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Bernie Sanders campaign volunteers to host 3,900 kickoff parties on April 27

Volunteers for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign have reportedly agreed to host approximately 3,900 parties across the country on April 27 to kick off his campaign’s organizing program.

The Vermont Democrat’s campaign manager told Politico the parties will be held in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico as well as 19 other countries.

“People power is the unique and comparative advantage of the Bernie Sanders campaign,” Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir told the publication.

Sanders will join Fox News Channel for a Town Hall co-anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on Monday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m. ET in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT BERNIE SANDERS

“We are seeing an extraordinary mass participation from a dedicated volunteer base, whose individual skills, life experiences and relationships to their communities allows us to connect with voters in a way that hasn’t been done before,” Shakir added.

The 77-year-old presidential hopeful tweeted a call for hosting the Organizing Kickoff parties last week and reportedly had 1,200 people signed up to host parties in the first 24 hours, according to Politico.

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT BERNIE SANDERS’ FOX NEWS TOWN HALL

According to Politico, Sanders’ campaign wants to get his volunteers working early since they had a bit of a late start in the 2016 primary.

Sanders’ campaign is planning to pursue a similar “distributed organizing” strategy that they used for his last presidential bid where volunteers were trained for phone-banking and campaign texting, the outlet reported.

Though Sanders lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton in 2016, he has made quite a comeback in his 2020 run.

His campaign announced on April 2 that the senator raised $18.2 million and received 900,000 individual contributions in the 41 days from the launch of his campaign on Feb. 19 until the end of the first quarter of fundraising on March 31 — which aides claimed “far outpaced” Sanders’ 2016 fundraising.

Sanders also announced in a video on Twitter only six days after launching his 2020 bid that 1 million volunteers signed up to help his run for White House campaign, a feat he called a “historic threshold.”

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Liam Quinn contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Baltimore Archdiocese names 23 clergy accused of sex abuse

The Catholic archdiocese in Baltimore on Wednesday published the names of 23 dead priests and religious brothers who it says were credibly accused of child sex abuse after their deaths.

The release of the names marks a revision to an archdiocese policy that once prohibited the naming of priests and brothers who were no longer alive when they were accused of abusing youngsters.

"It is hoped that this step will demonstrate the archdiocese's commitment to transparency and provide encouragement and healing for victim-survivors of abuse," archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said in an email.

Baltimore's archdiocese — home to the country's first bishop, first cathedral, and first diocese — has now publicly named and listed 126 clergy members accused of child sex abuse, with incidents dating back as far as 80 years.

It began releasing the names more than 16 years ago as Catholic bishops across the country adopted widespread reforms as clergy abuse became a national crisis for the church in the U.S. But a Pennsylvania grand jury last year made very clear that more changes are needed.

In a nearly 900-page report released in August, the grand jury in Pennsylvania alleged that more than 300 Roman Catholic priests had abused at least 1,000 children over the past seven decades in six dioceses. It also accused senior church officials of systematically covering up complaints.

Following the turmoil of 2018 — which included the pope's removal of U.S. church leader Theodore McCarrick as a cardinal amid various allegations — Archbishop William E. Lori and members of the Baltimore archdiocese's independent review board asked that the policy prohibiting the naming of priests and brothers who were no longer alive be revisited with an eye toward greater transparency.

Here's what's changed: The archdiocese will add the names of priests and brothers accused after their deaths if church investigators received an allegation of child sexual abuse from more than one victim, if a single allegation of child sex abuse is substantiated through external information that corroborates sex abuse, or if the name of the priest or brother was already published elsewhere in connection with an abuse allegation.

In some cases, the information about the newly named priests and brothers came from Pennsylvania's grand jury report. Baltimore church leaders noted that many of the men whose names were released Wednesday also served outside of the archdiocese.

The list released Wednesday hardly makes up all outstanding allegations brought to the Baltimore archdiocese. In a statement posted on its website, the archdiocese made clear that it is aware of "numerous additional allegations against individuals who are not named here." It says it plans to update its list of child sex abusers as it receives additional information.

Earlier this year, church leaders in Baltimore's Catholic archdiocese said they had delivered over 50,000 internal files to Maryland's top law enforcement official amid an investigation into child sex abuse and were in the process of handing over more. At the time, Lori described the clergy sex abuse scourge that's been rocking the church as a "genuine crisis" and said Baltimore's archdiocese was working hard to cooperate with Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh's investigation.

___

Follow McFadden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dmcfadd

Source: Fox News National

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Ovations, hugs and soaring speeches as Apple embraces Hollywood

CEO Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg stand for a photo after the Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California
Apple CEO Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg stand for a photo after the Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

March 25, 2019

By Jill Serjeant

(Reuters) – Apple Inc brought in Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Momoa to talk up its new television streaming service at a Hollywood-style event on Monday marked by standing ovations, hugs and soaring rhetoric.

The event ended almost 18 months of secrecy over Apple’s television project and featured some of the biggest names in entertainment promoting their original content shows. Apple is working to reinvent itself as an entertainment and financial services company as sales of its iPhones fall.

“We believe deeply in the power of creativity,” Chief Executive Tim Cook told an audience at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

He said Apple’s partners on the Apple TV+ service were “the most thoughtful, accomplished and award-winning group of creative visionaries who have ever come together in one place.”

Apple did not say how much the new television subscription service would cost but said it would launch in the fall of 2019 and would be available in 100 nations.

Apple has commissioned more than 30 shows, including a science fiction show from Spielberg, a horror series from movie director M. Night Shyamalan, a new Sesame Workshop show teaching coding to kids and a drama set in the world of morning television starring Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon and popular former “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston.

“This has brought me back to television, and I am really excited about it!” Aniston said on Monday.

In true Hollywood style, Apple saved the biggest performance until last, introducing producer and former talk show host Winfrey.

Winfrey, who ended her daily talk show in 2011 after 25 years to launch her OWN cable channel, said she would interview “artists, newsmakers and leaders,” present two documentaries – one about harassment in the work place and another about mental health – and launch a new, bigger version of her popular Oprah book club.

“My deepest hope is we all humans get to become the fullest version of ourselves as human beings, to join in that mission and unite for our common good and leave this world more enlightened, kinder and better than we found it,” she said in a rousing speech.

Winfrey said she had joined Apple because “they are the company that has re-imagined how we communicate.”

“They’re in a billion pockets y’all. A billion pockets … The whole world’s got them in their hands and that represents a major opportunity to make a genuine impact,” she said.

Cook bade Winfrey farewell with thanks and a hug, wiping away a tear in his eye. “I will never forget this,” he told her.

Songstress Sara Bareilles performed an emotional new ballad that will serve as the theme song from her new musical drama “Little Voice,” while Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani performed a brief standup routine to introduce his “Little America” series about immigrants in America.

“We hope ‘Little America’ will help viewers understand there is no such thing as the other. There is only us,” Nanjiani said.

“We are excited that we get to tell these stories with Apple. Connecting humanity is in their DNA,” he added.

Despite the celebrity appearances, there was only a minimal glimpse of the new shows either completed or in production.

A short compilation reel of clips ended with “Aquaman” star Momoa, who will appear in futuristic drama “See” about a world in which everyone has lost the power of sight.

“This is where we build our new home,” he said.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

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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Tucker Carlson: Congress must address the student loan debt problem and stop colleges from scamming our kids

America's collective student loan debt now stands at more than $1.5 trillion. For some perspective, that's more than the entire GDP of Spain or Sweden or any of the 54 countries in Africa.

Apart from mortgages, student loans are the biggest source of personal debt in this country, more than car loans and credit card bills. That's a staggering amount of debt. It's enough to distort and cripple the U.S. economy. It's enough to stunt the life prospects of an entire generation of young people.

If you're wondering why the majority of Americans under 30 say they prefer socialism, debt is a major reason. Student loans are killing them, and they never go away. Thanks to extensive lobbying efforts here in Washington, student loans, unlike other forms of debt, cannot be erased by bankruptcy.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TUCKER CARLSON.

The student loan crisis is a modern problem. Just 13 years ago, the average new college graduate owed $20,000 in student loans. Today, that number has jumped to $37,000. Student debt is rising far faster than the earnings of American workers, the very earnings that are supposed to justify student loans in the first place.

For professional degrees, the number goes far higher than that. The average law school graduate carries more than $110,000 in student loan debt. For new doctors, the burden is nearly $200,000 by the time they finish medical school.

Overall, two million Americans owe more than a $100,000 in student loans. Imagine starting life that far behind. Many of the people paying off college loan debt never even earned a degree. They tried to improve their lives by attending college, and they wound up poorer and in bondage. And not just a few of them -- millions and millions of them. What are the effects of this?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ENTIRE EPISODE.

Well, the damage is far more profound than anything caused by climate change. Young people are broke. As a result, they're delaying the vital life transitions that were automatic for earlier generations.

In 1990, a quarter of American adults lived with their parents. Today, the number has risen to 35 percent. The home ownership rate for millennials dropped eight points from the generation before. Unable to afford homes, millennials are getting married later and less often. They're also having fewer kids. It's not because they don't want children. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who want children has not changed in 25 years. And yet fewer children are being born, thanks in part to rising debt levels, America's middle class cannot replace itself.

That's why we're told we must import millions of new workers from abroad. Young Americans want homes and families. Helping them get those things ought to be our top priority as a country. We can't begin until we reform the student loan system. Why haven't we done that yet?

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP.

Well, a hugely powerful lobby stands in the way -- colleges and universities. Their lobbyists swarm Washington. Not surprisingly, these are the people who benefit from student loan debt. Drive through rural America, and you see how well they've done. In a sea of poverty and despair, you will notice gated islands of affluence. These are colleges.

Colleges control access to the credentials that we are all convinced are necessary and mandatory to achieve success in the modern economy. It's a racket. These are the gatekeepers of modern society and they are ripping off every kid who passes through those gates.

Outside the gates, people are unemployed and dying of opioid overdoses. Inside the gates, it's like the Ritz on South Beach. If you haven't been to an American university lately, see it for yourself. Everything is new. There's been a building boom underway for decades on campuses, all of it funded by debt that is destroying a generation of American kids.

A hundred schools now have endowments over a billion dollars. They are hedge funds with schools attached. What have colleges done with this money? Well, they've hired massive staffs of like-minded people for one thing. From 1987 to 2012, the number of administrators on college campuses more than doubled. That's far bigger than the increase of actual students going to college. College administrators routinely make six-figure salaries. What exactly do they do for that money? Not a single thing that makes this a better country.

College presidents often get seven-figure salaries. Their pay is probably the only thing in America rising as fast as tuition costs. Academic publishers are getting rich from all of this, too -- from the debt boom. Prices of textbooks have tripled in the past 20 years. Printing hasn't gotten more expensive; non-academic books are cheaper now than they were two decades ago. But students are a captive market, and they are being exploited ruthlessly. Nobody says a word about it.

So to sum up, young people in this country get poorer every year. College administrators, probably the least impressive group in the country, are getting richer at their expense. It's not a law of the universe that this has to happen. It's a product of policy and of the incentives our society has created over time.

Right now, the federal government allows young people to take out an almost unlimited amount in student loans. Colleges know this, of course, and they hike their tuition to capture as much of that money as they can. Young people have little choice but to go along with it.

Colleges control access to the credentials that we are all convinced are necessary and mandatory to achieve success in the modern economy. It's a racket. These are the gatekeepers of modern society and they are ripping off every kid who passes through those gates.

What's the solution? Well, here's one. Have colleges co-sign the loans. And why shouldn't they? If you and I enter into a partnership in business and we succeed, we share the rewards. But we also share the risk. If we fail, we're both on the hook for that. That's how honest arrangements work. College loans don't work that way. Colleges get rich, no matter what happens to the kids. The kids are on their own.

If students get a degree and a decent job and repay their loans, that's great. But if they drop out of college, or their degrees turn out to be worthless, as so many are, and they can't repay what they have borrowed, so what? The college doesn't care. They've got no stake in the outcome. Colleges get all of the benefit and none of the risk. That is the definition of a scam. It's amazing it could even be legal. It should not be legal.

Maybe Congress could take 20 minutes from the Russia hoax and posturing about climate change and fix one of the actual problems, one of the biggest problems this country faces. Pass a law forcing colleges to share the liability on defaulted student loans. What would be the argument against that? That colleges can't afford it? That taxpayers should shoulder all the risk so that Wesleyan or Brown can build another diversity and inclusion center and hire more useless overpaid Deans of Sensitivity?

It's kind of hard to make that case out loud. It's too stupid. Congress should act now. The student loan system is going to collapse. That is inevitable. Before it does, let's be very clear about who has been profiting from it.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on March 18, 2019.

Source: Fox News National

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NHL roundup: Blue Jackets clinch last playoff spot

NHL: Columbus Blue Jackets at New York Rangers
Apr 5, 2019; New York, NY, USA; Columbus Blue Jackets left wing Artemi Panarin (9) celebrates his shoot out goal past New York Rangers goaltender Alexandar Georgiev (40) at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

April 6, 2019

Artemi Panarin scored the only goal in the shootout Friday night for the Columbus Blue Jackets, who clinched the last open NHL playoff spot by edging the host New York Rangers, 3-2.

With their sixth win in the last seven games, the Blue Jackets (46-31-4, 96 points) assured themselves of one of the wild-card berths in the Eastern Conference and eliminated the Montreal Canadiens (94 points) from contention.

The Blue Jackets are headed to the playoffs for the third straight season after making the postseason just twice in their first 15 seasons. They will enter the final day of the season as the second wild card, but they would move up to the first wild card if they beat the Ottawa Senators and the Carolina Hurricanes lose to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.

Panarin’s shootout tally capped an evening of roller-coaster emotions for the Blue Jackets, who trailed 1-0 after two before tying the game and going ahead in a span of a little more than 12 minutes in the third period on goals by Ryan Dzingel and Panarin — only to see Pavel Buchnevich tie the game with seven seconds left in regulation.

Blackhawks 6, Stars 1

Patrick Kane scored twice, and Chicago got goals from five different players as it thumped visiting Dallas, keeping its Central Division rivals from clinching the first wild-card spot in the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Stars (42-32-7, 91 points) have already sewn up a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 2016, but they need one point in their final game, at home on Saturday against Minnesota, to secure the seventh overall seed in the Western Conference.

Chicago (36-33-12, 84 points) was eliminated from the postseason on Tuesday and will miss the playoffs for a second straight season.

Ducks 5, Kings 2

Korbinian Holzer scored his first NHL goal in more than two years, and rookie Sam Steel also tallied as Anaheim concluded a disappointing season with a home-ice victory over Los Angeles.

John Gibson made 44 saves — 20 of them in the third period — for Anaheim.

While the 30 other teams will play on Saturday, the Ducks (35-37-10, 80 points) are the first club to finish their campaign. Anaheim will miss the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2011-12. The Kings (30-42-9, 69 points) will finish at the bottom of the Western Conference.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Tennis: Osaka enjoys rollercoaster win in Miami

Tennis: Miami Open
Mar 22, 2019; Miami Gardens, FL, USA; Naomi Osaka of Japan serves against Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium (not pictured) in the second round of the Miami Open at Miami Open Tennis Complex. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

March 22, 2019

By Steve Keating

MIAMI (Reuters) – World number one Naomi Osaka endured a rollercoaster start to the Miami Open on Friday advancing to the third round with a 6-0 6-7(3) 6-1 win over Belgian Yanina Wickmayer.

After facing eight-times Miami champion Serena Williams in her first match last year, Osaka might have expected an easier opener on Friday against the 141st-ranked Belgian qualifier.

Yet that was not the case as she needed more than two hours to dispose of her Belgian opponent, having dispatched the 23-times grand slam singles champion 6-3 6-2 a year earlier.

“It was really hard for me, I think, emotionally in the second set because I just started thinking about winning, not exactly the things I could do in order to win,” said Osaka. “I had a bit of a dip. She was also playing really well.”

The first match on Stadium Court the contest again looked like it might wrap up before the late arrivals had settled in but it turned into a head scratcher for Osaka that ebbed and flowed between dominance and despair.

The Japanese, who had been firing on all cylinders while Wickmayer sleepwalked through a one-sided opening set, suddenly began to sputter in the second as the Belgian woke from her slumber.

Letting her foot off the gas, the Australian and U.S. Open champion was left muttering to herself and flipping her racket as shots that had been finding their target minutes before were sprayed all over the temporary court allowing Wickmayer back into the match.

Yet just as quickly as Osaka lost her way the 21-year-old got back on track in the third set, securing the early break on her way to a 3-0 lead and a topsy-turvy victory.

Although South Florida is home for Osaka, the Miami stop has not been kind to the Japanese, who has never ventured past the third round.

Osaka will next face Taiwan’s 27th seed Hsieh Su-wei who was a 6-2 7-5 winner over American Alison Riske.

“I consider Miami a home,” said Osaka. “I definitely always want to do well here whenever I play.

“I haven’t really done well here compared to the other tournaments. It’s definitely been a really big goal of mine.”

After a dramatic comeback win in her opening match, Canadian teen sensation Bianca Andreescu took a more confident step towards the ‘Sunshine Double’, disposing of American 22nd seed Sofia Kenin 6-3 6-3 to reach the third round.

The youngest player to win Indian Wells since Serena Williams in 1999, Andreescu is bidding to become just the fourth woman to win both there and Miami back-to-back in the same year.

While Andreescu’s run continues, two other promising American teenagers saw their time in Miami come to an end.

After picking up her first career WTA Tour event win on Thursday, 15-year-old Cori Gauff fell to 14th-seeded Russian Daria Kasatkina 6-3 6-2 while 17-year-old Amanda Anisimova lost 6-3 1-6 6-4 to Estonian Anett Kontaveit.

(Editing by Toby Davis)

Source: OANN

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

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].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

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)

Source: OANN

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