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Charges Dropped Against Jussie Smollett

Prosecutors announced Tuesday they are dropping all charges against Empire actor Jussie Smollett, after he was accused of filing a fake police report and staging a hate crime against himself.

Following an emergency hearing, prosecutors said they are dropping all 16 charges against him. In all, he faced up to 48 years in prison.

Smollett, who is openly gay and black, claimed he was attacked on January 29 around 2 AM by two unknown assailants who beat him, shouted homophobic slurs at him, threw bleach at him, and placed a noose around his neck.

Two men suspected of the attack claimed to have been hired by Smollett to attack him and had purchased a noose, a red hat, and masks at his behest at a hardware store in uptown Chicago.

A judge overseeing the case granted a motion to seal details of the case.

An attorney for Smollett said he was vindicated after being tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion.

“Today, all criminal charges against Jussie Smollett were dropped and his record has been wiped clean of the filing of this tragic complaint against him. Jussie was attacked by two people he was unable to identify on January 29th. He was a victim who was vilified and made to appear as a perpetrator as a result of false and inappropriate remarks made to the public causing an inappropriate rush to judgment.”

“Jussie and many others were hurt by these unfair and unwarranted actions. This entire situation is a reminder that there should never be an attempt to prove a case in the court of public opinion. That is wrong. It is a reminder that a victim, in this case Jussie, deserves dignity and respect. Dismissal of charges against the victim in this case was the only just result.”

“Jussie is relieved to have this situation behind him and is very much looking forward to getting back to focusing on his family, friends and career.”

Smollett all the while maintained his innocence and stuck to his story.

State Attorney Kim Foxx’s office wrote they dropped Smollett’s charges after a review of the facts and his completion of “volunteer service in the community”:

“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case.”

Chicago Police were reportedly blindsided by the news.


Source: InfoWars

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NRCC Ad Campaign Targets Dems on Impeachment

The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting vulnerable House Democrats on the issue of impeaching President Donald Trump, Roll Call is reporting.

The NRCC is launching a digital ad campaign on Friday designed to pin down where certain Democrats stand on impeachment. According to Roll Call, the ads are the latest sign the GOP will attempt to tie vulnerable Democratic lawmakers to their more liberal colleagues.

One ad viewed by Roll Call showed Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and her prediction that Democrats will impeach Trump. The ad compared it with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., saying he is “not worth it.” The ad then notes: “Democrats are split on baseless impeachment talks.”

The 12-second ads, which will run on Facebook in 55 districts, urge viewers to call a particular Democratic lawmaker to see where he or she stands on the issue.

“The socialist Democrats in Congress need to definitively state if they will stand up to the baseless attempts to impeach our president or if they will once again roll over for the extremists running their caucus,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the NRCC chairman.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Officer who used gun instead of stun gun won’t face charges

A Pennsylvania police officer who mistakenly pulled his weapon rather than his stun gun won't face charges for shooting a man in police custody.

Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub says last month's shooting was an accident.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the officer, who retired Wednesday and whose name was not released, shot 38-year-old Brian Riling during a scuffle inside a holding cell at the New Hope Police Department on March 3.

Weintraub says as the officer struggled with Riling, he yelled "Taser!" as a warning, but mistakenly drew his gun and shot him in the stomach. Riling was in critical condition but has been released from the hospital.

Riling was in police custody after an arrest earlier that day on intimidation charges.

His attorney Richard Fink says he has no comment.

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Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.com

Source: Fox News National

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UN chief meets with Egypt’s top cleric, decries hate speech

The U.N. chief has expressed solidarity with Muslims world over during a visit to Cairo, denouncing hate speech and racism, as well as anti-Semitism.

The remarks by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday in the Egyptian capital came less than a month after the terrorist attack on New Zealand mosques killed 50 worshippers.

Guterres says "hate speech is entering the mainstream, spreading like wildfire through social media and radio."

He says that "in this time of difficulties and division, we must stand together and protect each other. Nothing justifies terrorism, and it becomes particularly hideous when religion is invoked. ... we must uphold and promote human dignity and universal human rights."

Guterres' comments came after his meeting with Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam in Cairo.

Source: Fox News World

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U.N. nuclear watchdog could be in North Korea within weeks of a deal

The flag of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) flutters in front of their headquarters in Vienna
The flag of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) flutters in front of their headquarters in Vienna, Austria March 4, 2019. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

April 2, 2019

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations atomic watchdog said on Tuesday that if a deal was reached with North Korea to give up its nuclear program then it would be ready to send in inspectors within weeks – if asked – to verify and monitor denuclearization.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano told the U.N. Security Council that the IAEA was the only international organization equipped to carry out the job “in an impartial, independent and objective manner.”

“Subject to the approval of our Board of Governors, we could respond within weeks to any request to send inspectors back to the DPRK,” he told the 15-member council during a meeting on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The official name of North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have met twice in the past year to discuss denuclearization. North Korea is under tough U.N. Security Council sanctions that have been steadily tightened since 2006 to choke off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Trump and Kim last met in Vietnam in February, but the summit was cut short after they failed to reach a deal on the extent of economic sanctions relief for North Korea in exchange for steps to give up its nuclear program.

On the day that their talks in Hanoi collapsed, Trump handed Kim a piece of paper that included a blunt call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States, according to the document seen by Reuters. [nL1N21G01V]

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has not had access to North Korea since Pyongyang expelled its inspectors in 2009, and it now monitors the country’s nuclear activities mainly through satellite imagery.

Amano said that sending in IAEA inspectors “would help to make the implementation of any agreement sustainable.”

“It would also contribute to the denuclearization of the DPRK in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, as required by numerous resolutions of the Security Council,” he said.

The IAEA already monitors the implementation of a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers to curb its nuclear program. Trump withdrew the United States from the deal with Iran in May 2018.

“Our inspectors have had access to all the sites and locations in Iran which they needed to visit,” Amano said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Source: OANN

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Populists and Traditionalists Are Battling in Both Parties

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WASHINGTON -- Dick Cheney, the former vice president, made just about the nastiest crack a Republican could offer about President Trump's foreign policy when he said it "looks a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan."

Obviously, the comparison is flawed. But say this much for Cheney: He's the rare Republican who isn't intimidated by Trump these days. Cheney made a string of similarly blistering comments at a supposedly off-the-record conversation with Vice President Pence at a gathering in Sea Island, Georgia, last weekend hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

Cheney's remarks tell us that we are experiencing what may be a political realignment in America, in which some of our political labels don't work very well. There's a populist wing in both parties, with Trump and some progressive Democrats expressing broadly similar concerns about America's overextension in the world and the unfairness of the existing global order to working people.

There's a traditionalist wing in both parties, too, which supports the old Cheney-esque American-led world order and its network of alliances and trade agreements. This traditionalist approach was embodied in the shared invitation this week by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to NATO's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, to address a joint session of Congress.

There's a world of difference, to be sure, between Trump's bullying, rich-guy version of populism and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' empathetic, progressive version. Similarly, Pelosi's version of internationalism is less defense-oriented and hawkish than McConnell's. But politics is confusing these days partly because the usual left-right spectrum doesn't always apply. Is free trade liberal or conservative? How about internationalism? What about privacy protection?

American politics has always been more personality-driven than ideological, and when we think of eras, they're usually defined by presidents. George Washington personified the Federalist Era; Andrew Jackson defined a freewheeling Democratic Party assault on the elites; Abraham Lincoln created the modern Republican Party in the Civil War; and Theodore Roosevelt recast it in the Progressive Era; Franklin Roosevelt created a new Democratic coalition; and Reagan framed a new Republican one.

Is Trump such a transitional figure? I doubt it. He seems more an emblem of our current political disorder than the architect of a new political alignment. But he's a harbinger of change in our party system.

Trump already has led one of the most successful insurgencies in American politics. He destroyed the existing Republican establishment, savaging the GOP's field of presidential candidates in 2016. His defiant, carnival-barker politics of resentment was on display this month at the CPAC convention. It was a bizarre, idiosyncratic performance, but it clearly enthralled his audience. Trump owns what's left of the party he wrecked.

Democrats these days can seem just as frightened as Republicans by a party base that's in ferment. An example is former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, an ex-entrepreneur who created a bipartisan base in his home state. Hickenlooper is the embodiment of a moderate Democrat. But he verged on incoherence last week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" when host Joe Scarborough asked him if he was a "socialist" or "capitalist." Watching him, it seemed possible that Democrats are as jittery about offending Sanders supporters as Republicans are of crossing Trump.

Maybe Sanders has the passion and progressive appeal to make "democratic socialism" a winning strategy for 2020. He's undeniably appealing to the Democratic base; polls show him gaining steadily over the past two months, while most of the rest of the field has been treading water.

But I'll be very surprised if Sanders can make it to the White House. The Democrat who can beat Trump is more likely to be a large but also reassuring personality, acceptable to blue-collar Democrats and also exciting to younger voters -- a more youthful version of Joe Biden, perhaps. People who occupy that space (at least on my mental map) include Sen. Michael Bennett; Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Seth Moulton and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke.

Political systems can be like scientific theories. Sometimes there emerge so many anomalous elements that don't fit the existing structure that the theory collapses, and a new one arises. In science, that means, for example, that the theory that the sun revolves around the earth loses its explanatory power, and evidence proves the opposite is the case. In politics, new parties emerge, or the existing ones develop new identities.

We may be entering such a period. The definition of a winning Democrat may be that, in response to Trump's rambling circus of self-aggrandizement, he or she could create a genuinely coherent new political order.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

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Chronology of key events in the killing of Kim Jong Nam

Two Southeast Asian women were the only suspects charged with murder after an outcast from North Korea's ruling family was poisoned with VX nerve agent at a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, airport two years ago. The trial ended abruptly Monday after a Vietnamese woman, Doan Thi Huong, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and is expected to be freed next month. It comes just three weeks after prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Siti Aisyah of Indonesia.

A chronology of key events in the case:

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Feb. 13, 2017: A North Korean man, waiting to board a flight to Macau at a low-cost airport terminal in Malaysia, complained to airport officials that someone grabbed him from behind him and smeared his face with some liquid. He was sent to the airport clinic and pronounced dead on the way to a hospital.

Feb. 14, 2017: International media broke the news that Kim Jong Nam was murdered in Malaysia. Police later said the victim was a North Korean man known as Kim Chol based on his passport.

Feb. 15, 2017: Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam was detained at the same airport terminal where Kim was killed.

Feb. 16, 2017: Indonesia's Siti Aisyah was detained. Malaysia's then-Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi confirmed that Kim Chol was Kim Jong Nam.

Feb. 18, 2017: Police arrested North Korean Ri Jong-chol, 47, who is believed to be a chemical expert.

Feb. 19, 2017: Police announced they were looking for seven North Korean suspects in connection with the murder. Police later said four of them were believed to have left the country and later sought Interpol's help to detain them.

Feb. 24, 2017: Officials said Kim was killed by the toxic VX nerve agent, listed by the U.N. as a weapon of mass destruction.

Feb. 26, 2017: Officials said they found no hazardous material nor any trace of VX after a sweep of the airport terminal where Kim was killed, and declared it safe.

Feb. 27, 2017: South Korean lawmakers said the country's National Intelligence Service had told them that four of the North Koreans identified as suspects by Malaysian authorities were spies from North Korea's Ministry of State Security. The lawmakers also said they were told that two other suspects were affiliated with North Korea's Foreign Ministry and that leader Kim Jong Un directed a "state-organized terror" to kill his half brother. The lawmakers didn't say how South Korea's spy agency got the information.

March 1, 2017: Aisyah and Huong were charged in a Magistrate's Court with Kim Jong Nam's murder and faced the death sentence if convicted.

March 2, 2017: Ri Tong Il, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations who was leading a high-level delegation to Malaysia to seek Kim's body, said a heart attack likely killed the victim, not VX nerve agent as the autopsy showed.

March 3, 2017: North Korean Ri Jong-chol was released due to a lack of evidence and deported.

March 4, 2017: The Malaysian government expelled North Korean Ambassador Kang Chol, days after scrapping a visa-free entry for North Koreans. Kang Chol, who had denounced Malaysia's investigations into Kim's death and accused Kuala Lumpur of colluding with outside forces to defame Pyongyang, was given 48 hours to leave the country.

March 7, 2017: North Korea banned Malaysian citizens in its country from leaving as tension escalated over Kim's killing. Malaysia responded with a similar ban.

March 30, 2017: Nine Malaysians held in Pyongyang returned home after the two countries struck a deal to end a diplomatic row. Malaysia released Kim's body to Pyongyang and also allowed North Koreans to leave, including a North Korean Embassy official and an Air Koryo employee wanted by police for questioning over Kim's death.

Oct. 2, 2017: The joint trial of Aisyah and Huong began in the High Court. They pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers said they were pawns in a political assassination orchestrated by four North Korean suspects who fled Malaysia on the day of Kim's killing. The four men were accused in the charge sheet of conspiring with the women to kill Kim.

Aug. 18, 2018: A High Court judge ordered the two women to enter their defense after ruling there was enough evidence to infer that they had engaged in a "well-planned conspiracy" with the four missing North Korean suspects to kill Kim.

Nov. 7, 2018: The judge set Jan. 7 for the trial to resume after Aisyah's lawyers complained that some witnesses were unreachable.

Jan. 7, 2019: The trial was postponed to March. Aisyah's lawyers sought time to appeal to higher courts to obtain statements given by witnesses to police that they said are crucial for her case.

March 11, 2019: Prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the murder against Aisyah, without giving any reason. Aisyah was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal by the court. She was flown back to Jakarta in a private jet on the same day. Indonesian officials said her release was due to Jakarta's continual high-level lobbying. A distraught Huong, who was supposed to start her defense, said she was in a shock. Her lawyers sought a postponement of the trial and asked prosecutors to also withdraw the murder charge against Huong.

March 12, 2019: Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh phoned his Malaysian counterpart, Saifuddin Abdullah, requesting the court to be fair and also free Huong. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Aisyah's release was based on the rule of law, amid allegations the government had interfered in the trial.

March 13, 2019: Law Minister Liew Vui Keong said Malaysia's attorney general has sole discretion in withdrawing the charge against Aisyah and that the government cannot interfere with the attorney general's power.

March 14, 2019: Prosecutors told the court that the attorney general ordered the murder case to proceed against Huong. They didn't explain why the attorney general refused to acquit her. Huong's lawyers accused the attorney general of being unfair and discriminating against her. The judge postponed hearing to April 1 after Huong told the judge she was unwell and stressed.

April 1, 2019: Prosecutors said the attorney general offered a reduced charge of "voluntarily causing injury with a dangerous weapon" to Huong following renewed pleas from the Vietnamese government and her lawyers. Huong pleaded guilty and the judge sentenced her to three years and four months in jail. Her lawyers said she will be freed early next month after a one-third remission for good behavior. Huong said she was "very happy" and that the sentence was fair.

Source: Fox News World

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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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