Now On Air

Liberty #MAGAOne Mix

Via MAGA One Mix

6:00 am 8:00 am


Upcoming shows
Real News

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Liberty #MAGAOne Mix

Via MAGA One Mix

6:00 am 8:00 am



Maga First News

Upcoming Shows

Join The MAGA Network on Discord

0 0

U.S. income inequality a ‘national emergency’: billionaire Ray Dalio

FILE PHOTO: China Development Forum in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: Bridgewater Associates Chairman Ray Dalio attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 23, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

April 4, 2019

By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Widening income inequality and under-investment in public education “pose an existential risk for the U.S.,” hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio wrote in a paper released Thursday.

Dalio, who Forbes lists as the 57th-richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $18.4 billion from founding hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, released a report Thursday in which he spells out the ways he sees capitalism as failing in the United States. In the report, Dalio advocates for an increase in investments in early childhood education, per-pupil spending, infrastructure, and public health measures in order to save it.

Chief among Dalio’s criticisms are the widening wealth gap in the United States, which he links to lower high school graduation rates, greater disparity in test scores, and lower teacher pay compared with those with similar education levels over the last three decades.

“To me, leaving so many children in poverty and not educating them well is the equivalent of child abuse, and it is economically stupid,” Dalio wrote.

The increasing use of automation to replace workers and the wealth-effect of lower interest rate policies by the Federal Reserve which have increased the value of equities and property will continue to compound this problem, which will make the 2020 presidential election “a hell of a battle,” Dalio wrote. Yet by taxing pollution and other societal ills, the United States can strengthen the capitalist system without replacing it, Dalio argued.

The move by Dalio to publish his essay comes approximately two months after Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $3.7 billion, said he was considering a bid for the White House as an independent in order to address the “crisis of capitalism in this country.”

(Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Diane Craft)

Source: OANN

0 0

Panasonic says reviewing further investment in Tesla Gigafactory

FILE PHOTO: A logo of Panasonic Corp is pictured at the CEATEC JAPAN 2017 in Chiba
FILE PHOTO: A logo of Panasonic Corp is pictured at the CEATEC JAPAN 2017 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

April 11, 2019

(Reuters) – Panasonic Corp is studying further investments in battery production at its gigafactory joint venture with Tesla Inc, the company said, responding to a media report that the two companies had frozen previous investment plans.

Giving no details of its sources, Nikkei reported https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-and-Panasonic-freeze-spending-on-4.5bn-Gigafactory earlier on Thursday that financial issues had led Tesla and Panasonic to rethink plans to expand the capacity of Gigafactory 1 by another 50 percent next year, having invested $4.5 billion in the plant.

(Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)

Source: OANN

0 0

Fire in old part of Bangladesh's capital kills at least 45

A devastating fire has raced through at least five buildings in an old part of Bangladesh's capital and killed at least 45 people.

About 50 other people have been injured and the fire in Dhaka is not yet under control.

The fire department's Director General Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmed said early Thursday the blaze broke out in the Chawkbazar area Wednesday night in one building but quickly spread.

Ali said by early Thursday rescuers recovered at least 45 bodies as they were trying to get the blaze under control.

Some floors of the destroyed buildings had chemicals and plastic in storage.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

'RUN!': NZ shooting victims recount horror, mourn the lost

They had walked that once innocuous stretch of sidewalk side-by-side so many times. Every Friday, Yasir Amin and his dad had ambled along the path toward the mosque where they prayed together in peace, a routine so serene and so ordinary that Amin was nearly blinded by confusion when the man drove up with the gun.

Amin and his father, Muhammad Amin Nasir, were just 200 meters from the Al Noor mosque on Friday when everything went wrong. They had no idea that a white supremacist had just slaughtered at least 41 people inside the mosque's hallowed halls, or that more people would be killed at a second mosque soon after. All they knew was that a car that had been driving by had suddenly stopped. And a man was leaning out the car's window, pointing a gun at them.

"RUN!" Amin screamed.

The bullets began to fly. The men began to run. But at 67, Nasir couldn't keep up with his 35-year-old son. And so he fell behind, by two or three fateful steps.

Amid the blasts, Amin turned to scream at his father to get down on the ground. But his father was already falling.

The gunman drove away. A pool of blood poured from Nasir's body.

"Daddy!" Amin screamed. "Daddy! DADDY!"

Amin had never seen anyone shot before. He left Pakistan for Christchurch five years ago, and was embraced by a multicultural city that felt like the safest place on earth. His father, who farms vegetables, wheat and rice back in Pakistan, also fell for the leafy green city at the bottom of the world.

And so Nasir began making routine visits to see his son, sometimes spending up to six months in New Zealand before returning to Pakistan to tend to his crops. Nasir had been in town only three weeks for his most recent visit when he was shot three times on the street of the city he had adopted as a second home.

From the ground, Nasir stared up at his son, unable to speak, tears running down his face. Amin ran to his car to grab his phone and called the police. Officers quickly arrived, and soon the father and son were in an ambulance racing to the hospital.

Nasir had always been more than just a dad to Amin. When Amin was just 6, his mother died, leaving Nasir to raise him along with his four siblings. Nasir became both a father and a mother, a reliable source of laughter with a huge heart. He embraced Amin's new community of New Zealand friends as if they were his own family. And in turn, the community embraced Nasir — so much so, that it initially confused him.

The elder man was baffled by the constant chipper greetings of "Hello!" he received whenever he dropped Amin's children off at school. Why do they keep saying that to me? he asked his son. Amused, Amin explained that the locals were simply trying to welcome him, their own version of the Arabic peace greeting, "As-Salaam-Alaikum."

Amin chuckled at the memory on Saturday, one day after he brought his father to the hospital. Nasir remains in an induced coma with critical injuries, though his condition has stabilized. The bullets pierced his shoulder, chest and back.

Like many other victims struggling to cope with the horrific events of Friday that left 49 dead, Amin made his way to Hagley College near the hospital. The college was serving as a community center for the grieving, and members of the public poured in with meals and drinks, doling out hugs and words of support to those in need.

Outside the college, Javed Dadabhai mourned for his gentle cousin, 35-year-old Junaid Mortara, who is believed to have died in the first mosque attack. As of Saturday, many families were still waiting to find out if their loved ones were alive.

"He's very punctual, so he would've been there at a dime. He would've been there at 1:30," Dadabhai said, a reference to the time of the attack, which began soon after.

His cousin was the breadwinner of the family, supporting his mother, his wife and their three children, ages 1 to 5. Mortara had inherited his father's convenience store, which was covered in flowers on Saturday.

Mortara was an avid cricket fan, and would always send a sparring text with relatives over cricket matches when Canterbury was facing Auckland.

"The sad thing is he was actually due to come up to Auckland next weekend for a family wedding," Dadabhai said. "We were due to have a catch-up. But I never knew a more shy, soft-spoken kind of person. ... As cousins, you'd kind of make fun of the fact when someone's so gentle like that, but he's leaving a huge void."

The long wait for information on the status of the dead was particularly painful because Muslim tradition calls for burials within 24 hours of a person's death.

Dadabhai said the community was trying to be patient, because they understood there was a crime scene involved. "But it's hard, because until that happens, the grieving process doesn't really begin," he said.

For some families, patience had worn thin by Saturday, and frustration erupted as they waited to find out the status of their relatives.

Ash Mohammed, 32, of Christchurch, pushed through a police barricade outside the Al Noor mosque Saturday morning, desperate for information, before police held him back.

"We just want to know if they are alive or dead," he could be heard telling an officer at the barricade.

In an interview later, Mohammed said he was desperate for information about his brothers, Farhaj Ashashan, 30, and Ramazvora Ashashan, 31, and his father, Asif Vora, 56, who were all at the mosque on Friday.

"We just want to know, are they alive or not alive so we can start the funerals," he said. "The hospital's not helping, cops not helping. Somebody has to help get the answers."

As Amin waited and worried over the fate of his father, he was also focused on trying to protect the youngest members of his family. He and his wife have so far tried to shield their children from hearing about the attack. But on Friday, Amin's wife briefly turned on the news and an image of an ambulance popped onto the screen. Their 5-year-old son immediately dove under a table, assuming there was an earthquake. Christchurch, no stranger to disaster, suffered a devastating quake in 2011 that left 185 dead.

Though his relatives back in Pakistan now fret that New Zealand is too dangerous, Amin believes Christchurch is the safest place in the world. And he hopes that his funny, fiercely loving father will pull through, so they can immerse themselves once again in the friendly hellos and the peaceful Friday prayers they have long cherished.

Like Amin, Farid Ahmed refuses to turn his back on his adopted home. Ahmed lost his 45-year-old wife, Husna Ahmed, in the Al Noor mosque attack, when they split up to go to the bathroom. The gunman livestreamed the massacre on the internet, and Ahmed later saw a video of his wife being shot dead. A police officer confirmed she had passed away.

Despite the horror, Ahmed — originally from Bangladesh — still considers New Zealand a great country.

"I believe that some people, purposely, they are trying to break down the harmony we have in New Zealand with the diversity," he said. "But they are not going to win. They are not going to win. We will be harmonious."

___

Associated Press videojournalist Haruka Nuga contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

UK parliament will have to look at other options if May pursues her Brexit deal: Labour

British PM May walks outside Downing Street in London
British Prime Minister Theresa May walks outside Downing Street, as she faces a vote on Brexit, in London, Britain March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

March 13, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – If Prime Minister Theresa May presses on with her Brexit deal after lawmakers vote to delay Britain’s exit, parliament will have to look at other options, the opposition Labour Party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said on Wednesday.

Lawmakers are expected to be given a vote on Thursday on whether they want to seek an extension to the Article 50 negotiation period. The EU have said any extension would need a purpose.

“She will have to make decision of whether that is the point at which she drops her red lines and her blinkers and opens up the debate to other options,” Starmer told parliament.

“If she presses on with her own deal I think we still have to go on and look at other options and get a common purpose.”

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Writing by Kylie MacLellan; editing by William James)

Source: OANN

0 0

Florida woman discovers snake inside dryer, says she 'never ran so fast in my life'

A Florida woman's laundry routine on Sssssssunday quickly turned into a terrifying encounter with a ssssslithering intruder after she discovered a snake in her dryer.

Amanda Wise said in a Facebook post she had started off the day in a fairly uneventful way: making her morning coffee and heading out to the garage to fold laundry from the dryer.

Wise was almost done unloading the clothes when she looked in and saw a corn snake laying next to her clean clothes.

FLORIDA MAN ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY THROWING COOKIE AT GIRLFRIEND

"If there’s one thing I am terrified of (other than flying) it’s snakes," she wrote.

Wise said her husband, a "snake tamer," was able to get the reptile out of the dyer and out of the house.

"I have never ran so fast in my life," she said. "My heart was racing, my legs were shaking and I burst into a sweat."

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Wise told FOX13 she later realized the dryer vent cover on the side of the home in Safety Harbor had fallen off, and the couple believes that's how the snake made its way into the appliance.

Source: Fox News National

0 0

Dems’ Relentless, Fruitless Hunt for the Great Orange Whale

X

Story Stream

recent articles

Democrats are trying to spin the Mueller Report as welcome news. Good luck with that. Legally, they’ve got no case left. Politically, they are making a serious mistake.

They do have some material to work with, especially the report’s second volume, which portrays a vulgar, deceitful president. The details are new, but the portrait itself is not. What’s new are some cases where the president came close to obstructing justice, according to the special counsel’s investigators. Even so, they did not say he crossed the line.

The most important news, of course, is the report’s basic findings. It clearly demonstrates Russia tried to influence the 2016 election and favored Trump, but it kills the assertion that Trump or his campaign cooperated with them. For two years, Democrats and the mainstream media said the opposite about Trump — repeatedly, loudly, insistently. To continue that attack now is ludicrous. That doesn’t mean they will retract, apologize, or return their Pulitzer Prizes. They prefer to change the subject.

Their new focus is obstruction, where the evidence is more ambiguous. The Mueller team presents 10 possible instances and made no final decision. But that, in itself, is a decision since prosecutors must ultimately choose to indict or drop the matter. There is no third choice, and they didn’t indict. Significantly, their refusal was based on the evidence, not on the Department of Justice’s long-standing legal opinion that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

Escaping criminal charges is not exactly high praise for a president. Still, the Mueller team’s refusal to indict carries special weight because the prosecution team was stacked with Democratic donors and close allies of Hillary Clinton. That provenance shows throughout the report, which reads like opposition research, equipped with subpoena powers.

After the report was finished, the DoJ made a clear-cut decision on obstruction: no indictment. Democrats immediately slimed Attorney General Bill Barr as a political hack, doing Trump’s bidding. It is important to note, however, that Rod Rosenstein reached the same conclusion. Democrats have spent the last two years defending Rosenstein, the department’s second-ranking official and the man who appointed Mueller and supervised his team. Now, they are stuck with his decision.

The White House, naturally, claimed complete victory, despite all the damaging evidence. They make two key points about obstruction, including the troubling instance when President Trump told White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. The president, famous for firing people, never followed through. He was furious with AG Jeff Sessions’ recusal and furious with the investigation, but he did not fire Mueller and allowed McGahn to speak at length with the special counsel’s team. “Where’s the obstruction there?” the White House asks. Second, the White House provided Mueller’s team with unprecedented information, excepting only in-person testimony by the president himself. Trump handed over more than a million documents, allowed all White House appointees to testify, and never claimed “executive privilege” to withhold documents, prevent testimony, or redact the final report. Any White House trying to obstruct would have fought the investigation at every turn, as Presidents Nixon and Clinton did. Instead, Trump cooperated.

Not good enough, say powerful Democrats and their faithful media allies. After all, the Great Orange Whale is still out there, swimming and spouting. His adversaries, still fighting the last election and ready for the next one, have their harpoons sharpened and ready.

Their single-minded pursuit carries real risks for Democrats in swing districts and their 2020 presidential nominee. The general electorate wants to move on and focus on health care, immigration, inequality, opioids, and education.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows that. But she cannot control the party’s activist, left-wing base, its presidential hopefuls, or its powerful House chairmen, Jerry Nadler, Elijah Cummings, and Adam Schiff. Those zealots are steering the good ship Pequod into dangerous waters.

What they are doing now is pure showmanship: smearing Barr as a partisan lackey and demanding unredacted copies of the Mueller Report. Neither will succeed. Barr is a lawyer’s lawyer. His stature and integrity tower above his critics. Remember, too, that Rosenstein signed on to the obstruction decision.

As for the report itself, the public has seen a reasonably complete version. It will see more when several current investigations end. Some parts were redacted because they reveal “sources and methods,” but Barr has indicted he is willing to show them to a small group of congressional leaders and their aides. It is unclear if Democrats will accept Barr’s offer.

Democrats are also demanding to see grand jury testimony. Only a court can order that, and then only under very limited conditions. Democrats will litigate and lose.

The debate over the Mueller Report now becomes a purely political one, and the advantage shifts to the Republicans. Yes, the Democrats and media will use the disclosures to damage the president. They have plenty to work with. But they cannot overcome the bottom-line conclusions, and they will pay a price for their obsession. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice will move on to meatier investigations of its own, implicating the highest levels of the Obama DoJ, FBI, and national security team. Senior officials there have real legal problems.

Mueller himself will have to answer hard questions about why his report ignored those failures, glossed over FBI abuses, and included a gratuitous statement that he “could not exonerate” Trump of obstruction. That statement upends a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon and Roman civil law, where prosecutors are never asked to exonerate, only whether to prosecute or decline. They should never use evidence to harm someone who is not charged. James Comey made those grievous mistakes in his July 5, 2016, press conference, damaging Hillary Clinton and perhaps costing her the election. It is stunning to see Mueller repeat them.

The report hands Democrats another harpoon, but it is not a lethal one. The Great Orange Whale still swims free. It is the frenzied sailors — the ones who began this hunt and want to continue it — who now face real peril.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he is founding director of PIPES, the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Liberty #MAGAOne Mix

Via MAGA One Mix

6:00 am 8:00 am



Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London
Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London, Britain, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Gerhard Mey

April 26, 2019

By Hanna Rantala

LONDON (Reuters) – Irish rockers The Cranberries are saying goodbye with their final album released on Friday, a poignant tribute to lead singer Dolores O’Riordan who died last year.

“In the End” is the eighth studio album from the band that rose to fame in the early 1990s with hits likes “Zombie” and “Linger”, and includes the final recordings by O’Riordan, who drowned in a London hotel bath in January 2018 due to alcohol intoxication.

Work on the album began during a 2017 tour and by that winter, O’Riordan and guitarist Neil Hogan had penned and demoed 11 tracks.

With O’Riordan’s vocals recorded, Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler completed the album in tribute to her.

“When we realized how strong the songs were, that was the deciding factor really… There was no point… trying to ruin the legacy of the band,” Noel Hogan said in an interview.

“It was obvious that Dolores wanted this album done because when you hear the album, you hear the songs and how strong they are, and she was very, very excited to get in and record this.”

The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with another singer. O’Riordan replaced him a year later and the group went on to become Ireland’s best-selling rock band after U2, selling more than 40 million records.

O’Riordan, known for her strong distinctive voice singing about relationships or political violence, was 46 when she died.

“She was actually in quite a good place mentally. She was feeling quite content and strong and looking forward to a new phase of her life,” Lawler said.

“A lot of the lyrics in this album are about things ending… people might read into it differently but it was a phase of her personal life that she was talking about.”

The group previously announced their intention to split after the release of “In The End”.

“We are absolutely gutted we can’t play (the songs) live because that’s something that’s been a massive part of this band from day one,” Noel Hogan said.

“A few people have said to us about maybe even doing a one off where you have different vocalists… as kind of guests of ours. A year ago that’s definitely something we weren’t going to entertain but I don’t know, I think it’s something we need to go away and take time off for the summer and have a think about.”

Critics have generally given positive reviews of the album; NME described it as “(seeing) the band’s career go full-circle” while the Irish Times called it “an unexpected late career high and a remarkable swan song for O’Riordan”.

Their early songs still play on the radio. This week, “Dreams” was performed at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead in Londonderry last week as she watched Irish nationalist youths attack police following a raid.

“We wrote them as kids, as a hobby and 30 years later they are on radio and on TV, like all the time… That’s far more than any of us ever thought we would have,” Noel Hogan said.

“That would make Dolores really happy because she was very precious about those songs. Her babies, she called them and to have that hopefully long after we’re gone… that’s all any band can wish for.”

(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; additoinal reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

April 26, 2019

By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.

The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.

(View Warren’s military housing bill here. https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dy5aht)

(Read Reuters’ Ambushed at Home series on military housing here. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-military)

The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.

The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.

The measure would also require private landlords to cover moving costs for at-risk families, and healthcare costs for people with medical conditions resulting from unsafe base housing, ensuring they receive continuing coverage even after they leave the homes or the military.

“This bill will eliminate the kind of corner-cutting and neglect the Defense Department should never have let these private housing partners get away with in the first place,” Warren said in a statement Friday.

The proposed legislation comes after February Senate hearings where Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, slammed private real estate firms for endangering service families, and sought answers about why military branches weren’t providing more oversight.

Her legislation would direct the Defense Department to allow local housing code enforcers onto federal bases, following concerns they were sometimes denied access. Warren’s office said a companion bill in the House of Representatives would be introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico.

In response to the housing crisis, military branches are developing a tenant bill of rights and hiring hundreds of new housing staff. The branches recently dispatched commanders to survey base housing worldwide for safety hazards, resulting in thousands of work orders and hundreds of tenants being moved. The Defense Department has pledged to renegotiate its 50-year contracts with private real estate firms.

Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar

(Reuters) – Deloitte quit as Ferrexpo’s auditor on Friday, knocking its shares by more than 20 percent, days after saying it was unable to conclude whether the iron ore miner’s CEO controlled a charity being investigated over its use of company donations.

Blooming Land, which coordinates Ferrexpo’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, came under scrutiny after auditors found holes in the charity’s statements.

Ferrexpo on Tuesday said findings of an ongoing independent investigation launched in February indicated some Blooming Land funds could have been “misappropriated”. It did not provide any details or publish its findings.

Shares in Ferrexpo, the third largest exporter of pellets to the global steel industry, were 23.4 percent lower at 206.1 pence at 1022 GMT following news of Deloitte’s resignation.

“Ferrexpo’s shares are deeply discounted vs peers … following the resignation of Deloitte, we expect downside risks to dominate Ferrexpo’s shares near term.” JP Morgan analyst Dominic O’Kane said in a note on Friday.

Swiss-headquartered Ferrexpo did not provide a reason for the resignation of Deloitte, which declined to comment, while Blooming Land did not respond to a request for comment.

Funding for Blooming Land’s CSR activities is provided by one of Ferrexpo’s units in Ukraine and Khimreaktiv LLC, an entity ultimately controlled by Ferrexpo’s CEO and majority owner Kostyantin Zhevago, Ferrexpo said on Tuesday.

Ferrexpo’s board has found that Zhevago did not have significant influence or control over the charity, but Deloitte said it was unable reach a conclusion on this.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact Zhevago.

In a qualified opinion, a statement addressing an incomplete audit, Deloitte said it had been unable to conclude whether $33.5 million of CSR donations to Blooming Land between 2017 and 2018 was used for “legitimate business payments for charitable purposes”.

Deloitte said on Tuesday that total CSR payments made to Blooming Land by Ferrexpo since 2013 total about $110 million.

Ferrexpo, whose major mines are in Ukraine, has said that the investigation was ongoing and new evidence pointed to potential discrepancies.

Zhevago, 45, who ranked 1,511 on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires for 2019 with a net worth of $1.4 billion, owns the FC Vorskla soccer club and has been a member of Ukraine’s parliament since 1998.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev; editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Bernard Orr)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba, Mozambique April 26, 2019 in this still image obtained from social media. SolidarMed via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

April 26, 2019

By Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer

JOHANNESBURG/LUANDA (Reuters) – Cyclone Kenneth killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.

The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280 km per hour (174 mph) when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.

It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swathe of southern Africa.

The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600 millimeters of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice that brought by Cyclone Idai.

One woman in the port town of Pemba died after being hit by a falling tree, the Emergency Operations Committee for Cabo Delgado (COE) said in a statement, while another person was injured.

In rural areas outside Pemba, many homes are made of mud. In the main town on the island of Ibo, 90 percent of the houses were destroyed, officials said. Around 15,000 people were out in the open or in “overcrowded” shelters and there was a need for tents, food and water, they said.

There were also reports of a large number of homes and some infrastructure destroyed in Macomia district, a mainland district adjacent to Ibo.

A local group, the Friends of Pemba Association, had earlier reported that they could not reach people in Muidumbe, a district further inland.

Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the storm could require another major humanitarian operation in Mozambique.

“Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the government’s limited resources,” he said in a statement.

FLOOD WARNINGS

Shaquila Alberto, owner of the beach-front Messano Flower Lodge in Macomia, said there were many fallen trees there, and in rural areas people’s homes had been damaged. Some areas of nearby Pemba had no power.

“Even my workers, they said the roof and all the things fell down,” she said by phone.

Further south, in Pemba, Elton Ernesto, a receptionist at Raphael’s Hotel, said there were fallen trees but not too much damage. The hotel had power and water, he said, while phones rang in the background. “The rain has stopped,” he added.

However Michael Charles, an official for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said heavy rains over the next few days were likely to bring a “second wave of destruction” in the form of flooding.

“The houses are not all solid, and the topography is very sandy,” Charles said.

In the days after Cyclone Idai, heavy inland rains prompted rivers to burst their banks, submerging entire villages, cutting areas off from aid and ruining crops. There were concerns the same could happen again in northern Mozambique.

Before Kenneth hit, the government and aid workers moved around 30,000 people to safer buildings such as schools, however authorities said that around 680,000 people were in the path of the storm.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alexandra Zavis)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai
FILE PHOTO: A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai, India, May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas

April 26, 2019

By Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Surging global oil prices will pose a first big challenge to India’s new government, whoever wins an election now under way, especially as domestic prices have been allowed to lag, meaning consumers are in for a painful surge as they catch up.

For oil-import dependent India, higher global prices could lead to a weaker rupee, higher inflation, the ruling out of interest rate cuts and could further weigh on twin current account and budget deficits, economists warned.

But compounding the future pain, state-run fuel suppliers and retailers have held off passing on to consumers the higher prices during a staggered general election, which began on April 11 and ends on May 23, according to sources familiar with the situation.

That delay is expected to be unwound once the election is over. And there could be additional price increases to make up for losses or profits missed during the period of delayed increases, the sources said.

In some major Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pump prices are adjusted periodically so they move largely in tandem with international crude prices.

That was what was supposed to happen in India but the election means there have been many days when pump prices have been unchanged.

In New Delhi, for example, while crude oil prices have gone up by nearly $9 a barrel, or about 12 percent, in the past six weeks, gasoline prices have only risen by 0.47 rupees a liter, or 0.6 percent.

State-controlled fuel suppliers and retailers declined to say why they had delayed price increases, or discuss whether there has been any pressure from the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A government spokesman declined to comment.

The opposition Congress party said Modi’s government was violating its own policy of daily price revision by advising the state oil companies to hold prices steady.

“The government should cut fuel taxes otherwise consumers will have to pay much higher oil prices once the elections are over,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, a senior leader of the Congress party.

(GRAPHIC: India Polls: Fuel price hike lags crude surge – https://tmsnrt.rs/2XLlxik)

Nitin Goyal, treasurer at the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, representing fuel stations in 25 states, said prices were similarly held down for 19 days in the southern state of Karnataka last year, when it held state assembly elections.

Only for them to surge after the vote.

“Consumers should be ready for a rude shock of a massive jump in retail prices, similar to the level we have seen in the Karnataka state election,” Goyal said.

‘CREDIT NEGATIVE’

Sri Paravaikkarasu, director for Asia oil at Singapore-based consultancy FGE, said retail prices of gasoline and gasoil prices would have been up to 6 percent, or about 4 rupee, higher if they had been allowed to rise in line with global prices.

“Indian pump prices have failed to keep up with the recent uptrend in crude prices,” Paravaikkarasu said.

“With the country’s general elections underway, the incumbent government has been keeping pump prices relatively unchanged.”

India had switched to a daily price revision in June 2017 from a revision every two weeks, as the government allowed retailers to set prices.

But the government faced protests last October when retailers raised prices by up to 10 rupees a liter after the crude oil price went above $80 a barrel, forcing it to cut fuel taxes.

Global prices rose to their highest level in 2019 on Thursday, days after the United States announced all Iran sanction waivers would end by May, pressuring importers including India to stop buying Tehran’s oil. [O/R]

Higher oil prices will mean Asia’s third largest economy is likely to see growth of less than 7 percent rate this fiscal year, economists said. Growth slowed to 6.6 percent in the October-December quarter, the slowest in five quarters.

Rating agency CARE has warned that a 10 percent rise in global oil prices could increase demand for dollars, putting pressure on the rupee and widening the current account deficit.

India’s oil import bill rose by nearly one-third in the fiscal year ending March 31 to $140.5 billion, against $108 billion the previous year.

“The increase in international oil prices is a credit negative for the Indian economy,” ICRA, the Indian arm of the Fitch rating agency, said in a note.

“Every $10/ bbl increase in crude oil prices increases the fiscal deficit by about 0.1 percent of GDP.”

Any big price rise would also build a case for the central bank to keep rates steady, or even raise them.

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, which cut the benchmark policy repo rate by 25 basis points this month, warned that rising oil and food prices could push up inflation.

Policymakers are worried that a sustained increase in the oil price in the range of $70-75/barrel or higher can move the rupee down by 3-4 percent on an annual basis.

The rupee has depreciated by 1.24 percent against the dollar since a year high in mid-March.

($1 = 70.1800 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma; Editing by Martin Howell and Rob Birsel)

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