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The Human Toll of Our Crumbling Infrastructure

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Everyone has a traffic horror story that’s come with a high cost—a missed meeting, family dinner, or the Little League opening pitch.  These are the moments and memories that are lost as we sit imprisoned in our vehicles.  Today, the biggest obstacle that stands between us and the places we work, live and play is thousands of miles of crumbling roads, highways and bridges that are creating bottlenecks and gridlock. 

The problem has reached a tipping point.  Just last month, chunks of falling concrete struck cars traveling under bridges in California and Massachusetts.  We are no longer facing a future highway maintenance crisis.  We’re living it.  In nearly 53 percent of the highway fatalities, the condition of the roadway contributed.  Every day we fail to invest, we’re putting more lives at risk. 

In February, the American Transport Research Institute released its annual list of top 100 bottlenecks in the country that rob us all of time and money. Time wasted sitting in traffic – rather than at work or with our families – has skyrocketed.  The typical commuter spends 42 hours each year sitting in traffic, and motorists now pay an annual average of $1,600 in vehicle repairs, wasted gas and lost time – all as a result of our failing infrastructure. The trucking industry loses 1.2 billion hours of productivity every year because of traffic congestion, which is the equivalent of 425,000 truck drivers sitting idle for an entire year.  That adds $74.5 billion in additional operating costs to the nation’s supply chain – costs that ultimately reach the end consumer. 

Fortunately, our leaders in Washington appear to be inching toward cooperation to fix the problem as House Democrats and the Republican administration have each signaled a desire to find common ground on this issue.  To get there we need an innovative solution.  America’s truckers believe that our nation’s roads and bridges should be paid for by the users that travel on them every day.  While trucks make up just 4% of the vehicles on our nation’s highways, trucking already pays for nearly half of the Highway Trust Fund — and we’re willing to pay more.  That’s why we have proposed the Build America Fund: a five-cent-per-gallon user fee added on to all transportation fuels each year for four years, including diesel, gasoline and natural gas. 

The fee will be applied at the wholesale terminal rack, before the retail gas pump, and indexed to inflation and improvements in fuel efficiency.  The business community, including the trucking industry, will shoulder a large share of the $340 billion that the plan would generate.  

The Build America Fund is the most fiscally conservative proposal, costing less than .01 cent on the dollar to administer.  This is new and real revenue for our nation’s roads and bridges, not fake funding like toll roads, which cost up to .35 cents a dollar for tolling schemes — the very definition of highway robbery.  User fees have seen broad support in the past.  President Reagan twice increased the user fee, which was supported by Democrats and Republicans, organized labor and the business community, as the best way to invest in roads and bridges.  Today, user fees are seeing support from governors in Ohio, Michigan and Alabama and multiple other states in legislation to help shore up their own infrastructure needs.  

The immediate revenue generated from this fund comes at a critical time, as multiple indicators are pointing to a softening of the U.S. economy.  This problem will only be exacerbated if our deteriorating infrastructure prevents us from moving goods quickly and efficiently.  Investment now is essential to sustaining economic growth in the coming years.  

Too often, lawmakers get caught up in the politics, pay-fors and big price tags of fixing our infrastructure, but they often forget the human toll and the wasted time and money that are being bled every day on the roads.  Let’s end the nightmare that Americans are living through and put them on the road to a better future.

Chris Spear is president and CEO of American Trucking Associations.

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U.S. judge rebuts Trump on transgender troop limits

FILE PHOTO - Members of the Army march up 5th Avenue during the Veterans Day Parade in New York
FILE PHOTO - Members of the Army march up 5th Avenue during the Veterans Day Parade in New York November 11, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

March 19, 2019

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday contradicted the Trump administration’s “incorrect” claim that no legal blocks remain for it to enforce a contentious policy to restrict many transgender individuals from the U.S. armed forces starting on April 12.

In a three-page notice, U.S. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said an injunction that she issued against the policy in 2017 remains in place.

“Defendants were incorrect in claiming that there was no longer an impediment to the military’s implementation” of the transgender policy, the judge wrote.

A spokeswoman for Pentagon said it was consulting with the U.S. Justice Department, which declined to comment.

Three other injunctions issued by judges in separate cases have already been lifted, in part by a Jan. 22 U.S. Supreme Court decision and subsequent action by a federal judge in Maryland.

That prompted the U.S. Defense Department to sign a memo on March 12 that would enforce its service limitations on transgender people, effective one month later.

Kollar-Kotelly’s injunction, however, had been set aside by a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 4. The panel said it would hold off on issuing a “mandate” to finalize the higher court’s decision until it resolves any request by the plaintiffs who challenged the transgender policy as a violation of the U.S. Constitution to rehear their appeal.

“The Trump administration cannot circumvent the judicial process just to fast track its baseless, unfair ban on transgender servicemembers,” said attorney Jennifer Levi of the anti-discrimination group GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, who represents the plaintiffs.

President Donald Trump in 2017 announced a plan to ban transgender people from the military, reversing Democratic former President Barack Obama’s policy of allowing transgender troops to serve openly and get medical transition care.

In March 2018, Trump backed a revised policy from then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It banned, in some circumstances, transgender people with gender dysphoria, or distress due to internal conflict between physical gender and gender identity.

The Mattis policy also banned transgender people who seek or have undergone gender transition steps.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Richard Chang)

Source: OANN

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NH Poll: Buttigieg in Third Behind Biden, Sanders

Surprise presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is gaining ground on political heavyweights Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, at least in New Hampshire, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The 37-year-old longtime South Bend, Indiana, mayor has the support of 10.7 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, compared with 23 percent for former Vice President Biden and 15.6 percent for Sen. Sanders, I-Vt.

"Right now, it looks like the battle in New Hampshire is all about two familiar faces," said Neil Levesque of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

"This is very surprising," Levesque said of Buttigieg in third. "He's now in third place in New Hampshire, and he came from relative obscurity. And he's gone up an astounding 33 percent with his favorability, so Pete Buttigieg is somebody to watch."

Sanders is running for a second consecutive time, while Biden has yet to announce a bid for the 2020 race, though he is leaning toward running.

Buttigieg has only announced an exploratory committee, a step short of an actual presidential campaign.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Guaido says he’s trying to freeze Venezuelan accounts in Switzerland

Venezuela's Guaido attends a news conference to mark the 5th anniversary of the arrest of the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in Caracas
FILE PHOTO: Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country's rightful interim ruler, attends a news conference to mark the 5th anniversary of the arrest of the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in Caracas, Venezuela February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Manaure Quintero

February 20, 2019

(Reuters) – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said he spoke to Switzerland’s president on Wednesday to try to freeze banks accounts belonging to the tumultuous South American nation after “irregular movements” were discovered.

Guaido invoked a constitutional provision to claim the presidency three weeks ago, arguing that Nicolas Maduro’s reelection last year was a sham. Since then, Guaido has been trying to control Venezuelan assets overseas.

In an interview with Mexican network Televisa, Guaido said he had spoken with the Swiss president earlier on Wednesday. He did not mention President Ueli Maurer by name and a Swiss foreign ministry spokesman denied the two men had spoken.

Guaido said the Venezuelan government held bank accounts in Switzerland and that irregular efforts to migrate part of those accounts to “another site” had been detected.

“We are doing everything possible to protect these assets that belong to the republic,” he said.

He did not say who had detected the movements in the accounts, whether any money had been transferred, or give further details.

Most Western countries, including the United States, have recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state, but Maduro retains the backing of Russia and China as well as control of state institutions including the military.

Switzerland has urged protection for Guaido and calls the situation in Venezuela under Maduro “extremely problematic,” but says it formally recognizes states, not governments.

The Swiss Finance Ministry, which Maurer also heads, declined to comment on the Venezuelan accounts, referring further requests for information to the foreign ministry’s asset recovery department.

Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice said no one in Venezuela so far had sought Swiss legal assistance in tracking down assets.

(Reporting by Adriana Barrera in Mexico City and Michael Shields in Zurich; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bill Trott and Richard Chang)

Source: OANN

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NFL expands replay to include pass interference

FILE PHOTO: New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton looks on as his team takes on the Atlanta Falcons during their NFL football game in New Orleans, Louisiana
FILE PHOTO: New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton looks on as his team takes on the Atlanta Falcons during their NFL football game in New Orleans, Louisiana September 8, 2013. REUTERS/Sean Gardner

March 27, 2019

NFL owners voted 31-1 to make offensive and defensive pass interference calls and non-calls reviewable in 2019, the NFL announced Tuesday from the annual league meetings in Phoenix.

According to multiple reports, the Cincinnati Bengals were the only team to vote against the rule.

The new rule, which will be revisited next offseason to determine if it becomes permanent, will allow coaches to challenge any call or non-call of pass interference before the final two minutes of each half, and any such plays to be reviewable by the booth inside of two minutes. Coaches will still be allowed only two challenges per game, or three if the first two are successful.

After getting little support from the owners in meetings Monday, the rule change was pushed over the edge by overwhelming support from coaches, multiple outlets reported. Meetings regarding the rule ran long Monday as coaches made their case for implementing the change, and they continued Tuesday.

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton led the effort, after his team missed out on a likely appearance in Super Bowl LIII when referees failed to make an obvious pass interference call late in the NFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Rams.

“I think we got it right,” Payton told reporters afterward. “It felt like we had to go around the block twice, and then arrived at the right address.”

Saints owner Gayle Benson, who issued a strong statement after the team’s championship game loss in reference to the officiating, added, “This is what I wanted to happen. That’s why I made my statement. [The missed call] will never happen again.”

“People compromised on long-held views because people wanted to get it right,” commissioner Roger Goodell said in his press conference, held shortly after the new rule was approved.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports the new rule would have had a major impact had it been in place earlier, not only the NFC Championship Game but also for Super Bowl LIII.

According to Schefter, the competition committee admitted the new rule would have given the Rams the ball at the 1-yard line with 4:24 remaining as they trailed 10-3 in the Super Bowl, after cornerback Stephon Gilmore subtly hooked wideout Brandin Cooks’ arm on an incompletion in the end zone. No call was made on that play — Cooks still nearly caught the pass, but couldn’t hang on — and Jared Goff was intercepted by Gilmore on the next snap, all but clinching the game for New England.

Meanwhile, the possibility of a “sky judge” — an eighth official looking at camera feeds live to help make obvious decisions without reviews — is not yet dead, according to Steelers owner Art Rooney II. However, there remain a number of logistics to work out on the subject, and it will be revisited later this offseason.

Among other decisions made on rule changes:

–The Kansas City Chiefs’ proposal that would guarantee both teams possession in overtime, regardless of whether the first team to possess the ball scores a touchdown, was tabled until May. The Chiefs lost the AFC Championship Game without possessing the ball in overtime after the Patriots scored a touchdown on the first possession.

–The Denver Broncos’ proposal to allow teams to attempt a fourth-and-15 conversion from their own 35-yard line in lieu of attempting an onside kick — used a maximum of once per game — was rejected, despite seven of eight competition committee members voting in favor of it.

–The definition of plays subject to automatic reviews was expanded. Previously including only plays involving a score or turnover, the category now also includes any score or turnover nullified by penalty or any extra-point or 2-point conversion attempt.

–Changes made to the kickoff in 2018 on a one-year trial were made permanent moving forward.

–All blind-side blocks were made illegal, with the intention of improving player safety after research showed such blocks led to a third of concussions sustained on punts. Previously, players were only allowed to deliver blind-side blocks that avoided the head or neck area.

–After unsportsmanlike conduct penalties occur during a touchdown play, teams are now allowed to choose whether to enforce the penalty on the extra-point try or on the kickoff.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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The Latest: Kansas boy’s parents charged with murder

The Latest on a Wichita couple whose 3-year-old son was found dead at their mobile home (all times local):

5 p.m.

Prosecutors have filed murder charges against a Wichita couple whose 3-year-old had been dead for days when his body was found in a crib in their mobile home.

The parents of Zaiden Javonovich made their first court appearances Tuesday. His 22-year-old mother, Brandi Kai Marchant, and 28-year-old father, Patrick Janovich, both face five charges.

The Wichita Eagle reports that the charges include first-degree murder with underlying felonies of neglect and abuse, two counts of abuse of a child and aggravated endangerment of a child.

Police last week responding to a domestic disturbance between the parents found the parents walking outside their Wichita home before checking on the children inside where the found the older boy's body. A 4-month-old boy who was taken from their home Thursday in critical condition is improving.

___

7:15 a.m.

Police say child welfare authorities had received abuse reports about a Wichita couple whose 3-year-old had been dead for days when his body was found in a crib in their mobile home.

Capt. Brent Allred says an autopsy will determine the cause of death for Zaiden Javonovich, whose parents were booked into jail last week on suspicion of murder. Police also say a 4-month-old boy who was taken from their home Thursday in critical condition is improving.

Police responding to a domestic disturbance first encountered the parents as they walked back to the home. Police said they hadn't received abuse reports and provided no details on the Kansas Department for Children and Families' involvement with the family.

The agency told KSNW-TV reports that it won't release details while it's investigating.

Source: Fox News National

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Olympics: Tokyo great-grandmother proves it’s never too late to learn

A view of the construction site of the Tokyo Aquatics Centre for Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games in Tokyo
FILE PHOTO: A view of the construction site of the Tokyo Aquatics Centre for Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games in Tokyo, Japan February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato

March 11, 2019

By Jack Tarrant

TOKYO (Reuters) – Great-grandmother Setsuko Takamizawa is determined to prove that it is never too late to learn as she bids to conquer the English language before the Tokyo Olympics, having been prevented from learning what was considered the “enemy language” in her youth.

When Japan last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964, Takamizawa was too busy raising a family to go to any events or pay much attention.

Takamizawa will be 92 when the Olympics return to Tokyo in July next year and this time she wants to get as close to the action as possible.

She is one of more than 200,000 people who have applied as volunteers at the Olympics and Paralympics, hoping to be part of the army of people needed to help organize and guide thousands of foreign visitors around the city.

Although it is not a mandatory qualification, the ability to speak English is a crucial skill organizers are looking for and Takamizawa is eager to finally take the opportunity acquire it.

“When I was a freshman at a girl’s senior high school, World War Two broke out,” Takamizawa explained in an interview with Reuters.

“In my second year there, English was banned because it was the enemy language.”

Takamizawa said her grandchildren had helped convince her she was not too old to learn.

“I don’t speak English at all, so I thought I wish I could speak English,” Takamizawa said whilst visiting the under-construction Olympic Stadium in central Tokyo.

“When I talked to my grandchildren about my wish, they said, ‘it’s not too late. We will teach you one word a day. It’s going to be a good challenge for you’.”

“That was when everything started.”

According to organizers, less than 1 percent of the applicants to the volunteer program are over 80.

However, she knows that novelty will not be enough and that an ability to speak passable English will help her achieve her chief goal – to share stories with people from around the world.

“When I taught her the word ‘world’, grandmother said: ‘that’s what I want to know about, the world and your country. I want to know about the world’,” said Takamizawa’s granddaughter, Natsuko.

Natsuko speaks English well and has been her grandmother’s main teacher.

“What I want is not only a chance to speak English but also I want to encounter various people with various culture and values by using English as a tool,” added Takamizawa.

“That would be the best.”

OPENING UP

According to the EF English Proficiency Index, Japan ranks 49th among countries where English is not the first language, below nations such as Chile, Belarus and neighboring South Korea.

This is slowly changing as younger generations embrace English and it is taught in schools from a much younger age.

However, Takamizawa believes real change will not happen unless Japanese people become more open to the rest of the world.

“There are only few, or such a thin layer of people on the surface, very thin like cling film, who can speak English or who are interested in the world,” she said of her fellow Japanese.

“But they must look to step out of the country. We should live and act not only as a Japanese person but also one of the global members on the earth.”

Natsuko sends her grandmother a new English word to learn every day on her phone and they also regularly sit down together to work on key phrases that Takamizawa will need come the Olympics.

“Welcome to Tokyo, this is the Olympic stadium, how can I help you?” says a beaming Takamizawa when asked to recite the English phrases she has learnt.

For her granddaughter, this curiosity is a source of true joy.

“My intention was that I wanted to give her a joy at her age of 90,” Natsuko said.

“For me it’s simply fun to talk to her and to wait for her reply, (it’s not about) admiring her hard work or contributing to the Olympic Games.

“I can clearly see her English is getting better. It’s my joy now.”

With a little over 500 days to go until the Games begin, the whole Takamizawa family is eager to welcome the world to Tokyo.

“I am of course excited. I have never thought of seeing the Olympics in Tokyo twice in my life,” said Takamizawa.

“It’s good to live long.”

(Additional reporting by Aina Tanaka; Reporting by Jack Tarrant; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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].”

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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