“The Post wrongfully targeted and bullied Nicholas because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip to the January 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C. when he was unexpectedly and suddenly confronted by Nathan Phillips (‘Phillips’), a known Native American activist, who beat a drum and sang loudly within inches of his face (‘the January 18 incident’),” the lawsuitfiledby lawyers Todd V. McMurtry and Lin L. Wood in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky reads.
The total sum sought by Sandmann is the same amount Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper for in 2013, the suit notes.
In a tweet Saturday, Wood announced via Twitter that he would begin filing defamation lawsuits against several news outlets this week. “Nick Sandmann is 16 years old has 2+ years to identify accusers sue them,” hesaid. “No member of mainstream social media mob who attacked him should take comfort from not being sued in initial round of lawsuits which will commence next week. Time is Nick’s friend, not his enemy.”
The development comes after investigators hired by a Kentucky diocese have found that Catholic school boys did not instigate a January 18th confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial that went viral on social media. Covington Bishop Roger Foys initially condemned the students’ behavior after a video showed a teenage boy face-to-face with a Native American man. Days later, Foys apologized for “making a statement prematurely.”
The students were in Washington for an anti-abortion rally last month when they encountered a group of black street preachers who were shouting insults at both them and a group of Native Americans. The bishop now says the students “were placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening.”
“The immediate world-wide reaction to the initial video led almost everyone to believe that our students had initiated the incident and the perception of those few minutes of video became reality,” Foys wrote this week in a letter to parents. Both the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, and the Covington student facing Phillips have said they were attempting to defuse the situation.
The four-page report on the investigation said a group of investigators from a firm called Greater Cincinnati Investigation interviewed 43 students and more than a dozen chaperones who were on the trip to Washington. Investigators reviewed social media videos, tried to contact Phillips and traveled to Michigan to attempt to speak to him, but he was not interviewed.
The videos show Phillips surrounded by students. Many interviewed students told investigators that they felt Phillips was coming into their group to join their own cheers, which were meant to drown out insults from the street preachers, who referred to themselves as the Black Hebrew Israelites. Many students reported that they were confused but did not feel threatened by Phillips, the report said.
In an interview with NBC’sToday, Sandmann said that while he had a right to stand in the memorial, he wished the incident could have been avoided. “As far as standing there, I had every right to do so,” Sandmanntoldinterviewer Savannah Guthrie. “My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I’d like to talk to him. I mean, in hindsight, I wish we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing. But I can’t say that I’m sorry for listening to him and standing there.”
“In hindsight, I wish we had just found another spot to wait for our buses, but at the time being positive seemed better than letting them slander us with all of these things,” the high school studentadded. “So, I wish we could have walked away.”
Sandmann then went on to explain that he did not simply walk away from Phillips because he did not want to appear disrespectful to him. “Well, now I wish I would have walked away. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to Mr. Phillips and walk away if he was trying to talk to me, but certainly I was surrounded by a lot of people I didn’t know that had their phones out, had cameras and I didn’t want to bump into anyone or seem like I was trying to do something,” hesaid.
FILE PHOTO - A pedestrian walks past the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after Special Counsel Robert Mueller handed in his report to Attorney General William Barr on his investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election and any potential wrongdoing by U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
April 4, 2019
By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s decision to abandon plans to relocate the bureau’s crumbling and outdated headquarters to Virginia or Maryland, saying he prefers to build a new state-of-the-art facility at its current location in downtown Washington, D.C.
“It is the FBI’s view that the best balance of equities for the men and women of the FBI is to be here downtown, ideally in our current location,” Wray said in testimony during a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations hearing.
“Building a new building in that location gives us both the ability to have a level five security facility to significantly grow the number of people we can have there but also … make sure our folks are within close proximity to the hundreds and hundreds of meetings that they have with their partners every day all within about a mile and a half of our current location.”
Democrats in the U.S. House have been probing the abrupt move by the FBI in 2017 to abandon long-standing plans to relocate its headquarters outside of the capital.
At the heart of their concerns is whether President Donald Trump may have improperly intervened in the FBI’s decision-making out of self-interest, in order to protect the nearby Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue from any potential competition by developers who may want to erect a new hotel at the FBI’s current location.
Prior to taking office in January 2017, Trump supported the FBI’s relocation plans, according to Democrats involved in the probe.
Last fall, Congressional Democrats released an email which revealed that a White House-backed proposal for a new FBI building at the agency’s existing headquarters would result in a “less secure facility” and have a “higher per seat cost” than an earlier plan to move the FBI to the suburbs.
The decision to abandon the FBI’s relocation plans preceded Wray, who became director last August.
“When I came into this job, the previous project had already been canceled,” he testified. “I wasn’t involved in that part of it. I came into it with a blank slate.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Lynn Starkey, the co-director of guidance at Roncalli High School, was told she will lose her job because of her same-sex marriage, her lawyer said. (DeLaney & DeLaney LLC)
A guidance counselor at an Indianahigh school will lose her job because she is in a same-sex marriage, making her the second employee to do so under those circumstances, her lawyer said.
Lynn Starkey, the co-director of guidance at Roncalli High School, was told earlier this month that her contract will not be renewed for the 2019-2020 school year, her lawyer, Kathleen DeLaney, said in a statement. Starkey was the co-director with Shelly Fitzgerald, who made headlines in August when high school officials put her on paid administrative leave because she is married to a woman.
"Starkey’s 39 years of exemplary employment, including teacher of the year recognition in 2009, will end because she is in a same-sex marriage and because she filed discrimination complaints," DeLaney said in a news release provided to Fox News on Wednesday.
Starkey had filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November against the high school and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. DeLaney said she filed to amend the charges to include Starkey’s termination.
"These filings address her termination and reiterate her allegations of discrimination and hostile work environment based on sex, sexual orientation, and retaliation all in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," DeLaney said.
Starkey has been in a civil union with her spouse since 2015, but has been working at Roncalli for 39 years. She has been a guidance counselor at the private Roman Catholic high school for 21 years.
On Aug. 14, 2018, two days after Fitzgerald was placed on administrative leave, Roncalli High School principal Chuck Weisenbach approached Starkey and asked if she was in a civil union, DeLaney said.
"Ms. Starkey answered truthfully that she does. Ms. Starkey has continued to work in the school as Co-Director of Guidance for the 2018-19 school year, even after confirming her marital status to her Principal," she said.
The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said in a statement to FOX59 that employees are on one-year contracts and do not automatically renew.
“The School Guidance Counselor has no right to, or the promise of a contract exceeding the school year,” the statement read. “Ms. Starkey is currently in breach of her contract with Roncalli High School, because she is in a civil union that is considered ‘contrary to a valid marriage as seen through the eyes of the Catholic Church,’” the statement read.
“The 2019-2020 contract language will contain the same language. Therefore, Ms. Starkey could not in good faith enter into the contract so long as she is unable to abide by the terms of the contract,” the statement continued.
When asked for a comment, Weisenbach told Fox News to contact the archdiocese for a statement.
Delaney told Fox News she and her client will wait until May before filing their case in court.
Fitzgerald previously told the New York Times that she was "stunned" when school officials told her she was at risk of losing her job because of her marriage.
“They showed me they had a copy of my marriage certificate, and let me know how it was going to play out," Fitzgerald told the newspaper. "I did not announce it [my relationship]. I never came out one time to a single student and parent.”
In the desert between Iraq and Syria, mostly Kurdish forces have seized the last remaining pocket of the Islamic State's once sprawling dominion. But while the terrorists may have capitulated for now, many have gone underground to plan the next deadly phase.
More than 20 schools have been temporarily placed on lockdown in Colorado as US authorities investigate a “credible threat” just ahead of the 20th anniversary of the notorious Columbine High School shooting.
An “armed and extremely dangerous” woman, identified as Sol Pais, had been making “credible” threats and traveled to Colorado on Monday night, the FBI and local authorities have warned. Authorities requested the lockout in Jefferson County on Tuesday afternoon as they searched for the suspect, whose description was released on Twitter with a warning not to approach her.
“Last night Sol Pais traveled here to Colorado and she made threats to commit an act of violence in this area, she is armed and considered dangerous,” Mike Taplin of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office told local media.
Classes continued as normal at most of the affected schools, except for Columbine, which canceled after-school activities. No one was allowed to enter or exit the premises until the end of the school day.
According to a BOLO (Be on the Lookout) notice sent out by Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force, 18-year-old Pais is “infatuated with Columbine school shooting” and was “attempting to buy firearms.” She was most recently seen in the “foothills” of Jefferson County.
Local authorities are on edge as Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the deadly Columbine massacre, in which two students gunned down 12 students and a teacher.
Big Tech is immune to F.O.I.A. requests in certain cases of wrongdoing, so the best thing for society is to have employees of Big Tech become whistleblowers.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of U.S. conglomerate General Electric is pictured at the company's site of its energy branch in Belfort, France, February 5, 2019. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler/File Photo
April 12, 2019
(Reuters) – General Electric Co will pay a $1.5 billion civil penalty to resolve claims related to subprime residential mortgage loans offered by its WMC Mortgage unit, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday.
The settlement resolves claims that GE and WMC misrepresented the quality of the loans, as well as WMC’s internal quality and fraud controls, in connection with the marketing and sale of residential mortgage-backed securities.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul)
FILE PHOTO: An usher holds a baton to guide attendees towards the AGM of advertising agency WPP in London, Britain, June 13, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo
April 26, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – The world’s biggest advertising company WPP reported an 8.5 percent slump in first-quarter underlying sales in North America, its biggest market, due to client losses that held the overall group back.
WPP, being led by company veteran Mark Read following last year’s departure of founder Martin Sorrell, said group organic revenue less pass-through costs was down 2.8 percent, compared with a full-year forecast of a fall of between 1.5 to 2 percent.
The British company reaffirmed its full-year outlook, including the forecast that the first half of the year would be more difficult.
(Reporting by Kate Holton, Editing by Paul Sandle)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – 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.
LONDON – 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.”
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)
JOHANNESBURG – 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.
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)
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