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FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, on a flight from Miami to New York City, comes in for landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York, U.S., March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration met for three hours on Friday with representatives from the three major U.S. airlines that fly now grounded Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and their pilots’ unions to discuss two fatal crashes and the path forward.
More than 300 Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes, one in Indonesia in October and one in Ethiopia last month.
Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell told participants “he wanted to know what operators and pilots of the 737 MAX think as the agency evaluates what needs to be done before the FAA makes a decision to return the aircraft to service,” the agency said in a statement.
At the meeting with American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co, the FAA discussed the preliminary reports from both crashes and Boeing’s proposals for a software upgrade and new pilot training, said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association which represents American’s pilots.
American Airlines said in a statement it was “confident in the direction the FAA is heading. We’ll continue to work collaboratively with the FAA, Boeing and the Allied Pilots Association in this process.”
Tajer said pilots were pleased with the “very good briefing” and said pilots need to be satisfied in the training and software upgrade. He said the FAA sought pilots’ input.
“We have to unground the confidence in this airplane,” Tajer told reporters outside FAA headquarters.
American and United have canceled flights through early June, while Southwest said Thursday it would remove its 34 737 MAX jets from its flying schedule through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.
Tajer said everyone is focused on getting the plane back in service safely. “We take off out watches and put the calendars in the drawer,” he said.
Boeing said it has reprogrammed software on the 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes. On April 1, Boeing said it delayed submitting the proposed revisions to the FAA for approval.
The FAA said the meeting covered a review of the publicly available preliminary findings of the investigations into the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents; an overview of anticipated software enhancements to an anti-stall system and, an overview of pilot training. Elwell said the meeting participants’ “operational perspective is critical input as the agency welcomes scrutiny on how it can do better.”
The agency is also convening a joint review with aviation regulators from China, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other countries.
Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector general’s office and a blue-ribbon panel are also reviewing the plane’s certification.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Source: OANN
Zach Johnson of the U.S. hits from the rough on the 2nd hole during second round play of the 2019 Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
April 12, 2019
AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) – American Zach Johnson accidentally struck his ball during a practice swing on the 13th tee during the second round of the Masters on Friday, producing the kind of cringe-worthy moment every golfer dreads.
Johnson, giving his club a forceful swing through the air, clunked the ball into the marker, proving that even major champions can make silly mistakes.
Luckily, the 43-year-old emerged unscathed — pride not withstanding — as no penalty was applied and he went on to birdie the 13th hole.
The 2007 Masters champion was in the middle of the pack as he wound his way through the back nine, after scoring a 74 in the opening round.
(Reporting By Amy Tennery, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
Source: OANN
A relative of a Palestinian who was killed at the Israeli-Gaza border fence during a protest, reacts in the northern Gaza Strip April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
April 12, 2019
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager taking part in protests along the Gaza border on Friday, Palestinian health officials said, the first fatality since Gazans marked the one-year anniversary of the weekly demonstrations in March.
The Israeli military said about 7,400 Palestinians massed along the frontier, some throwing rocks, and that there were several attempts to approach the fence into Israel.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said a 15-year-old boy died after being shot by Israeli gunfire. An Israeli army spokesman said the troops were responding with riot dispersal means.
Tensions rose after a rocket fired from Gaza wounded seven Israelis north of Tel Aviv on March 25. Israel mounted a wave of air strikes following that attack on targets it said belonged to Hamas, the Islamist group which rules the coastal enclave.
The cross-border violence immediately played into Israel’s election campaign, which concluded earlier this week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heading toward a record fifth term in office.
But Egyptian mediators intervened to avoid further escalation by persuading Israel to lift restrictions on the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza and expand the breadth of Mediterranean waters where Gazans can fish.
The protesters are demanding an end to a blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and want Palestinians to have the right to return to land from which their families fled or were forced to flee during Israel’s founding in 1948.
Israel rejects any such return, saying it would eliminate its Jewish majority.
More than 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since the ‘Great March of Return’ started on March 30 last year, according to Gaza health officials. An Israeli soldier was also killed by a Palestinian sniper.
Last month’s anniversary rally was smaller than expected, despite concerns that the event, during which four Palestinians were killed, would see a major escalation.
Israel seized Gaza in the 1967 Middle East War and pulled out its troops and settlers in 2005. It says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel and fired thousands of rockets at it in the past decade.
Israel’s use of lethal force at the border protests has drawn censure from the United Nations and human rights groups. U.N. investigators in February said Israeli forces might be guilty of war crimes for using excessive force.
Israel says its troops have no choice because they are trying to stop militants breaching the fence and attacking Israeli communities nearby. Palestinians have also launched incendiary balloons and kites into Israel.
(Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Jet Airways plane is parked as another moves to the runway at Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport in Mumbai, India, February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By Abhirup Roy and Tanvi Mehta
MUMBAI (Reuters) – The Indian prime minister’s office has called for an urgent meeting to discuss a crisis at debt-laden airline Jet Airways on Friday, television news channels reported.
The carrier, saddled with more than $1.2 billion of debt, has had to ground more than 80 percent of its fleet over unpaid dues to leasing companies, pushing it to the brink of shutdown and jeopardizing hopes of attracting a new investor.
A Jet Airways spokesman said the airline had suspended all west-bound international flights until Monday.
Government officials have previously expressed concern about the loss of jobs at the airline and on the prospect of higher Indian air fares if Jet Airways collapses.
Jet’s lenders, led by State Bank of India, are still trying to seek expressions of interest in the carrier from potential investors.
The banks have received initial bids from five to six companies, television channels reported, citing sources.
Nripendra Mishra, the principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will chair the meeting at 6pm India time (1230 GMT), the TV channels said, adding that the aviation regulator and civil aviation secretary were also expected to attend.
Television news channel ET Now reported late on Friday that India’s aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola said the company had money to operate only 6-7 aircraft over the weekend and after that the lenders would have to decide how many aircraft the airline could operate beyond Monday afternoon.
Kharola said the company will meet bankers on Monday for infusion of funds in the interim, the TV channel said.
Earlier on Friday, hundreds of Jet’s employees marched from the airport to the airline’s headquarters in Mumbai to seek clarity on whether they will get paid soon and if their jobs will be secure over the coming months.
The All India Jet Airway’s Officers & Staff Association, which represents ground handlers, ground crew, loaders and guest service executives working at Mumbai airport, has filed a police complaint against the airline’s former chairman Naresh Goyal, CEO Vinay Dube and representatives of its lead lender SBI.
“The company has not paid salaries to its employees (to date) which is in gross violation of the law of the land,” Kiran Pawaskar, president of the association said in the complaint.
(Additional reporting by Aditi Shah and Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Martin Howell and Jane Merriman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A view of an office building of German airline Lufthansa in Frankfurt, Germany March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
April 12, 2019
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Lufthansa on Friday lost its court challenge against millions of euros in state aid being granted to Frankfurt-Hahn airport to the benefit of rival Ryanair, after failing to prove the payments dented its revenue or market share.
The German carrier took its case to the Luxembourg-based General Court after EU antitrust regulators in 2014 gave the green light to a series of support measures for the airport, which is 82.5-percent owned by China’s HNA Group with the rest held by the German state of Hesse.
The support given to the airport, which is only used by Ryanair and Wizz Air, included capital increases totaling 49 million euros ($55.5 million), direct grants and a charging scheme.
The German airline argued that many of the benefits of the aid were passed on to Ryanair, which was not paying high enough airport charges.
But Europe’s second-highest court said that Lufthansa had failed to show it took a financial hit or lost market share as result of the measures.
The airline can appeal at the Court of Justice of the European Union but only on points of law. The case is T-492/15 Deutsche Lufthansa v Commission.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Kirsten Donovan)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters building is seen ahead of the IMF/World Bank spring meetings in Washington, U.S., April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By Jonathan Cable
LONDON (Reuters) – Global economic growth is slowing, according to the International Monetary Fund, policymakers and hundreds of economists polled by Reuters – but that downturn is coming at a time when central banks’ arsenals are running on empty.
On Tuesday, the IMF cut its expectations for world growth to its lowest level since 2016, its third downgrade since October, and said risks to the global financial system have grown over the past six months.
“This is a delicate moment for the global economy,” IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath told a news conference.
Major central banks have reined in their forecasts, and in recent months economists in Reuters polls have repeatedly trimmed their expectations for the countries they cover.
“Last week’s releases provide some reassurance that the world economy is not falling off a cliff, which had seemed a plausible, if relatively small, risk as recently as a month or so ago. This is clearly good news,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics.
“But we remain in the late stages of this global economic expansion. Springtime inevitably brings with it an air of optimism for the future – but in the case of the world economy at least, we expect growth to remain subdued.”
Rising trade protectionism and tighter financial conditions have been blamed for the slowdown. Uncertainty over how to practically implement Britain’s June 2016 decision to quit the European Union has also played its part.
Trade conflict with the United States and sluggish demand means China’s economic growth is expected to slow to a near 30-year low of 6.2 percent this year, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
While still waging a trade war against China that is widely regarded as harmful to global growth, U.S. President Donald Trump has now threatened to slap tariffs on $11 billion of products from the EU.
Those threats come as British politicians continue to struggle to agree on a way to leave the EU. A messy exit would almost certainly further damage the economies of both sides in the divorce, with the impact likely spreading further afield.
In the early hours of Thursday, EU leaders gave Britain six more months to leave the bloc. But the latest extension still offers little clarity on when, how or even if Brexit will happen.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has so far failed to build support in the UK parliament for the withdrawal terms she agreed with the EU last year, but she now has until Oct 31 to do that or find an alternative course.
“Brexit was originally supposed to have occurred two weeks ago but the intractability of the problem coupled with political incompetence on the part of the UK means that it has been postponed yet again,” said Peter Dixon, an economist at Commerzbank.
“The scope for lifting Brexit-related uncertainty is thus limited, which suggests little prospect of a sustainable rebound in either the economy or sterling.”
THE CUPBOARD WAS BARE
What appears to be a globally synchronized economic slowdown comes as central banks run out of tools for supporting growth.
After the 2008 financial crisis policymakers slashed interest rates – sometimes below zero – and also turned to more unconventional measures to boost growth, such as pumping trillions of dollars into economies.
But as inflation has never really picked up, many of them have yet to change tack and start tightening.
The U.S. Federal reserve led the pack and has hiked rates nine times in the current cycle, but it is probably now done with increases until at least the end of next year.
The Bank of England has lifted Bank Rate twice since the June 2016 referendum, but borrowing costs remain very close to record lows and expectations for a rate hike later this year are far from set in stone.
The European Central Bank, already on its longest break from changing interest rates, may have missed its chance to raise them this time around altogether. According to a median forecast in a Reuters poll, the first increase won’t come until after June next year.
On Wednesday, ECB President Mario Draghi even raised the prospect of more support for the struggling euro zone economy if its slowdown persisted, saying the central bank had “plenty of instruments” with which to react.
However, one problem is that after pushing borrowing costs to record lows and taking 2.6 trillion euros’ worth of bonds out of the market, the ECB’s options are limited and there are fears what it has will not be enough.
“Market pricing is expressing more anxiety that the ECB is either too slow to use whatever is left in its policy toolbox or – worse – that it thinks the tools won’t do much anyway,” said Laurence Mutkin, global head of G10 rates strategy at BNP Paribas.
(Reporting by Jonathan Cable; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Hong Kong Airlines Airbus A330-343 descends before landing at Hong Kong Airport in Hong Kong, China, April 4, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong Airlines shareholders have demanded to see 2018 accounts before considering providing at least HK$2 billion ($255 million) needed to ensure the carrier – part owned by the indebted HNA Group – keeps its license, two sources said.
The demand came at a tense extraordinary shareholder meeting last week and at which former majority owner HNA did not speak at all, the sources said of the discussion, which has not previously been reported.
Shareholders questioned the airlines’ dealings with other HNA firms, including querying the prices paid to lease planes from affiliates as well as the cost of materials bought from them, the sources said, declining to be identified as the information was not public.
Hong Kong Airlines said, as a private company, it does not comment on its financial activities. HNA declined to comment.
Just weeks earlier, Hong Kong’s Air Transport Licensing Authority (ATLA) demanded the airline detail plans to improve finances. ATLA declined to comment further on Friday.
ALTA’s demand came after a travel insurer in January dropped protection against the airline’s collapse, prompting the airline to reassure customers it was operating as normal. A month before, the airline suffered a series of executive departures.
Meanwhile, the formerly acquisitive HNA – a planes-to-banking Chinese conglomerate – has been working to improve finances since China cracked down on aggressive debt-fueled foreign dealmaking began in mid-2017.
At that point, a $50 billion spree had netted HNA assets including the single largest stake in Deutsche Bank. It has since been selling off holdings, including low-cost carrier Hong Kong Express Airways last month.
At last week’s meeting, Hong Kong Airlines executives told shareholders that without fresh funds, the airline’s operating license was at risk, said the people familiar with the matter.
Executives then discussed raising HK$2 billion via share placements, the people said. Such a move would significantly dilute the holdings of shareholders if they do not participate.
Major shareholders include Chinese private equity firm Frontier Investment Partner with about 34 percent, and Zhong Gousong, a former executive and director of the airline, at about 27 percent.
HNA cut its stake in the carrier two years ago and currently owns 29 percent through Hainan Airlines, its mainland flagship airline and China’s fourth-largest carrier.
Meeting attendees demanded to see the airline’s accounts for 2018 including details of interactions with other HNA firms before considering whether they would participate in the share placements, the people said.
The airline also told shareholders that it swung to a loss of about HK$3 billion last year, the people said. In 2017, it booked profit of HK$759 million, showed accounts for that year seen by Reuters.
The 2017 accounts showed signs of rising financial strain, including a 50 percent jump in trade receivables – money due but not received – while revenue rose only 11 percent. Payments owed to the airline by HNA companies more than doubled to HK$1.3 billion, or 73 percent of total receivables.
The airline also held stock of four unlisted HNA affiliates, worth $367 million at the end of 2017, and had outstanding loans at that point of $300 million extended to two other HNA firms.
(Reporting by Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes in Hong Kong; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Source: OANN
Virgin Galactic’s carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo carrying space tourism rocket plane SpaceShipTwo takes off from Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, U.S. December 13, 2018. REUTERS/Gene Blevins
April 12, 2019
By Elizabeth Culliford
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) – Virgin Galactic’s goal to fly tourists into space as early as this summer is about 12 years later than initially promised by its founder, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson.
But many of its customers, including Gisli Gislason, aren’t sweating it.
Right up there with a few minutes in space on Gislason’s bucket list is his time on earth with other space enthusiasts and Branson, a fellow adrenaline junkie known as much for his globe-trotting stunts as for starting his own airline.
“It’s more than just a trip to space, it’s a huge, ongoing event,” said Icelandic ticket holder Gislason, who has a Virgin Galactic logo tattooed on his arm and bought his ticket to space in 2010. “I’ve already got what I paid for, so I’m just in for a bonus,” he added.
Gislason’s experience is no accident.
Since its early days, Virgin Galactic specifically set out to win customer loyalty, knowing its attempt to become the world’s first commercial spaceline would likely see its share of setbacks. So featuring its top salesman Branson, the company prioritized exclusive experiences for its “future astronauts,” building a community that has stayed loyal through years of pushed deadlines and a fatal 2014 crash.
(For an interactive version of this story, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Id1QMH)
While waiting for their trip, some since 2004, Virgin ticket holders have been busied with treats on earth: from a custom-created solar eclipse festival in Idaho and test-flight viewings in California’s Mojave Desert to spaceship-shaped cufflinks at Christmas and group excursions to Branson’s private island in the Caribbean, where they can play tennis with the famous entrepreneur and swap design ideas for the spaceflight around a campfire.
“One of our astronauts once said to me, ‘Don’t fly to space, we’re thoroughly enjoying spending all this time going to the game reserve in Africa or Necker Island,’” Branson told Reuters in an exclusive interview.
“That long, drawn out foreplay can be pretty good, the orgasm is quite quick,” he said, laughing.
Ticket holders pay for some of these particularly high-end events, but just cover the travel for others.
“That was a compelling part of the package,” said Mark Rocket, a New Zealander who changed his name nearly 20 years ago and signed up with Virgin Galactic in 2006. “It’s not just about those few minutes in space.”
More than 600 people from 58 countries have put down a deposit for a 90-minute flight priced at $250,000, up from $200,000 in 2013. The first 100 “founders” will partake in a lottery to determine who gets to fly sooner rather than later. The company expects to increase the frequency of the flights as they build up their space fleet over time.
It has collected about $80 million in ticket holder deposits, money which CEO George Whitesides said the company does not use for spaceship development. That funding instead comes largely from the Virgin Group and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Group.
Other than stating Branson himself will be on the first scheduled flight, the company has not disclosed which ticketholders will go first – though Branson is considering the possibility of some customers jumping the line for the right price to help pay the bills.
“There is a market out there we believe who would be willing to pay a million dollars to go on an earlier flight, and we’ve got a few slots at that sort of price,” Branson told Reuters.
Signed-up “future astronauts” vary from billionaires to people who remortgaged their homes to pay for the ride, from pop star Justin Bieber to Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk, 80, one of the so-called ‘Mercury 13’ women who in the 1960s passed the same punishing tests as male astronauts before the program’s funding was pulled.
Virgin’s decision to sign up customers long before it developed and tested a commercial spaceship contrasts with Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, which will only sell tickets for its suborbital flights after it completes its crewed flight tests.
“It would not have been a Virgin company had we squirreled away in secret and built a spaceship without any customers and rolled it out once it was all ready and tested,” said Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic’s commercial director and first full-time employee.
Now, after a crewed SpaceShipTwo test flight to space in December 2018 and another carrying a test passenger in February, Virgin Galactic is inching closer to commercial flight. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has reached space but its first human spaceflight is still targeted for this year, and it has not determined a ticket price or when it will begin taking reservations.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also in the race: last year it named Japanese fashion magnate Yusaku Maezawa as its first customer on a voyage around the moon, tentatively scheduled for 2023.
“FUTURE ASTRONAUT” STRATEGY
Virgin Galactic knew that the price tag for its flights, sold in advance to prove that there was a healthy market when there was a product to deliver, would require providing customer service during the wait.
“Right from the start it was obvious to me that if we were going to have customers and we were accepting fairly large deposits, we were going to need to communicate regularly with those people,” said Attenborough.
It was not clear how long the wait for tourist spaceflights might be, with Branson’s timelines shifting: In 2004, Virgin was saying it would offer commercial spaceflights by 2007. By 2012, the plan was 2013.
As deadlines whizzed by, the future astronaut program evolved, organizing group trips from the Farnborough Air Show to the ‘Cradle of Humankind’ fossil site in South Africa.
“That is something that they tapped into and wised up to really early,” said Trevor Beattie, a ticketholder and UK advertising executive working on Virgin Galactic’s marketing campaign. “They created, quite deliberately, a sense of community.”
For some, access to Branson himself upped the experience.
“Isn’t it funny how the wine tastes better when you know the winemaker?” said Matthew Upchurch, a ticket holder and the CEO of Virtuoso, a travel agency network with exclusive rights to sell Virgin Galactic flights in North America.
CRASH TESTS LOYALTY
The biggest test of this carefully built customer community came in 2014, when a test flight crash killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot.
“I remember very well waking up very early on Saturday morning after the Friday accident and wondering what would happen to this customer base,” Attenborough said.
The company reached out to customers by email on the day of the crash, both before and after the co-pilot’s death was known. There was a blog post from Branson on that day, and later, a video message. A subsequent email from the astronaut relations team said that they planned to call every customer individually.
“That was obviously a horrendous day for everybody,” said Branson, adding that his experience of a fatal 2007 Virgin Trains crash in which an elderly woman was killed meant he knew it was important to get to the scene of the test flight accident and “take these things head on.”
In the end, Attenborough said only a “handful” of customers asked for refunds.
An email seen by Reuters from the astronaut relations team three weeks after the crash said it would soon share a program of upcoming activities and trips. It advertised some “gold-dust-like spots” for a “star Galactic team” at the London Marathon – some of the sponsorship money would now go to a memorial fund for the co-pilot who was killed.
After consulting with customers, the company went ahead with one of its planned annual Virgin Galactic trips to Necker Island just a few weeks after the crash.
Now, after years of huge setbacks and surreal highs, Virgin Galactic’s ticketholders are edging closer to their flights. For some, space is still the final frontier.
“I’ve driven a Bugatti at 253 miles an hour, I’ve skied to the South Pole, swam at the North Pole. I’ve done a lot of stuff and the thing I really want to do is fly in space,” said Jim Clash, an adventure journalist and passenger 610.
(Editing by Greg Mitchell and Edward Tobin)
Source: OANN
Moderate Democrats are pushing back against popular far-left proposals like the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all and liberal tax plans — fearing they will backfire in the 2020 election.
The centrists’ move has been strengthened by the entrance into the White House race of moderate presidential candidates like former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, and the expected announcements of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., The Washington Post reported.
Because of that, the policies now taking center stage are public options or marginal Medicare expansions, market-based solutions to climate change, closing tax loopholes, and expanding tax breaks for the middle class, the Post reported.
“There was a clear story coming out of the midterms, and it is like it never happened,” Jane Hartley, a former U.S. ambassador to France who helped raise millions to support 31 Democratic House candidates, told the Post.
“We have to look at how we won. The Democrats have to put together a coalition, and it’s a coalition that includes suburban voters.”
President Donald Trump has already suggested he will capitalize on the prominence of the Democrats’ progressive policy ideas.
“If they beat me with the Green New Deal, I deserve to lose,” Trump said at a recent fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Post reported. “What they want to do to the country would be horrible. We have to win.”
Biden’s probable entrance into the race could offer the strongest counterweight to the liberal surge, the Post reported.
“Show me the really left-left-left-left-wingers who beat a Republican,” he said last week, the Post reported. “The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the members of the Democratic Party are still basically liberal-moderate Democrats in the traditional sense.”
Larry Summers, who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a top economic adviser in the Obama administration, told the Post the Democratic Party has been down a radical path before — to no good end.
“There is a bit in the air that is worryingly reminiscent of 1972, when Democrats were rightly enraged with a corrupt and malign president were disillusioned by their previous unsuccessful establishment presidential candidate, gravitated to radical redistribution economic policy, focused on turning out their activists, and failed to focus on the middle,” Summers told the Post.
“The result was the political catastrophe of Richard Nixon’s re-election.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the Arabsat 6A communications satellite, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
April 11, 2019
By Joey Roulette
(Reuters) – The most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission on Thursday from Florida in a key demonstration for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company in the race to grasp lucrative military launch contracts.
The 23-story-tall Heavy, which previously launched Musk’s cherry red Tesla roadster to space in a 2018 debut test flight, blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center carrying its first customer payload.
“T plus 33 seconds into flight, under the power of 5.1 million pounds of thrust, Falcon Heavy is headed to space,” SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said on a livestream.
Roughly three minutes after clearing the pad, Heavy’s two side boosters separated from the core rocket for a synchronized landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The middle booster, after pushing the payload into space, returned nearly 10 minutes later for a successful landing on SpaceX’s seafaring drone ship 400 miles (645 km) off the Florida coast. In the 2018 test mission, Heavy’s core booster missed the vessel and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
Liftoff with Heavy’s new military-certified Falcon 9 boosters was crucial in the race with Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as Musk’s SpaceX, working to flight-prove its rocket fleet one mission at a time, aims to clinch a third of all U.S. National Security Space missions – coveted military contracts worth billions.
The U.S. Air Force tapped SpaceX in 2018 to launch for $130 million a classified military satellite and in February added three more missions in a $297 million contract.
Falcon Heavy carried a communications satellite for Saudi-based telecom firm Arabsat, which will beam internet and television services over Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Source: OANN
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