President Trump weighed in on the Jussie Smollett saga Thursday, calling his comments a ‘racist’ slur against supporters, hours after the Empire actor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
In a previous interview on “Good Morning America,” Smollett claimed that his alleged attacker said “Make America Great Again” while pouring bleach on him and putting a noose around his neck.
The President tagged Smollett in a tweet and asked “what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!?”
.@JussieSmollett – what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA
Smollett turned himself over to police in Chicago at around 5 am Thursday morning, according to reports, without making any statement.
Chicago police said Smollett set up a hate crime hoax because he was “dissatisfied with his salary” on the Fox show.
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that Smollett orchestrated a “phony attack” in order to take “advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.”
Smollett’s attorneys had previously vehemently denied the attack was a hoax.
“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with,” the lawyers said in a weekend statement.
“He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.” the statement continued.
In a further statement to Fox News on Wednesday, Smollett’s attorneys said the actor “enjoys the presumption of innocence, particularly when there has been an investigation like this one where information, both true and false, has been repeatedly leaked.”
If Smollett is found guilty of falsifying a police report, he could go to prison.
NAIROBI, Kenya – An internal United Nations document says Kenya again seeks to close the Dadaab camp that hosts more than 200,000 refugees from neighboring Somalia.
The U.N. refugee agency document obtained by The Associated Press says it "appreciates" Kenya's suggestion to close the camp in six months. But it notes that security remains "precarious" in Somalia, where the al-Shabab extremist group is based.
Kenya calls the refugee camp, one of the world's largest, a source of insecurity. A Kenyan court in 2017 blocked its closure, saying it was not safe for refugees to return home.
A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, confirmed Kenya's plan to close the camp and said it followed a deadly al-Shabab attack in Nairobi in January.
Trimmed eyebrows and make-up aren’t features one would expect to see on a hardened terrorist, but for some of them it is apparently the only way to escape from the Daesh enclave of Baghouz, Syria.
Alleged footage has emerged of the elaborate lengths some presumed Daesh* fighters go to flee the terror group’s final pocket in Syria.
A video shared by a freelance journalist on Twitter shows a purported interview with a bunch of people detained by Kurdish militia during the anti-Daesh offensive in Baghouz.
One of them is wearing a pink scarf and a burqa, a traditional Muslim veil worn by women that covers the body from head to toe except for the eyes.
When told to remove the face covering, it’s discovered that the woman is really a man in disguise, apparently attempting to flee the remains of the self-declared caliphate together with a group of women and children.
The man also appears to be wearing heavy make-up: smokey eyes and high-definition eyebrows.
The interviewer can be heard interrogating another man dressed up as a woman.
The authenticity of the video has yet to be verified.
This is not the first time Daesh militants have been caught “doing drag” to avoid arrest. Last month, Kurdish YPG militia confirmed that some fighters had tried to escape the war zone in southeast Syria using a similar trick.
In 2015, shortly after the beginning of the Russian air campaign against the terrorists, hundreds of fighters in northern Syria reportedly shaved their beards and fled to Turkey. The Russian Air Force then began monitoring terrorist efforts to flee the de facto Daesh capital of Raqqa dressed as civilians.
Later, the Iraqi military temporarily banned the burqa and niqab in liberated Mosul for security reasons amid fears that terrorists were disguising themselves as women in order to escape.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly-Kurdish US-backed militia, last month launched an operation against Daesh terrorists in Baghouz, a Syrian town near the Iraqi border. The battle against the group’s final enclave is drawing to a close, with jihadi fighters and their families fleeing the besieged town and surrendering to the Kurdish forces.
These refugees — some of whom came to Syria from overseas — are being placed in detention camps, as was the case with Shamima Begum, a British-born girl who fled to the country to marry a Daesh fighter. The UK has recently revoked her citizenship, despite her claims that she’d changed her mind about the organisation.
Not all of them, however, appear willing to follow suit. One of the women detained in Baghouz was reported to have defended militants who raped Yazidis because Yazidi women were “their property”, according to Islam.
Shocking: Surrendered ISIS woman in #Baghouz justifies the enslavement of Yazidi women. Saying “The Yazidi women are property. In Islam you are allowed to use them as sex slaves. It’s not rape in the name of Islam.” These people are sick and should not be allowed back in the west pic.twitter.com/xKrJWr5VCc
FILE PHOTO: Jun 5, 2017; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe looks on prior to the game against the Washington Nationals at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports
February 19, 2019
Former National League MVP and Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Don Newcombe, one of the Dodgers franchise’s final links to Brooklyn, passed away Tuesday after a lengthy illness. He was 92.
Los Angeles team president Stan Kasten called Newcombe “a role model for major leaguers across the country.”
“He was a constant presence at Dodger Stadium and players always gravitated to him for his endless advice and leadership,” Kasten said in a statement. “The Dodgers meant everything to him and we are all fortunate he was a part of our lives.”
Newcombe, a right-hander, pitched for 10 seasons in the majors, earning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1949 and All-Star selections in 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1955.
The three-time 20-game winner won a World Series championship with Brooklyn in 1955 and enjoyed his finest individual season in 1956, capturing MVP and Cy Young honors with a 27-7 record, a 3.06 ERA, 18 complete games and five shutouts.
Newcombe retired after the 1960 season with a record of 149-90, a 3.56 ERA and 1,129 strikeouts in 344 games (294 starts) with the Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds (1958-60) and Cleveland Indians (1960). He missed the 1952 and 1953 seasons due to military service.
FILE PHOTO: Workers inspect railway tracks, which serve as a part of the Belt and Road freight rail route linking Chongqing to Duisburg, at the Dazhou railway station in Sichuan province, China March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
April 4, 2019
By Ben Blanchard and Robin Emmott
BEIJING/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – China is struggling to ease worries about President Xi Jinping’s signature plan to build a new Silk Road as it readies for a major summit in late April, especially among Western nations wary about debt, transparency and Chinese influence.
While China gained a major victory by convincing Italy to become the first G7 nation to formally sign on to the plan last month during Xi’s visit to Rome, others in the West have been less keen to jump onboard, though many have kept an open mind.
The Belt and Road Initiative, as it is formally called, is aimed at building a vast network of infrastructure connecting China to Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and beyond, much like the ancient Silk Road.
Following the first Belt and Road summit two years ago, in a luxuriously appointed convention center in hills north of Beijing, the second one is scheduled for the same location in late April. China is billing it as the country’s most important diplomatic event of the year.
The country’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, said on Saturday that almost 40 foreign leaders would come, and also took a swipe at “prejudiced” critics of the program who seek to besmirch it with concerns like “debt traps”.
“The Belt and Road is open, inclusive and transparent. It does not play little geopolitical games,” Yang, who runs the ruling Communist Party’s foreign affairs committee, told the official People’s Daily.
The United States, locked in a bitter trade war with China, has been a particular critic of the Belt and Road, calling it an “infrastructure vanity project” when Italy signed on.
Jonathan Cohen, acting permanent representative of the United States at the United Nations, last month slammed China’s attempt to get Belt and Road language into a resolution on Afghanistan, saying it had “known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and lack of transparency”.
Wu Haitao, chargé d’affaires of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, said the rebuke was “contrary to the facts and fraught with prejudice”.
In 2017, the United States sent White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matt Pottinger to the summit. This time, Washington said it will not dispatch high-level officials due to its concerns about the project.
Lower-level staffers, possibly from the U.S. embassy in Beijing, might go to the summit to observe and take notes, sources familiar with the matter said, though a final decision has yet to be made.
China says it always welcomes “like-minded countries” to take part in the project.
It has not disclosed a full list of the leaders planning to attend the event. But some of Beijing’s closest friends have confirmed they will go, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.
EU WARINESS
The European Union, China’s largest trading partner, has also been in a bind about how to respond.
Last week, Europe’s top leaders told Xi they wanted a fairer trading relationship with China, signaling an openness to engage with the project if it meant more access to the Chinese market.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking at the EU summit in March, grumbled about Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s decision to join the project, although she said Germany will play in active role in the Belt and Road and called for reciprocity.
Conte is due to attend the summit. Rome says signing onto the Belt and Road will bring much-needed investment and boost trade and has pointed to the fact that a dozen EU countries have already signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with China, including Hungary, Poland, Greece and Portugal.
SAFEGUARDING INTERESTS
The EU last year proposed its own infrastructure scheme, but it has denied it is trying to counter China’s ambitions.
“For China it is a question of power projection. China is corrupting what should be a level playing field by offering loans that send country debts soaring and create a culture of economic dependency on Beijing,” one EU official said.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a Merkel confidant, is attending the summit, along with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, with Altmaier saying they wanted to “safeguard European interests in co-operation with China there”.
Several EU officials said the European Commission was still looking at who to send as a replacement for Vice President Jyrki Katainen, who attended 2017’s Belt and Road summit and has cited a calendar clash with the EU-Japan summit for not being able to go this time.
China has been on a push to show that the Belt and Road remains popular, despite cooling enthusiasm from governments including in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Maldives, where new administrations are wary of deals struck with China by their predecessors.
The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, who ranks below Yang, last month touted the success of the $57-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a major Belt and Road scheme.
Wang said after meeting Pakistan’s foreign minister that less than 20 percent of funding for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor came from Chinese loans, with the rest made up of direct Chinese investment and free grants.
The corridor focuses on the interests of ordinary people, Wang said, citing as an example women truck drivers trained to work at a coal mine connected to the project, which he described as a “touching story”.
Wang told reporters at March’s annual meeting of parliament that the Belt and Road was about high quality, sustainable, green development.
“As President Xi has said, the Belt and Road initiative comes from China, but the achievements belong to the world,” Wang said.
(Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Beijing, Andreas Rinke and Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Richard Lough in Paris, David Brunnstrom in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; editing by Neil Fullick)
FILE PHOTO: Swiss telecoms company Sunrise's logo at one of its stores in Zurich, January 14, 2015. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
February 27, 2019
ZURICH (Reuters) – Sunrise Communications has entered “advanced discussions” to buy Liberty Global’s Swiss business in a deal which values the internet and digital television provider at 6.3 billion Swiss francs ($6.30 billion).
Sunrise said it would only pursue a deal for UPC Schweiz if it was “strategically compelling and demonstrably value creative for its shareholders,” and said no final decision had been made.
“In the event of a transaction, Sunrise is committed to a prudent capital structure and to retaining its existing progressive dividend policy,” the mobile phone and internet services company said late on Tuesday.
A purchase could strengthen Sunrise’s position as Switzerland’s second-largest telecoms company, and would be another European sale by Liberty Global which divested its Austrian business to T-Mobile Austria last year.
Analysts have said a tie-up makes sense, given that Sunrise and UPC’s fixed and mobile services would make the combined entity a stronger rival to the dominance of state-controlled Swisscom.
Zurich-based Sunrise confirmed earlier this month it was negotiating to buy the UPC business, which has 1.1 million TV customers but falling subscriptions, and 138,000 mobile phone clients in Switzerland.
Sunrise is due to report its fourth quarter earnings on Thursday, while Liberty Global is due to report its full year results later on Wednesday.
(Reporting by John Revill, editing by John Miller)
Renegade General Khalifa Haftar has only intensified his ongoing assault of the Libyan capital of Tripoli after the UN and various countries, including the United States have urged him to halt the advance of his Libyan National Army (LNA).
Haftar’s response? His forces unleashed air power over Tripoli’s suburbs on Monday.
Video emerged online and confirms the LNA’s airstrike on what’s said to be the city’s only currently functioning airport — Mitiga Airport — in the eastern quarter of Tripoli in what constitutes a major escalation. The video shows the moment a MiG-21 jet drops its deadly payload over what appears to be a densely packed civilian region.
Amid widespread condemnation from supporters of the UN-backed and recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) entrenched in Tripoli, LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari insisted that the attack wasn’t aimed at civilian planes in a statement.
In the video footage an LNA warplane launches what appears a pair of unguided air-to-ground missiles towards the target — it’s unknown if there were any casualties from the airstrike, though over a dozen have died since the assault on Tripoli began from Benghazi-based Gen. Haftar’s forces, which includes multiple civilians.
The UN said 3,400 people have been displaced since the outbreak of major violence near Tripoli last Thursday, with Libya’s Ministry of Health citing 21 deaths and 27 injured, according to CNN.
One political commentator and historian, Gerald Horne, placed the latest rapidly unfolding events within the context of the prior NATO intervention: “You may well expect a bloodbath to unfold in Tripoli. Which is quite tragic and unfortunate, but I’d say it’s the inevitable outcome of the ill-advised attack by NATO, led by the US, that resulted in the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi,” he told Russia’s RT.
Libya’s beleaguered Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, leader of the GNA, has been told by his western supporters not to leave Tripoli. Though the UN and France have this week made shows of support the GNA’s Sarraj, whom Haftar is seeking to unseat, France is widely seen as quietly supporting Haftar, who could be the war-torn country’s next potential strongman backed by the Gulf states and some European countries (similar to the rapid rise of Egypt’s Sisi).
France has been under pressure since Haftar’s assault on Tripoli to not merely issue statements condemning “all sides”. Meanwhile, the GNA and its backers have called Haftar’s use of air power a “war crime”. The United Nations called it “a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s office has lately said it wanted Sarraj to remain a “key player” in continuing efforts to negotiate peace between the GNA and Haftar’s forces, saying “France would like Sarraj’s government to remain a key player and to try and conclude the peace process negotiated in Abu Dhabi,” according to CNN.
Last week’s assault by LNA forces focused on securing Tripoli’s international airport, 15 miles south of the city center, but which has been out of operation for years. It was briefly taken over by Haftar’s forces, but the GNA currently claims to be in control.
“Haftar forces attacked Tripoli four days ago, mainly from the south and got as far as controlling Tripoli international airport,” the GNA told CNN Monday. “As of yesterday and today, Monday, Haftar forces have been pushed back and Tripoli secured.”
On Sunday Secretary of State Michael Pompeo had urged in a statement, “We have made clear that we oppose the military offensive by Khalifa Haftar’s forces and urge the immediate halt to these military operations against the Libyan capital.”
Explosion reported at the Mitiga airport, with initial reports suggesting this was the result of an LNA airstrike #Libyapic.twitter.com/FOcQB1V3EU
Additionally Pompeo stated, “There is no military solution to the Libya conflict” — an absurd and ironic line for a top US official, given it was the US-NATO led 2011 war on Libya’s Gaddafi that plunged the country into years of internecine civil war and violence in the first place.
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)
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)
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s military, which ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of protests against his 30-year rule, says it intends to keep the upper hand during the country’s transitional period to civilian rule.
The announcement is expected to raise tensions with the protesters, who demand immediate handover of power.
The Sudanese Professionals Association, which is spearheading the protests, said Friday the crowds will stay in the streets until all their demands are met.
Shams al-Deen al-Kabashi, the spokesman for the military council, said late Thursday that the military will “maintain sovereign powers” while the Cabinet would be in the hands of civilians.
The protesters insist the country should be led by a “civilian sovereign” council with “limited military representation” during the transitional period.
The army toppled and arrested al-Bashir on April 11.
FILE PHOTO: Small toy figures are seen in front of a displayed Huawei and 5G network logo in this illustration picture, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
April 26, 2019
By Charlotte Greenfield
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies said Britain’s decision to allow the firm a restricted role in building parts of its next-generation telecoms network was the kind of solution it was hoping for in New Zealand, where it has been blocked from 5G plans.
Britain will ban Huawei from all core parts of 5G network but give it some access to non-core parts, sources have told Reuters, as it seeks a middle way in a bitter U.S.-China dispute stemming from American allegations that Huawei’s equipment could be used by Beijing for espionage.
Washington has also urged its allies to ban Huawei from building 5G networks, even as the Chinese company, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment, has repeatedly said the spying concerns are unfounded.
In New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network that includes the United States, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in November turned down an initial request from local telecommunication firm Spark to include Huawei equipment in its 5G network, but later gave the operator options to mitigate national security concerns.
“The proposed solution in the UK to restrict Huawei from bidding for the core is exactly the type of solution we have been looking at in New Zealand,” Andrew Bowater, deputy CEO of Huawei’s New Zealand arm, said in an emailed statement.
Spark said it has noted the developments in Britain and would raise it with the GCSB.
The reports “suggest the UK is following other European jurisdictions in taking a considered and balanced approach to managing supplier-related security risks in 5G”, Andrew Pirie, Spark’s corporate relations lead, said in an email.
“Our discussions with the GCSB are ongoing and we expect that the UK developments will be a further item of discussion between us,” Pirie added.
New Zealand’s minister for intelligence services, Andrew Little, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday that he would report to parliament the conclusions of a government review of the 5G supply chain once they had been taken.
He added that the disclosure of confidential discussions on the role of Huawei was “unacceptable” and that he could not rule out a criminal investigation into the leak.
The decisions by Britain and Germany to use Huawei gear in non-core parts of 5G network makes it harder to prove Huawei should be kept out of New Zealand telecommunication networks, said Syed Faraz Hasan, an expert in communication engineering and networks at New Zealand’s Massey University
He pointed out Huawei gear was already part of the non-core 4G networks that 5G infrastructure would be built on.
“Unless there is a convincing argument against the Huawei devices … it is difficult to keep them away,” Hasan said.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
FILE PHOTO: The logo of commodities trader Glencore is pictured in front of the company’s headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Glencore shares plunged the most in nearly four months on Friday after news overnight that U.S. regulators were investigating whether the miner broke some rules through “corrupt practices”.
Shares of the FTSE 100 company fell as much as 4.2 percent in early deals, and were down 3.5 percent at 310.25 pence by 0728 GMT.
On Thursday, Glencore said the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether the company and its units have violated some provisions of the Commodity ExchangeAct and/or CFTC Regulations.
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