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If Manafort must be punished, then 'drain the swamp' of all the other Manaforts in DC: Tom Bevan

If former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is being held accountable for the laws he has broken, he’s got plenty of company in Washington, D.C., Real Clear Politics founder Tom Bevan argued Wednesday evening.

Manafort is now facing more than seven years in prison for crimes he committed before joining Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as well as for crimes he committed during the Russia investigation. His legal troubles are far from over as he has now been indicted on an additional 16 counts in New York state.

During Thursday's "Special Report" All-Star panel, Bevan -- along with national security analyst Morgan Ortagus and Georgetown Institute of Politic executive director Mo Elleithee -- weighed in on the Manafort sentencing as well as the latest developments from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page’s congressional testimony.

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Bevan began by making it clear that “nobody is going to shed a tear” for a “corrupt guy” like Manafort. That being said, he insisted that if Manafort was being punished for his crimes, then plenty of others should be as well.

“If the standard is now, ‘We’re going to prosecute for FERA violations and we’re going to drain the swamp,’ let’s do it because there are another fifty or a hundred Paul Manaforts doing the exact same thing. So if that’s the standard, let’s go ahead and drain the swamp,” Bevan told the panel.

Elleithee warned about the consequences of President Trump possibly pardoning Manafort, saying that at minimum the “optics look bad” and noting that Trump cannot shield Manafort from the state-level charges against him.

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Meanwhile, Ortagus noted Lisa Page’s significant role in revealing what happened in the Department of Justice during its handling of the Clinton email investigation as well as the early stages of the Russia probe. Testimony shared by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Page confirmed to lawmakers that the Justice Department instructed the FBI not to pursue charges of “gross negligence” against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“When the story, the history is written about all of this, Lisa Page is going to be such a fascinating and integral character in this,” Ortagus said. “I mean, look at all the number of people -- Comey, McCabe, Strzok -- all of these people she’s given congressional testimony to counter them, to contradict them and they are all in trouble, multiple times over. ... So pay attention to Lisa Page. She’s taking down some of the biggest names in the FBI.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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Nissan brand Infiniti aims to launch first electric car in three years, made in China

The Infiniti logo is seen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan
The Infiniti logo is seen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 10, 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) – The first electric car for Nissan Motor Co’s premium brand Infiniti will be a sporty sedan produced in China, the Japanese carmaker said in a statement viewed by Reuters ahead of a public announcement expected as soon as Wednesday.

The vehicle would hit the market around three years, and consumers would get a taste when the company unveils a concept car, dubbed the Qs Inspiration electric sedan, at the Shanghai auto show later this week, Nissan officials said.

“China has the most growth potential for electric vehicles globally, especially in the premium segment,” Infiniti Chairman Christian Meunier said in the statement seen by Reuters.

(Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Source: OANN

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Bernie Warns Dems to Avoid Anti-Trump Focus or ‘We Lose’

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned Monday, if Democrats focus on an attack strategy against President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 election, "we lose."

In a wide-ranging town hall sponsored by Fox News and held in Bethlehem, Pa. — a state that helped Trump win in 2016 — an energetic and confident Sanders hit some of the hot-button issues likely to be part of his second run at the White House, including political  strategy, taxing the rich, and a single-payer healthcare system.

"I don't think the American people are proud that we have a president who is a pathological liar," he said. "It does not give me pleasure to say that. I disagreed with George W. Bush on almost everything. Bush was not a pathological liar. . . . It's hard to believe anything that he says."

But, he added, "if we spend all of our time attacking . . . Democrats are going to lose. Our job is to lay out a vision that makes sense to the working families of this country, and that's what I'm trying to do."

Sanders also was grilled on his taxes, which were released Tuesday — and he was unapologetic for being a millionaire, emphasizing he voted against a 2017 tax bill from which he admittedly benefited.

"You raised the issue I'm a millionaire," he said, adding: "It came from a book that I wrote, pretty good book, you might want to read it . . . and we made money. If anyone thinks that I should apologize for writing a best-selling book, I'm sorry, I'm not going to do it.

"But let me reiterate, I voted against [the tax cut bill]."

He also took a sharp slap at Trump's refusal to release his taxes.

"The president watches your network a bit, right?" he asked hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, which triggered laughs from the audience and smiles of the hosts.

Then, looking at the camera, Sanders said: "Hey, President Trump, my wife and I just released 10 years of our taxes. Please do the same."

There were brief boos from an otherwise supportive audience when the subject of terminating a pregnancy at birth was was raised.

"I think that that happens very, very rarely," he said, adding "it's being made into a political issue, but at the end of the day, I believe that the decision over abortion belongs to a woman and her physician, not the federal government, not the state government."

Sanders also promoted a single-payer healthcare system.

"We are not talking about government-run healthcare," he said. "The Veterans Administration and most veterans think that that's a pretty good healthcare system . . . What we are talking about is simply a single-payer insurance program, which means that you will have a card which says Medicare on it, you will go to any doctor that you want, you will go to any hospital that you want."

Sanders also addressed outspoken criticism by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., of Israel.

"I think that she has got to do a better job in speaking to the Jewish community, but if your question to me is do I think she's anti-Semitic, no, I don't," he said.

"Here is the point, also, I'm Jewish. I lost my father's family, devastated by Hitler, so this is an issue of some sensitivity to me. I will do everything in my power, and I hope every member of Congress will fight not only anti-Semitism, but racism and anti-Muslim activity,  so we create a nondiscriminatory society.

"But it is not anti-Semitic to be critical of a right wing government in Israel. It is not anti-Semitic."

Source: NewsMax America

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UK watchdog warns of market disruption after a hard Brexit

FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen outside the entrance of the London Stock Exchange in London
FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen outside the entrance of the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain. Aug 23, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

February 27, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Preparations made so far are no guarantee markets won’t be disrupted if there is a no-deal Brexit, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday.

FCA Chief Executive Andrew Bailey told a House of Lords committee that he could give no assurance there would not be market disruption if Britain crashes out of the European Union next month with no transition deal.

Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29 but has no agreement with Brussels that would include a business-as-usual transition agreement.

Britain and the EU have taken steps to avert dislocation in markets, but Bailey said work remained to be done to mitigate risks from uncleared cross-border derivatives and exchange of data.

But unlike Britain, Brussels has decided there is no need for EU-wide action on uncleared derivatives, leaving it to individual states to take measures, which some have.

“Those measures are not the same. Some are more robust than others … It’s helpful in term of reducing the cliff edge,” Bailey told a House of Lords committee on EU affairs.

Brussels was unwilling to go as far as Britain in taking steps to avoid disruption to markets from any hard Brexit partly because it wanted to see a transfer of financial services activity from Britain to the continent, he added.

A hard Brexit also risk disrupts the flow of data between financial firms in Britain and the EU, he said.

The FCA has told financial-services firms in the past 24 hours they need to put in place contingency measures, such as clauses in contracts, as a workaround to avoid disruption in data flows, Bailey said.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Larry King)

Source: OANN

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Don't Give ISIS Brides Victimhood Status. Try Them.

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As the Islamic State caliphate’s last redoubt of Baghouz falls to U.S. allied forces, more than 50,000 women and children have recently streamed into camps run by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. Among them is a 24-year-old Hoda Muthana, a former Alabama student and a three-time jihadi bride. This summer, a United States federal court will decide her appeal concerning whether she and her 18-month old son are American citizens and whether they can resettle here.

Wherever Muthana ends up — in a Syrian Democratic Force evacuation camp, an Iraqi detention center, or the U.S. — Washington should ensure that she and other women who flocked to ISIS face charges. They threw their support behind a terror group that the U.S. government officially designated as responsible for religious genocide against the Middle Eastern Yazidi, Christian, and ethnic Shiite minorities. These minorities will struggle for generations to recover, and they yearn for justice.

Muthana may no longer shout Allahu Akbar while flashing the IS sign, an index finger pointing upward for monotheism, but she rushed to join ISIS’s caliphate in its early months in 2014 and stayed until its bitter collapse. She enthusiastically answered ISIS’s call to be a wife for its militants and a mother for its next generation of holy warriors, and she played an important administrative role in the caliphate.  

An extensive 2018 Netherlands intelligence study found that “in many cases, jihadist women are at least as dedicated to jihadism as men and they … form an essential part of the jihadist movement.” That is demonstrably true for Muthana. On her social media posts, Muthana served as an IS propagandist under the name “Umm Jihad” (mother of jihad).  “Wake up u cowards,” she incited, “go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood.” She urged truck-ramming attacks against American veteran parades, like the 2016 Bastille Day gathering in Nice, France.  She joined IS’s al-Khanssaa Brigade, a female religious police unit led by Western women and known for lashing local Sunni women with cables for dress-code infractions.

Al-Khanssaa also enforced the caliphate rulings on slave houses – the emblematic institution of ISIS’ genocide. The survivors among 6,000 Yazidi and some Christian victims of IS slavery have testified firsthand about them. Yazidi advocate Pari Ibrahim related: “ISIS brides would lock [the Yazidi slaves] up and beat them. They would shower the girls, put them in nice clothes and put makeup on their faces to get them ready to be raped.”

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad, a Yazidi who escaped enslavement, wrote in her book “Last Girl” that IS women were often “crueler than men” and would “beat and starve their husbands’ sabaya [slaves], out of jealousy or anger or because we are easy targets.”  Iraqi Christian Rita Ayoub, liberated from enslavement in 2017, told of being beaten daily until bloody by a Moroccan jihadi bride in Syria, in an effort to force her to convert to Islam. Mingled among the Baghouz evacuees are more of their dazed Yazidi women and children slaves. ISIS wives have even been found concealing guns under their robes as they exit Baghouz.

Despite this, there’s a growing human rights movement that views jihadi brides as part of an undifferentiated class of oppressed women. Some assert that as a sub-class of ISIS’ victims, they merit government protection and housing, jobs and health care under the U.N. Protocol on Trafficking in Persons. (Minor girls who were groomed could fall into this category, but Muthana was of majority age when she joined IS.)

Ratified by the U.S. in 2005, this protocol was aimed at criminal prostitution gangs. Its vague wording, however, could allow foreign ISIS women to be defined as “trafficked victims”: They were “transferred” across Turkey-Syrian borders by ISIS for “the purpose of exploitation” and “deceived” by ISIS’ “fraudulent” claims of family life in an Islamic utopia.  The trafficked woman’s “consent” to the intended exploitation can be “irrelevant” if she had unspecified “vulnerabilities.” And “imperfect victims” — those with “unsavory affiliations” and who “committed crimes in conjunction with their trafficking” — are not disqualified. In other words, the women’s reliance on ISIS to smuggle them into the Islamic State negates their responsibility for their subsequent misdeeds.

This patronizing argument based on gender could find support in American courts. The U.S. government has focused on ISIS men while underestimating the role of their wives. The Justice Department tends to  charge women who “provided material support of ISIS” from within the U.S., but with few exceptions it ignores the crimes of women, American or not, who went to the caliphate.

One exception was Sally Jones, a 40-something British rocker and Muslim convert who, in 2013, went to Syria to marry a 21-year-old ISIS hacker and then joined the Islamic State. After posting online a hit list of American military personnel, they became known as “Mr. and Mrs. Terror.” Jones claimed credit for posting the address of the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden and she was part of the al-Khanssaa Brigade. In 2016, the U.S. added Jones to its terror list and, in 2017, reportedly killed her in a drone strike, the first targeting a woman. 

Another was Umm Sayyaf, the Iraqi wife of IS’ chief financier. She organized sabaya, institutionalized sexual enslavement, and personally managed the serial rape of 26-year-old American humanitarian Kayla Mueller. Kayla died enslaved in 2016 but we know of her ordeal from two Yazidi teenagers who were chained with her in the Sayyaf home. Umm Sayyaf also told American interrogators of jihadi wives who gathered intelligence for IS and aided jihadi operations. 

But even there, the U.S. was reluctant. In May 2015, Umm Sayyaf was captured in a U.S. Delta Force raid targeting her husband and, incredibly, was released without charge. In 2016, U.S. federal prosecutors, pressed by Sen. John McCain, eventually charged her with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization that resulted in an American death. She is now held in Iraq.

That neither Jones nor Umm Sayyaf held rank within ISIS did not exonerate their complicity in crimes of terror and human rights abuses. 

The real victims of IS deserve justice.  Specifically on the issue of jihadi brides, Ibrahim told us: “What we Yazidis want is for a court somewhere to recognize that these people are guilty of more than just terrorism, that they have committed genocide or crimes against humanity.”  Last year, President Trump signed a law  to help them get just such an accountability.  

The ultimate travesty would be to now confer the jihadi brides with victimhood status that absolves them of all responsibility for the heinous crimes committed by ISIS. Muthana and other jihadi brides should face charges and fair trials.

Nina Shea is a senior fellow and director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

Farahnaz Ispahani is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, author, and former member of Pakistan's Parliament.

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Disney closes $71 billion acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox’s assets

A screen shows the trading info for The Walt Disney Company company on the floor of the NYSE in New York
A screen shows the logo and a ticker symbol for The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

March 20, 2019

(Reuters) – Walt Disney Co closed its $71 billion acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc’s film and television assets on Wednesday, giving its upcoming streaming service a range of popular content as it takes on Netflix Inc.

The deal will expand Disney’s portfolio of some of the world’s most popular characters, uniting Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker and Marvel superheroes with Fox’s X-Men, “Avatar” and “The Simpsons” franchises.

The streaming service, Disney+, aims to make up for the continuing loss of subscribers from ESPN and other cable networks.

The completion of the Fox deal comes nearly a year after Disney won a bidding war against cable company Comcast Corp for the assets.

Disney also said Kevin Mayer and James Kapenstein have stepped down from its board.

Separately, Fox Corp debuted on the Nasdaq on Tuesday and named former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Formula One Group Chief Executive Officer Chase Carey and two others to its board.

The newly spun-off media company, which will house assets including Fox News Channel and Fox Broadcast Network, is expected to bring in around $10 billion in annual revenue.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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Citizenship question on U.S. Census would cause big Latino undercount: study

People walk with flags as they take part in the annual Hispanic Day Parade in New York
People walk with flags as they take part in the annual Hispanic Day Parade in New York, October 12, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

March 22, 2019

By Nick Brown

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s proposal to ask a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census could lead to an undercount of some 4.2 million among Hispanics, costing their communities federal aid and political representation, according to a study by Harvard researchers released on Friday.

The study by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is the first to assess the impact of the proposed question since U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced plans last year to reinstate it for the first time in more than half a century.

The study found the question could lead to census-takers missing between 3.9 million and 4.6 million Hispanics nationwide – or between 7.7 percent and 9.1 percent of the Hispanic population recorded in the last U.S. census, in 2010.

Demographers, data experts and even Census Bureau officials have said the question risks frightening immigrants into abstaining from the count in a climate of stepped-up immigration enforcement. Because decennial census data determines how congressional seats are apportioned – and how the U.S. government allocates $800 billion a year in federal aid – an undercount could prove disastrous in some communities.

Harvard said it surveyed some 9,000 people, about half of whom were Hispanic. Researchers found the citizenship question would make all respondents – but especially Hispanics – more likely to skip key questions about race and ethnicity, and less likely to report Hispanic members of their households.

The study may have undersold the impact of the question, the researchers said. “Not only are we university affiliated academic researchers, and not the U.S. Government… but our respondents were paid panelists and thus financially incentivized to complete the survey,” they said.

The U.S. Commerce Department declined to comment.

Although a citizenship question has routinely appeared on some Census Bureau surveys, it has not appeared on the mandatory, decennial U.S. census since 1950. Ross says it is needed to help the U.S. Department of Justice better enforce federal protections for minority voters.

Two federal judges have blocked the question for now, siding with Democratic states and cities that alleged Ross’ reasoning was a pretext to repress immigrant participation. The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear an appeal on April 23.

The Census, estimated to cost taxpayers $16 billion, becomes more expensive when fewer people respond, as the bureau must pay door-knockers to follow up with noncompliant households. But in testimony earlier this month before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Ross said the census “is adequately funded and prepared for contingencies.”

His agency has come under fire for not testing the citizenship question itself. The Census Bureau says it is planning to survey the effects of the question in July.

(Reporting by Nick Brown)

Source: OANN

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Venezuela's Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza talks to the media during a news conference in Caracas
Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza talks to the media during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Manaure Quintero

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s foreign minister and a Venezuelan judge, according to a statement on the department’s website.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza and a judge, Carol Padilla, were targeted over the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the Treasury Department said, the latest in a list of officials blacklisted by U.S. authorities for their role in President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Makini Brice and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of
Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of “Avengers: Endgame” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marvel Studios superhero spectacle “Avengers: Endgame” hauled in a record $60 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices during its Thursday night debut, distributor Walt Disney Co said.

Global ticket sales for the film about Iron Man, Hulk and other popular characters reached $305 million for the first two days, Disney said.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Funeral of journalist Lyra McKee in Belfast
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends the funeral service for murdered journalist Lyra McKee at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland April 24, 2019. Brian Lawless/Pool via REUTERS

April 26, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said on Friday he had turned down an invitation to a state dinner which will be part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Britain in June.

“Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honor a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric,” Corbyn said in a statement.

He said maintaining the relationship with the United States did not require “the pomp and ceremony of a state visit” and he said he would welcome a meeting with Trump “to discuss all matters of interest.”

(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg)

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A bedridden 67-year-old woman and more than a dozen animals were rescued Thursday after a welfare check found that they were living in a home filled with trash, urine, and feces, Florida police said.

Pinellas County sheriff’s deputies said when they arrived at the home in Dunedin around 7:20 p.m. Thursday, they could smell the odor of rotting trash and animal feces as they walked up to the driveway.

“Inside the residence, the odor of feces and urine was so overwhelming that deputies had to don masks,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

FLORIDA SHERIFF ON BORDER CRISIS AFTER MAJOR DRUG BUST: ‘IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY CRAZY’

Walking throughout the residence, the deputies found 10 emaciated dogs and puppies living in bins filled with their own feces, five large Macaw birds flying freely, rats, bugs and overall squalor.

Puppies discovered living in their own feces inside a Florida home that was filled with trash, urine, and feces.

Puppies discovered living in their own feces inside a Florida home that was filled with trash, urine, and feces. (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)

Deputies said due to the large amounts of trash in the home, they had to clear a path to reach the victim’s bedroom.

“None of the home’s toilets were working and all were found to be overflowing with feces,” deputies said. “The only working sink was located on the opposite end of the house from the victim’s bedroom.”

They said there was no food or water for the victim or the animals.

FLORIDA MAN IN EASTER BUNNY COSTUME CAUGHT IN VIRAL BRAWL IS WANTED IN NEW JERSEY, HAS HISTORY OF ARRESTS

The victim was transported to a local hospital for injuries that were non-life threatening, while the animals were transported to shelters.

The woman’s caretaker, Richard Lawrence Goodwin, 65, was arrested and charged with abuse and neglect of an elderly person, disabled person, and cruelty to animals.

Richard Goodwin, 69, was arrested for abuse and neglect of an elderly and disabled person after deputies found she was living in deplorable conditions.

Richard Goodwin, 69, was arrested for abuse and neglect of an elderly and disabled person after deputies found she was living in deplorable conditions. (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)

The sheriff’s department said this was Goodwin’s second arrest for abuse and neglect of the same victim. He was previously arrested in May 2018.

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Neighbor Victoria Muenzerbeer told FOX 13 that Goodwin and the victim were hoarders and the conditions inside the home were horrible years ago when she visited once.

“I went in and it was absolutely, a human being couldn’t live there,” she said. “The kitchen wasn’t usable and part of the wall was falling in.”

Source: Fox News National

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Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli
Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara

April 26, 2019

By Ulf Laessing

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s U.N.-recognized government has budgeted up to 2 billion dinars ($1.43 billion) to cover costs of a three-week-old war for control of the capital, such as treatment for the wounded, to be funded without new borrowing, the economy minister said.

Ali Abdulaziz Issawi suggested the government hoped for business to continue more or less as usual despite the assault on Tripoli, in the country’s northwest, by forces tied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Once Africa’s third largest producer of oil, Libya has been riven by factional conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Khalifa Haftar and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

Still, with Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces unable so far to pierce defenses in Tripoli’s southern suburbs, normal life and business activities continue in much of the capital and western coastal towns.

Issawi, in an interview with Reuters in his Tripoli office, also said Libya’s commercial ports and wheat imports were still functioning normally, although some roads have been blocked.

He said the Serraj government estimates it will spend up to 2 billion dinars extra on medical treatment for wounded, aid for displaced people and other “emergency” war costs.

He said this was not military spending but analysts believe that the sum will also cover expenditures such as pay for allied armed groups or food for fighters.

“We could actually spend less,” he added, in comments that gave the first insight into the economic impact of the fighting.

Issawi said the Tripoli government, which controls little territory beyond the greater capital region, would not incur new debt to fund the war costs, sticking to a plan to post a 2019 budget without a deficit.

Tripoli derives revenue largely from oil and natural gas production, interest-free loans from local banks to the central bank, and a 183 percent surcharge on foreign exchange transactions conducted at official rates.

But with centralized tax collection greatly diminished, public debt has piled up – to 68 billion dinars in the west, including unpaid state obligations such as social insurance.

Some analysts expect Serraj’s government will be forced to raise new debt if the war for control of Tripoli drags on.

With much of Libya dominated by armed factions that also act as security forces, the public wage bill for both the western and eastern administrations has soared as fighters have been made public employees in efforts to buy their loyalty.

The east has sold bonds worth 35 billion dinars outside the official financial system as the Tripoli central bank does not fund the parallel government apart from some wages.

Despite its limited reach, the Tripoli government still runs an annual budget of around 46.8 billion dinars, mainly for public salaries and fuel subsidies.

“This year we cannot finance via debt…we will not borrow (by agreement with the central bank),” Issawi said.

According to International Monetary Fund data, Libya’s central government debt-to-GDP ratio is 143 percent, making it one of the most heavily indebted in the world on that measure.

Issawi declined to say what parts of the budget would be trimmed to support the extra outlay for war costs.

However, with some 70 percent of the budget allocated to public wages, fuel subsidies and other welfare benefits, a portion devoted to infrastructure is most likely to be axed.

Widespread lawlessness has meant there have been no major infrastructural projects since 2011, when a NATO-backed uprising overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving schools, hospitals and roads in acute need of restoration.

FOREX SURCHARGE

Issawi said the government planned to raise as much as 30 billion dinars by the end of 2019 from hard currency deals after imposing in September a 183 percent surcharge on commercial and private transactions done on the official rate of 1.4 to the U.S. dollar. That fee has effectively devalued the official rate to 3.9, much closer to the black market equivalent.

Some 17 billion dinars have been raised since then, with hard currency allocated for import credit letters now issued without delays, Issawi said. The forex fee has helped the government forecast a budget in the black for 2019.

Despite the narrowing spread between the two rates, the black market continues to thrive. Dozens of traders remained at their favorite spot behind the central bank headquarters in Tripoli when Reuters reporters visited it last week.

But traders said it could take time for the Serraj government to register the extra forex receipts as official banking channels were taking up to six months to approve import financing, keeping the black market in play for dealers.

Issawi said authorities planned to lower the forex fee from 183 percent, without saying when. The black market rate has dropped from 6 to around 4.1 since September but it has hardly moved of late as demand for black market cash remains high.

The Tripoli government has stopped subsidizing food and bread, which used to be cheaper than drinking water in Libya. Wheat imports are now being arranged by private traders and there are surplus stocks of flour at the moment, Issawi said.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Tripoli with additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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