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General Electric in $49 million settlement over Petters fraud

FILE PHOTO: The logo of US conglomerate General Electric is pictured at the company's site of its energy branch in Belfort
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

March 26, 2019

(Reuters) – General Electric Co has reached a $49 million settlement to end a long-running lawsuit over its relationship with Thomas Petters, the Minnesota businessman serving a 50-year prison term for running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

The settlement between GE and a trustee for two bankrupt Florida investment funds known as Palm Beach Finance was disclosed in a Tuesday filing with the federal bankruptcy court in West Palm Beach, Florida.

GE denied liability in agreeing to settle.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Source: OANN

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Putin says no imminent decision on oil output cuts

Russian President Putin attends the International Arctic Forum in Saint Petersburg
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a session of the International Arctic Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

April 9, 2019

By Vladimir Soldatkin and Gleb Stolyarov

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia and OPEC should discuss the future of their oil output-cutting deal later this year, adding that current oil prices suited Moscow.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other large oil producers led by Russia agreed to reduce their combined output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1 this year for six months in an attempt to balance the market.

Russia undertook to cut its production by 228,000 bpd but has struggled to comply with the pact.

On Monday, one of the key Russian officials to foster the pact with OPEC, Kirill Dmitriev, signaled that Russia wanted to raise oil output when it meets with OPEC in June because of improving market conditions and falling stockpiles.

But Putin, the ultimate decision-maker in Russia, seemingly softened that stance, saying it was too early to judge whether the deal should be extended.

“We are ready for cooperation with OPEC in decision-making … But whether it would be cuts, or just a stoppage at the current level of output, I am not ready to say,” Putin told an Arctic conference in St. Petersburg.

“We are not supporters of uncontrollable price rises,” he said. Putin also said current oil prices suited Russia, which is heavily dependent on sales of oil and natural gas.

OPEC and allied oil producers are due to meet in late June in Vienna.

“Of course, we and our partners … are closely watching the market. We agreed that if there is a need for joint efforts, we will gather in the second half of the year and hold discussions,” Putin said.

Putin also said Russian companies had their own plans and their intention to develop new fields should be taken into account.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said earlier on Tuesday there would be no need to extend the output deal if the oil market was expected to be balanced in the second half of the year, the RIA news agency reported.

Novak later said all options were on the table.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Tom Balmforth and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Dale Hudson and Maria Kiselyova)

Source: OANN

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The Latest: Maduro announces 30-day rationing plan for power

The Latest on Venezuela's crisis (all times local):

9:35 p.m.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced a 30-day plan to ration electricity as nationwide power cuts continue to inflict misery on millions of people.

Maduro said Sunday on national television that the plan will help deal with the outages that have also cut off water supply and communications for days at a time.

Maduro is also warning against any unrest in reaction to the blackouts, although there were already scattered protests earlier Sunday following a call by opposition leader Juan Guaido to demonstrate against the government's failure to provide basic services.

Guaido says years of government neglect and corruption has left the electrical grid in shambles after years of mismanagement. Maduro alleges U.S.-led sabotage is the cause of the power cuts, although he has not provided clear evidence.

___

8:30 p.m.

Another day, another blackout.

Power went out across Venezuela on Sunday, just as it did on Saturday, and the day before that.

But while some electricity had returned by Sunday afternoon, jittery Venezuelans weren't so much celebrating the lights coming on as wondering when the next outages would flick them off.

"No one can put up with this. We spend almost all day without electricity," said Karina Camacho, a 56-year-old housewife who was about to buy a chicken when electronic payment machines stopped working. "There's been no water since (last) Monday, you can't call by phone, we can't pay with cards or even eat."

As the latest blackout unfolded, many took to balconies and building windows to bang pots in protest and shout curses at President Nicolas Maduro, who they consider responsible for the power failures.

Others responded to a call by opposition leader Juan Guaido to demonstrate against the government, blocking roads and burning rubbish until "colectivos," or frequently armed government supporters, appeared to arrive on motorbikes. Some of the protests occurred near the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, in a direct challenge to Maduro.

The ongoing blackouts now mark another point of tension in a country paralyzed by political and economic turmoil, compounding a humanitarian crisis and deepening a prolonged standoff between two political parties vying for power.

Source: Fox News World

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Gaza officials say Palestinian man killed by Israeli troops

Gaza's Health Ministry says a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces near the perimeter fence with Israel, hours before an expected mass protest there.

The ministry said 21-year-old Mohammed Saad was shot early Saturday at a protest camp near the fence. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The fatal shooting came hours before Palestinians were to hold a large rally, capping a year of weekly marches against the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, imposed after the 2007 takeover of the territory by Hamas.

Egypt has been trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Palestinians with knowledge of the talks have said that as part of the proposed deal, Gaza protesters were to keep away from the fence Saturday and Israeli snipers were to hold their fire.

Source: Fox News World

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UN conference for Yemen seeks funds for $4b target in 2019

The United Nations has opened a third pledging conference in hopes of drumming up some $4 billion this year for Yemen, a war-battered country facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Host U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented "an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe" where some 24 million people, or four-fifths of Yemen's total population, require aid and protection.

"Twenty million people cannot reliably feed themselves or their families," he said in Geneva, where the meeting is taking place. "Almost 10 million are just one step away from famine."

U.N. officials say they are running out of money in a country also facing a devastated health care system, a lack of jobs, continued fighting and fallout from the world's worst cholera epidemic in 2017.

Source: Fox News World

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Democratic Leaders Are Positive That Everything’s Perfect

Democratic Leaders Are Positive That Everything's Perfect

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

“You guys have it all wrong,” Nancy Pelosi told reporters at the end of her press conference Thursday morning, mostly unprompted, on the second day of the House Democratic retreat at a northern Virginia resort.

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Sunrise chairman expects UPC deal to go through

Logo of broadband and telecommunications provider UPC Schweiz is seen at its headquarters in Wallisellen
The logo of broadband and telecommunications provider UPC Schweiz is seen at its headquarters in Wallisellen, Switzerland February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

April 10, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Sunrise Communications believes it will win backing to raise $4.1 billion to complete its takeover of Liberty Global’s Swiss business UPC, Chairman Peter Kurer told shareholders on Wednesday.

After Sunrise met more than 170 large shareholders and potential investors in recent weeks, “they view the transaction significantly more positively than before,” he said.

He expected regulatory approval for the $6.3 billion deal, adding a rival could well buy UPC should Sunrise fail.

(Reporting by Angelika Gruber, Writing by Michael Shields)

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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