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California workers sue union for holding them 'against their will,' despite landmark ruling

Two University of California system employees claim they are effectively being held "against their will" and forced to pay monthly union dues, despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling last summer barring public-sector unions from requiring nonmembers to pay so-called agency fees without their consent.

The June 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME sent shockwaves through organized labor, holding not only that public unions violated the First Amendment by taking money out of unwilling workers' paychecks to fund collective bargaining, but also that employees must "clearly and affirmatively consent" before any fees or dues are collected.

WORKERS SAY UNIONS DEFYING JANUS RULING

The two workers outlined their claims in a federal lawsuit filed late Wednesday against the Teamsters and the University of California system. According to the complaint, exclusively obtained by Fox News, UC administrators are illegally withholding $41 per month from University of California, Santa Barbara finance manager Cara O’Callaghan, and $53 per month from University of California, Los Angeles administrative assistant Jenée Misraje.

On May 31, 2018, according to the complaint filed Wednesday, a union representative "came to O’Callaghan’s workplace and pressured workers to join the Union," without informing O’Callaghan of the impending Janus decision. O’Callaghan, the lawsuit says, "relied on this lack of information and signed an application joining the union and authorizing it to deduct union dues from her paycheck."

On July 25, 2018, "upon learning of the Janus decision of June 27, 2018," O’Callaghan resigned from the union by letter and also wrote to UCSB requesting that it stop deducting union dues from her paycheck.

In response, O'Callaghan said, the union informed UCSB that it should continue withholding money from her paycheck, and the university complied. The union said that, under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, O'Callaghan could eventually opt out of the fees -- she would just need to wait until around March 31, 2022.

O'Callaghan and Misraje are represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), which also represented Mark Janus before the Supreme Court last year.

In addition to demanding those wages back, the lawsuit seeks to invalidate a California law requiring that government employers rely on unions to determine which employees' wages should be subjected to union donations, and that all questions about such matters be directed to unions instead of employers.

Mark Janus sued because he didn’t want a certain fee deducted from his paycheck to go toward a union just because he worked for the state.

Mark Janus sued because he didn’t want a certain fee deducted from his paycheck to go toward a union just because he worked for the state. (Reuters/Leah Millis)

The lawsuit also charges that other California laws violate the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights to represent themselves in negotiations -- citing the majority opinion in Janus, which stated, “Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command, and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned.”

O'Callaghan and Misraje join a slew of plaintiffs in several states who charge that unions are either flat-out ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling, or establishing a frustrating maze of procedural roadblocks to avoid complying with it.

EXPERTS: JANUS DECISION ENDED CASH COW FOR LIBERAL ACTIVISTS

Neither the Teamsters nor the University of California system replied to Fox News' request for comment.

"Prior to the Janus decision, employees were given an unconstitutional choice: pay the union as a member or pay the union as a nonmember," Kristen Williamson, LJC's communications director, told Fox News. "Now that their right to choose is restored, any permission to deduct dues given before June 27, 2018, should be null and void and workers should be allowed to resign immediately."

Added Williamson: "The University of California system and Teamsters Local 2010 seem intent on holding Cara and Jenée in the union against their will. They've both made multiple requests to resign since the Janus ruling yet continue to have dues deducted from their paychecks."

LJC has filed eight cases in five states -- California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Mexico and Pennsylvania -- on behalf of workers seeking to opt out of union fees in the wake of the Janus decision. All are ongoing.

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According to the latest complaint, Misraje had a similar experience as O’Callaghan, and was eventually told that she could get out of the payroll deduction only by providing written notice within a narrow "time window" that coincided with the anniversary date of her signed agreement with the union.

Experts have said Janus could end up costing unions hundreds of millions of dollars in California alone. The nation's largest union, the 3-million-member National Education Association, announced plans to cut nearly $40 million from its budget after Janus, amid fears it would lose hundreds of thousands of members.

"We're seeing huge problems across the country," Diana Rickert, the vice president of the LJC, told Fox News months after the Supreme Court's decision. "There is almost no government in America that is fully complying with the Janus ruling."

Source: Fox News Politics

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Kershaw to start Oklahoma City’s opener on rehab stint

FILE PHOTO: MLB: Spring Training-Kansas City Royals at Los Angeles Dodgers
FILE PHOTO: Mar 8, 2019; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw (22) signs autographs for fans before the game against the Kansas City Royals at Camelback Ranch. Mandatory Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

April 2, 2019

Clayton Kershaw’s run of eight straight Opening Day starts ended due to left shoulder inflammation.

However, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace will have a different type of Opening Day assignment when he makes a rehab start at Oklahoma City on Thursday night.

Kershaw was cleared to make the start after throwing a bullpen session on Monday, and the rehab appearance just happens to be the Triple-A club’s season opener against San Antonio.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts joked about the irony and told reporters that Kershaw’s streak of Opening Day starts should remain intact.

On a serious note, Los Angeles will see how Kershaw performs on Thursday before deciding the next move. Considering normal rest, the three-time Cy Young winner possibly could make his first major league start of the year on April 9 against the Cardinals in St. Louis.

Kershaw, a 31-year-old left-hander, threw a three-inning simulated game on Saturday without issues.

Roberts also said that left-hander Rich Hill (knee) played catch Monday and will throw off the mound either Tuesday or Wednesday.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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North Korea Rebuilding Missile Launch Site, Photos Show

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WASHINGTON — North Korea is rapidly rebuilding a long-range rocket launch facility in the Tongchang-ri province, according to satellite imagery obtained by a D.C.-based think-tank.

President Trump walked away from negotiations during a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un last week in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The images were obtained by one of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ research verticals. The photos show work completed at the Sohae rocket launch center which is located along the border with China.

The Mar. 2nd photos show that the vertical engine test stand has been rebuilt.

North Korea originally appeared to dismantle the Sohae launch facility in late 2018 — an event in which reporters from the West were invited to.


President Donald Trump speaks as Sec of State Mike Pompeo looks on during a news conference after a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

During a press conference following his Hanoi summit with Kim, President Trump told reporters that Kim agreed not to conduct missile or nuclear tests. “He told me..he told me that he would not conduct any more tests,” said Trump.

Negotiations between Trump and Kim fell apart last week in Hanoi after North Korea requested that all international sanctions against their regime be lifted in exchange for destroying one test site.

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump told reporters at his press conference. “We asked Kim to do more, but he wasn’t willing to do that today,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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Dershowitz: Expanding Supreme Court 'Terrible Idea'

Expanding the Supreme Court is a "terrible idea" that only serve to increase the high court's politicization, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday, but he does agree adding term limits might be a good way to go.

"The highest court is supposed to be a neutral, objective, nonpartisan institution, as the chief justices said there are no Republican justices or Democratic justices," Dershowitz told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" about the growing calls from Democratic presidential candidates to add more justices. "That's really a wish rather than a reality."

Both parties are at fault for the current standoff, he added.

"Republicans are at fault for not letting Merrick Garland's nomination come to the floor," said Dershowitz. "The Democrats are at fault for the way they treated President [Donald] Trump's nominees."

Term limits could help with the court's politicization problems, said Dershowitz.

"The framers [of the Constitution] didn't intend for justices to sit on the Supreme Court for 40 or 50 years," said Dershowitz. "Life expectancy was in the 40s and 50s and people were appointed when they were 50. Now they're serving for lifetimes."

Dershowitz added he's concerned about the repercussions of tampering with the Supreme Court, as it raises political risks.

"There are some who say there should be five Republican justices, five Democratic justices and five Independent justices picked by the 10 partisan justices," said Dershowitz. "Every idea seems worse than previous ideas and worse than the status quo. We may, in the end, have to struggle to maintain the current law because fixing it may produce more problems than the problems that currently exist."

Source: NewsMax America

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Body of girl, 9, found near Los Angeles hiking trail ID’d, 2 ‘persons of interest’ detained

Authorities on Sunday identified the body of a young girl who was found at the bottom of an embankment near Los Angeles last week and said two "persons of interest" have been detained in connection with the girl's death.

Trinity Love Jones, 9, was the girl who county maintenance workers found partially inside a duffel bag near a hiking trail in Hacienda Heights on Tuesday, her father Antonio Jones told KTLA earlier Sunday. By Sunday evening the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released a statement confirming the girl's identity.

"Although the Coroner's Office determined the death to be a homicide, the cause of death is being withheld," Deputy Tracey Koerner of the Sheriff's Information Bureau said in the statement.

The statement said that investigators have detained "two persons of interest in the case" and that an investigation is ongoing. No additional details were released.

BODY FOUND ON ISLAND NEARLY 23 YEARS AGO HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED

A candlelight vigil was held for Jones on Sunday at the site where the body was found, KCBS-TV reported. Family members brought candles, flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, and photos, the report said.

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Authorities are asking anyone with information to contact the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500 or submit an anonymous tip to L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.

Fox News' Amy Lieu contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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The Latest: Sudanese army defends its ouster of president

The Latest on the situation in Sudan (all times local):

11:35 a.m.

The Sudanese army claims it has no ambition to hold the reins of power for long after ousting President Omar al-Bashir, saying it responded to calls from the people against his rule.

Col. Gen. Omar Zein Abedeen told a press conference on Friday that the military wants to "guide the country forward" and act as a "tool for change."

Zein Abedeen, a member of the transitional council that took over on Thursday after al-Bashir was arrested, tried to strike a conciliatory tone, saying: "We came for you."

He says al-Bashir is in custody but declined to provide more details. He said al-Bashir's top government members, including the vice president and associates, are also under arrest but didn't elaborate.

He pledged the military would stay only as long as it's needed.

___

9:30 a.m.

Sudanese pro-democracy protesters who spent four months on the streets rallying against the country's autocratic president are now defying the military leaders who overthrew Omar al-Bashir the day before.

Thousands kept up their sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum overnight and into Friday morning despite a curfew imposed by the army after it arrested al-Bashir.

Organizers of the demonstration say they'll keep up the campaign. It wasn't clear if the army would move against the protesters.

The mood in the crowd appeared festive, with protesters playing music and chanting, "Down again" — a reference Defense Minister Awad Mohammed Ibn Ouf.

Ouf, on a U.S. sanctions list for Darfur genocide, was sworn in as head of the new military transitional council that has taken charge for the next two years.

Source: Fox News World

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Pelosi rejects Republican bill to change national emergencies act

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at memorial event for Kasur Gyari
FILE PHOTO: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at a memorial event for Kasur Gyari, former special envoy of Dalay Lama to the U.S., on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

March 13, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday the House of Representatives will not consider a Republican bill to amend a federal national emergencies law after President Donald Trump used the declaration in a bid to get money for his long-promised border wall.

“Republican Senators are proposing new legislation to allow the President to violate the Constitution just this once in order to give themselves cover.

“The House will not take up this legislation to give President Trump a pass,” the Democratic leader said in a statement. “The House will not take up this legislation to give President Trump a pass.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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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)

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Joe Biden may have just stepped into the 2020 ring, but he’s wasted no time in throwing punches at President Trump.

Former Vice President Biden appeared on “The View” Friday in his first interview since officially announcing he is running for the White House on Thursday.

After batting away a softball opening question from host Joy Behar about why he took so long to enter the race, the ex-VP delivered what is likely to be his campaign’s major message.

Asked about the comment in his announcement that a battle is underway for “the soul of this nation,” Biden replied: “What I mean by that is we are not — this is not who we are the way we’re treating people. It’s not who we are as a nation when we’re talking about things like the reason for your problem is the other.

JOE BIDEN’S SENIOR ADVISER IN 2016: ‘WE DON’T NEED WHITE PEOPLE LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RIGHT NOW’

“It really is what I said and I really mean it and I wrote an article at the time in “The Atlantic” magazine when Charlottesville happened. This is not who we are. It’s about decency, honor, including everyone. The idea to compare these racists and not condemn them. Neo-Nazis — I don’t ever remember that happening in an administration in well over 100 years.

“I found myself thinking — by the way I travel around the world a lot as vice president and since then I have as well. The rest of the world — I mean, they look at us like my god — what happened to America?”

Behar then asked Biden how he plans to win over “blue-collar voters, a group that Trump won.”

“By making the case that we have to restore dignity to work. Think about this. The way we treat ordinary hard-working Americans who are middle class and working class people fighting to get in the middle class is we treat them like they’re a means to an end as opposed to an ends to themselves,” Biden said.

TRUMP ASSESSES 2020 DEMS; TAKES SWIPES AT BIDEN, SANDERS; DISMISSES HARRIS, O’ROURKE; SAYS HE’S ROOTING FOR BUTTIGIEG

“Go out. When’s the last time we went out and thanked the guy who kept the sewer from overflowing into your basement. What about the woman up on a bucket reconnecting a connection?

“Think about what we don’t do guys. It’s all been about dividing. There’s a real opportunity, incredible opportunity if we just treat each other with more decency.

“My dad had an expression. He said, ‘Joey, a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, it’s about your place in the community, it’s about your place in society and your self-worth. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say it’s going to be okay and mean it.’

“Think about how many people can’t do that today. This president has done nothing to help that group.”

BIDEN VOWS THAT ‘AMERICA IS COMING BACK,’ SPARKING ‘MAGA’ COMPARISONS

Biden’s appearance came after President Trump took a swipe at him in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

“I think we are calling him ‘Sleepy Joe’ ’cause I’ve known him for a while. Is he a pretty sleepy guy? He won’t be able to deal with [Chinese] President Xi, I will tell you. That’s a different level of energy and, frankly, intelligence. So I sort refer to him as ‘Sleepy Joe.’ A lot of people wanted me to change the word ‘sleepy’ to something else that rhymes with it,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “I thought it was too nasty.

“He’s not going to be able to do the job.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Biden officially announced his candidacy in a video Thursday morning, going directly after Trump.

“If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen,” Biden said in the video.

Source: Fox News Politics

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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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