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9-year-old Los Angeles area girl found in duffel bag ID'd

Investigators have identified a Los Angeles-area girl found dead in a duffel bag along a suburban equestrian trail, and two people have been detained in connection with the case.

The coroner's office determined that the girl was 9-year-old Trinity Love Jones and ruled her death a homicide, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said late Sunday.

The department has declined to say how the girl was killed but planned to release additional information later in the week.

The two people detained in Trinity's deaths are considered persons of interest and their names have not been released.

Trinity's body was found on March 5 partly protruding from the duffel bag at the bottom of an embankment in an unincorporated area of Hacienda Heights, southeast of Los Angeles.

Investigators believe her body was there less than 48 hours.

A sketch of Trinity released to help identify her showed her wearing a pink shirt that read, "Future Princess Hero."

A man who identified himself as Trinity's father told KTLA-TV that his daughter was full of life and joy and that he's in shock over her death.

"Words can't explain what I'm feeling right now," Antonio Jones said. "I just want answers. I just want justice."

He declined to discuss details about the case or Trinity's living situation.

Meanwhile a large memorial near where Trinity's body was found continued to grow Monday, with people stopping by to add Disney balloons, teddy bears, flowers and photos of the bright-eyed girl. Signs read, "Justice for Trinity," and "Rest in Heaven, Princess."

Source: Fox News National

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Pakistani police: Road accident kills 6 schoolgirls, driver

Pakistani police say a bus has hit a rickshaw killing six schoolgirls and driver in the eastern Bhakkar district.

Senior officer Shahista Nadeem says one girl was also critically injured in the accident Saturday.

The official says the girls were returning home from their first-year high school exams when the bus sped into their rickshaw.

She added that angry protesters partly burned the bus, before police could arrive.

Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan because of lax safety standards and disregard for traffic laws.

Source: Fox News World

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Senate pays tribute to Fritz Hollings, the ‘senator from central casting’

Nobody talked like the late Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.

Nobody sounded like Fritz Hollings.

Nobody was Fritz Hollings.

"When it comes to Senator Hollings, they broke the mold," observed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in a statement. "Fritz was a giant of a man who was often called the 'senator from central casting.'"

"He was an original," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Fritz Hollings died over the weekend at age 97. Hollings was tall, standing about 6'3". He was topped by a shock of sleek, white hair, always demarcated by a crisp part on the left. Always dressed impeccably, in tailored, pinstripe suits.

Hollings just looked like a senator.

And then there was the voice.

The pipes were what really distinguished Hollings. His voice was deep like a hollowed-out, Lowcountry well. The result was a resonant, rich, southern drawl. When Hollings spoke, he just sounded the way you thought a senator from South Carolina would sound. Think Foghorn Leghorn crossed with James Earl Jones.

And when Hollings took the floor, everything in the Senate stopped. You couldn't ignore him. Hollings would prowl around his desk near the rear of the Senate chamber. Hollings didn't need props. He didn't need a stack of papers. Hollings just had his own, 100-watt sound system. The senator would thunder from the back of the Senate and his voice would rattle the copper spittoons which remain on the floor in front.

"If this budget is balanced, I'll jump off the Capitol Dome!" Hollings once cried during a speech about fiscal discipline in the mid-1990s. He stretched out the word "dome" into a polysyllabic melody.

Hollings then proceeded to upbraid his colleagues who would "ride around the countryside in limousines," describing the entire affair "a grand farce."

Only, Hollings didn’t quite say "farce." He stretched out the word "farce" like a grade-school kid playing with slime. There was no discernable "r" in Hollings’s enunciation.

Hollings served in the Senate from 1966 through 2005. But despite his lengthy tenure in Washington, Hollings was South Carolina's junior senator for all but the final two years of his career. That made Hollings the longest-serving junior senator in U.S. history. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., arrived in the Senate in 1954, and after a seven-month gap in 1956, never left until he retired at age 100 in January 2003. Thurmond's longevity always blocked Hollings when it came to seniority.

Skyrocketing federal spending was Hollings' key issue. He teamed with then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and the late Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., to create a balanced budget plan called "Gramm-Rudman-Hollings" in 1985. You may have heard of "sequestration," the package of mandatory spending cuts imposed by the debt ceiling deal of 2011. Sequestration lingers to this day over what Congress terms as "discretionary" spending. However, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was the original version of sequestration. It canceled spending, preventing Congress from exceeding certain fiscal ceilings.

The House and Senate approved Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in 1985. But the Supreme Court case Bowsher v. Synar found the automatic cuts to be unconstitutional. The argument was that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings ceded spending authority to the executive branch. Senators retooled the plan in 1987, but it never resulted in smaller deficits. Hollings later lopped off his surname from the legislation, saying the revised effort lacked teeth.

As much as you remembered Hollings' voice, people often recalled what he said – for good or ill.

Congressional Republicans frequently pushed for tax cuts. Hollings often suggested that the government really needed a tax increase to balance the books.

Hollings sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. "Shoot all the economists," he said. "Shoot all the pollsters." It wouldn't have helped. Hollings dropped out of the race after a poor showing in New Hampshire.

Hollings once referred to then-Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, as "the senator from B'nai B'rith." Metzenbaum, who was Jewish, took issue with the South Carolinian's characterization of him and the Jewish service organization. Hollings later apologized and the language was stripped from the Congressional Record.

When discussing an international trade meeting in Switzerland, Hollings said that "these potentates down from Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good, square meal in Geneva."

Hollings chaired a Commerce Committee hearing about violence on TV in the early 1990s.

"What is it? Buffcoat and Beaver or Beaver and something else?" Hollings said at the hearing, referring to MTV's animated ne'er-do-wells Beavis and Butt-Head. "I don't watch it. But whatever it was, it was on at 7. Buffcoat. And they put it on now at 10:30."

Current South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ran against Hollings for Senate in 1986.

“I’ll take a drug test if you’ll take an IQ test,” snapped Hollings during one contentious exchange.

Hollings prevailed with 63 percent of the vote. But McMaster and former Vice President Joe Biden will both speak at Hollings's funeral next week. Hollings will also lie in state in the South Carolina statehouse.

When Hollings was on his way out from the Senate in 2005, he noted that a letter to the editor of a local paper declared "'We hope Hollings enjoys his retirement, because we sure as hell will.'"

Bipartisan members of South Carolina's House delegation assembled in the well of the House chamber Monday evening to pay tribute to Hollings. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn spoke about Hollings's push for desegregation while serving as South Carolina governor.

Clyburn says he first met Hollings in 1960, when Clyburn was organizing sit-ins. Hollings invited Clyburn to his office.

"He gave me a great lesson that day in politics," said Clyburn, saying that even to this day, he's not spoken publicly about some of the kernels of wisdom Hollings passed along.

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Clyburn said that in 1962, just before Hollings was to finish his term as governor, the courts ruled that Clemson University had to integrate.

"Fritz spoke to the legislature and said to them on that day, 'We have run out of courts. And we are going to be a nation of laws,'" said Clyburn.

Fritz Hollings may have fallen silent. But to Clyburn and others, the voice still echoes.

Source: Fox News Politics

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German conservatives float compromise to defuse EU row with Hungary’s Orban

FILE PHOTO: Hungary's National Day celebrations in Budapest
FILE PHOTO: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks during Hungary's National Day celebrations in Budapest, Hungary, March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo

March 20, 2019

By Marton Dunai and Andreas Rinke

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s conservatives floated a compromise in a long-running dispute between Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the EU’s center-right grouping that could avert his party’s expulsion over concerns about Budapest’s authoritarian drift.

Orban, a feisty nationalist, was due in Brussels on Wednesday for a meeting to decide the fate of his Fidesz party after 13 sister organizations in the European People’s Party (EPP) urged its expulsion.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, head of Germany’s Christian Democrats, the largest party in the EPP, said Fidesz should be suspended, but not expelled, for violating the grouping’s values with contested judiciary reforms and anti-immigration campaigns.

“As long as Fidesz does not fully restore trust there cannot be normal full membership,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told Reuters.

A membership “freeze” would be an option, added Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is the frontrunner to eventually replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Bavaria’s premier Markus Soeder, both EPP members, supported her position, sources close to Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

But, as Orban’s decision to attend in person what would normally be a routine administrative meeting demonstrates, the stakes are high: EPP membership for Fidesz confers mainstream respectability and influence that other populist parties lack.

The decision poses a particular headache for Manfred Weber, the EPP’s lead candidate in May’s European Parliament elections, whose chances of succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the executive European Commission would be reduced without the votes of Fidesz’s European lawmakers, of whom there are currently 12.

Juncker, who was the target of a Hungarian government poster campaign depicting him as a proponent of mass immigration into Europe and a puppet manipulated by wealthy Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros, wants Fidesz expelled.

JUNCKER BACKS EXPULSION

On Wednesday Juncker, who is also from the EPP, repeated his call for Fidesz to be kicked out of the grouping.

“I think that Mr Orban is a long way from basic Christian Democratic values,” he told German radio.

The EPP grouping, the largest in the European Parliament, is also concerned over Orban’s campaign against the private Central European University in Budapest that Soros founded.

Sources close to Weber said Orban had at least partially met the German conservative’s conditions for keeping Fidesz in the EPP, including by apologizing to colleagues in the grouping for labeling them immigration-backing “useful idiots”.

The sources said the EPP committee in Brussels would vote on Wednesday on proposals to deprive Fidesz of the right to vote in meetings of the grouping or to propose candidates for posts. Fidesz would also no longer be present at all meetings.

Weber also proposed that former European Council president and Belgian prime minister Herman van Rompuy could head a monitoring committee to evaluate Fidesz’s cooperation with its sister parties, the sources added.

However, some were not sure Fidesz – which has a big majority in Hungary’s parliament – would accept being suspended.

“I think in reality this means that Fidesz will leave the group,” said Swedish conservative Gunnar Hokmark. “I don’t think they will appreciate being suspended. And anyway they will not be able to live up to the conditions.”

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin, writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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easyJet warns of Brexit hit to European demand

An EasyJet airplane is pictured at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome
An EasyJet airplane is pictured at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria

April 1, 2019

(Reuters) – British low-cost airline easyJet said on Monday that macroeconomic uncertainty and many unanswered questions surrounding Brexit were driving weaker customer demand in the market, hurting ticket yields across Europe.

The carrier, the largest operator at Britain’s second-biggest airport Gatwick, said its outlook for the second half of the year was now more cautious.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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Uber buys rival Careem in $3.1 billion deal to dominate ride-hailing in Middle East

The Uber Hub is seen in Redondo Beach
The Uber Hub is seen in Redondo Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

March 26, 2019

By Heather Somerville, Alexander Cornwell and Saeed Azhar

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Global ride-hailing firm Uber Technologies Inc will spend $3.1 billion to acquire Middle East rival Careem, buying dominance in a competitive region ahead of a hotly anticipated initial public offering.

    Uber said late Monday night it would pay $1.4 billion in cash and $1.7 billion in convertible notes in a deal that gives it full ownership of Careem. The long-expected agreement ends more than nine months of start-and-stop negotiations between the two companies and hands Uber a much-needed victory after a series of overseas divestments.

The notes will be convertible into Uber shares at a price equal to $55 apiece, Uber said, marking about a nearly 13 percent increase over Uber’s share price in its last financing round, led by SoftBank Group Corp more than a year ago.

The acquisition makes Careem a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber and will keep the Careem brand and app intact, at least initially. Careem co-founders Mudassir Sheikha, Magnus Olsson and Abdulla Elyas are staying on with Careem following the acquisition, the companies said.

However, Careem’s board will be overhauled, with three seats going to Uber representatives and two belonging to Careem. Sheikha, who is Careem’s CEO, and Olsson will have board seats. An Uber spokesman declined to say whom Uber would appoint to the board.

The $3.1 billion cash-and-stock purchase buys out all outside Careem investors, the companies said, and Careem stock will be converted into Uber equity. Careem had raised less than $800 million from investors and as of October had a $2 billion valuation. Its backers include German car maker Daimler AG , Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing, Japanese internet company Rakuten Inc and Saudi investor Kingdom Holding Company.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020, the companies said, meaning it will not be reflected in Uber’s first couple of quarterly earnings releases as a public company, although it will likely be disclosed in a public IPO filing. Uber will kick of its IPO next month and is expected to receive a valuation of at least $100 billion.

The agreement is subject to regulatory approval, including by antitrust officials in the countries where Careem operates, which could prevent the deal from moving forward or compel the companies to modify the terms.

MONTHS OF NEGOTIATIONS

The deal is particularly important for Uber, whose ability to be a competitive global ride-hailing player had come into question after it sold its operations in China, Russia and Southeast Asia to local rivals after sustaining heavy losses.

Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi in a statement called the deal with Careem “an important moment for Uber.”

Uber has been eager to reach an agreement before the company begins its “roadshow,” when it will meet with public market investors prior to listing shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The deal enables Uber to claim dominance in a growing region for ride-hailing outside of the United States.

Uber operates in more than 70 countries, but faces strong rivals in Latin America and India, and tough regulations in Europe.

Talks between the companies had dragged on since at least last summer, sources told Reuters, although they did not get serious until the end of the year. The companies had for years battled in a competition for drivers and riders that had required discounts and subsidies and pushed prices artificially low.

Careem over the course of last year grew its business rapidly, including adding a delivery service, and went on to nearly double its valuation, pressuring Uber to increase its bidding price.

Toward the end of last year, Careem was entertaining interest from investors for another financing round when Uber moved aggressively to buy the company outright, sources said.

SPOTLIGHT ON MIDDLE EAST TECH

Careem, founded in 2012, has a larger presence than Uber in the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey, operating in 98 cities there compared with Uber’s roughly 23 locations.

“An Uber-Careem merger underscores the huge potential of car-hailing in the Middle East,” said Sam Blatteis, CEO at the MENA Catalysts, a Middle East public policy advisory and research firm.

The merger also follows the $580 million acquisition of Dubai-based ecommerce company Souq Group Ltd by Amazon.com Inc in 2017, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, spotlighting the Middle East’s budding technology scene.

“It’s the first ‘unicorn’ exit in the Middle East, and it’s representative of things to come out of the Middle East,” said David Chao, co-founder and general partner at venture firm DCM and a Careem investor, referring to start-ups valued at $1 billion or more.

Uber said its revenue last year was $11.3 billion, while its gross bookings from rides were $50 billion. But the company lost a staggering $3.3 billion, excluding gains from the sale of its overseas business units in Russia and Southeast Asia.

Careem does not disclose its earnings.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville in San Francisco and Alexander Cornwell and Saeed Azhar in Dubai; Editing by Leslie Adler, Lisa Shumaker and Keith Weir)

Source: OANN

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Switzerland bans commercial Ju-52 flights after deadly crash

FILE PHOTO: A Junkers Ju-52 airplane of JU-AIR airline takes-off from the airport in Duebendorf
FILE PHOTO: A Junkers Ju-52 airplane of JU-AIR airline takes-off from the airport in Duebendorf, Switzerland August 17, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

March 12, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland is withdrawing a tourist airline’s commercial license to carry paying passengers in its vintage planes after a crash in the Swiss Alps last year killed 20 people, the country’s government said on Tuesday.

Seventeen Swiss and three Austrians were aboard a trimotor Junker JU-52 aircraft, built in the 1930s as a military aircraft and later used by a Swiss tour operator for scenic flights, when it crashed on Aug. 5.

“Following the accident in the summer of 2018, Federal Office for Civil Aviation (BAZL) re-evaluated the risks of passenger flights with classic planes and came to the conclusion that commercial operation with historic aircraft no longer meets today’s safety requirements,” the Swiss government said.

The agency said results from an ongoing investigation of the Ju-52’s crash last year supported its decision, adding that European laws governing historic planes are due to be changed in mid-2019 to forbid commercial operations.

Private flights by members of the Duebendorf, Switzerland-based Ju-Air, the 37-year-old organization which owns the planes, could eventually be allowed under the rules, BAZL said.

For now, however, Ju-Air’s three Ju-52 aircraft will remain indefinitely grounded until the group carries out technical measures required by the Swiss civil aviation agency to ensure airworthiness.

Ju-Air officials, based at a former Swiss military airfield near Zurich, declined to comment. A press release will be issued later on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

Ju-Air’s remaining planes have been banned from flying since November, when the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (STSIB) found signs of corrosion on the plane that had crashed, among other shortcomings.

The issues were not the accident’s cause, the safety board said at the time, adding that no technical reason has been determined in its ongoing probe that led to the plane slamming into the ground in the mountain canton of Grisons.

(Reporting by John Miller, editing by Ed Osmond)

Source: OANN

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

April 26, 2019

By Rupam Jain and Hameed Farzad

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani encouraged newly-elected lawmakers to participate in the peace process with the Taliban as he opened on Friday the first session of parliament since a controversial election.

Ghani has invited thousands of politicians, religious scholars and rights activists to an assembly known as a loya jirga next week to discuss ways to end the 17-year war.

Several opposition leaders have said they will boycott the four-day assembly in Kabul, saying it was pulled together without their input and is being used by Ghani as he seeks a second term in a September presidential election.

“We have presented the peace plan on a regular basis and we are committed to it,” Ghani said in the first session since parliamentary elections marred by technical problems, militant attacks and accusations of voting fraud last year.

“Based on this plan, there will be no peace deal and negotiation that does not have the green card of the parliament,” he added.

Officials from the United States and the Taliban have held several rounds of talks to end the Afghan war.

U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has reported some progress toward an accord on a U.S. troop withdrawal and on how the Taliban would prevent extremists from using Afghanistan to launch attacks as al Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

The insurgents have so far rejected U.S. demands for a ceasefire and talks on the country’s political future that would include Afghan government officials.

The loya jirga, a centuries-old institution used to build consensus among competing tribes, factions and ethnic groups, is an attempt by Ghani to influence the peace talks and cement his position for a second term, Afghan politicians and Western diplomats say.

Amid growing political divisions in Kabul, opposition politicians have demanded that Ghani step down when his mandate ends next month, and give way to an interim government to oversee peace talks with the Taliban. Ghani has ruled that out.

The country’s top court said last week Ghani can stay in office until the presidential election in September.

(Reporting by Hameed Farzad, Rupam Jain, Editing by Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Thursday defended special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation while slamming former President Barack Obama’s administration for being slow to take action on Russian interference in U.S. elections and ex-FBI Director James Comey for telling Congress the agency was investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Our nation is safer, elections are more secure, and citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence schemes,” Rosenstein said in a speech to the Armenian Bar Association, marking his first public remarks after the Mueller report was released, reports CBS News.

He also pointed out that the investigation revealed a pattern of computer hacking and the use of social media to undermine elections as “only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration also made “critical decisions,” including choosing not to publicize the full story about Russian hackers and social media trolling, “and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” said Rosenstein.

He noted that the Mueller probe began after Comey disclosed during a hearing before Congress that President Donald Trump “pressured him to close the investigation and the president denied that the conversation occurred.”

Rosenstein said two years ago, when he was confirmed, he was told by a Republican senator that he would be in charge of the probe and that he’d report the results to the American people.

However, he said he didn’t promise to do that, because it is “not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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President Trump on Friday said “no money” was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, after reports that the U.S. received a $2 million hospital bill from Pyongyang for the late American prisoner’s care.

“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else. This is not the Obama Administration that paid 1.8 Billion Dollars for four hostages, or gave five terroist[sic] hostages plus, who soon went back to battle, for traitor Sgt. Bergdahl!” Trump tweeted Friday.

NORTH KOREA GAVE US $2M HOSPITAL BILL OVER CARE OF AMERICAN OTTO WARMBIER, SOURCES SAY

The Washington Post first reported that North Korean authorities insisted the U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier, 21, who was a student of the University of Virginia, sign a pledge to pay the bill before allowing Warmbier’s comatose body to return to the United States. Sources confirmed the bill and the amount to Fox News on Thursday.

Sources told the post that the envoy signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions from the president, but a source told Fox News that the U.S. did not ever pay money to North Korea.

The White House declined to comment when asked on the bill, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders saying in a statement that: “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”

Meanwhile, the president added: “’President[sic] Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.’ Cheif[sic] Hostage Negotiator, USA!”

Warmbier was on tour in North Korea when he allegedly stole a propaganda sign from a hotel. He was arrested in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016. Warmbier, for unknown reasons, fell into a coma while in custody and was held in that condition for an additional 17 months.

North Korean officials did not tell American officials until June 2017 that Warmbier had been unconscious the entire time. He died less than a week after he returned to the U.S. North Korean officials, though, have repeatedly denied accusations that Warmbier was tortured, instead claiming that he had suffered from botulism and then slipped into a coma after taking a sleeping pill.

AMERICAN PRISONERS HELD IN NORTH KOREA ON THEIR WAY HOME AFTER POMPEO VISIT, TRUMP SAYS

Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages – money that the Hermit Kingdom will probably never pay.

While the Warmbiers blamed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has said he believes Kim’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.

Trump and Kim have met in two separate summits. The most recent, held in February, ended without an agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Fox News: “Otto Warmbier was mistreated by North Korea in so many ways, including his wrongful conviction and harsh sentence, and the fact that for 16 months they refused to tell his family or our country about his dire condition they caused.  No, the United States owes them nothing. They owe the Warmbier family everything.”

Last year, the Trump administration was also able to save three American prisoners held by North Korea. Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, and Kim Hak Song were all detained in North Korea. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the three Americans home last May, and said they were all in “good health.”

Fox News’ John Roberts, Rich Edson, Nicholas Kalman, and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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