Wealthy residents in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the legal costs of fighting a proposed homeless shelter, The Washington Free Beacon is reporting.
Residents of the wealthy waterfront neighborhoods near the proposed 200-bed Homeless Navigation Center already have raised $60,952 of their $100,000 goal.
Dubbing themselves, “Safe Embarcadero for All,” the group noted on its GoFundMe page: “South Beach, Rincon Hill, Bayside Village, East Cut & Mission Bay residents, businesses and other interested parties are organizing to oppose the Navigation Center proposed for Seawall Lot 330. “Given the multiple interested parties, potential legal costs and restrictions on the boards of our HOAs from taking independent action, our new group, Safe Embarcadero for All, invites you to join us.”
The Free Beacon noted the proposed location of the homeless shelter and the nearby neighborhoods are in Pelosi’s 12th Congressional District. It pointed to a Business Insider report that listed San Francisco’s average household income as $141,000.
One of the donors to the site appears to be Jerome Dodson, chairman of Parnassus Investments, according to the Free Beacon. His firm’s offices are less than a mile from the proposed shelter site. The website said Dodson has contributed in the past to Democratic candidates.
FILE PHOTO: Election staff check Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines and Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) ahead of India's general election at a warehouse in Ahmedabad, India, March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
March 26, 2019
By Sanjeev Miglani
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Most Indians are happy with the direction of the country and economic prospects for the next generation, a Pew survey published weeks ahead of general elections showed, although the level of satisfaction has fallen over time.
Lack of employment opportunities is India’s biggest problem, said more than three-quarters of those polled, and that had not changed through most of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure, the survey found.
The survey published on Monday said concerns about terrorism and Pakistan loomed large even before last month’s crisis triggered by an attack on a security convoy in Indian Kashmir that Pakistan claims as its own.
Three-quarters of Indians believe Pakistan to be a threat and 59 percent said terrorism had become worse.
“But despite these worries, most Indian adults are satisfied with the direction of their country and the economic prospects of the next generation,” Pew said, summing up the survey result.
Of those polled, 54 percent said they were satisfied with the way democracy is working in India. But satisfaction had declined 25 percentage points from 2017, when 79 percent voiced approval.
Men are more likely than women to give Indian democracy a thumbs-up, though one in five women decline to offer an opinion, it said.
There were 2,521 respondents in the Pew Survey run from May 23 to July 23, 2018, the final year of Modi’s term before the election, at which about 900 million people are eligible to vote.
Modi is considered the frontrunner to win the election that begins on April 11, but his lead is narrowing and several polls have suggested his Hindu nationalist-led group may fall short of a clear majority required to rule.
Renewed tension with arch foe Pakistan has shifted attention somewhat from bread-and-butter issues to national security over the past month, to the advantage of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Critics have accused the BJP of creating a climate of fear among India’s Muslim minority by promoting a Hindu-first agenda and targeting it for the slaughter of cows they consider sacred and have sometimes questioned its allegiance to India.
The BJP denies bias but says it opposes appeasement of any community.
Muslims make up about 14 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion.
(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke got an unusual invite while on the campaign trail in Iowa on Thursday: A high school student asked him to be her date for the prom.
During a campaign rally in Sioux City, 17-year-old Claire Campbell asked O’Rourke: “It’s OK if you say no, but will you go to prom with me?”
O’Rourke said he was “really touched,” given that he did not attend his own prom when he was in high school.
“This means more to me than you know,” he told her, before making a request of his own.
“[S]omebody told me about your sign, so we came up with a counter-proposal,” O’Rourke said, before lifting up a sign that said, “Will you caucus for me?” -- referring to the Iowa caucuses that will be held in early 2020 to determine the state's picks for president.
Campbell later told the Des Moines Register that she was disappointed with O’Rourke’s answer “because, like, I need a prom date. But his counter offer was pretty good.”
However, Campbell couldn't accept O'Rourke's invitation because she is from South Dakota, which bars her from participating in the Iowa caucuses.
The light-hearted exchange was a sharp contrast to O’Rourke’s earlier response to a reporter in which he compared President Trump’s rhetoric to Nazi Germany.
I can’t think of a time when Americans were more apathetic about getting prepared, and yet this is exactly the time when the urgency to get prepared should be at the highest.
Earlier today, my wife Meranda and I were discussing the fact that every single element of “the perfect storm” is coming together just as we had anticipated. One by one, the pieces are all falling into place, and I share the most recent things that my research has uncovered with all of you on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most Americans are absolutely convinced that there is no reason to get prepared for hard times because everything is going to be just great. In America today, most people either believe that the future is going to be totally wonderful or that the future will be totally wonderful once we get rid of Trump. Because so many of us have adopted one of these false narratives, most Americans are partying instead of preparing, and that is going to mean big trouble when things really start going haywire.
Are you familiar with “the rule of three”? I just looked it up on Google, and this is how it is defined…
“You can survive for 3 Minutes without air (oxygen) or in icy water. You can survive for 3 Hours without shelter in a harsh environment (unless in icy water) You can survive for 3 Days without water (if sheltered from a harsh environment) You can survive for 3 Weeks without food (if you have water and shelter)”
Of course these numbers are not exact. For example, many have gone without food for more than 3 weeks without serious problems. But in general, this is a pretty good guideline for survival.
Sadly, if a major emergency were to hit this country tonight, most Americans would be completely unprepared when it comes to even the most basic essentials. In fact, one survey found that only 39 percent of Americans have any sort of an “emergency kit” whatsoever…
When it comes to being prepared for an emergency, 39% say they have an emergency kit, while another 39% have a non-perishable food stock. A little less than one-third (28%) of people have stockpiles of water, and one in four people (25%) have an evacuation plan.
Of those who have an emergency kit, the most common items to have in the kit are: a first-aid kit (86%), flashlights or other light sources (83%), food (65%), water (63%), and blankets (62%).
So what are all of those people going to do when things hit the fan and the government is not there to rescue them?
Needless to say, a lot of people will really freak out when they can’t get what they need.
But as long as things are relatively “normal”, this astounding lack of preparation will not be a problem. And right now, Americans are acting as if things will be “normal” for the foreseeable future. In fact, most of us are partying like it’s 1999 all over again. According to CNBC, U.S. consumer debt just surpassed the four trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…
Relatively strong holiday spending, particularly in November, and increasing credit card debt added more than $41 billion in outstanding balances at the end of 2018, according to LendingTree, a loan comparison website, which analyzed the data from the Fed.
We are spending money as if there is no tomorrow, and that would be fine if tomorrow never arrived.
Of course we really shouldn’t be spending money so wildly anyway, because many of us are already completely drowning in debt. For example, auto loan delinquencies are already far higher than they were during the peak of the last recession. The following comes from NBC News…
At least 7 million Americans were in serious delinquency on their car loan — 90 or more days behind — at the end of 2018, according to data released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That’s 1 million more than at the end of 2010, after the recession.
And student loan delinquencies also just shot up to the highest level ever. We have never seen anything like this before in modern American history, and yet the party continues to roll on.
For now.
Unfortunately, all parties eventually come to an end, and the end of this one is going to be particularly painful.
When disaster strikes, most Americans are going to be out of resources very, very rapidly. One survey found that 78 percent of all American workers are living paycheck to paycheck. That number is a little higher than other figures that I have seen, but everyone agrees that a solid majority of the country is barely scraping by each month.
When things get really bad, I honestly don’t know how most people are going to make it.
A number of years ago, a survey asked Americans how long they thought they would survive if the electrical grid went down for an extended period of time.
Nearly 75 percent said that they would be dead before the two month mark.
Hopefully you are more resourceful than that. But without a doubt all of us are going to stand a better chance of surviving what is ahead if we make some basic preparations. It’s isn’t rocket science, but if you choose to do nothing because you have blind faith in the system, then you and your entire family could find yourselves in a world of hurt when things start getting really crazy out there.
If we had made different choices as a nation, we could have had a very different future.
Sadly, our self-destructive behavior continues to get even worse, and a day of reckoning for America is fast approaching.
FILE PHOTO: White House adviser Stephen Miller walks across the tarmac to board Air Force One as he departs Washington with U.S. President Donald Trump for travel to Grand Rapids, Michigan from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
April 25, 2019
By Mark Hosenball and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chairmen of three U.S. House committees sought documents on Thursday related to recent Trump administration firings of top Department of Homeland Security officials, escalating tensions between congressional Democrats and the White House over immigration policy.
U.S. Representatives Elijah Cummings, Bennie Thompson and Jerrold Nadler, Democrats who head the House of Representatives Oversight, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, said in a statement they were “concerned that the president may have removed DHS officials because they refused his demands to violate federal immigration law and judicial orders.”
The chairmen said they were particularly interested in documents relating to recent moves by President Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, a former congressional aide who has become a top presidential adviser on immigration, to purge DHS of “senior leaders” who “reportedly refused orders to violate the law.”
The committee leaders’ move followed a White House declaration that it was refusing a request from the Oversight Committee for Miller to testify before the panel.
In a letter to the committee on Wednesday, the White House said Miller would not testify about administration immigration initiatives, including Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents and his threat to send immigrants in the country illegally to so-called sanctuary cities.
“In accordance with longstanding precedent, we respectfully decline the invitation to make Mr. Miller available for testimony before the committee,” the White House counsel said in the letter, which was provided to Reuters on Thursday.
The Republican president is pushing back against legal requests from Democratic-led House committees, which are conducting wide-ranging investigations of Trump and his administration, including his tax returns, White House security clearances and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
DHS DEPARTURES
In their Thursday letter, the Democratic committee chairmen noted that DHS recently announced the departures of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the department’s undersecretary for management, the director of the U.S. Secret Service and the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Cummings, whose committee has launched multiple investigations into Trump administration and White House policies, accused Trump on Wednesday of an “unprecedented, and growing pattern of obstruction” after he ordered federal employees not to comply with congressional investigations.
Cummings on April 17 invited Miller to testify voluntarily about why the administration decided to separate immigrant children from their parents at the border.
Cummings also called for an explanation of “transferring asylum seekers to sanctuary cities as a form of illegal retribution against your political adversaries, and firing top administration officials who refuse orders to violate the law.”
Trump has said he is considering sending immigrants in the country illegally to jurisdictions that have adopted some form of “sanctuary city” policies in which they refuse to use their resources to help federal agents enforce deportations.
Miller, a former Senate aide, helped shape some of Trump’s most contentious immigration policies, from a ban on Muslim immigrants proposed shortly after Trump took office in 2017 to the child separation policy, both of which were rejected by courts.
The oversight panel could move to subpoena Miller, but the White House could invoke executive privilege to protect his discussions with Trump.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Roberta Rampton and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Peter Cooney)
US president Donald Trump has called on Venezuelan military to accept opposition leader Guaido’s offer of amnesty.
US president Donald Trump also claimed that Washington seeks a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela, noting however that all options remain open.
The US president also claimed that the Venezuelan military officers who are supporting Maduro are risking their future and lives.
The US has officially recognized Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Some have hinted at military action, but will that be necessary?
“There are members of the Venezuelan military still barely supporting this failed dictatorship. They are risking their future, they are risking their lives,” Trump said on Monday in his remarks to the Venezuelan American Community.
“If you choose this path [support Maduro], you will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything,” the US president added.
Venezuela has been in a state of political crisis for some time now, which deteriorated on January 23, when the opposition leader Guaido declared himself interim president, disputing President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election last year.
While the United States has openly backed Guaido, the European Union did not issue a joint statement following suit because the motion was vetoed by Italy, according to a diplomatic source.
Despite this, however, many European countries have individually voiced their support for the Venezuelan opposition leader.
Russia, China, Mexico, among other nations, voiced support for Maduro, who, in turn, accused Washington of orchestrating an attempted coup with Guaido’s help.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes joins Owen Shroyer in studio to discuss solutions for President Trump.
CAIRO – An Egyptian official says his Red Sea province will impose a ban on disposable plastics, prohibiting everything from single use straws to plastic bags in an effort to fight pollution.
Ahmed Abdallah, governor of Hurghada province, said late on Monday the ban will go into effect from June.
He says it was proposed by the Hurghada Environmental Protection & Conservation Association to protect province's "threatened and endangered species."
The ban will apply to restaurants, supermarkets, grocery stores and pharmacies. Plastic forks and knives, cups and dishes will be among banned items.
The Red Sea resort of Hurghada, the province's capital, is a major tourist destination.
In 2017, Egypt launched an EU-funded initiative to encourage people to limit their use of plastic bags. The country produces 970,000 tons of plastic waste.
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)
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)
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s military, which ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of protests against his 30-year rule, says it intends to keep the upper hand during the country’s transitional period to civilian rule.
The announcement is expected to raise tensions with the protesters, who demand immediate handover of power.
The Sudanese Professionals Association, which is spearheading the protests, said Friday the crowds will stay in the streets until all their demands are met.
Shams al-Deen al-Kabashi, the spokesman for the military council, said late Thursday that the military will “maintain sovereign powers” while the Cabinet would be in the hands of civilians.
The protesters insist the country should be led by a “civilian sovereign” council with “limited military representation” during the transitional period.
The army toppled and arrested al-Bashir on April 11.
FILE PHOTO: Small toy figures are seen in front of a displayed Huawei and 5G network logo in this illustration picture, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
April 26, 2019
By Charlotte Greenfield
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies said Britain’s decision to allow the firm a restricted role in building parts of its next-generation telecoms network was the kind of solution it was hoping for in New Zealand, where it has been blocked from 5G plans.
Britain will ban Huawei from all core parts of 5G network but give it some access to non-core parts, sources have told Reuters, as it seeks a middle way in a bitter U.S.-China dispute stemming from American allegations that Huawei’s equipment could be used by Beijing for espionage.
Washington has also urged its allies to ban Huawei from building 5G networks, even as the Chinese company, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment, has repeatedly said the spying concerns are unfounded.
In New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network that includes the United States, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in November turned down an initial request from local telecommunication firm Spark to include Huawei equipment in its 5G network, but later gave the operator options to mitigate national security concerns.
“The proposed solution in the UK to restrict Huawei from bidding for the core is exactly the type of solution we have been looking at in New Zealand,” Andrew Bowater, deputy CEO of Huawei’s New Zealand arm, said in an emailed statement.
Spark said it has noted the developments in Britain and would raise it with the GCSB.
The reports “suggest the UK is following other European jurisdictions in taking a considered and balanced approach to managing supplier-related security risks in 5G”, Andrew Pirie, Spark’s corporate relations lead, said in an email.
“Our discussions with the GCSB are ongoing and we expect that the UK developments will be a further item of discussion between us,” Pirie added.
New Zealand’s minister for intelligence services, Andrew Little, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday that he would report to parliament the conclusions of a government review of the 5G supply chain once they had been taken.
He added that the disclosure of confidential discussions on the role of Huawei was “unacceptable” and that he could not rule out a criminal investigation into the leak.
The decisions by Britain and Germany to use Huawei gear in non-core parts of 5G network makes it harder to prove Huawei should be kept out of New Zealand telecommunication networks, said Syed Faraz Hasan, an expert in communication engineering and networks at New Zealand’s Massey University
He pointed out Huawei gear was already part of the non-core 4G networks that 5G infrastructure would be built on.
“Unless there is a convincing argument against the Huawei devices … it is difficult to keep them away,” Hasan said.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company’s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Glencore shares plunged the most in nearly four months on Friday after news overnight that U.S. regulators were investigating whether the miner broke some rules through “corrupt practices”.
Shares of the FTSE 100 company fell as much as 4.2 percent in early deals, and were down 3.5 percent at 310.25 pence by 0728 GMT.
On Thursday, Glencore said the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether the company and its units have violated some provisions of the Commodity ExchangeAct and/or CFTC Regulations.
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