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FILE PHOTO: A process operator holds a handful of dried distillers grains, a protein animal feed that can be fed to livestock, at the GreenField Ethanol plant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada April 10, 2008. REUTERS/Mark Blinch
April 15, 2019
By Hallie Gu and Tom Daly
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed it is starting a review on Monday of its anti-dumping tariffs on imports of distillers grains (DDGS) from the United States and said the investigation should be completed in a year.
The review comes amid trade talks between Beijing and Washington aimed at ending a months-long tit-for-tat tariff row that has roiled global markets. Beijing has pledged during these talks to increase its imports of U.S. farm goods.
The commerce ministry “will review whether it is necessary to continue to impose anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures on imported DDGS from the United States,” according to a statement posted it website.
Reuters reported last week that the ministry was set to review the tariffs on U.S. DDGS, citing a document issued by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association.
DDGS are a byproduct of ethanol production and have become a key part of profits for makers of the biofuel. China’s tariffs on U.S. DDGS were first implemented in 2016 at a rate of 33.8 percent, and its imports of the feed ingredient fell sharply.
From January 2017, the anti-dumping duties were raised to between 42.2 percent and 53.7 percent, while anti-subsidy tariffs have ranged from 11.2 percent to 12 percent.
China bought 3 million tonnes of DDGS in 2016, mainly from the United States and worth $684 million, according to Chinese customs data. Imports that year were down 55 percent from 2015.
“It is likely that the tariffs will be removed but it really depends on the trade talks,” said a trader with an international trading house.
“It is still too risky to make any moves at this moment as tariffs are too high,” the trader said.
The trader declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The commerce ministry said in its statement that any interested party can submit suggestions and evidence to the review within 20 days.
(Reporting by Hallie Gu and Tom Daly; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Tom Hogue)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The Iron Throne is seen on the set of the television series Game of Thrones in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast, Northern Ireland, REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo
April 15, 2019
(Reuters) – Some HBO GO users were facing issues with the streaming service late on Sunday, according to outages monitoring website Downdetector.com, as the first episode of the much-anticipated final season of Game of Thrones was scheduled to air.
The website showed some users in the United States, Mexico and other parts of Latin America were experiencing issues.
“If you’re having difficulty accessing #HBOGO in Latin America, please connect to live chat at http://help.hbogola.com,” HBO GO posted on Twitter https://twitter.com/HBOGOhelp/status/1117585945514127360.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Property sale signs are seen outside of a group of newly built houses in west London, Britain, November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo
April 14, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Asking prices for British homes rose by the most in over a year in the four weeks to April 6, a survey showed, adding to other tentative signs that the housing market may have passed the worst of its slowdown ahead of Brexit.
The 1.1 percent monthly rise in asking prices was a bigger increase than usual at the start of the spring season and reduced the fall in prices in annual terms to 0.1 percent, property website Rightmove said.
Britain’s housing market has stumbled since the 2016 Brexit referendum with most measures of prices showing only minimal growth in recent months. But some data has suggested that the slowdown stabilized in early 2019.
Rightmove director Miles Shipside said last week’s delay of Britain’s exit from the European Union could spur hesitant home movers into action.
“We are not anticipating an activity surge, but maybe a wave of relief that releases some pent-up demand to take advantage of static property prices and cheap fixed-rate mortgages,” he said, noting visits to Rightmove’s website hit a record high in March.
Rightmove’s data is based on property advertisements on its website, which it says accounts for 90 percent of residential property on sale in the United Kingdom.
(Reporting by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce)
Source: OANN
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway On Sunday said she did not believe President Donald Trump had advance knowledge that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was going to be arrested by the British police and charged by U.S. prosecutors.
“Not to my knowledge,” Conway told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, when asked if Trump knew ahead of time about Assange, who last Thursday was hauled out of the Ecuador’s embassy in London where he had taken refuge since 2012 to avoid extradition.
U.S. prosecutors subsequently announced charges on Thursday and accused Assange of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.
Lawyers for Assange said he may risk torture and his life would be in danger if he were to be extradited to the United States. They have also suggested the charges could chill press freedom.
Conway said she believed Trump did not have any knowledge of what was going to happen to Assange but added that based on her numerous conversations with him on the issue, he is against releasing such classified information.
“The President believes that those who publish classified information should not do that,” she said. .”..So anybody who’s publishing classified information, in our view, should think thrice before they do that because you can imperil folks.”
Trump in 2016 said “I love WikiLeaks” after the website released emails that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia to harm his election opponent Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he told reporters he had no opinion on the charges against Assange. “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing,” Trump said.
Assange’s U.S. indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of President Barack Obama.
It was triggered in part by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the diplomatic communications – disclosures that embarrassed the United States and strained relations with allies.
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrives at the Westminster Magistrates Court, after he was arrested in London, Britain April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
April 14, 2019
By Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House adviser Kellyanne Conway On Sunday said she did not believe President Donald Trump had advance knowledge that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was going to be arrested by the British police and charged by U.S. prosecutors.
“Not to my knowledge,” Conway told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, when asked if Trump knew ahead of time about Assange, who last Thursday was hauled out of the Ecuador’s embassy in London where he had taken refuge since 2012 to avoid extradition.
U.S. prosecutors subsequently announced charges on Thursday and accused Assange of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.
Lawyers for Assange said he may risk torture and his life would be in danger if he were to be extradited to the United States. They have also suggested the charges could chill press freedom.
Conway said she believed Trump did not have any knowledge of what was going to happen to Assange but added that based on her numerous conversations with him on the issue, he is against releasing such classified information.
“The President believes that those who publish classified information should not do that,” she said. “…So anybody who’s publishing classified information, in our view, should think thrice before they do that because you can imperil folks.”
Trump in 2016 said “I love WikiLeaks” after the website released emails that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia to harm his election opponent Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he told reporters he had no opinion on the charges against Assange. “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing,” Trump said.
Assange’s U.S. indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of President Barack Obama.
It was triggered in part by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the diplomatic communications – disclosures that embarrassed the United States and strained relations with allies.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Source: OANN
Freshman lawmakers pushing socialist agendas are directing the Democratic Party even further left than the progressives, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., laments.
“You see an embrace of socialism,” Rep. Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, told “The Cats Roundtable,” according to The Hill. “You see an embrace of policies that would fundamentally steal power from the American people and give it to the government. They would essentially make us slaves to socialism.
“Those voices right now are driving the agenda of the Democratic Party.”
Rep. Cheney pointed to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., pushing her Green New Deal, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s, D-Minn., Muslim rebuke of Israel, Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s, D-Mich., “impeach the motherf–er” call to oust the U.S. president.
“Right now they’re letting the most radical voices, including Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and Tlaib, they’re letting them to set the agenda and they’re following them,” Rep. Cheney told host John Catsimatidis. “And I think that’s very dangerous for the nation. I hope that that will stop, but unfortunately I don’t see any signs that it will.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also often speaking out against President Donald Trump, has been slow to tamp down the youthful exuberance of the freshmen lawmakers, suggesting a lack of “control” over her party in the chamber, according to Cheney.
“So far we have not seen that Speaker Pelosi will exercise any kind of control, or that she knows how to exercise control over these socialists,” Cheney said, per The Hill. “They ought to strip Ilhan Omar of her membership on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“. . . We can never get to the point where . . . the Democrats allowing [Rep. Omar] to stay on the Foreign Affairs Committee after her anti-Semitic comments. Now they’re apparently letting her stay on that committee after her disgraceful comments about 9/11.”
The latest controversy swirls around Rep. Omar’s statement about the 9/11 radical Islamic terrorist attacks as being merely “some people did something” and Muslims are unfairly connected to the event, according to The Hill.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Rep. Omar infamously but claimed said last week. CAIR says on its website it was founded in 1994.
Source: NewsMax Politics
Two days after the Thursday arrest of Julian Assange at Ecuador’s London embassy, several government websites were hacked; including Ecuador’s official website, the Central Bank of Ecuador, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ecuadorian Assembly in the UK, according to Gateway Pundit‘s Cassandra Fairbanks, who was in London last week and documented the run-up to Assange’s arrest.
Looks like at least one Ecuadorian government subdomain has been hijacked. https://t.co/Ivl897ACQF pic.twitter.com/piwFjuRwIJ
— Jacob Riggs (@Riggsbit) April 13, 2019
Concurrent with the breach, a hacking group operating under the name “AL1NE3737” released a database containing the full names and passwords for what appear to be 728 Ecuadorian government employees.
I believe I’ve just found another database dropped with the full names and bcrypt hashed passwords for what appear to be 728 Ecuadorian gov employees alongside 5 admin credentials, one password of which is MD5 hashed (lol). Not sure exactly where these were sourced from yet.
— Jacob Riggs (@Riggsbit) April 13, 2019
Furthermore, Ecuador’s sites were hit with Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. According to DefCon Lab.
Among those involved in these attacks stand out from the groups / hacker DeathLaw , 5UB5, Cyb3r C0nven Security and Al1ne ( Pryzraky ).
DoS actions has consistently been against the Ecuadorian government targets, the country that gave Julian Assange to the UK police.” –DefCon Lab
…
The hacker Al1ne ( Pryzraky ) performed page defacements against and released a list of vulnerable targets related to the government of Ecuador
As noted by Fairbanks, “The cyber attack was reminiscent of 2010’s “Operation Avenge Assange” which was launched by the broader “Operation Payback” effort. The movement lead to hacktivists hitting companies such as PayPal, PostFinance, Mastercard, Visa, and others who had blocked services to WikiLeaks with a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. This is when a website is flooded with fake traffic until it crashes and goes offline.”
Following Assange’s Thursday arrest, more than 70 MPs and peers signed a letter urging the UK home secretary to ensure that the WikiLeaks founder is extradited to Sweden if Swedish authorities request it.
Sweden is considering whether to open a previously-dropped investigation into allegations of rape and sexual assault against Assange.
The United States, meanwhile, wants to try Assange for the largest-ever leak of government secrets in 2010. On Thursday, the Justice Department hit him with an indictment that claims the WikiLeaks founder helped former US Army intelligence analyst crack DoD password using Linux.
“The indictment alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications,” reads a DOJ press release.
Materials Manning released included videos of various US airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the “Iraq War Logs” and “Afghan War Diary.”
Assange faces five years in prison if convicted in the Manning case.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of the Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
April 14, 2019
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s social networking site is inaccessible to some users across the world on Sunday, according to Downdetector.com, a website which monitors outages.
The outage tracking website showed that there are more than 9000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook.
Downdetector.com’s live outage map showed that the issues mainly cropped up in Europe.
Separately, Downdetector.com also showed that there were issues with WhatsApp and Instagram, but with relatively lower count of outage reports.
Facebook had experienced one of its longest outages in March, when some users around the globe faced trouble accessing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for over 24 hours.
(Reporting by Akshay Balan in Bengaluru)
Source: OANN
A Wall St. street sign is seen near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 14, 2019
By Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As President Donald Trump keeps up his attacks on the Federal Reserve’s policies, Wall Street is cautiously embracing them, giving a passing grade to the Fed’s communication since its shift in January to a “patient” approach on rate hikes.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York surveys the main Wall Street securities companies it trades with and asks them how they would grade the Fed’s communication with markets and the public since the last survey. The central bank asked for scores on a scale of one, for “ineffective,” to five, for “effective.”
Roughly two-thirds of the Wall Street companies, known as primary dealers, gave the Fed a score of four or five (more effective) in the latest survey published on Thursday, while 22 percent gave the Fed a score of one or two (less effective). The others were neutral.
The 3.4 composite of those scores is below Chairman Jerome Powell’s 3.6 average grade during his term but above the 3.2 average achieved by each of his two most recent predecessors, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, a Reuters analysis of all surveys available on the New York Fed’s website shows. (For a graphic, see https://tmsnrt.rs/2XawZ6T).
A separate New York Fed survey of market participants that includes large investors showed that 57 percent gave the top two effectiveness scores while a quarter gave the lowest two scores. Both surveys were conducted March 6 to 11.
The grades are important because they help the Fed gauge how well its message is getting through to financial markets. The Fed relies on its credibility with investors to influence the economy.
After raising rates four times in 2018, a majority of Fed policymakers at their latest meeting in March expected that they would leave rates in their current 2.25-2.50% range for the rest of the year due to uncertainty about how much the global economy is slowing.
A well-honed message that rates are likely to stay on hold for a while can help ease financial conditions when central banks think those conditions overly tight. But if markets find the Fed’s message confusing or not credible, they may surge or slump in ways that undermines the Fed’s impact. That was the case late last year, when markets swung sharply in response to statements by Powell widely regarded by investors as communication missteps.
President Trump, meanwhile, has publicly slammed the central bank’s prior rate hikes for thwarting economic growth and he also pressed policymakers to change course.
Lewis Alexander, the chief economist at Nomura Securities, said the Fed moved policy “quite a lot” from December to March and that calibrating their language so everyone could understand it was not going to be easy.
“Powell’s stated intention to use plain language I very much endorse; there’s nothing in this world that can’t be explained thoroughly but simply,” he said.
The Fed is increasingly keen on its ability to communicate. Powell has instructed a small group of policymakers to come up with ways to improve it, minutes of the Fed’s March meeting published on Wednesday showed. This reflects concern that markets may take Fed forecasts on rates and the economy as promises rather than best-guess projections.
The emphasis on communications is also evident in Powell’s decision this year to hold news conferences after every Fed meeting, double the previous frequency. Even the New York Fed’s inclusion of the question on communications effectiveness in the March survey may reflect increased interest, given that historically it has posed that question only once a quarter.
Grades generally go up when the Fed does as expected and fall when it surprises, the Reuters analysis of grades over the last nine years show. The New York Fed did not make its pre-2011 surveys available.
Powell and other Fed policymakers have tried to dispel any perception that it could derail the economy by being too aggressive. Stocks leapt higher after Powell signaled he would be open to taking a go-slow approach on rate hikes.
In October 2015, when the Yellen Fed was navigating the difficult transition from years of super-low interest rates to a cycle of rate hikes, she got the worst grade of her tenure – an average 2.27 out of 5.
The Bernanke Fed did worse, getting a grade of 2.1 in late 2013, when they did not begin to taper the Fed’s bond purchases in September as markets had expected. His grades later recovered as the Fed limited its controversial quantitative easing program.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir in San Francisco and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A view of the U.S. District Courthouse as jury deliberations are set to begin in former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s trial on bank and tax fraud charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo
April 14, 2019
By Nathan Layne and Mark Hosenball
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As recently as February, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team dropped hints that the inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election might unearth evidence of active cooperation between Moscow and President Donald Trump’s campaign.
That turned out not to be the case. Attorney General William Barr, who has said he hopes to release Mueller’s nearly 400 page report this week, told U.S. lawmakers on March 24 that the special counsel investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
To be sure, the investigation documented numerous contacts between Trump campaign figures and Russia, a willingness on the part of the campaign to accept help from Moscow, and no indication that the campaign told the Kremlin to keep out of an American presidential race.
No criminal conspiracy was documented, according to Barr. But tantalizing court statements by members of Mueller’s team and evidence disclosed in various prosecutions by the special counsel had suggested on several occasions during the 22-month investigation that a different conclusion had been possible.
Frank Montoya, a former senior FBI official with extensive experience in counterintelligence investigations, said the words “did not establish” are commonly used in national security cases as language merely ruling out a chargeable offense.
“It doesn’t mean a subject is innocent. It means investigators didn’t find enough evidence to charge a crime,” Montoya said.
The most recent indication that the special counsel might document a Trump-Russia conspiracy came on Feb. 4 during a closed-door court hearing in Washington. Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said Mueller was still investigating interactions between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his Russian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik as critical to the inquiry.
“This goes to the larger view of what we think is going on, and what we think the motive here is,” Weissmann said, according to a transcript released days later that indicated Mueller might be on the verge of a breakthrough. “This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the Special Counsel’s Office is investigating.”
Mueller’s team said Manafort shared political polling data from the campaign with Kilimnik, who the special counsel has said had ties to Russian intelligence. The two also discussed proposals for a Ukrainian client to solve the Crimea conflict in a Kremlin-friendly way, Mueller said.
Three weeks after Weissmann made his comments, Mueller’s office backtracked. It said in a court filing it needed to correct its assertions about Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik. Partially redacted court filings indicated the correction may relate to the polling data.
When Mueller’s report is released – with parts blacked out by Barr to protect certain sensitive information – it is unclear how harsh a light it will shine on the contacts between Trump campaign figures and Russians. Those making contacts included the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and campaign figures Manafort, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos.
Mueller and U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russia employed hacking and propaganda to sow division in the United States, harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump’s candidacy. Moscow has denied election interference.
A key event in the question of conspiracy was a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York in which Manafort, Kushner and Trump Jr. met with Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had offered damaging information about Clinton. After being promised “dirt” on Clinton, Trump Jr. wrote in an email, “I love it.”
Mueller charged 34 people and three Russian entities. He convicted or secured guilty pleas from Trump aides including Manafort, Flynn, Cohen and Papadopoulos, and charged Russian intelligence officers and a Russian “troll farm.”
Perhaps no avenue of inquiry appeared more promising on the question of conspiracy than Mueller’s pursuit of longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone, who had suggested he had a relationship with the WikiLeaks website and advance knowledge of its release of Democratic emails the special counsel said were stolen by Russians to hurt Clinton.
But when Mueller indicted Stone in January, the seven criminal counts did not refer to conspiring with Russians and there was no allegation of close ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who separately was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to a 2010 hack of U.S. government computers.
Mueller questioned more than a half dozen Stone associates to establish if he had acted as a go-between for the campaign with Wikileaks. Stone associates who spoke to Reuters suggested Stone was struggling to make contact with Assange rather than having an inside track.
Randy Credico, a New York comedian associated with Stone who appeared before Mueller’s grand jury, is a case in point. Text messages seen by Reuters show Stone sought to use Credico as an intermediary with Assange and urged Credico to feed WikiLeaks anti-Clinton research. Credico told Reuters he never made good on the request.
Mueller’s investigation was aided by witnesses including Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying about his communications with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in 2016, and Samuel Patten, a political consultant and former Kilimnik business partner sentenced to probation on Friday after prosecutors credited him for assisting Mueller and other probes.
It is unclear to what extent Mueller’s inability to secure fulsome cooperation from others impeded him.
A judge found that Manafort, after agreeing to cooperate, repeatedly lied to prosecutors about interactions with Kilimnik and other matters, breaching a plea deal. Kilimnik, charged along with Manafort with conspiring to tamper with witnesses, was believed to be in Russia, out of reach.
There also are witnesses like Papadopoulos, the first former Trump aide charged by Mueller who initially cooperated but became increasingly critical of the special counsel, especially after completing a two-week prison term in December.
Montoya, the former FBI agent, said it should fall to Congress to decide whether the conduct found by Mueller warranted punishment such as the impeachment process in Congress to remove a president from office.
“History suggests,” Montoya said, “the impeachment process does not rely on establishing wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt.”
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Will Dunham)
Source: OANN
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