brazil is a big swing factor in the global sugar market due to the flexibility of its mills, which manage to go quicker or slower on processing, or direct more cane to ethanol versus sugar production, depending on prices.

“If there is a delay in crushing, then the supply of raw sugar that can be tendered against the May futures may be severely restricted,” an analyst at a large European trading house told Reuters.

“There will be a lot of debate about specifically how much cane will be crushed in the second half of March and in April,” said the analyst, requesting anonymity to speak openly.

The start to Brazil’s cane harvest has varied dramatically in recent years. In 2016, Brazilian mills crushed 80 million tonnes from mid-March to the end of April, but the crush in the same period of 2017 fell below 50 million tonnes.

Last year Brazil’s center-south crushed 67.7 million tonnes in that six-week stretch, producing 2.41 million tonnes of sugar. Analysts are forecasting less this year.

Datagro, a leading sugar and ethanol consultancy in Brazil, sees most mills pushing their first crush back by two weeks due to high ethanol inventories and slow cane development.

Brazilian cane industry group Unica said on Tuesday that just 27 center-south mills were operating in the first half of March, down from 50 at the same time last year.

If processing continues to lag, mills and traders that have already sold sugar in New York might roll their positions to July instead of delivering the sugar. That could leave buyers scrambling to find new supplies.

To be sure, a sunny forecast for early April in center-south Brazil could help to jumpstart crushing season, bringing sugar to the market as expected.

Dib Nunes, a Brazilian cane expert, said major cane areas near Presidente Prudente and Araçatuba are likely to see delays, but other parts of Sao Paulo state may not.

Not all of Brazil’s cash-strapped mills can afford to wait.

“A potential delay would be 15 or 20 days maximum, not more, because many mills also need to make cash,” he said.

(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Brad Haynes and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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U.S. Navy ships pass through strategic Taiwan Strait, riling China

FILE PHOTO: US Navy destroyer USS Stethem transits waters east of the Korean peninsula
FILE PHOTO: The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem transits waters east of the Korean peninsula during a photo exercise including the United States Navy and the Republic of Korea Navy during Operation Foal Eagle March 22, 2017. U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kurtis A. Hatcher/Handout via REUTERS

February 26, 2019

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States sent two Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait on Monday as the U.S. military increased the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.

The voyage risks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.

The movement comes as U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States and China were “very, very close” to a deal to end a months-long trade war that has slowed global growth and disrupted markets.

The U.S. Navy’s passage through the Taiwan Strait also came just days before a summit between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

The two ships were identified as the destroyer Stethem and Navy cargo and ammunition ship Cesar Chavez, the statement said. The 180 km-wide (112 miles) Taiwan Strait separates Taiwan from China.

There was no immediate reaction from China, which has previously expressed its opposition to such exercises.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday the U.S. ships had already left the strait, following a northerly route.

Taiwan’s armed forces had kept watch on the sailing and noticed nothing out of the ordinary, so there was no cause for alarm, it said.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help defend the island nation and is its main source of arms. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.

China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it considers a wayward province of “one China” and sacred Chinese territory.

Beijing’s concerns about Taiwan are likely to factor strongly into this year’s Chinese defense budget, following a stern new year’s speech from President Xi Jinping, threatening to attack Taiwan should it not accept Chinese rule.

China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills in the past few years and worked to isolate the island internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report earlier this year describing Taiwan as the “primary driver” for China’s military modernization, which it said had made major advances in recent years.

Democratic Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by autocratic China.

Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom of navigation patrols.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Yimou Lee in TAIPEI; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Paul Tait)

Source: OANN

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The Latest: ‘No common sense’ in Michigan cop’s use of Taser

The Latest on the second-degree murder trial of a former Michigan trooper in the death of a Detroit teenager (all times local):

1:10 p.m.

A prosecutor is urging jurors to convict a former Michigan State Police trooper of second-degree murder in the death of a Detroit teen, saying there wasn't a "lick of common sense" in firing a Taser at a boy riding an all-terrain vehicle.

Damon (Da-MAHN') Grimes crashed the ATV and died. Mark Bessner is on trial for a second time after the first trial last fall ended without a unanimous verdict .

The trial moved to closing arguments Tuesday after Bessner declined to tell his version of what happened in 2017 on a Detroit street. It was a major shift in strategy: He offered emotional testimony at the first trial, telling jurors that he believed the 15-year-old had a gun. Grimes didn't have a weapon.

Defense attorney Richard Convertino says the ATV was in poor condition and Bessner feared for his safety.

___

11:19 a.m.

A former Michigan State Police trooper charged with murder in the death of a Detroit teen says he won't testify in his own defense.

Mark Bessner is on trial for the second time after a jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict last fall. He testified at the first trial but told a judge Tuesday that he will remain silent this time. It's a major shift in strategy.

Damon (Da-MAHN') Grimes was 15 years old in 2017 when he crashed an all-terrain vehicle and died after Bessner shot him with a Taser on a Detroit street.

Prosecutors say the Taser was unnecessary and created a high risk of danger. At the first trial, Bessner told jurors that he believed Grimes was armed. The teen had no gun.

Source: Fox News National

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The Latest: France, Germany congratulate Ukraine winner

The Latest on the results of Ukraine's presidential vote in which TV actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy won in a landslide (all times local):

12:20 p.m.

France and Germany, which have led diplomatic efforts to defuse the conflict in eastern Ukraine, are congratulating Volodymyr Zelenskiy on being elected as president.

They are underlining their support for reform and their commitment to Ukraine's territorial integrity.

French President Emmanuel Macron's office said Monday that he spoke with Zelenskiy and restated his readiness to work alongside Germany in the so-called "Normandy format," which also involves Ukraine and Russia, to help resolve the conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Germany and France brokered a 2015 peace accord with Ukraine and Russia to stop the fighting, but the deal is far from implemented. There has been no recent summit between the four countries' leaders.

In a separate message to Zelenskiy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed her interest in stabilizing Ukraine and a peaceful resolution to the conflict, along with reforms to the judicial system, decentralization of Ukraine and fighting corruption.

___

12 noon

The European Union is congratulating Volodymyr Zelenskiy on his election as Ukrainian president, pledging strong support for his plans to reform the country and fight corruption.

In a joint letter to Zelenskiy on Monday, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council chief Donald Tusk said the political novice can "count on the EU's continued and steadfast support of Ukraine's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity."

Juncker and Tusk wrote that "you can count on the EU's strong support to Ukraine's reform path, including consolidating the rule of law, fighting corruption, maintaining macro-financial stability and pursuing the essential reform of the energy sector." And they said that further implementation of a Ukraine-EU association agreement could be a "crucial instrument" in achieving that.

Zelenskiy, a TV actor, trounced incumbent Petro Poroshenko in Sunday's election.

___

11:30 p.m.

Even with a landslide win in Ukraine's presidential election to give him a powerful mandate for change, TV actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy has daunting challenges ahead.

The simmering, deadly conflict in eastern Ukraine and the conundrum over Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea are likely to dominate the agenda of the man who up until now has only played the president in a TV sitcom. Zelenskiy, a Russian speaker from central Ukraine has promised to step up efforts to re-integrate the east back into Ukraine's fold but has offered no details on how he is going to do that.

A political novice, 41-year-old Zelenskiy will also have to face off against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled his country for nearly two decades, if he wants to mend relations with Ukraine's neighbor.

___

10:30 a.m.

With nearly all the votes counted in Ukraine, TV star Volodymyr Zelenskiy is projected to win the country's presidential runoff vote in a landslide.

The Central Election Commission says Monday that Zelenskiy has won 73% of the vote while the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko got just 24% support with more than 96% of the ballots counted.

Unlike in most of the elections in Ukraine's post-Soviet history, Zelenskiy appears to have won both in Ukraine's west and east, areas that have been traditionally polarized. One of the campaign slogans of the popular television comedian who has no previous political experience was to unify Ukraine, which has been torn by bitter debates over its identity as well as the separatist conflict in the east that is fueled by neighboring Russia.

Source: Fox News World

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Escaped teenager charged in mother’s death recaptured

Authorities on Friday recaptured a 15-year-old boy who is charged with killing his mother and managed to escape a Southern California juvenile facility.

A "very good lead" led authorities to a McDonald's restaurant in Anaheim, where Ike Souzer was taken peacefully into custody on Friday night, Orange County sheriff's Capt. Mike Peters said. The teenager was given medical treatment for puncture wounds on his leg that might have come from his escape, Peters said.

Ike Souzer escaped the Orange County Juvenile Hall, somehow got onto a roof and then jumped a perimeter fence just after midnight Friday, said Steve Sentman, chief probation officer for the county.

Jail staff spotted Souzer on the roof, then turned on a facility-wide alarm and called the sheriff's office, he said.

Peters said deputies were "very quick" to respond, but Souzer was able to elude capture.

The sheriff's office released surveillance footage showing Souzer tending to an apparent wound on his leg shortly after escaping and then walking seemingly casually away from the facility. The 6-foot, 200-pound teen was wearing red pants and a white shirt.

Dozens of law enforcement personnel, including FBI agents and federal marshals, searched for the boy.

Sentman said it was the first escape from the 434-bed facility in at least two decades and that an investigation is underway into how it happened.

Souzer has been in custody since he was 13, when he was arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing his mother, 48-year-old Barbra Scheuer-Souzer. His escape came in the middle of Souzer's trial on a murder charge in juvenile court, said Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Souzer's public defender, David Hammond, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.

A Gofundme page for Scheuer-Souzer says she was so good at helping her son with autism that she went back to school to help others with the condition and was about to graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Through her unconditional love and commitment, she helped her son go from non-verbal to verbal status," according to the page. "Her whole goal was to help her son and the autistic community by giving back and serving the needs of others."

Scheuer-Souzer had three other grown children and three grandchildren.

Source: Fox News National

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Initial optimism over first-quarter results from Starbucks Corp was waning fast on Wall Street on Friday, as analysts questioned the longer-term prospects of its new sales push given subdued overall customer traffic numbers especially in China.

The company on Thursday beat brokerage estimates for quarterly same-store sales on the back of demand for its new Cloud Macchiato, Matcha tea and cold brews in the United States.

However, BTIG’s Peter Saleh was one of a number of sector analysts who said while customers forking out for higher-priced new drinks had helped drive growth in same-store sales, “anemic” traffic at cafes remained a concern.

He and others pointed to a 1 percent decline in footfall at cafes in the Chinese market, viewed as crucial to the chain’s growth for the foreseeable future.

More broadly, transaction numbers, the substitute analysts use for customer traffic, were unchanged in all three of the company’s global regions.

Shares in the company, which hit a record high after the results on Thursday, fell 1 percent in morning trade.

“We remain cautious given near-term headwinds surrounding China, including cannibalization, increasing competition (and) a slowing economy,” Wedbush analyst Nick Setyan said.

Starbucks has also poured money into beefing up its delivery network in China as it battles with local startup Luckin Coffee, whose speedy growth led it to file for an IPO in the United States earlier this week.

New menu items and partnerships with delivery services, the heart of the company’s strategy to win back customers lost to artisanal coffee shops and cheaper fast-food rivals, did help Starbucks’ sales in its home market.

However, analysts said growth in China may continue to be subdued.

Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog said she expects store expansion in China to take priority over comparable sales growth.

She downgraded her rating on Starbucks’ to “market perform” from “outperform”, arguing that the company facing tough sales comparisons later on in 2019 from last year and the current rich valuation of shares meant the stock had limited room to rise.

“Investors will be hesitant to invest new money in a stock with a topline that, while still strong, is unlikely to meaningfully accelerate,” Herzog said.

Still, the company’s solid same-store growth in the United States, improving profit margins and a lower tax rate for the rest of the year led at least 6 Wall Street brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock to as high as $81.

11 of 29 brokerages rate Starbucks “buy” or higher, 17 “hold” and 1 “sell” or lower. Their median price target is $75.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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