Upcoming shows
Real News

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Story Time

1:00 am 6:00 am



Maga First News

Upcoming Shows

Join The MAGA Network on Discord

0 0

Felicity Huffman, others to plead guilty in U.S. college admissions scandal: prosecutors

Actor Felicity Huffman leaves the federal courthouse after facing charges in a nationwide college admissions cheating scheme in Boston
Actor Felicity Huffman leaves the federal courthouse after facing charges in a nationwide college admissions cheating scheme in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Gretchen Ertl

April 8, 2019

BOSTON (Reuters) – Actress Felicity Huffman and 13 other people have agreed to plead guilty to participating in what prosecutors call the largest college admissions scam uncovered in U.S. history, federal prosecutors said on Monday.

The 14 are among 50 people accused by federal prosecutors in Boston of engaging in schemes that involved cheating on college entrance exams and paying $25 million in bribes to secure their children admission at well-known universities.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)

Source: OANN

0 0

Powerful storms continue to move across South

Deadly storms continue to move across the South after spawning suspected tornadoes and damaging several homes.

The National Weather Service says a twister was reported Saturday night in the Vicksburg, Mississippi, area. No injuries were reported, and news footage showed shattered windows and rooftop debris.

In East Texas, authorities say two children were killed when high winds toppled a tree onto the back of the family car while it was in motion. The Angelina County Sheriff's Office says an 8-year-old and 3-year-old died after the tree hit the back of the car in Lufkin, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Houston. The parents in the front seats were not hurt.

The weather service also says preliminary information showed an EF-3 tornado with winds of 140 mph touched down in Franklin, located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of Dallas.

Source: Fox News National

0 0

Trump lawyer calls on IRS to reject Dem demands for tax returns, says it would set ‘dangerous precedent’

A lawyer for President Trump said in a letter Friday that Democratic efforts to get the IRS to turn over the president’s tax returns are an attempt to harass a political opponent and that it would set a “dangerous precedent” for the agency to turn them over.

“For good reason, it would be a gross abuse of power for the majority to use tax returns as a weapon to attack, harass, and intimidate their political opponents. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, the ensuing tit-for-tat will do lasting damage to our nation,” William S. Consovoy said in a letter to the Treasury’s general counsel.

AOC REMINDS TRUMP IN TWEET ABOUT TAX RETURN REQUEST: 'WE DIDN'T ASK YOU'

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., formally asked the IRS on Wednesday to provide six years of Trump’s tax returns -- the latest of a yearslong effort by Democrats to get access to Trump’s financial documents.

Neal asked for Trump’s personal and business returns from 2013-18 and set April 10 as a deadline. Democrats say it is within their mandate of congressional oversight, but the unprecedented move has been opposed by Republicans and is likely to foreshadow a lengthy legal fight.

Trump has said repeatedly throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and his presidency that he can’t make public his tax returns as he is under audit.

In his letter, Consovoy said that Neal “cannot legally request” the information as the tax code guards taxpayer privacy with the exception of certain conditions -- which he says are not met.

“Even if Ways and Means had a legitimate committee purpose for requesting the President’s tax returns and return information, that purpose is not driving Chairman Neal’s request,” he wrote.

“His request is a transparent effort by one political party to harass an official from the other party because they dislike his politics and speech,” he added.

HOUSE DEMS RAMP UP EFFORTS TO GET TRUMP’S TAX RETURNS, WILL ‘TAKE ALL NECESSARY STEPS’

Consovoy also rejects Neal’s claim that the committee is seeking to assess how the IRS audits and enforces tax law against a president, asking why he did not request any other presidential tax returns.

“The answer, of course, is that Chairman Neal’s request is not about examining IRS policy. It is about scoring political points against President Trump,” he said.

“If the IRS acquiesces to Chairman Neal’s request, it would set a dangerous precedent,” he said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump was asked by reporters in California on Friday if he had any comment on the letter: "I'm under audit. When you're under audit you don't do it," he said.

Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said in testimony to Congress last month that he will “protect the president as we would protect any taxpayer" regarding their right to privacy.

Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

0 0

Ionescu scores 31, Oregon upends Mississippi State

NCAA Womens Basketball: NCAA Tournament-Portland Regional-Oregon vs Mississippi State
Mar 31, 2019; Portland, OR, USA; Oregon Ducks guard Sabrina Ionescu (20) scores a three point basket during the first half against Mississippi State Bulldogs guard Bre'Amber Scott (23) in the championship game of the Portland regional in the women's 2019 NCAA Tournament at Moda Center. Troy Wayrynen-USA TODAY Sports

March 31, 2019

Sabrina Ionescu scored a game-high 31 points and added eight assists and seven rebounds to lead second-seeded Oregon to its first Final Four appearance, beating top seed Mississippi State 88-84 in the Portland Region final on Sunday.

Oregon (33-4) will play on Friday at Tampa, Fla., against the winner of Monday’s Greensboro (N.C.) Region final between Iowa and Baylor. Mississippi State, which played in the past two national championship games, finishes its season 33-3.

The game — which featured 15 lead changes and 11 ties — was a rematch from a game on Dec. 18, when Oregon topped Mississippi State 82-74 at Eugene, Ore.

Satou Sabally added 22 points and seven rebounds, and Ruthy Hebard had 14 points for the Ducks.

Mississippi State had five players score in double figures, led by 19 points and 15 rebounds from Teaira McCowan. Jazzmun Holmes had 15 points and 13 assists.

Oregon, which shot 54.2 percent from the floor, made its last seven field goals in the game.

Ionescu had 14 of her points in the fourth quarter on 5-of-6 shooting from the field. Her step-back 3-pointer with 1:13 left put Oregon ahead 81-75.

Mississippi State’s Bre’amber Scott made a layup with 54 seconds left, but Maite Cazorla answered with a 3-pointer with 35 seconds left to give Oregon an 84-77 lead.

After Holmes made a jumper with 26 seconds left, Erin Boley, a 94 percent free throw shooter, made two free throws with 19 seconds left to put Oregon ahead 86-79.

Andra Espinoza-Hunter nailed a 3-pointer with 13 seconds left for Mississippi State. Ionescu was fouled and made two free throws with 11 seconds left to give Oregon the 88-82 lead.

A last-second shot made by Holmes was too little, too late.

Neither team had larger than a seven-point lead in the game.

After Oregon led 40-38 at halftime, the game remained close to the end of the third quarter with the game tied at 59. There were three more lead changes and four ties in the period.

Mississippi State shot 57.1 percent from the field in the third quarter while Oregon had only one turnover, made 7 of 10 from the free throw line and outscored the Bulldogs 12-6 in the paint.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

0 0

How Capitalists — Unlike Environmentalists — Make Life Easier for the Disabled

When I was a kid in the 1980s, Velcro shoes hit the stores in force.

Although Puma first started using the fasteners in 1968, it was not until the 1980s that the shoes became commonplace on the street and at retail outlets.

At the time, many of us mocked the idea. “Who is so lazy he can’t tie shoelaces?” we snickered. We were all sure we were quite superior in our willingness to tie our own shoelaces. Years later, I noticed that quite a few elderly people — and others with reduced mobility or disabilities such as severe arthritis or cerebral palsy, often wore shoes fastened with Velcro. At that point, my playground cleverness didn’t seem quite so clever anymore.

Velcro shoes, of course, aren’t the only product that might strike us as only for lazy people.

The Huffington Post has mocked tomato slicers and corn “kernelers,” to name just two examples among the plethora of “useless” products marketed by greedy capitalists who will sell anything to make a buck.

Many of these products, however, aren’t pointless at all. While everyday tasks like slicing a tomato may be easy for those of us with normally functioning bodies, that’s not necessarily the case for everyone.

In Vox last year, responding to criticisms of allegedly useless products like the “Sock Slider,” author s.e. smith [sic] writes :

“If I didn’t have that silly piece of plastic with ropes, I wouldn’t be able to put socks on,” says Emily Ladau, a disabled advocate, writer, and speaker with Larsen syndrome , a congenital skeletal disorder.  Ladau, who uses a wheelchair for mobility, cannot bend over to put on socks. Without a “sock putter-onner,” as she calls it, she would be forced to rely on the assistance of a personal care attendant (PCA) to put her socks on every morning. “Something that people think is a silly piece of plastic is one of the reasons I don’t need a PCA when I travel.”

Environmentalists to the Disabled: Screw You

The daily hassles faced by the disabled, though, appear to have gone quite unnoticed by environmentalists who have taken to attacking useless products as not only silly, but as morally objectionable. These products, we are told, are environmentally damaging.

One example is a case of Twitter-manufactured outrage over “wasteful” packaging of pre-peeled oranges at Whole Foods. In 2016, an apparently non-disabled woman posted a photo of the oranges on the shelf and complained — with the usual level of tiresome snark we’ve come to expect on Twitter — “If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them.”

As of this writing, the comment has over 104,000 likes, and Whole Foods eventually responded, saying “Definitely our mistake. These have been pulled. We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel.”

That comment received over 750 likes.

What received far fewer likes was a comment from another user, who wrote:

I’m so sorry you’ve decided to do that. I have rheumatoid disease and it’s often impossible to peel an orange.

This, however, was apparently not very convincing to the Environmental Justice Warriors. One dismissively told the woman claiming to have rheumatoid disease to buy an orange peeler, which earned the response “If I could handle that, I could handle an orange. 🙂 It’s really no different from baby carrots in a bag or getting a pizza delivery.” To that, the Enlightened Environmentalist essentially responded “tough luck, there’s too much plastic in the ocean.”

Another environmentalist posted in response to the photo of the pre-peeled oranges:

Fu—ing hell. That makes me unbelievably angry actually. Talk about necessarily contributing to plastic taking over the planet.

When confronted with the idea that “not everyone is physically able to peel an orange,” she retorted “You know, as well as i do, that that is NOT who that is marketed towards.”

By this way of thinking, products that help the disabled are only to be tolerated if their packaging is emblazoned with phrases like “great for cripples!” or “designed for invalids!” All other products that aren’t obviously aids for disabled people shall be mocked as “useless,” and “wasteful” or perhaps banned under force of law.

The environmentalists’ war against the disabled perhaps reached a fever pitch in 2018 when activists throughout the wealthy West began demanding that small business remove all plastic straws from their stores, and that governments even outlaw them.

Some advocates for the disabled noted that plastic straws as essential in allowing many disabled people to enjoy the products and services many other people take for granted. One of these advocates, Alice Wong, explained at eater.com:

Plastic is seen as cheap, “anti-luxury,” wasteful, and harmful to the environment. All true. Plastic is also an essential part of my health and wellness. With my neuromuscular disability, plastic straws are necessary tools for my hydration and nutrition.

This argument didn’t get much of a better hearing than the orange-peel argument. Many social media readers suggested that disabled people should just carry their own straws everywhere. And after all, what’s the big deal? What did disabled people do before straws anyway?

 

Entrepreneurs vs. Consumers

There are many unpleasant lessons we could learn from these exchanges about the problems that come with being smug and self-centered.

But as this is an economics site, I’d like to focus here on what the “useless products” debate illustrates about the difference between consumers and entrepreneurs.

The lack of sensitivity we encounter with the anti-plastic environmentalists isn’t only a product of a single-minded ideology. It’s also the result of the narrow-mindedness that comes from thinking primarily as a consumer and lacking the broader mindset of an entrepreneur.

For example, in order to consume, one needs to think only in terms of himself and others like him. “I don’t need a tomato slicer,” the thinking goes, “so it’s safe to say that no one else needs one either.”

The entrepreneur, on the other hand, approaches things far differently. He (or she) thinks in terms of changing the status quo. The entrepreneur thinks in terms of meeting an unmet need.

Whether or not the entrepreneur thinks explicitly in terms of meeting the needs of disabled people is, of course, completely beside the point. The fact is that many new products created by entrepreneurs end up helping disabled people, and that’s now a common outcome in a marketplace. It’s to be expected in a marketplace where entrepreneurs think constantly in terms of expanding the world of products and services available to a large number of consumers.

So, as the universe of consumer goods expands to include Sock Sliders and tomato peelers and plastic straws, the market also expands to meet the unmet needs of more and more people.

Also irrelevant is the fact that many entrepreneurs and inventors of various products may have no idea of how these products might be used ahead of time. Entrepreneurs are partly in the business of guessing what new products and services people want. But since those products and services don’t exist already in the marketplace, they can’t know for sure.

Some products may, at first, appear to be useless. It may be the inventor of the Sock Slider didn’t set out to invent a “sock-putter-onner”  at all. The inventor may have simply been toying around with a variety of different ideas, as is suggested by inventor Simone Giertz:

The true beauty of making useless things [is] this acknowledgment that you don’t always know what the best answer is … It turns off that voice in your head that tells you that you know exactly how the world works.

Giertz is summarizing what many entrepreneurs also ready know: they can’t be sure about “exactly how the world works.” But, they are willing to try to deliver new products and services that the world might be willing to pay for. They often fail to guess properly. But they also sometimes succeed. The question is always this: can I meet an unmet need at a cost below the price people are willing to pay?” When the answer is “yes,” the world often gets new and better products — and many of them improve the lives of the disabled.

The consumer who wants to ban plastic straws and “useless” products for “lazy” people thinks in an entirely different way. These people already consider themselves experts on what everyone needs. They think they know exactly “how the world works” and they’re itching to pass laws and shame others to make sure the world fits their vision. Rather than expanding the world of new products and services, these consumers want to shrink it — to keep it in line with their personal needs, and to reflect what they themselves consider to be important.

While the consumer thinks “nobody needs that!” the entrepreneur thinks “I wonder if someone needs that.” These are two very different ways of looking at the world. Only one of them helps disabled people live easier lives.



Will Johnson presents a video and breaks down how a female was attacked by a leftist simply for wearing her ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.

Source: InfoWars

0 0

The Birth of a Monster

The Federal Reserve’s doors have been open for “business” for one hundred years.

In explaining the creation of this money-making machine (pun intended — the Fed remits nearly $100 bn. in profits each year to Congress) most people fall into one of two camps.

Those inclined to view the Fed as a helpful institution, fostering financial stability in a world of error-prone capitalists, explain the creation of the Fed as a natural and healthy outgrowth of the troubled National Banking System. How helpful the Fed has been is questionable at best, and in a recent book edited by Joe Salerno and me — The Fed at One Hundred — various contributors outline many (though by no means all) of the Fed’s shortcomings over the past century.

Others, mostly those with a skeptical view of the Fed, treat its creation as an exercise in secretive government meddling (as in G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island) or crony capitalism run amok (as in Murray Rothbard’s The Case Against the Fed).

In my own chapter in The Fed at One Hundred I find sympathies with both groups (you can download the chapter pdf here). The actual creation of the Fed is a tragically beautiful case study in closed-door Congressional deals and big banking’s ultimate victory over the American public. Neither of these facts emerged from nowhere, however. The fateful events that transpired in 1910 on Jekyll Island were the evolutionary outcome of over fifty years of government meddling in money. As such, the Fed is a natural (though terribly unfortunate) outgrowth of an ever more flawed and repressive monetary system.

Before the Fed

Allow me to give a brief reverse biographical sketch of the events leading up to the creation of a monster in 1914.

Unlike many controversial laws and policies of the American government — such as the Affordable Care Act, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or the War on Terror — the Federal Reserve Act passed with very little public outcry. Also strange for an industry effectively cartelized, the banking establishment welcomed the Fed with open arms. What gives?

By the early twentieth century, America’s banking system was in a shambles. Fractional-reserve banks faced with “runs” (which didn’t have to be runs with the pandemonium that usually accompanies them, but rather just banks having insufficient cash to meet daily withdrawal requests) frequently suspended cash redemptions or issued claims to “clearinghouse certificates.” These certificates were a money substitute making use of the whole banking system’s reserves held by large clearinghouses.

Both of these “solutions” to the common bank run were illegal as they allowed a bank to redefine the terms of the original deposit contract. This fact notwithstanding, the US government turned a blind eye as the alternative (widespread bank failures) was perceived to be far worse.

The creation of the Fed, the ensuing centralization of reserves, and the creation of a more elastic money supply was welcomed by the government as a way to eliminate those pesky and illegal (yet permitted) banking activities of redemption suspensions and the issuance of clearinghouse certificates. The Fed returned legitimacy to the laws of the land. That is, it addressed the government’s fear that non-enforcement of a law would raise broader questions about the general rule of law.

The Fed provided a quick fix to depositors by reducing cases of suspensions of their accounts. And the banking industry saw the Fed as a way to serve clients better without incurring a cost (fewer bank runs) and at the same time coordinate their activities to expand credit in unison and maximize their own profits.

In short, the Federal Reserve Act had a solution for everyone.

Taking a central role in this story are the private clearinghouses which provided for many of the Fed’s roles before 1914. Indeed, America’s private clearinghouses were viewed as having as many powers as European central banks of the day, and the creation of the Fed was really just an effort to make the illegal practices of the clearinghouses legal by government institutionalization.

Why Did Clearinghouses Have So Much Power?

Throughout the late nineteenth century, clearinghouses used each new banking crisis to introduce a new type of policy, bringing them ever closer in appearance to a central bank. I wouldn’t go so far as to say these are examples of power grabs by the clearinghouses, but rather rational responses to fundamental problems in a troubled American banking system.

When bank runs occurred, the clearinghouse certificate came into use, first in 1857, but confined to the interbank market to economize on reserves. Transactions could be cleared in specie, but lacking sufficient reserves, a troubled bank could make use of the certificates. These certificates were jointly guaranteed by all banks in the clearinghouse system through their pooled reserves. This joint guarantee was welcomed by unstable banks with poor reserve positions, and imposed a cost on more prudently managed banks (as is the case today with deposit insurance). A prudent bank could complain, but if it wanted to use a clearinghouse’s services and reap the cost advantages it had to comply with the reserve-pooling policy.

As the magnitude of the banking crisis intensified, clearinghouses started permitting banks to issue the certificates directly to the public (starting with the Panic of 1873) to further stymie reserve drains. (These issues to the general public amounted to illegal money substitutes, though they were tolerated, as noted above.)

Fractional-Reserve Free Banking and Bust

The year 1857 is a somewhat strange one for these clearinghouse certificates to make their first appearance. It was, after all, a full twenty years into America’s experiment with fractional-reserve free banking. This banking system was able to function stably, especially compared to more regulated periods or central banking regimes. However, the dislocation between deposit and lending activities set in motion a credit-fueled boom that culminated in the Panic of 1857.

This boom and panic has all the makings of an Austrian business cycle. Banks overextended themselves to finance the booming industries during America’s westward advance, primarily the railways. Land speculation was rampant. As realized profits came in under expectations, investors got skittish and withdrew money from banks. Troubled banks turned to the recently established New York Clearing House to promote stability. Certain rights were voluntarily abrogated in return for a guarantee on their solvency.

The original sin of the free-banking period was its fractional-reserve foundation. Without the ability to fund lending activity with their deposit base, banks never would have financed the boom to the extent that it became a destabilizing factor. Westward expansion and investment would still have occurred, though it would have occurred in a sustainable way funded through equity investments and loans. (These types of financing were used, though as is the case today, this occurred less than would be the case given the fractional-reserve banking system’s essentially cost-free funding source: the deposit base.)

In conclusion, the Fed was not birthed from nothing in 1913. The monster was the natural outgrowth of an increasingly troubled banking system. In searching for the original problem that set in motion the events culminating in the creation of the Fed, one must draw attention to the Panic of 1857 as the spark that set in motion ever more destabilizing policies. The Panic itself is a textbook example of an Austrian business cycle, caused by the lending activities of fractional-reserve banks. This original sin of the banking system concluded with the birth of a monster in 1914: The Federal Reserve.



Stewart Rhodes and Alex Jones reveal to listeners how lawmakers in the Texas State Government are taking building the wall into their own hands.

Source: InfoWars

0 0

Parents Sue New York Over Forced Measles Vaccination

Five parents have filed a lawsuit against city officials, claiming New York City's mandatory measles vaccination order last week was unjustified and in violation of their religious belief, the New York Post reported.

A public health emergency was declared in parts of Brooklyn in response to a measles outbreak, requiring unvaccinated people living in the affected areas to get the vaccine or face fines. Referring to the order's "recklessly short 48-hour period," vaccination opponents claimed in the suit the current measles outbreak was not serious enough to warrant the "unjustifiable forced vaccination."

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Brooklyn Supreme Court by Orthodox Jewish families, came mere hours before an Orthodox daycare center in Williamsburg was shut down after failing to allow health officials to inspect its medical records. In addition, 23 yeshivas and daycare centers were slapped with citations after they violated orders to keep unvaccinated children away from students, the Daily News reported.

In the court documents, the families argue there was "insufficient evidence of a measles epidemic or dangerous outbreak to justify the respondents' extraordinary measures, including forced vaccination."

Speaking on behalf of the families, lawyer Robert Krakow said the parents were well within their rights to make health decisions for their families and blamed officials for issuing the immunization order instead of quarantining those believed to be infected first.

"Rather than using available legal mechanisms such as isolation or quarantine . . . respondents have imposed not only severe criminal and civil penalties for not vaccinating but have stated that persons not vaccinated 'shall be vaccinated against measles,' thus introducing the specter of unjustifiable forced vaccination to Williamsburg and the City of New York," the suit claimed, per The New York Post.

Krakow told the Daily News there were multiple dangers stemming from the city's order.

"There's the harm to my clients' rights — their religious freedom," he said. "I think it harms the vaccination program because it promotes public distrust."

Mayor de Blasio said the city, which has seen 284 confirmed measles cases among children in Brooklyn and Queens since last October, was feeling confident about its legal position. 

"This is something the law department feels strongly about it, everything's been done here fully within our legal rights obviously in the midst of a real health challenge," he said, according to the Daily News.

Source: NewsMax America

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Story Time

1:00 am 6:00 am



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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
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

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Current track

Title

Artist