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Banca d’Italia orders client stop at ING in fight against money laundering

Bird flies near ING Bank Slaski logo seen on their building in Warsaw
A bird flies near ING Bank Slaski logo seen on their building in Warsaw, Poland July 1, 2016. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

March 16, 2019

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Italian central bank on Saturday said Dutch lender ING is not allowed to take on new customers in Italy as long as it has not improved its monitoring of client behavior.

The measure follows inspections by Banca d’Italia from October last year until the beginning of 2019, which showed ING Italy did not do enough to prevent money laundering transactions through its accounts.

ING paid a record 775 million euro ($900 million) fine in a settlement with Dutch prosecutors in September last year for failing to spot criminal use of its Dutch accounts for years.

The bank said the shortcomings found by the Italian supervisors were the result of steps announced after the Dutch settlement, meant to enhance management of compliance risks.

“In the coming days ING will work hard to address the shortcomings and resolve the issues identified,” the lender said.

ING said it would refrain from taking on new customers in Italy during further discussions with Banca d’Italia, but would continue to serve existing clients in the country.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Source: OANN

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‘Tank man’ video for Leica sparks outcry in China ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

Woman walks past an advertisement on an elevator showing Huawei P30 series phones with a camera system co-developed with Leica, in Shanghai
A woman walks past an advertisement on an elevator showing Huawei P30 series phones with a camera system co-developed with Leica, in Shanghai, China April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song

April 19, 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) – Germany’s Leica Camera AG drew criticism on Chinese social media over a video depicting a news photographer covering the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square three decades ago.

The five-minute dramatization, released this week, touches on a highly sensitive topic in China. The ruling Communist Party has never declared how many people died in the crackdown and discussion of the incident is censored on social media.

The video shows the photographer hiding and running from Chinese-speaking policemen before taking a picture that has come to symbolize the protests – the “tank man” – a protester standing in front of a convoy of tanks to block their path. The video ends with the Leica logo.

The hashtag “Leica insulting China” surfaced on China’s Twitter-like Weibo late on Thursday, before being censored. Users left hundreds of comments on Leica’s official Weibo account criticizing the company for the video.

“Get out of China, you are done,” one user posted.

Others cheered the video as daring ahead of the 30th anniversary of the crackdown on June 4, but the majority of posts were scrubbed from Chinese social media by Friday and the comments section on two of its most recent Weibo posts were disabled.

Users were also prevented from posting messages using Leica’s English or Chinese name with warnings that they were violating laws, regulations or the Weibo community guidelines.

Leica did not respond to several calls and emails from Reuters seeking comment on the video, which included other dramatizations about news photography.

However, Leica spokeswoman Emily Anderson was quoted by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post as saying the video was not an officially sanctioned marketing film commissioned by the firm.

“Leica Camera AG must therefore distance itself from the content shown in the video and regrets any misunderstandings or false conclusions that may have been drawn,” it quoted her as saying by email, adding that the firm had taken measures to not share the film on Leica’s social media channels.

The video was created by Brazilian ad agency F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi and published on its verified Twitter account on April 16 with a tweet in Portuguese that said: “Inspired by the stories of photographers who spare no effort so that everyone can witness reality, Leica pays tribute to these brave professionals.”

Advertising websites such as Ads of the World republished the video saying it was created for Leica.

Some netizens suggested the video could put pressure on Chinese telecoms equipment provider Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, which uses Leica lenses in its flagship high-end phones.

Huawei declined to comment while F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, which has previously produced videos for Leica, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Several foreign companies have been tripped up by touching on certain topics that can provoke strong public reactions in China, including calls for boycotts.

Last year, companies ranging from Delta Air Lines to Muji were criticized by the Chinese government and netizens for the language they used to describe Taiwan, a self-ruled, democratic island that Beijing considers a wayward province.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Neil Fullick)

Source: OANN

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British ex-soldier to be charged in Bloody Sunday killings of Northern Ireland protesters

A former British soldier will face murder charges in connection with the deaths of two civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland more than 40 years ago - but there is insufficient evidence to prosecute 16 others.

The Public Prosecution Service announced Thursday that there was enough evidence to prosecute the former paratrooper – only identified as “Soldier F” – for the deaths of James Wray and William McKinney.

He will also face attempted murder charges for Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon, and Patrick O’Donnell.

Prosecutors, who also considered files on two former members of the old “Official IRA,” said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the other 16 former soldiers. One of the soliders has since died.

British troops arrest civilians on Rossville St, Londonderry during a civil rights march. The day went on to become known as Bloody Sunday as British paratroopers shot dead 14 civilians.

British troops arrest civilians on Rossville St, Londonderry during a civil rights march. The day went on to become known as Bloody Sunday as British paratroopers shot dead 14 civilians. (William L. Rukeyser/Getty Images)

UK LAWMAKERS REJECT 'NO DEAL' BREXIT, TAKE STEP CLOSER TO DELAYING DEPARTURE

"I wish to clearly state that where a decision has been reached not to prosecute, that this is in no way diminishes any finding by the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that those killed or injured were not posing a threat to any of the soldiers," Stephen Herron, the director of public prosecutions for Northern Ireland, said as he announced the charges. "We recognize the deep disappointment felt by many of those we met with today."

Bloody Sunday was one of the darkest episodes during the unrest in North Ireland known as the Troubles. On January 30, 1972, troopers of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment fired on unarmed protesters in a civil rights march in Derry, also known as Londonderry. Thirteen people were killed and 15 were wounded.

The charges follow a decade-long investigation that concluded soldiers killed 13 unarmed demonstrators protesting Britain's detention of suspected Irish nationalists.

In this Jan. 30, 1972 file photo, soldiers take cover behind their sandbagged armored cars in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

In this Jan. 30, 1972 file photo, soldiers take cover behind their sandbagged armored cars in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. (PA via AP, File)

But the results of the inquiry that concluded in 2010 could not be used in any prosecution, and Thursday's charges resulted from a separate police investigation into the incident.

GROUP CALLING THEMSELVES THE IRA CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR LETTER BOMBS IN UK

The investigation into the kills included 668 witness statements, numerous physical exhibits such as photographs, video, and audio recordings and a total of 125,000 pages of material, according to Sky News.

The families of the victims have campaigned for decades for the former soldiers to face justice. They told Sky News on Thursday that they were “disappointed” by the result.

Families hold photographs of the victims of Bloody Sunday and march through the Bogside in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Thursday, March 14, 2019.

Families hold photographs of the victims of Bloody Sunday and march through the Bogside in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Thursday, March 14, 2019. (Liam McBurney/PA via AP)

Kate Nash, whose brother William was shot dead and father wounded on Bloody Sunday, said she thinks about her brother – who was 19 at the time – every single day.

"Justice matters to anybody. If you have a family member and something like that happens to them... your brother, your poor dead brother is treated like he never existed, that he wasn't worth justice, what every one of us are entitled to,” she said.

British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson said the government will offer full legal support to “Soldier F” – including paying legal costs and providing welfare support.

"We are indebted to those soldiers who served with courage and distinction to bring peace to Northern Ireland," he said in a statement. "The welfare of our former service personnel is of the utmost importance."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The news of the charges comes amid a police investigation between Metropolitan Police and Police Scotland after letter bombs were sent to three London transportation hubs and a Scottish university last week.

On Monday, authorities said that a media outlet in Northern Ireland received a claim of responsibility from a group calling themselves members of the IRA, referring to the Irish Republican Army which has been in a cease-fire for years.

In this photo dated Tuesday March 5, 2019, issued by Britain's Metropolitan Police showing a suspect package after it ignited, sent to Heathrow airport, one of three packages being treated as a linked series by Britain’s counter-terrorism police. 

In this photo dated Tuesday March 5, 2019, issued by Britain's Metropolitan Police showing a suspect package after it ignited, sent to Heathrow airport, one of three packages being treated as a linked series by Britain’s counter-terrorism police.  (Britain's Metropolitan Police via AP)

All homemade devices – sent to the Waterloo rail station in central London, offices at Heathrow and London City Airports, and the University of Glasgow – had stamps from the Irish Republic and had Dublin as the return address. They also bore stamps issued by Ireland’s post office to mark Valentine’s Day.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx open to outside investigation into Jussie Smollett case

After intense public backlash, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said Friday night that she is open to an outside investigation into her office’s dramatic decision to dismiss all charges against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett.

In an op-ed for The Chicago Tribune, Foxx admitted that a third-party review into the high-profile case would help maintain transparency.

The surprise decision to drop charges on Tuesday, followed by Smollett's claims of innocence and exoneration paired with an immediate rebuke from Chicago's mayor and police superintendent that it was a "whitewash of justice" put pressure on the state's attorney's office to defend its actions.

“I am not perfect, nor is any other prosecutor out there, but ensuring that I and my office have our community’s trust is paramount,” Foxx, who ran on a platform of transparency, wrote.

TRUMP SAYS DOJ, FBI TO REVIEW OUTRAGEOUS DECISION TO DROP CHARGES IN JUSSIE SMOLLETT CASE 

Smollett is accused of staging an anti-gay, racist attack on himself in January in order to promote his career. He has denied the charges from the start and says two men approached him, beat him, threw bleach on him and tied a rope around his neck before shouting, "This is MAGA country," in reference to President Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

In order to investigate the hate crime, the city removed 24 detectives from their regular cases, expending up to 1,000 hours to hunt down the truth.

“In determining whether or not to pursue charges, prosecutors are required to balance the severity of the crime against the likelihood of securing a conviction,” Foxx wrote. “For a variety of reasons ... my office believed the likelihood of securing a conviction was not certain.”

Foxx said Smollett’s “alleged unstable actions have probably caused him more harm than any court-ordered penance could.” But she added that jails should be reserved for those who commit violent crimes.

Her defense isn't swaying many people.

CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUP AFTER CHARGES DROPPED 

"Foxx could have distanced herself from this blunder given that her own blunder — emailing and texting with people close to Smollett early in the investigation — had prompted her to step away from the case and leave it to underlings," Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote. "But she grabbed ownership of it Wednesday, giving interviews in which she expressed pride and confidence in the way her office had handled the case."

Zorn, like so many others in Chicago, believe Foxx "probably will and arguably should lose her job next year over her office's handling of the Jussie Smollett case."

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Foxx's actions also prompted both the National District Attorneys Association and the Illinois Prosecutors bar Association to sharply criticize her office.

President Trump even waded into the controversy, saying he'd asked federal law enforcement officials to look into Smollett's case.

“I think the case in Chicago is an absolute embarrassment to our country, and I have asked that they look at it,” Trump said.

Source: Fox News National

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EU leaders agree to short-term Brexit delay, granting PM Theresa May a lifeline

European Union leaders on Thursday night agreed to a short-term Brexit extension in order to allow British Prime Minister Theresa May more time to get her withdrawal agreement through Parliament -- just a week before Britain was scheduled to leave the bloc.

Britain was due to leave the E.U. on March 29 without a deal after the withdrawal agreement May negotiated with E.U. leaders in 2018 was shot down for the second time by lawmakers last week -- hurling Britain into a full-blown political crisis and leaving May scrambling for a solution to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.

TRUMP BACKS BREXIT BY PROMISING A 'LARGE SCALE TRADE DEAL' WITH UK

May’s government, as well as business leaders and pro-Remain politicians, have warned that leaving without a deal would cause chaos at ports, and lead to food and medicine shortages across the country. More pro-Brexit MPs have insisted that those alleged perils are overblown.

May is expected to put her deal again to Parliament next week, hoping that concessions that she has made to her Northern Irish coalition partner the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will persuade them to back her deal and in turn convince the hardline Brexiteers in her own party to back her deal as a result.

To get more time to get lawmakers on her side, and to allow for the technical details of the deal through Parliament, she traveled to Brussels with a request of a delay until June 30.

The European Council, which consists of the leaders of the E.U.’s member states, had appeared skeptical of giving any delay without a firm plan, but on Thursday night announced they had agreed to a pause until May 22 -- although that is conditional on British lawmakers approving the deal next week.

UK LAWMAKERS REJECT 'NO DEAL' BREXIT, TAKE STEP CLOSER TO DELAYING DEPARTURE

If May is unsuccessful in getting her deal through Parliament, then that delay will only be until April 12, where lawmakers will then face the choice of either leaving without a deal, approving some sort of new or alternative deal, or revoking Article 50 -- the mechanism that triggers Britain’s departure from the bloc.

"What this means in practice is that until that date all options will remain open and the cliff-edge date will be delayed," European Council President Donald Tusk said in a press conference.

May used her remarks at a second press conference to focus on rallying MPs back home to her deal, urging them to pass the legislation.

“I know MPs on all sides of the debate have passionate views and I respect those different positions,” she said. “I hope we can all agree we are now at the moment of decision and I will make every effort to ensure we are able to leave with a deal and move our country forward.”

May has ruled out revoking Article 50, and has said that doing so -- in order to go back to the public with a second referendum -- would risk undermining the British public’s trust in democracy.

"I don’t believe that’s what you want and it is not what I want," May said in a televised speech from 10 Downing Street Wednesday night. "We asked you the question already and you gave us your answer. Now, you want us to get on with it."

If there had been a longer delay, it would have required Britain taking part in the European Parliament elections in May, something that it appears neither the British government nor E.U. leaders want to happen. May has also faced pressure to either resign or hold a general election as a way to break the deadlock in Parliament.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

It is far from clear that May’s deal will muster enough votes to pass, having been rejected 391-242 just this month. That vote came just two months after it was shot down 432-202 in January -- the largest defeat for a prime minister in the history of the House of Commons.

While many on the left in Parliament oppose leaving the E.U. altogether and want a second referendum instead, much of the opposition to the deal from the right and the DUP comes from concern over the “backstop” -- a safety net by which the U.K. temporarily remains in a customs union until a trade deal in secured, so as to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Critics have pointed to the lack of a unilateral exit mechanism in the backstop as evidence that it could lead to Britain never leaving the bloc, or being forced to accept unfavorable trading terms.

May announced earlier this month that she had secured "legally binding" changes to the agreement to prevent a permanent backstop, but it was not enough to get the deal through. The government is hoping that the new assurances to the DUP bring its lawmakers on board and that the risk of no Brexit at all begins to move more pro-Brexit MPs to reluctantly back the deal.

Even if the government whips up enough votes, the deal may not even be put before Parliament. Speaker John Bercow warned on Monday that he would not allow legislation that was “substantially the same” as that that had been rejected by Parliament twice already.

Source: Fox News World

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Woman crashes car and injures leg after spotting spider in driver’s area, police say

A woman in New York totaled her car and injured her leg — all over a spider.

An unidentified woman let her arachnophobia get the best of her on Wednesday when she spotted a spider inside the car while she was driving and panicked, Cairo police said. She lost control of the vehicle, crashed into stone barrier and injured her leg.

Photos showed the front of the vehicle wrecked. Cairo fire and ambulance, Green County medics and sheriffs all responded to the scene on Silver Spur Road.

WOMAN STEALS ELECTRIC SCOOTER FROM WALMART, DRIVES IT TO WAFFLE HOUSE TO GET COFFEE, POLICE SAY

Cairo fire and ambulance, Green County medics and sheriffs all responded to the scene on Silver Spur Road in Cairo, N.Y.

Cairo fire and ambulance, Green County medics and sheriffs all responded to the scene on Silver Spur Road in Cairo, N.Y. (Cairo, New York, Police Department)

Police said they were posting about the crash to “bring up a contributing factor [of collisions] that is not covered too often.”

“We know that it is easier for some drivers than others but PLEASE, try to teach new drivers and yourselves to overcome the fear and pull over to a safe place. Lives depend on it,” police wrote in the post.

Cairo is about 42 miles south of Poughkeepsie.

Source: Fox News National

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Why Trump abandoned his plan to replace ObamaCare

President Trump collided with political reality this week, and reality won.

I'm not talking about the border crisis or the Mueller probe. This is about health care.

When the president proclaimed, seemingly out of nowhere, that the Republicans would be the party of health care, the media said he had taken on an impossible task. And as members of his party scrambled to distance themselves from the idea, it turned out the press was right.

In a series of tweets Monday night, Trump tried to extricate himself from his vow.

"Trump Retreats on Health Care," said The New York Times. "Trump Punts," said The Washington Post.

The president framed it as a mere delay. He said that "everybody agrees that ObamaCare doesn’t work" — well, not everyone — and that the Republicans are "developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles than ObamaCare."

NEW YORK POST: HOW REPUBLICANS SHOULD REPLACE OBAMACARE

BUT ... the vote "will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House."

The obvious implication is that Trump himself will have been safely reelected. And just as obvious is that the GOP may not regain full control of the government, making the promise moot.

Trump is a branding expert who loves to win the news cycle. Declaring that there would be a new super-duper Republican plan would accomplish that, but for the inconvenient fact that he tried and failed three different times to push an ObamaCare replacement through a Congress controlled by his party. The Democratic House has no interest in weakening ObamaCare, which now enjoys majority support in the polls for the first time.

The Times reports that "some of the president's senior advisers" pushed for the administration to join a Texas lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Obama law (although others, including Attorney General Bill Barr, were opposed).

If the suit were to succeed, it would leave millions with no coverage and kill the law's most popular provision, a ban on insurance companies rejecting applicants based on preexisting conditions.

The Post says the president, in backing off, was "apparently heeding warnings from fellow Republicans about the perils of such a fight during campaign season." Mitch McConnell made clear that he would not play a significant role, and Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee chairman, said there was no plan to replace ObamaCare.

Politico said Trump touting a new health care law "was seen as a potential disaster-in-the making by GOP leaders, who knew their incumbents and candidates were hurt by it badly last November ... In public and private, Republican leaders made clear that they didn't want anything to do with the president's most recent maneuver. They begged Trump to back down, and made their displeasure known to other administration officials, as well."

FLASHBACK: CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS RATTLED BY TRUMP'S PIVOT TO OBAMACARE FIGHT AFTER MUELLER REPORT SUMMARY

The president has made a big deal in the past of promising legislative deals that he could not deliver. He convened those televised sessions on gun control that never went anywhere.

He proffered a deal on the wall in exchange for helping the dreamers that soon collapsed, leading to the current state of emergency. Democrats bear some responsibility here too.

The president also hasn't talked about the middle-class tax cut he talked up at the end of the midterms.

The reason Trump has been boxed in on health care is that he ran as a populist who wanted universal access to insurance but delivered more cheaply and efficiently. Yet that would mean preserving much of ObamaCare, which proved impossible to sell to the House Freedom Caucus while still holding on to enough moderates. That's why most Republicans didn't want Trump opening this Pandora's box.

Ross Douthat, the conservative Times columnist, says "there are effectively two Trump presidencies. One offers something like what the president promised on the campaign trail — a break with Paul Ryan's green-eyeshade approach to entitlement reform, a more moderate tack on health care, an indifference to Obama-era conservative orthodoxies on fiscal and monetary policy.

"The other offers a continuation of the Tea Party's insistence on spending cuts and Obamacare repeal, and appropriately its present leader is a former Tea Party congressman — Mick Mulvaney, the Zelig of the administration, whose zeal is apparently the main reason that the Obamacare lawsuit now has administration support.

"The first presidency is mostly real; the second presidency has been mostly imaginary ever since the failure of Obamacare repeal left Ryanism neutered."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

If Douthat is right, Trump is governing in most ways like a populist conservative — leaving aside cultural issues — and the hard-edged rhetoric from some of the hard-liners around him is mostly that, rhetoric.

That's why Trump has kicked the health-care can down the road. An actual plan that could satisfy conservative Republicans would hurt too many people, including some who voted for him.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Alex Jones – Info Wars

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

April 26, 2019

By Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s board has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to hunt for a new chief executive, ideally a woman who can tackle its regulatory and public perception issues, two people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo’s ambition to become the only major U.S. bank with a female CEO underscores the need to restore its image with a wide range of constituents, including customers, shareholders, regulators and politicians, after it became mired in a scandal in 2016 for opening potentially millions of unauthorized accounts.

Former CEO Tim Sloan left abruptly last month, becoming the second CEO to leave the bank in the scandal’s fallout.

The board plans to approach Citigroup Inc’s Latin America chief Jane Fraser, one of the sources said. During Fraser’s 15-year tenure at Citigroup, she has gained experience running consumer and commercial businesses as well as its private bank.

Fraser could not be immediately reached for comment.

The board also discussed approaching JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Marianne Lake, but after the bank named her to run JPMorgan’s consumer lending business last week, that option became less viable, the source added. The board wants someone who can convince regulators, employees, investors and customers that the bank has fixed problems underpinning the sales scandal, the sources said.

The bank’s board feels that choosing a woman might please lawmakers in Washington who have been critical not only of Wells Fargo’s misbehavior, but of the broader banking industry for a lack of diversity and gender equality, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It also believes that such a move could bolster Wells Fargo’s image with the households of customers where women play a leading role in managing finances, one of the sources added.

The new CEO will also have to resolve litigation and regulatory matters. There are 14 outstanding consent orders with government entities, as well as probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

To be sure, Spencer Stuart will approach and consider several male candidates for the CEO job as well, one of the sources said. The top priority is to find an external candidate who can navigate the bank’s regulatory issues, the source added.

Finding an outsider who meets all those qualifications and wants the job will be difficult, the sources said. There are few people with the necessary experience, even fewer of those who are women, and it is not clear if any of the obvious candidates would be open to taking the role.

The sources asked not to be identified because Wells Fargo’s board deliberations are confidential.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Spencer Stuart declined to comment.

Wells Fargo’s board has not made any public statements about its requirements for a new CEO, beyond Chair Betsy Duke saying the job should attract the “top talent in banking.”

The board wants to complete the search within the next three to six months, one of the sources said.

STALLED SHARES

After Sloan’s ouster, Wells Fargo’s board appointed Allen Parker, who had been general counsel, as interim CEO. The board has said it is looking for an external candidate as a permanent replacement. It is not clear whether Parker will stay at the bank.

Others whose names have been mentioned by analysts, recruiters and industry sources as perspective CEO candidates include Alphabet Inc finance chief Ruth Porat and Bank of America Corp’s chief technology officer Cathy Bessant.

Wells Fargo shares have stalled since Sloan’s departure on March 29th, while the KBW Bank index has rallied more than 7 percent.

Wells Fargo would be “the best stock on earth to buy” if it had the right CEO, said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Donaldson Capital Management in Indiana.

Donaldson held about 50,000 Wells Fargo shares, but sold the stake last year as problems mounted. The CEO change could convince him to re-invest, depending on who it is, he told Reuters.

“It would be very smart for them to get a woman,” he said.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Greg Roumeliotis and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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