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Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir ousted after 3 decades in apparent military coup

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was ousted and arrested Thursday in an apparent military coup as army officials took power, effectively ending three decades of autocratic power that was marred by allegations of genocide.

The country’s defense minister, Awad Mohammed Ibn Ouf, dressed in military fatigues, announced on state TV that a state of emergency has been imposed for the next three months and that the military would be taking over for the next two years to suspend the constitution and close the nation’s borders and airspace.

Ibn Ouf said after the two years, "free and fair elections" will take place. He said a transitional military council will lead the country for those two years.

The announcement comes hours after the military said to expect an “important statement” on state TV on state TV as well as reports that al-Bashir had been placed under house arrest inside the presidential palace. The circumstances of the ouster remain unclear.

SUDANESE ARMY TO DELIVER 'IMPORTANT STATEMENT' AMID PROTESTS

Thursday’s news sent tens of thousands of Sudanese to the streets of the capital Khartoum cheering, singing and dancing in celebration.

Protesters chanted: “It has fallen, we won.”

Sudanese celebrate after officials said the military had forced longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir to step down after 30 years in power in Khartoum, Sudan, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (AP Photo)

Sudanese celebrate after officials said the military had forced longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir to step down after 30 years in power in Khartoum, Sudan, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (AP Photo)

Sudanese sources told Reuters that the 75-year-old Bashir was under house arrest and under “heavy guard” at the presidential residence. A son of Sadiq al-Mahdi, the head of the country’s main opposition Umma Party, told al-Hadath TV that Bashir was under house arrest along with “a number of leaders of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group”.

Pan-Arab TV networks said top ruling party officials were being arrested.

Word of al-Bashir’s remove comes months after protests erupted last December with rallies against a worsening economy. They quickly escalated into calls for an end to embattled al-Bashir’s rule.

LIBYA SPEAKER: NO DEALS WHILE ARMED GROUPS 'KIDNAP' TRIPOLI

The protests gained momentum last week after Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in power for 20 years, resigned in response to similar demonstrations.  The mass protests bear striking resemblances to the popular uprisings in 2011 that swept across several Arab nations and ousted leaders in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen.

"We are not leaving. We urge the revolutionaries not to leave the sit-in," the Sudanese Professionals Association, one of the main organizers, said Thursday, warning against attempts to "reproduce the old regime."

Protesters pray during a demonstration near the military headquarters, Tuesday, April 9, 2019, in the capital Khartoum, Sudan. Activists behind anti-government protests in Sudan say security forces have killed at least seven people, including a military officer, in another attempt to break up the sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum. A spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, said clashes erupted again early Tuesday between security forces and protesters who have been camping out in front of the complex in Khartoum since Saturday. (AP Photo)

Protesters pray during a demonstration near the military headquarters, Tuesday, April 9, 2019, in the capital Khartoum, Sudan. Activists behind anti-government protests in Sudan say security forces have killed at least seven people, including a military officer, in another attempt to break up the sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum. A spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, said clashes erupted again early Tuesday between security forces and protesters who have been camping out in front of the complex in Khartoum since Saturday. (AP Photo)

The Sudanese government responded with an increased crackdown. Security forces tried repeatedly to break up the sit-in since Saturday, in violence that killed at least 22 people.

Armored vehicles and tanks were parked in the streets and near bridges over the Nile River, they said, as well as in the vicinity of the military headquarters where the sit-in was taking place. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. There were also unconfirmed reports that the airport in the Sudanese capital had been closed.

AMERICAN TOURIST, GUIDE WHO WERE FREED AFTER KIDNAPPING IN UGANDA PICTURED AS TRUMP URGES CAPTORS' CAPTURE

Ahead of the expected army statement, Sudanese radio played military marches and patriotic music. State TV ceased regular broadcasts, showing only the statement promising the statement and urging the public to "wait for it."

Protesters rally in front of the military headquarters in the capital Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 8, 2019. Organizers behind anti-government demonstrations in Sudan said security forces attempted to break up a sit-in outside the military headquarters. A spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association told The Associated Press that clashes erupted early Monday between security forces and protesters, who have been camped out in front of the complex in Khartoum since Saturday. (AP Photo)

Protesters rally in front of the military headquarters in the capital Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 8, 2019. Organizers behind anti-government demonstrations in Sudan said security forces attempted to break up a sit-in outside the military headquarters. A spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association told The Associated Press that clashes erupted early Monday between security forces and protesters, who have been camped out in front of the complex in Khartoum since Saturday. (AP Photo)

But the hours without an army statement raised fears among protesters that the military was seeking to keep its control. Some feared that the delay would allow al-Bashir to go into exile.

"Is there an attempt to get around the anger of the Sudanese people after they failed to end the protests by violence? If so, the revolution will continue," said Mariam al-Mahdi, of the opposition Umma Party.

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Al-Bashir came to power in a 1989 coup, leading an alliance of the military and Islamist hard-liners. Since then, the military has stuck by him, even as he was forced to allow the separation of South Sudan and as he became a pariah in many countries, wanted by the international war crimes tribunal for atrocities in Darfur that led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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SEC fines Prosper Funding $3 million for overstating net returns to investors

FILE PHOTO: To match Special Report SEC/INVESTIGATIONS
FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission logo adorns an office door at the SEC headquarters in Washington, June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

April 19, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday said Silicon Valley-based Prosper Funding LLC will pay a $3 million penalty for miscalculating and materially overstating annualized net returns to retail and other investors.

The regulator said the online lending platform from around July 2015 until May 2017 excluded certain non-performing charged off loans from its calculation of annualized net returns that it reported to investors. As a result, Prosper overstated annualized net returns to more than 30,000 investors, it said.

(Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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‘A target on the back’: North Korea embassy raid thrusts shadowy group into the spotlight

FILE PHOTO: A Spanish National Police car is seen outside the North Korea's embassy in Madrid
FILE PHOTO: A Spanish National Police car is seen outside the North Korea's embassy in Madrid, Spain February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo

March 27, 2019

By Josh Smith and Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – A shadowy group seeking to overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been thrust into the international spotlight after a Spanish court investigating a break-in at the North Korean embassy in Madrid named apparent members as suspects.

Cheollima Civil Defense, also known as Free Joseon, first went public in 2017, when it said it was protecting the family of Kim Jong Un’s half brother Kim Jong Nam, who was murdered in a Malaysian airport.

Spanish authorities unsealed court documents on Tuesday accusing at least 10 individuals of storming into the embassy, restraining and beating some staff members and holding them hostage for hours before fleeing with stolen computers and hard drives. Such an action would be one of the most militant operations ever carried out by activists opposed to North Korea’s government.

“Parties seeking to ‘out’ those in Madrid have painted a target on the backs of those seeking only to protect others,” Cheollima Civil Defense said in a website post, apparently acknowledging for the first time its involvement in the raid. “They have chosen to side with Pyongyang’s criminal, totalitarian rulers over their victims.”

It disputed police allegations that weapons or violence were used in the break-in.

Of the 10 suspects, the documents listed the names and birth dates of seven, including citizens of Mexico, the United States, and South Korea. All but one are under 30 years old.

The identification of at least some of the individuals in the group may have undermined their cause and perhaps endangered their lives, analysts and activists said.

“It was too risky,” said one South Korean human rights activist who previously worked with one of the suspects. “Now that their identities are known, they won’t be able to carry out activities as before.”

NORTH KOREA ACTIVIST

The Mexican national named by Spanish authorities as one of the embassy raid’s leaders, Adrian Hong, is a longtime activist who helped found the refugee aid organization Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), and later led an organization preparing for an “imminent, dramatic change” in North Korea, analysts said.

Spanish court documents said Hong played a leading role in the break-in, and that after fleeing to the United States he contacted the FBI to offer information that had been stolen.

Hong could not be reached for immediate comment.

Hong was among several LiNK activists who were arrested and deported from China in late 2006 as they were trying to help a party of North Korean refugees escape.

In a statement on Tuesday, LiNK said Hong had not been involved in any way with the group for more than 10 years and LiNK had no information on his current activities.

Hong told a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates in 2011 that the Arab Spring uprisings then unfolding were “a dress rehearsal for North Korea”.

Kang Cheol-hwan, a defector and founder of the North Korea Strategy Centre in Seoul, said Hong went so far as to travel to Libya to research the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster.

FREE JOSEON

Cheollima Civil Defense takes its name from a winged horse commonly featured in East Asian mythology. Free Joseon, meanwhile, references the last Korean dynasty, and a name that North Korea still often uses to refer to itself.

On its website, the group used soaring language to declare itself the “a provisional government” of Free Joseon as “the sole legitimate representative of the Korean people of the north”.

The website also began to sell “post-liberation blockchain visas” that can be bought with cryptocurrency, and on March 11 it claimed responsibility for defacing the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

North Korea has not publicly commented on the Madrid break-in, nor filed a complaint with Spanish police.

The group’s brazen actions led some to speculate that there could be serious dissent against Kim Jong Un taking shape. But other analysts were more sceptical, and say there are lingering questions over possible ties to foreign intelligence agencies.

“I’m still inclined to believe there was some professional involvement, because taking over a foreign mission is not an easy operation,” said Korea Risk Group director Andrei Lankov.

“They took computers and hard disks, but if you don’t have highly specialized capabilities for breaking the codes it’s probably not going to be useful to anyone but major intelligence agencies.”

Cheollima Civil Defense said on Tuesday that no governments were involved or were aware of the embassy operation before hand. It said it had shared “certain information of enormous potential value” with the FBI at the agency’s request, but that agreements of confidentiality “appear to have been broken”.

The U.S. State department said on Tuesday the U.S. government was not involved in the raid.

(Reporting by Josh Smith and Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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Greece won’t get euro zone money on Monday, but probably in April: EU’s Moscovici

EU Commissioner Moscovici presents the EU executive's economic forecasts in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici presents the EU executive's economic forecasts during a news conference at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium February 7, 2019. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

March 11, 2019

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Euro zone finance ministers will withhold a disbursement of 750 million euros to Greece on Monday because the country has not yet completed all the agreed reforms, but Athens could get the money released in April, the EU’s Economic Commissioner said.

European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici told reporters on entering a meeting of finance ministers of the 19 countries sharing the euro only three out of the 16 agreed reforms were still missing.

“It’s not finished, I think that it’s too early to decide formally the disbursement today,” Moscovici said.

“There are still some issues that need to be concluded but I am very confident that with goodwill and with work in the coming days, we will be capable of concluding that all issues are solved, so that we can decide the disbursement … at the latest at the next Eurogroup in April,” he said.

Greece struck a debt relief deal with euro zone creditors last June to continue various reforms even after its third bailout program ended in August. The Commission has the task of monitoring the reform progress.

In return, Athens is to get 750 million euros every six months. The money is part of about 4.8 billion euros of profits from Greek bonds held by the euro zone that is to be handed back to Athens by mid-2022 and from a waiver of the step-up interest rate margin on part of the euro zone loans.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski)

Source: OANN

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New Jersey utility worker narrowly escapes fallen power line erupting into fireball after storm

A utility worker in New Jersey had a shockingly-close encounter Monday after a powerline caught fire as it struck the wet ground after a storm.

The Manchester Police Department said in a Facebook post the incident happened at the intersection of State Highway 70 and Colonial Drive in Manchester Township, located about 60 miles south of New York City.

"Last night was quite SHOCKING for some of our midnight officers!" the department said.

TORNADOES SLAM SOUTH, KILLING AT LEAST 4 PEOPLE AS SEVERE THREAT EXPANDS NORTH

In video posted to Facebook, a utility worker is shown trying to handle a wire that was believed to be de-energized.

Flames can be seen after a powerline fell to the wet ground and exploded into a fireball as a utility worker was nearby in New Jersey on Monday.

Flames can be seen after a powerline fell to the wet ground and exploded into a fireball as a utility worker was nearby in New Jersey on Monday. (Manchester Police Department)

As the wire falls to the wet ground, it suddenly explodes into a fireball.

"Luckily, he was wearing proper safety equipment," police said.

NEW JERSEY SKYDIVING ACCIDENT LEAVES 'VERY EXPERIENCED' JUMPER DEAD

Manchester Township Police Sgt. Christopher Hemhauser told WCAU-TV he and another officer had to flee earlier that night from the same intersection when an arcing transformer sent sparks flying.

He also witnessed the second explosion, and said the utility worker was "definitely startled."

“It’s just a reminder of how dangerous electricity really is,” he told the television station.

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Manchester Police said no one was injured in either incident. A spokesperson with Jersey Central Power and Light told WCAU the incident is under investigation.

Source: Fox News National

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Reports: Raiders release WR Roberts

FILE PHOTO: NFL: Pittsburgh Steelers at Oakland Raiders
FILE PHOTO: Dec 9, 2018; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Raiders wide receiver Seth Roberts (10) after a catch against the Pittsburgh Steelers during the fourth quarter at Oakland Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

April 4, 2019

The Oakland Raiders released wide receiver Seth Roberts, according to multiple reports.

The move comes a day after the Raiders signed WR Ryan Grant. The Raiders have also added Antonio Brown, Tyrell Williams and J.J. Nelson to their receiving corps.

Roberts, 28, was set to make $4.45 million this season. He caught 45 passes for 494 yards and two touchdowns last season for Oakland.

Roberts has 158 receptions and 13 touchdowns for his career, all with the Raiders.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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New York Post’s front page calls out Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 comments: ‘Here’s your something’

The New York Post on Thursday hit back at Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., following her recent comments on the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S.

The dramatic front page had an infamous photo of New York City’s Twin Towers on fire on the day of the attacks. The towers collapsed after they were hit by planes that were hijacked. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.

CRENSHAW CALLS OUT OMAR FOR DESCRIBING 9/11 ATTACKS AS ‘SOME PEOPLE DID SOMETHING’

The page read: “Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was ‘some people did something.’”

“Here’s your something: 2,977 people dead by terrorism.”

The cover of the New York Post on Thursday, April 11, 2019.

The cover of the New York Post on Thursday, April 11, 2019. (New York Post)

WHITE HOUSE RIPS OMAR FOR CALLING STEPHEN MILLER A 'WHITE NATIONALIST,' HIGHLIGHTS HER 'HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITIC COMMENTS

The bottom of the cover read in small lettering: “Omar outraged the families of 9/11 victims by referring dismissively to the terrorist attacks while speaking to a Muslim lobbying group.”

The Post was referring to Omar’s recent comments at the Council of American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] fundraiser last month where she called upon other Muslim-Americans to “make people uncomfortable” with their activism. However, another part of the speech surfaced on social media this week in which Omar described the terror attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda.

“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,” Omar said at the event.

Her comments prompted a response from Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, a former Navy SEAL who lost his right eye after being injured by an IED in Afghanistan.

“First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as 'some people who did something,'” Crenshaw wrote in a tweet. “Unbelievable.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Omar, who became the first Somali-American elected to Congress in November, appeared on the “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Wednesday night where her comments were not addressed. The freshman congresswoman told the host she was still “learning” after she was accused of making an anti-Semitic remark in February.

“The whole process really has been one of growth for me, right,” she said. “I’m learning that everything is not as simple as we might think. As I’ve said to my constituents and my colleagues, when you tell me that you are pained by something I say, I will always listen and I will acknowledge your pain.”

Fox News’ Lukas Mikelionis contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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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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