(Bloomberg) -- Kekeletso Lekaota spends her work days nurturing rows of cannabis plants for harvest. Pruning a few yellowed leaves from stems with thick, flowering heads, she says the job requires a soft touch and delicate hands.It’s a crop Lekaota had no experience with 18 months ago, when she saw an advertisement for a grower in her local newspaper. Now, the 27-year-old trains others how to cultivate the plants for MG Health Ltd., a supplier of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products, at a farm and oil extraction facility in Lesotho, the tiny, mountainous kingdom bordered on all sides by South Africa.“I didn’t know what cannabis was-it was only when I was applying for this job that I realized it’s dagga,” Lekaota said, using a word for weed derived from the local Khoisan languages, as she readied the greenhouses for their required 12 hours of darkness.Read More: Booming Demand for CBD Is Making Hemp the Cannabis Cash Crop Marijuana has been widely cultivated across Lesotho, one of Africa’s poorest countries, since time immemorial-long used as medicine by the native Basotho people. It’s easier to grow and more lucrative than other crops such as maize and sugar cane, and the nation’s abundant water and fertile soil provide ideal conditions. Many families rely on the extra income from selling illicitly to recreational drug users, to cover basic costs such as sending their children to school.The Lesotho government is now trying to spur development of legal plantations supplying the burgeoning global medical cannabis industry to broaden its tax base-currently dominated by exports of diamonds, water and wool-and create jobs. About two-thirds of the country’s 2.2 million people live in rural villages, and many survive off subsistence farming. Cannabis is a critical piece of the government’s agricultural strategy, which it hopes will help fund basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water pipes.In 2018, Lesotho became the first African nation to issue licenses for the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Foreign investors including Canadian companies Supreme Cannabis Co., Canopy Growth Corp. and Aphria Inc. have since poured tens of millions of dollars into a handful of facilities, drawn by the low cost of production.MG Health, Lesotho’s biggest commercial producer, received C$10 million ($7.6 million) from Supreme Cannabis last year in exchange for 10% of the business then known as Medigrow Lesotho (Supreme has said it eventually wants to export medical cannabis oils from Lesotho to Canada). MG Health plans to employ as many as 3,000 workers locally-up from about 350 currently-once it reaches full production in a few years, says Chief Executive Officer Andre Bothma.The company harvests a strain of marijuana with low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-the compound that gets you stoned-to comply with regulations. It exports nonpsychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) oil extracts and other medical cannabis products primarily to South Africa, and is working on entering markets in Europe and the Middle East, as well as Australia. “We have first-mover advantage in Africa and we think the market is huge,” Bothma says. CBD is a fast-growing piece of the $340 billion global cannabis market. In the U.S. alone, CBD sales are expected to quintuple to about $20 billion by 2024 from six years earlier, according to BDS Analytics.As cannabis rules loosen around the globe, companies are turning to low-cost regions for supply. MG Health says that even in its start-up phase, it’s producing in Lesotho for about 93 cents a gram, less than the $1 or more per gram that it cites as the norm elsewhere. But Lesotho will face competition for investment from other regions known to be cheap, including Colombia and Jamaica, as well as other African nations that may follow in its footsteps and legalize production.To get large plants with thick flowering heads, growers need controlled temperatures of between 20 and 28 degrees Celsius (68 to 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit), plenty of air circulation to prevent mildew growing and, when in bloom, a strict regime of 12 hours of light and an equal measure of dark, according to MG Health.As a medical product, it’s imperative that the CBD oil produced is standardized and uncontaminated, and quality control testing for MG Health is conducted by the independent LuCan Laboritories Ltd. Workers have to shower at work and wear layers of protective clothing, which are then washed and pressed at the end of each day.  The fledgling legal industry in Lesotho has given big ideas to illegal growers, who produce strains known for their strong psychoactive effects and sell to South Africans. They can avoid arrest by producing in remote locations and bribing authorities.Kotsoana Clementi, a 43-year-old who grows pot illicitly in his village about a 1.5-hour drive from the capital of Maseru, says he would like to partner with one of the Canadian cannabis companies on a legal business. While Clementi stands out among other villagers with his blue collared shirt, Guess jeans and polished black shoes, the operation in his small stone house lacking electricity is rudimentary.After harvesting his weed between March and May, Clementi fills hundreds of packets and seals them with the flame from a paraffin lamp and the rounded end of a spoon. He charges 15 rand ($1) apiece and can sell 380 packets a day-an amount worth almost $400 (he says he keeps 60% of the sales and the rest goes to drug mules and bribes for border police).“The most important thing would be to secure an investor-then the whole village would have work,” Clementi says. “I’d still want to be in charge of the business, but the villagers could have a 2-3% stake.”  To contact the authors of this story: Loni Prinsloo in Johannesburg at lprinsloo3@bloomberg.netJanice Kew in Johannesburg at jkew4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

An online petition calling for their Sussex titles to be removed got 4000 signatures.

Another royal baby is on the way!

Noah Cyrus had "one of the hardest years" of her life in 2018 after being gripped by anxiety and depression. The 19-year-old star has spoken candidly about the difficult period in her life that led to her writing her song 'Lonely' and called for people to speak openly about their mental health issues.

Paris Hilton stole her famous catchphrase "that's hot" from her sister Nicky Hilton Rothschild. Meanwhile, the hotel heiress also claimed that she and pal Nicole Richie's reality show 'The Simple Life' was responsible for making Juicy Couture fashionable, as she started a trend which everyone from Kim Kardashian West to Madonna soon copied.

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump laid out a blistering attack in real time Wednesday against House Democrats’ vote to impeach him, saying the party showed “deep hatred and disdain for the American voter” and would pay for it in the 2020 election.“This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democratic party,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Battle Creek, Michigan, as the final tally of a vote to impeach him was being counted on the House floor.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic lawmakers “have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,” he added.Back in Washington, the House adopted two articles of impeachment against the president as he spoke at the rally, offering an unprecedented split-screen spectacle of the political strife dividing the nation. Underscoring the political reckoning for Trump, he spent the evening in Battle Creek -- a Republican stronghold that helped him win the otherwise Democratic state in 2016.The setting offered the president a receptive audience to make his rebuttal. When a protester disrupted his speech, the crowd booed loudly and the president faulted the event’s security guards for not being more physical in removing the woman, who he called “disgusting.”“You got to get a little bit stronger than that, folks,” Trump said.The first portion of the speech touched on a range of issues unrelated to impeachment. As votes were counted on the first of two articles of impeachment -- that Trump abused the power of his office -- he was praising F-35 fighter pilots. When the House adopted the article, he was assailing the “crooked media.”The frustration Trump has displayed reflects the potential harm impeachment does to his re-election campaign, which will be the first in postwar American history waged by an impeached president.The rally was held in the district of Representative Justin Amash, who quit the Republican Party earlier this year over what he called the president’s impeachable conduct. As it was unfolding, Amash was at the Capitol -- voting for both articles of impeachment.The historic votes Wednesday evening won the support of almost all Democrats in the House chamber but not a single Republican, leaving Trump as only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.Trump was shown the results of the vote as he stood on stage in Battle Creek.“So we had every single Republican voting for us. Wow,” Trump said. “We didn’t lose one Republican vote.”Trump had spent the day preparing for the rally and watching television, according to people familiar with the matter. On the flight to Michigan, he wrote part of the White House statement on a federal appeals court ruling that a key piece of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, unconstitutional. In the statement, he called the decision a “win for all Americans.”Americans appear evenly divided on impeachment, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published Wednesday, showing that 48% supported Trump’s removal and an equal percentage opposed it. The poll surveyed 900 adults from Dec. 14-17.But the president’s campaign has insisted the impeachment effort has been a boon for him, releasing internal polling Tuesday that showed voters in swing districts won by the president in 2016 but by House Democrats in 2018 opposed impeachment by 10 percentage points.“The contrast between President Trump and the Democrats couldn’t be more clear,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “And the only part of the vote that was bipartisan was in opposition. The president is just getting stronger while support for the Democrats’ political theater has faded.”Earlier Wednesday, Pelosi opened the House debate, calling the president an “ongoing threat to our national security,” and declared that, “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty.”Democrats’ first article of impeachment finds Trump abused the power of his office by withholding military assistance from Ukraine and pressuring President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The second article finds that Trump obstructed Congress’s inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, including by directing White House employees to defy lawmakers’ subpoenas to testify.Still, Trump is almost certain to be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate at a trial early next year, meaning he will remain in office.On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the trial a “political process” and said he would not serve as “an impartial juror.”“The House made a partisan political decision to impeach,” McConnell said. “I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.”Trump has previously said he’s eager for the Senate to call witnesses -- including Biden and his son, whose work for a Ukrainian energy company was at the heart of the president’s call for an investigation -- as part of the trial. But on Tuesday, Trump said he would defer to McConnell on the procedure for the trial.At the rally on Wednesday, Trump pilloried Democrats, but then expressed confidence in the political outcome.“I don’t know about you, but I’m having a good time,” Trump told the crowd. “I’m not worried because it’s always good when you do nothing wrong.”(Updates throughout with the president’s day and additional comments.)\--With assistance from Jennifer Jacobs.To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Princess Beatrice celebrated her engagement with a star-studded bash in London. The 31-year-old royal was joined by the likes of Ellie Goulding and Robbie Williams' wife Ayda Field as she partied at Chiltern Firehouse bar and restaurant after accepting Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi's proposal. Her mother Sarah Ferguson was also at the glitzy event on Wednesday night (18.12.19) - alongside Beatrice's sister Princess Eugenie, and Prince Harry's close friend Guy Pelly - although her father Prince Andrew did not attend.