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Analysis: Kim, returning to military optics, turns up heat

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is cautiously turning up the heat after his unsuccessful summit with President Trump in Hanoi two months ago.

Returning to military optics for the first time in five months, Kim on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to an Air Force base to inspect fighter combat readiness and followed that up the next day by supervising the test of what the North's official media described ominously but ambiguously — and without any photos or video — as a new type of "tactical guided weapon."

The military-related posturing comes after Kim expressed deep disappointment earlier this month with what the North claims was an inflexible, "gangster-like" demands by the U.S. in Hanoi.

It also comes amid reports that Kim may hold his first summit with Putin next week in Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East.

Putin has been something of an outsider over the past year as Kim has held multiple summits with the leaders of China, the United States and South Korea. But he could provide important political cover or economic aid for Pyongyang — and a potential headache for Trump — if he chooses to play a bigger role.

Though Kim claims he still has a good personal relationship with the U.S. president, he and senior North Korean officials have shown increasing frustration with Trump's top advisers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.

"The Hanoi summit gives us a lesson that whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, the talks go wrong without any results even from the point close to success," Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the American desk at the North's Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying on Thursday. "I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but (some) other person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us."

In an address to the Supreme People's Assembly, the North's version of parliament, Kim gave the U.S. until the end of the year to come up with a more mutually acceptable negotiation strategy.

For Pyongyang, that would mean lifting the sanctions it has imposed against the North over its development of nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

Kim indicated, however, that he would in the meantime maintain his self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile launches and he appears to be standing by that vow.

U.S. military officials said they did not detect any significant missile launches on Wednesday and the North's description of the "newly developed ultramodern tactical weapon" suggested it might have instead been an anti-tank guided missile or other short-range system.

If so, it was likely intended to be a response to recent military drills by U.S. and South Korea.

Just before the reports of the weapon test, a North-run propaganda website said the drills fuel "the mood for a fight and risks of war."

Washington and Seoul have renamed and scaled back their joint maneuvers since early last year, when the South hosted the Winter Olympics. They have continued that policy since Kim's first summit with Trump, in June last year, but the North claims even the smaller versions run counter to the spirit of dialogue.

Since Hanoi, Kim and senior North Korean officials have also been openly critical of South Korea and efforts by President Moon Jae-in to play the role of middleman, saying he has adhered too closely to his American allies and dragged his feet on inter-Korean projects that would provide the North with crucial investment to build its sagging infrastructure.

Moon has expressed an eagerness to engage with the North on such projects, but Washington wants it to stick to sanctions.

North and South Korean leaders have met three times and Moon has said he is ready to meet again at any time. Trump has also suggested he wants a third summit. But there are growing worries that the progress could be killed by mismatched demands between Washington and Pyongyang over sanctions relief and disarmament.

Washington says it won't allow the North's desired sanctions relief until the nation commits to verifiably relinquishing his nuclear facilities, weapons and missiles. Kim has shown no signs that he's willing to give away an arsenal he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

___

Talmadge is the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @EricTalmadge

Source: Fox News World

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The Media is Suppressing These Videos: Three Trump Supporters Attacked in One Day

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Source: InfoWars

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Kazakhstan puts campaigner against Chinese camps under house arrest

Kazakh rights activist Serikzhan Bilash walks outside a courthouse in Almaty
Kazakh rights activist Serikzhan Bilash walks outside a courthouse in Almaty, Kazakhstan, February 13, 2019. REUTERS/Mariya Gordeyeva

March 12, 2019

ALMATY (Reuters) – A Kazakh court has placed an activist who campaigned on behalf of ethnic Kazakhs in China under house arrest on the charge of calling for a “jihad” against the Chinese, state prosecutors said.

Serikzhan Bilash, a naturalized Kazakh citizen born in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, leads Atajurt, a group that has worked for the release of ethnic Kazakhs from “re-education” camps where activists say more than a million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held.

Police detained Bilash in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city, last weekend and brought him before a court in Astana, the Central Asian nation’s capital.

In a statement issued late on Monday, the Astana prosecutor’s office said Bilash is suspected of making the jihad comment at a public event last month. He has yet to make a plea.

Prosecutors said the court placed Bilash under house arrest for two months while they prepare for trial.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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Rhode Island man threatened to kill Democrats, eat pro-abortion professor ‘piece by piece,’ feds say

A Rhode Island man threatened to eat a pro-abortion professor “piece by piece” -- including his eyeballs -- and vowed to kill “every Democrat in the world,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Matthew Haviland, 30, was charged with cyberstalking and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce for terrorizing a college professor in Massachusetts, who was not identified but reportedly worked at Harvard, Boston25 reported. Haviland sent the professor about 28 emails on March 10 threatening to “rip every limb” from his body, investigators said.

“I will rip every limb from your body and eat it, piece by piece [and] I will bite through your eyeballs while you’re still alive, and I will laugh while you scream,” an email read.

Matthew Haviland, 30, was arrested for allegedly threatening a pro-abortion professor.

Matthew Haviland, 30, was arrested for allegedly threatening a pro-abortion professor. (WFXT)

Other emails slammed the professor for his supposed support for abortion.

“You will be held accountable for every [expletive] baby you murdered through your horrible deception of they are not humans…You will have your face ripped off and eaten by me, personally. I will enjoy raping your body after you’re dead. And that will only be the start,” officials said another threatening message stated.

'AVOWED RACIST' OFFERS NO LAST WORDS BEFORE EXECUTION FOR DRAGGING DEATH OF BLACK MAN IN TEXAS

“You are Evil. Pure evil — all Democrats must be eradicated, like the Confederates before them and among their ranks,” Haviland allegedly wrote, USA Today reported. “They must be slaughtered.”

The 30-year-old sent about 12 more emails five days later to the admissions office of the professor’s university.

“[Expletive], my existence is not a blight on society. Yours is, for pushing the idea that if you are able-bodied or white or okay WITH THE [EXPLETIVE] GENDER YOU WERE BORN WITH, you are a bad person,” one of the messages stated, according to authorities. “You people are Evil, putrid, and somebody shoudl [sic] BOMB your school for spreading the idea that it’s okay to HATE people because of their race.”

SUSPECT, 17, ARRESTED IN SHOOTING DEATH OF US POSTAL SERVICE LETTER CARRIER, AN ARMY VET

Federal authorities said Haviland wrote in another email, “You should be Murdered in cold blood.”

Haviland also sent 114 voice messages at a women’s medical center earlier this month.

Haviland later admitted he made the threatening calls but was not planning to harm anyone, USA Today reported. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Source: Fox News National

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Evidence for man-made global warming hits ‘gold standard’: scientists

FILE PHOTO: Ocean water is pushed up by the bottom of a pinnacle iceberg as it falls back during a large calving event at the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland
FILE PHOTO: Ocean water is pushed up by the bottom of a pinnacle iceberg as it falls back during a large calving event at the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

February 26, 2019

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) – Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.

Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.

“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”

Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.

Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

SATELLITE DATA

Monday’s findings, by researchers in the United States, Canada and Scotland, said evidence for global warming reached the five sigma level by 2005 in two of three sets of satellite data widely used by researchers, and in 2016 in the third.

Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville which runs the third set of data, said there were still many gaps in understanding climate change. His data show a slower pace of warming than the other two sets.

“You may see a certain fingerprint that indicates human influence, but that the actual intensity of the influence is minor (as our satellite data indicate),” he told Reuters.

Separately in 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.

Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain”, or 99-100 percent.

“The alternative explanation of natural factors dominating has got even less likely,” he told Reuters.

The last four years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century.

The IPCC will next publish a formal assessment of the probabilities in 2021.

“I would be reluctant to raise to 99-100 percent, but there is no doubt there is more evidence of change in the global signals over a wider suite of ocean indices and atmospheric indices,” said Professor Nathan Bindoff, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania.

(Reporting by Alister Doyle, editing by Ed Osmond and Angus MacSwan)

Source: OANN

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Appeals court nixes condo’s coed swimming restrictions

A federal appeals court has ruled that a New Jersey condominium association violated women's rights by setting separate swimming hours for male and female residents.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the schedule adopted by A Country Place's condominium association was "plainly unequal in its allotment of favorable swimming times."

The Lakewood condominium complex, which serves people 55 or older, restricts swimming by gender at certain times in accord with Jewish law that prohibits men and women from bathing together. Orthodox Jewish residents made up about two thirds of residents, but several non-Orthodox homeowners sued in 2016 after being fined $50 each after refusing to abide by the rules.

A judge ruled in January that the separate swim hours weren't discriminatory because they applied to both sexes equally, but the appeals court overturned that decision Monday.

Under the rules, men and women were only allowed in the pool together for two hours on weekdays and all day Saturday, when, the court noted, "Orthodox residents would not go swimming on the Jewish Sabbath."

The association said it allocated roughly the same number of hours for men and women, but the court said women were only able to swim for about 3½ hours on weeknight evenings compared to 16½ hours for men.

"Women with regular-hour jobs thus have little access to the pool during the work week, and the schedule appears to reflect particular assumptions about the roles of men and women," Judge Thomas Ambro wrote for the court majority.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Jose Roman, told the Asbury Park Press that his clients were "very happy that the court saw the case our way, that it was discriminatory based on gender." An attorney for the condominium association didn't immediately return an email seeking comment.

Source: Fox News National

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Nordic trust tarnished by money laundering scandal

Danske Bank sign is seen at the bank's Estonian branch in Tallinn
Danske Bank sign is seen at the bank's Estonian branch in Tallinn, Estonia March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

April 3, 2019

By Johan Ahlander, Esha Vaish and John O’Donnell

STOCKHOLM/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Money laundering allegations involving Sweden and Denmark have shattered faith in the open Nordic business culture, prompting demands for tighter controls on the banks held responsible.

Ranked among the least corrupt countries by anti-graft campaign group Transparency International, Sweden and Denmark have been rocked by investigations into Danske Bank and Swedbank, knocking billions off their value.

Politicians, regulators and investors now want closer policing and more stringent penalties, unwinding a system where the state largely trusted banks to keep themselves in check.

“Openness is key in our society. This is a system built on trust and that trust has decreased quite substantially,” Swedish financial markets minister Per Bolund told Reuters.

“It’s not enough to fire one person,” Bolund said of Swedbank’s dismissal last week of Birgitte Bonnesen as chief executive, adding that an overhaul of its controls was needed, in a clear signal of future government action.

“That has to go all the way from the top to the bottom.”

Sweden has yet to announce substantial reforms following the emergence of money laundering allegations against Swedbank which originated in Europe’s Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia.

Latvia, a former Soviet state with a large Russian-speaking minority, had modeled itself as a financial bridge for Russians moving money to Europe. Similar profitable activity took place in Estonia, but has now become a reputational liability.

Danske Bank has been ejected from Estonia after admitting 200 billion euros ($225 billion) of suspicious money movements flowed through its branch there between 2007 and 2015. And it is also pulling out of neighboring Baltic states.

Danish academic Gert Svendsen, author of ‘Trust’, says the scandals risk undermining a central tenet of Nordic culture.

“People become happier if you can do things based on trust. That explains why Swedes and Danes are quite happy,” he said.

WIDER WAVES

The money laundering scandals, which have been growing week by week, are shaking politics as well as the boardroom.

In Denmark, which was first to be hit by Danske Bank, the scandal bolstered support for a left-wing opposition bloc that some polls suggest could oust the right-wing coalition in elections expected by June.

In response, the Danish government plans to create what one minister dubbed a “more aggressive financial regulator”, doubling the officials fighting money laundering to 24, allowing it to fine banks for breaches or insert an observer on a board.

“In the case of Danske Bank, we’ve seen how authorities send letters back and forth for seven or eight years before it was stopped,” Danish business minister Rasmus Jarlov said, announcing the shift toward U.S.-style controls.

Sweden may follow suit, with prime minister Stefan Lofven last week saying he could “strengthen legislation” following criticism that regulators have been too lax.

Last year the management of Sweden’s financial watchdog went against its own experts’ recommendations that it should sanction several of the major bank for insufficient money-laundering controls, opting instead to send warning letters.

The FSA also had to tighten rules requiring banks to set aside more funds for home loan losses after the central bank said it was being too generous.

And Joacim Olsson, head of the Swedish Shareholders’ Association has criticized it for being tough on smaller banks but softer on large ones.

“We in Sweden as a whole, and other regulators, have done too little. That is the conclusion from Danske Bank,” Swedish FSA head Erik Thedeen told reporters last month.

Louise Brown of Transparency International said Sweden needed to reform, adding: “We need to upgrade both regulatory execution and corporate governance”.

REGULATORY RELATIONS

The Danske Bank and Swedbank scandals have also raised questions about often close relationships between regulators and the banks the oversee.

Former Danish FSA chairman Henrik Ramlau-Hansen, who had served as finance chief at Danske Bank for five years before joining the FSA in 2016, stepped down in May last year.

Denmark now prohibits the chairman and deputy chairman to have worked at financial institutions for five years prior.

Sweden’s FSA boss Thedeen had in previous roles worked with Swedbank’s board member Peter Norman, although there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by either.

The FSA has said that Thedeen earlier recused himself from the Swedbank investigation due to the conflict of interest, and that money laundering supervision, including the probe, were being handled by his deputy.

For some, such closeness is inevitable. “Sweden is quite a small country,” said Torbjorn Hallo, an economist at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. “Most people know each other.”

And some investors say it is time for change.

“We have had some concerns about the Nordic model … for some time. Often boards lack industry experience, and are instead pulled from a local pool,” the head of corporate governance at one London fund manager said, adding that the management often goes unchallenged as a result.

(Additional reporting by Teis Jensen in Copenhagen and Simon Jessop in London; Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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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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