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Victim of Migrant Gang Rapist Speaks Out after Passengers Stop Deportation

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Source: InfoWars

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California dad charged with murder, torture of missing son, 8

The search for missing 8-year-old boy from California took a turn for the worse on Thursday after authorities announced murder and torture charges against his dad.

Corona Police Chief George Johnstone announced at a press conference that efforts to find Noah McIntosh alive had turned into a search for remains.

“It is unfortunate and with a heavy heart that I must let the community know that the missing-child investigation regarding Noah McIntosh has now been escalated to a homicide case.”

SOUTH CAROLINA GIRL, 10, DIES 2 DAYS AFTER FIGHT AT SCHOOL: OFFICIALS

On March 12, police received a call from Jillian Godfrey, 36, Noah’s mother, asking authorities to conduct a welfare check on her son after she was unable to contact him for nearly two weeks. Police attempted to contact Bryce McIntosh, the boy’s father, at his home on Temescal Canyon Road, but were unsuccessful.

District Attorney Michael Hestrin announced that Bryce McIntosh, 32, was being charged with first-degree murder. Jillian Godfrey, 36, wasn't charged in the boy's death but faces a child endangerment charge

District Attorney Michael Hestrin announced that Bryce McIntosh, 32, was being charged with first-degree murder. Jillian Godfrey, 36, wasn't charged in the boy's death but faces a child endangerment charge (Corona Police Department)

The following day, after obtaining a search warrant, investigators discovered evidence inside McIntosh’s residence that allowed them to arrest both parents on child abuse charges.

“It does not make sense that the parents of an 8-year-old child would not know his whereabouts or be able to give us specific details of when he was last seen or where he last was,” Johnstone said.

The case morphed into a homicide investigation after police searched several locations in Temescal Valley, Aguanga and Murrieta that led them to believe Noah was dead.

MISSING CALIFORNIA GIRL, 15, FOUND DEAD HAD ‘TRAUMATIC’ INJURY, HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED: POLICE

“At the locations mentioned, we did collect trace evidence that leaves no doubt that Noah is a victim of a homicide, and that evidence was presented to the district attorney's office where the filing was made.”

Noah McIntosh, 8, was reported missing on March 12. The following day police discovered evidence in his father's apartment that led to the arrest of both parents.

Noah McIntosh, 8, was reported missing on March 12. The following day police discovered evidence in his father's apartment that led to the arrest of both parents. (Corona Police Department )

District Attorney Michael Hestrin announced that despite not having found Noah’s remains, his dad, 32, was being charged with first-degree murder and special-circumstance murder or torture.

If convicted, McIntosh could face life in prison without the possibility of parole and would become eligible for the death penalty. He is set to be arraigned on Monday.

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Godfrey has not been charged in the death of her son but is facing a child endangerment charge; her bail was set at $500,000.

Police say Noah’s father has refused to cooperate, and that Godfrey offered little information about the young boys whereabouts. Noah has an 11-year-old sister, but police wouldn''t say if she would serve as a witness.

Source: Fox News National

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Australia jury hears cardinal's side in police interview

Cardinal George Pell once blamed his wooden public persona on the self-discipline required to contain "a formidable temper."

That anger bubbled through the former Vatican finance minister's composure as he was interviewed by Australian police in a conference room at the Hilton Airport Hotel in Rome on Oct. 19, 2016. Det. Sgt. Chris Reed for the first time detailed to Pell allegations that he had orally raped two choirboys in Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral while he was archbishop of Australia's second-largest city 20 years earlier.

Pell appeared incredulous, distressed and outraged. He grimaced and waved his arms over his head, crossed them tightly across his chest and muttered to himself as the detectives detailed the accusations that one of the alleged victims leveled against him a year earlier.

Source: Fox News World

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‘Don’t shoot yourself in the foot’: Inside Mexico’s campaign to save NAFTA

FILE PHOTO: The flags of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are seen on a lectern before a joint news conference on the closing of the seventh round of NAFTA talks in Mexico City
FILE PHOTO: The flags of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are seen on a lectern before a joint news conference on the closing of the seventh round of NAFTA talks in Mexico City, Mexico March 5, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo

April 25, 2019

By Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – In April 2017, a group of Mexican executives filed into the Texas governor’s mansion in Austin for a meeting they hoped would help save a trillion-dollar trade deal.

They had a simple pitch for their audience – Republican Governor Greg Abbott, a handful of business leaders and some party donors: it would be in Texas’ best interest to preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Abbott was just one of the prominent names on a list of dozens of American politicians and business executives that Mexico would carefully compile to help save NAFTA from the relentless attacks of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Supplying them with up-to-date information on trade and investment flows, the Mexicans believed the Americans could persuade policymakers that scrapping NAFTA would hurt U.S. workers and companies. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2I9Q1Gb)

Rather than “be good to Mexico,” said Juan Gallardo, a prominent Mexican businessman who helped craft the strategy, the message was “don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

The inside story of Mexico’s efforts to stop Trump from killing NAFTA – and to preserve its essence in a reworked accord – comes from interviews with more than 20 Mexican and U.S. officials, lawmakers and executives involved in the process.

After 18 months of talks and concessions by both sides, a deal was struck. Canada later signed on in what became known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which awaits ratification by lawmakers in the three countries.

But final approval has become more uncertain since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives from Republicans, a potential setback to Mexico’s best laid plans.

GIVING GROUND

Mexican business and political leaders, including the heads of the foreign and economy ministries, started scrambling to save the 25-year-old trade deal right after Trump’s election in November 2016.

Early on, they decided to avoid public confrontation with Trump, who had made blaming NAFTA for job losses, particularly in manufacturing, a centerpiece of his campaign.

“Tit-for-tat wasn’t going to work,” said Moises Kalach, head of the international negotiating arm of Mexico’s CCE business lobby. “We agreed not to even get into the ring.”

Trump showed no sign of backing off after taking office in January 2017, telling aides he wanted to withdraw simultaneously from NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), according to three Mexican business and government leaders.

When Trump pulled out of TPP that month, Mexican officials feared NAFTA would be next. In Mexico City, then-foreign minister Luis Videgaray and his counterpart in the economy ministry, Ildefonso Guajardo, flew to Washington to sketch out possible concessions for an overhauled trade pact.

Meeting with Trump’s economic advisors and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, they floated stricter content rules for auto manufacturing, tougher Mexican labor laws and changes to dispute resolution mechanisms, Mexican participants said.

Those early concessions would eventually evolve into new rules set out in the USMCA deal.

“I’m absolutely convinced that if that didn’t happen … NAFTA would have died in January 2017,” Videgaray told Reuters shortly before leaving office.

While Videgaray dangled concessions, Mexico’s private sector rolled out a lobbying operation underpinned by reams of data supplied by IQOM, a Mexican trade consultancy.

Headquartered in an old stone townhouse in Mexico City, IQOM collected data and intelligence to pinpoint U.S. businesses with the most to lose from a NAFTA repeal. Two top Mexican negotiators of the original NAFTA, Herminio Blanco and Jaime Zabludovsky, spearheaded the effort.

It was “a permanent, online, computer-based information-gathering drive,” said IQOM partner Zabludovsky. “And a lot of data crunching.”

Meanwhile, the CCE hired Washington lobbying firm Akin Gump in the summer of 2017 to help identify about 250 potential U.S. allies, Gallardo said.

Akin Gump and the CCE communicated daily and met regularly. The idea was to “engage with USMCA stakeholders on both sides of the aisle and in the Trump administration,” an Akin Gump spokesperson said, and build “CCE’s brand and reputation as a trusted partner.”

Throughout the process, Mexican negotiators were in close contact with their Canadian counterparts – even as Mexico also left the door open to a bilateral deal with the United States.

EYE-OPENER

During negotiations, Mexico’s private sector had some 200 representatives in Washington updating its negotiators on how best to pitch the case to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, according to sources involved in the process.

Each member of Mexico’s team also had politicians or executives to target. Kalach of the CCE said he spoke to 36 U.S. state governors about the value of cross-border trade.

Mexican participants often expressed surprise about how little U.S. politicians knew about the extent of bilateral economic ties. Even in Texas, the state doing the most trade with Mexico, some officials appeared not to have grasped fully what a NAFTA termination could cost, Gallardo said.

At the April 2017 meeting in the governor’s mansion, the Mexican delegation gave a detailed breakdown of trade between Mexico and Texas to Abbott and the others, who included Gerardo Schwebel, executive vice president of the International Bank of Commerce, and oil tycoon Paul Foster, sources said.

Economic ties were explained “by players, by amounts,” Gallardo said. “That was an eye-opener… no one had ever put that together into one paper.”

Abbott eventually sent a letter to Lighthizer defending NAFTA – emphasizing that Texas exported more than $90 billion of goods to Mexico annually and that nearly a million jobs depended on free trade with the NAFTA partners.

In a second letter to Lighthizer, Abbott asked the Trump administration to “reconsider” its demand for a sunset clause that could have killed the new agreement in five years, a major Mexican concern. In the end, the clause was left out.

John Wittman, a spokesman for Abbott, confirmed the Austin meeting, adding that the governor had been engaged with various stakeholders and White House officials throughout NAFTA talks.

Lighthizer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

HELP FROM WALL STREET

High among the list of prospective allies drawn up by Mexico were several top Wall Street executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and KKR’s Henry Kravis.

Dimon chairs the Business Roundtable, which, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was viewed by the Mexicans as a powerful voice in support of NAFTA. The banking executive proved particularly effective, Mexican and U.S. sources said.

Among others, a source familiar with the situation said, Dimon met with Kushner, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser until April 2018.

Calling Mexico a peaceful neighbor, Dimon publicly argued a trade agreement would help “ensure that the young democracy in Mexico is not hijacked by populist and anti-American leaders.”

Mnuchin held multiple meetings with counterparts, and offered his input to Lighthizer as he negotiated USMCA, a U.S. Treasury official said. Mnuchin sees Canada and Mexico as important trading partners, and believes free and fair trade with them benefits the United States, the official added.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the meetings. Representatives for Cohn, Schwarzman and Kravis declined to comment or did not reply to requests for one.

Kansas City Southern Chief Executive Officer Pat Ottensmeyer, whose company runs trains through Mexico, was a staunch advocate for NAFTA in the United States, and also consulted with top-level Mexican officials.

Between Trump’s inauguration and the end of 2018, Kansas City Southern said it had organized or participated in 65 meetings with lawmakers or regulators, as well as 76 speeches or conferences in defense of NAFTA.

Ottensmeyer recalled speaking to several cabinet members, including Lighthizer and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when he was still head of the CIA.

The approach was to “literally talk to anybody and everybody who we thought was willing to listen and could be influential in the process,” Ottensmeyer told Reuters.

A representative for Pompeo declined to comment.

Within months, Mexico’s lobbying efforts began paying dividends: American politicians and business executives were making a case for NAFTA directly to the White House, pushing back on Trump’s ongoing threats to rip up NAFTA.

“From what I understand,” Gallardo said, “Trump never, ever in his wildest dreams imagined the kind of uproar this was going to create. And that’s what stopped him.”

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City, Jennifer Hiller in Houston, Richard Cowan in Washington, David Henry in New York; Editing by Simon Webb, Brian Thevenot and Paul Thomasch)

Source: OANN

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New York City's de Blasio blames Amazon for caving on deal for new headquarters in city

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio laid the blame on Amazon deciding to pull up stakes on a new headquarters in the city squarely on the corporate behemoth, saying that the company just “took their ball and went home.”

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” de Blasio defended progressive Democrats who argued against Amazon’s move to the country’s largest city, but did add that the deal could have been a way for progressive leaders to show a balance on economic issues.

“I have no problem with my fellow progressives critiquing a deal or wanting more from Amazon — I wanted more from Amazon, too,” de Blasio said. “The bottom line is, this was an example of an abuse of corporate power. They had an agreement with the people of New York City."

He added: "They said they wanted a partnership, but the minute there were criticisms, they walked away. What does that say to working people, that a company would leave them high and dry, simply because some people raised criticism?"

AMAZON BLASTS OCASIO-CORTEZ, SAYS 'WE DON'T WANT TO WORK IN THIS ENVIRONMENT IN THE LONG TERM'

Amazon officials joined de Blasio and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in November to announce plans to build a $2.5 billion headquarters in Queens.

De Blasio and Cuomo said the $2.8 billion in tax breaks and subsidies they were offering Amazon would result in $27 billion in tax revenue.

The company, however, announced on Thursday that it had dropped plans to build a new headquarters in Queens amid pressure from politicians and activists over the tax breaks it would receive.

“We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York,” the online giant from Seattle said in a blog post announcing its withdrawal.

The stunning move was a serious blow to Cuomo and de Blasio, who had lobbied intensely to land the project, competing against more than 200 other metropolitan areas across the continent that were practically tripping over each other to offer incentives to Amazon in a bidding war the company stoked.

Cuomo lashed out at fellow New York politicians over Amazon’s change of heart, saying the project would have helped diversify the city’s economy, cement its status as an emerging tech hub and generate money for schools, housing and transit.

“A small group (of) politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community,” he said.

But Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City’s new liberal firebrand, exulted over Amazon’s pullout.

“Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world,” she tweeted, referring to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

The swift unraveling of the project reflected growing antipathy toward large technology companies among liberals and populists who accuse big business of holding down wages and wielding too much political clout, analysts said.

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“This all of a sudden became a perfect test case for all those arguments,” said Joe Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

Amazon ultimately decided it did not want to be drawn into that battle.

Amazon announced in November that it had chosen the Long Island City section of Queens for one of two new headquarters, with the other in Arlington, Va. Both would get 25,000 jobs. A third site in Nashville, Tenn., would get 5,000.

The company planned to spend $2.5 billion building the New York office, choosing the area in part because of its large pool of tech talent. The governor and the mayor had argued that the project would spur economic growth that would pay for the $2.8 billion in state and city incentives many times over.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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India, Pakistan push ahead with route for Sikh pilgrims, despite tension

S.C.L. Das, Joint Secretary in India's Ministry of Home Affairs, addresses a news conference after a meeting with Pakistani officials at Attari
S.C.L. Das, Joint Secretary in India's Ministry of Home Affairs, addresses a news conference after a meeting with Pakistani officials at Attari, near the northern city of Amritsar, India, March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Manish Sharma

March 14, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India and Pakistan agreed on Thursday to go forward with a new border crossing and route for Sikh pilgrims to visit a holy temple in Pakistan, a rare glimmer of cooperation after tension flared over the neighbors’ decades-old Kashmir dispute.

The meeting was the first between the nuclear-armed foes since a dogfight between their warplanes over the Himalayan region last month led to the downing of an Indian aircraft and the capture of its pilot, since returned home.

“Both sides held detailed and constructive discussions,” the two countries said in a joint statement, after their officials met on Thursday at the Wagah checkpoint on their border to work out details of the crossing and the route.

The talks were cordial and another meeting of technical experts is planned for next week, they said, adding that both sides had agreed to work toward soon making the route operational.

The Sikh minority community in India’s northern state of Punjab and elsewhere has long sought easier access to the temple in Kartarpur, a village just over the border in Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Many Sikhs see Pakistan as the place where their religion began: its founder, Guru Nanak, was born in 1469 in a small village near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

But to get there, travelers must first secure hard-to-get visas, travel to Lahore or some other major Pakistani city and then drive to the village, which is just 4 km (2-1/2 miles) distant from the Indian border.

This week’s talks follow an agreement the neighbors struck last year to open a new route, the Kartarpur corridor, giving the pilgrims direct and visa-free access to the holy site that will be fenced off.

The arch rivals have said they shot down each other’s fighter jets late last month, after tension escalated following a claim of responsibility by a Pakistan-based militant group for the deadliest attack in Kashmir’s 30-year-long insurgency that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary troops.

(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Source: OANN

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Before mosque attacks, New Zealand failed to record hate crimes for years

FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands guard outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch
FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands guard outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

March 30, 2019

By Charlotte Greenfield and Praveen Menon

CHRISTCHURCH/WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Weeks before a gunman killed 50 Muslims in Christchurch, a man had threatened to burn copies of the Koran outside New Zealand mosques, in what community leaders said was the latest in a long list of threatening behavior against religious minorities.

Police said they warned a 38-year-old man over the incident, which was unrelated to the Christchurch attack, but could not say if it was part of a pattern.

That’s because, unlike many Western countries including the United Kingdom and the United States, New Zealand’s government keeps no comprehensive record of hate crimes, failing to act on requests to do so from local and international agencies spanning more than a decade.

“For many years our view has consistently been that this needs to be prioritized and implemented urgently,” said Janet Anderson-Bidois, Chief Legal Adviser at the Human Rights Commission, the independent government agency tasked with protecting human rights.

“It is imperative that we have good data.”

A suspected white supremacist has been charged with murder over the Christchurch shootings and will appear in court again on April 5.

In the wake of New Zealand’s worst mass shooting, questions are being asked about what signs agencies missed and where resources should have been allocated to protect vulnerable communities.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has ordered a Royal Commission, a powerful form of inquiry, into the attack.

Anwar Ghani from the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, said anecdotal evidence suggested there had been a rise in anti-Muslim behavior in recent years.

“When there is a hot spot in global events and when Muslims are involved…we do see the pulse of hate crime coming from certain members of the community,” he said.

“NOT A PRIORITY”

Joris De Bres, New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner between 2002 and 2013, said he was alarmed at signs of an uptick in threats against Muslims when he took up the role soon after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

De Bres said he repeatedly asked the government and police to create a central system for recording details about crimes motivated by hatred and racism.

He raised the issue with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which in its 2007 review of New Zealand said the lack of records was a concern, and asked the government to collect data on complaints of racially motivated crimes.

“I listed it every year…I wrote at various points to government about it and it was simply said that it wasn’t necessary and it wasn’t a priority,” De Bres said.

In its latest report on New Zealand in 2017, the UN committee repeated its concerns and requests and asked the government to provide the data for its next report as a priority.

When current Justice and Intelligence Services Minister Andrew Little took office in late 2017, the Human Rights Commission said in their incoming briefing the country needed a central system for recording details about crimes motivated by hatred and racism and steps currently taken by police were insufficient.

“Understanding the scale, extent, and location of hate crimes is essential and is a prerequisite to ensuring adequate resources are available to address the issue,” the briefing said.

Little did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment but told local media on Saturday that current hate speech laws were inadequate and he would work with officials to review the legislation, including considering whether a separate hate crime offense should be created.

Police said they took hate crimes seriously and were continually looking to improve the way they worked.

“We are engaged in ongoing conversations with community leaders and representatives about a range of issues, including how police record allegations of hate crime and crimes of prejudice,” said a police spokesperson via email.

The National Party, in power from 2008 to 2017, said while in government, it introduced legislation to protect people from harmful communication online.

“There are hate speech laws in the Human Rights Act, but whether data should be collected is an operational matter for Police,” a spokeswoman said by email.

NO ONE WAS LISTENING

New Zealand has had no previous extremist mass attacks, unlike neighboring Australia, but civil society members say an underbelly of racism has always existed and may have been escalating.

Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand said the group had repeatedly alerted the government over the past five years about the rise of the extreme right and the growing threat Muslim women felt in New Zealand.

“Without the data, without the measurement it’s really hard to push for change…I feel like it wasn’t taken seriously because it wasn’t hard data because we didn’t have it,” she said, adding she felt “a resistance to creating that data.”

One in 10 New Zealand adults have experienced hate speech online according to a 2018 study by internet safety organization Netsafe, with people of Asian descent or who identified as ‘other’ ethnicity most affected.

Since 2002, a law has specified judges should take hostility toward a group of people with a “common characteristic”, such as race or religion, into account when sentencing.

A Reuters review of sentencing records found 22 such cases since 2002, most with a racial motive.

Those included the murder of a Korean student, the hurling of a pipe bomb at a Sikh Temple, and threats to politicians by a non-Muslim posing as an Islamic extremist, which the judge described as a “deliberate attempt to tap into public fear about radicalized Muslims”.

The likely number is far higher, say human rights experts, because accessible records encompass only cases that are appealed or the most severe charges that reach New Zealand’s highest courts, not the tens of thousands of cases dealt with in lower District Courts each year.

One of those was a 2016 case, first reported by the New Zealand Herald, in which a Christchurch man delivered a bloodied pig’s head to Al Noor mosque, which was attacked this month.

He was charged with “offensive behavior” and fined NZ$800 ($543), court records show.

In 2017, lawmakers asked police whether hate crime was increasing but were told it could not be measured because it was not recorded as a specific category, according to Parliamentary records.

The Human Rights Commission said it received 417 complaints relating to race in 2018, up from 350 in 2014. Those included 63 complaints of “racial disharmony”, which includes hate speech, a 26 percent jump from four years earlier.

Lawmaker Golriz Ghahraman, a former human rights lawyer who was born in Iran and came to New Zealand as a child refugee, said she had received death threats and xenophobia including being called a “terrorist” and “Jihadist” online.

Before the Christchurch attacks, most of the public had felt safe, she said.

“Minorities didn’t, but no one was listening to them.”

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Praveen Menon.; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Source: OANN

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Cambodian authorities have ordered a one-hour reduction in the length of school days because of concerns that students and teachers may fall ill from a prolonged heat wave.

Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said in an announcement seen Friday that the shortened hours will remain in effect until the rainy season starts, which usually occurs in May. The current heat wave, in which temperatures are regularly reaching as high as 41 Celsius (106 Fahrenheit), is one of the longest in memory.

Most schools in Cambodia lack air conditioning, prompting concern that temperatures inside classrooms could rise to unhealthy levels.

School authorities were instructed to watch for symptoms of heat stroke and urge pupils to drink more water.

The new hours cut 30 minutes off the beginning of the school day and 30 minutes off the end.

School authorities instituted a similar measure in 2016.

Source: Fox News World

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Explosions have rocked Britain’s largest steel plant, injuring two people and shaking nearby homes.

South Wales Police say the incident at the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot was reported at about 3:35 a.m. Friday (22:35 EDT Thursday). The explosions touched off small fires, which are under control. Two workers suffered minor injuries and all staff members have been accounted for.

Police say early indications are that the explosions were caused by a train used to carry molten metal into the plant. Tata Steel says its personnel are working with emergency services at the scene.

Local lawmaker Stephen Kinnock says the incident raises concerns about safety.

He tweeted: “It could have been a lot worse … @TataSteelEurope must conduct a full review, to improve safety.”

Source: Fox News World

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The Wider Image: China's start-ups go small in age of 'shoebox' satellites
LinkSpace’s reusable rocket RLV-T5, also known as NewLine Baby, is carried to a vacant plot of land for a test launch in Longkou, Shandong province, China, April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 26, 2019

By Ryan Woo

LONGKOU, China (Reuters) – During initial tests of their 8.1-metre (27-foot) tall reusable rocket, Chinese engineers from LinkSpace, a start-up led by China’s youngest space entrepreneur, used a Kevlar tether to ensure its safe return. Just in case.

But when the Beijing-based company’s prototype, called NewLine Baby, successfully took off and landed last week for the second time in two months, no tether was needed.

The 1.5-tonne rocket hovered 40 meters above the ground before descending back to its concrete launch pad after 30 seconds, to the relief of 26-year-old chief executive Hu Zhenyu and his engineers – one of whom cartwheeled his way to the launch pad in delight.

LinkSpace, one of China’s 15-plus private rocket manufacturers, sees these short hops as the first steps towards a new business model: sending tiny, inexpensive satellites into orbit at affordable prices.

Demand for these so-called nanosatellites – which weigh less than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and are in some cases as small as a shoebox – is expected to explode in the next few years. And China’s rocket entrepreneurs reckon there is no better place to develop inexpensive launch vehicles than their home country.

“For suborbital clients, their focus will be on scientific research and some commercial uses. After entering orbit, the near-term focus (of clients) will certainly be on satellites,” Hu said.

In the near term, China envisions massive constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft to tracking coal shipments. Universities conducting experiments and companies looking to offer remote-sensing and communication services are among the potential domestic customers for nanosatellites.

A handful of U.S. small-rocket companies are also developing launchers ahead of the expected boom. One of the biggest, Rocket Lab, has already put 25 satellites in orbit.

No private company in China has done that yet. Since October, two – LandSpace and OneSpace – have tried but failed, illustrating the difficulties facing space start-ups everywhere.

The Chinese companies are approaching inexpensive launches in different ways. Some, like OneSpace, are designing cheap, disposable boosters. LinkSpace’s Hu aspires to build reusable rockets that return to Earth after delivering their payload, much like the Falcon 9 rockets of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“If you’re a small company and you can only build a very, very small rocket because that’s all you have money for, then your profit margins are going to be narrower,” said Macro Caceres, analyst at U.S. aerospace consultancy Teal Group.

“But if you can take that small rocket and make it reusable, and you can launch it once a week, four times a month, 50 times a year, then with more volume, your profit increases,” Caceres added.

Eventually LinkSpace hopes to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.48 million) per launch, Hu told Reuters.

That is a fraction of the $25 million to $30 million needed for a launch on a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus, a commonly used small rocket. The Pegasus is launched from a high-flying aircraft and is not reusable.

(Click https://reut.rs/2UVBjKs to see a picture package of China’s rocket start-ups. Click https://tmsnrt.rs/2GIy9Bc for an interactive look at the nascent industry.)

NEED FOR CASH

LinkSpace plans to conduct suborbital launch tests using a bigger recoverable rocket in the first half of 2020, reaching altitudes of at least 100 kilometers, then an orbital launch in 2021, Hu told Reuters.

The company is in its third round of fundraising and wants to raise up to 100 million yuan, Hu said. It had secured tens of millions of yuan in previous rounds.

After a surge in fresh funding in 2018, firms like LinkSpace are pushing out prototypes, planning more tests and even proposing operational launches this year.

Last year, equity investment in China’s space start-ups reached 3.57 billion yuan ($533 million), a report by Beijing-based investor FutureAerospace shows, with a burst of financing in late 2018.

That accounted for about 18 percent of global space start-up investments in 2018, a historic high, according to Reuters calculations based on a global estimate by Space Angels. The New York-based venture capital firm said global space start-up investments totaled $2.97 billion last year.

“Costs for rocket companies are relatively high, but as to how much funding they need, be it in the hundreds of millions, or tens of millions, or even just a few million yuan, depends on the company’s stage of development,” said Niu Min, founder of FutureAerospace.

FutureAerospace has invested tens of millions of yuan in LandSpace, based in Beijing.

Like space-launch startups elsewhere in the world, the immediate challenge for Chinese entrepreneurs is developing a safe and reliable rocket.

Proven talent to develop such hardware can be found in China’s state research institutes or the military; the government directly supports private firms by allowing them to launch from military-controlled facilities.

But it’s still a high-risk business, and one unsuccessful launch might kill a company.

“The biggest problem facing all commercial space companies, especially early-stage entrepreneurs, is failure” of an attempted flight, Liang Jianjun, chief executive of rocket company Space Trek, told Reuters. That can affect financing, research, manufacturing and the team’s morale, he added.

Space Trek is planning its first suborbital launch by the end of June and an orbital launch next year, said Liang, who founded the company in late 2017 with three other former military technical officers.

Despite LandSpace’s failed Zhuque-1 orbital launch in October, the Beijing-based firm secured 300 million yuan in additional funding for the development of its Zhuque-2 rocket a month later.

In December, the company started operating China’s first private rocket production facility in Zhejiang province, in anticipation of large-scale manufacturing of its Zhuque-2, which it expects to unveil next year.

STATE COMPETITION

China’s state defense contractors are also trying to get into the low-cost market.

In December, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) successfully launched a low-orbit communication satellite, the first of 156 that CASIC aims to deploy by 2022 to provide more stable broadband connectivity to rural China and eventually developing countries.

The satellite, Hongyun-1, was launched on a rocket supplied by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the nation’s main space contractor.

In early April, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALVT), a subsidiary of CASC, completed engine tests for its Dragon, China’s first rocket meant solely for commercial use, clearing the path for a maiden flight before July.

The Dragon, much bigger than the rockets being developed by private firms, is designed to carry multiple commercial satellites.

At least 35 private Chinese companies are working to produce more satellites.

Spacety, a satellite maker based in southern Hunan province, plans to put 20 satellites in orbit this year, including its first for a foreign client, chief executive Yang Feng told Reuters.

The company has only launched 12 on state-produced rockets since the company started operating in early 2016.

“When it comes to rocket launches, what we care about would be cost, reliability and time,” Yang said.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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At least one person is reported dead and homes have been destroyed by a powerful cyclone that struck northern Mozambique and continues to dump rain on the region, with the United Nations warning of “massive flooding.”

Cyclone Kenneth arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai tore into central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people and displacing scores of thousands. The U.N. says this is the first time in known history that the southern African nation has been hit by two cyclones in one season.

Forecasters say the new cyclone made landfall Thursday night in a part of Mozambique that has not seen such a storm in at least 60 years.

Mozambique’s local emergency operations center says a woman in the city of Pemba was killed by a falling tree.

Source: Fox News World

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German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer holds annual general meeting
Werner Baumann, CEO of German pharmaceutical and chemical maker Bayer AG, attends the annual general shareholders meeting in Bonn, Germany, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

April 26, 2019

By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger

BONN (Reuters) – Bayer shareholders vented their anger over its stock price slump on Friday as litigation risks mount from the German drugmaker’s $63 billion takeover of seed maker Monsanto.

Several large investors said they will not support aspirin investor Bayer’s management in a key vote scheduled for the end of its annual general meeting.

Bayer’s management, led by chief executive Werner Baumann, could see an embarrassing plunge in approval ratings, down from 97 percent at last year’s AGM, which was held shortly before the Monsanto takeover closed in June.

A vote to ratify the board’s actions features prominently at every German AGM. Although it has no bearing on management’s liability, it is seen as a key gauge of shareholder sentiment.

“Due to the continued negative development at Bayer, high legal risks and a massive share price slump, we refuse to ratify the management board and supervisory board’s actions during the business year,” Janne Werning, representing Germany’s Union Investment, a top-20 shareholder, said in prepared remarks.

About 30 billion euros ($34 billion) have been wiped off Bayer’s market value since August, when a U.S. jury found the pesticide and drugs group liable because Monsanto had not warned of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.

Bayer suffered a similar defeat last month and more than 13,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages.

Bayer is appealing or plans to appeal the verdicts.

Deutsche Bank’s asset managing arm DWS said shareholders should have been consulted before the takeover, which was agreed in 2016 and closed in June last year.

“You are pointing out that the lawsuits have not been lost yet. We and our customers, however, have already lost something – money and trust,” Nicolas Huber, head of corporate governance at DWS, said in prepared remarks for the AGM.

He said DWS would abstain from the shareholder vote of confidence in the executive and non-executive boards.

Two people familiar with the situation told Reuters this week that Bayer’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, plans to either abstain from or vote against ratifying the management board’s actions.

Asset management firm Deka, among Bayer’s largest German investors, has also said it would cast a no vote.

Baumann said Bayer’s true value was not reflected in the current share price.

“There’s no way to make this look good. The lawsuits and the first verdicts weigh heavily on our company and it’s a concern for many people,” he said, adding it was the right decision to buy Monsanto and that Bayer was vigorously defending itself.

This month, shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended investors not to give the executive board their seal of approval.

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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