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'Game of Thrones' Actor Compares Trump to Ruthless Boy-King

One of the actors on "Game of Thrones" said in a new interview the fantasy drama mimics modern life under President Donald Trump.

Kit Harington spoke with Variety ahead of the show's eighth and final season and compared Trump to a boy-king on the show who relished in chaos before he was killed in the fourth season.

"I think it's always been about two things for me. About dysfunctional families — or families in general, always where the best drama is — and the everlasting idea that people who seek power are very often the last people who should have it," Harington said.

"Unfortunately, we're leaving 'Thrones' with a Joffrey as the president of the United States of America."

Harington added he is "deeply sad" about the current state of the world.

"I'm deeply sad of the state of the world as 'Thrones' ends," he said. "Because if it was prophetic, you'd hope that people would have watched 'Thrones' and tried to avoid some of the situations these characters find themselves in, and I feel like we are living in a more 'Thrones'-like world."

Source: NewsMax America

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Who's telling the truth about Cohen pardon request? It's anyone's guess: Charles Lane

The question of whether former Trump attorney Michael Cohen ever sought a pardon from the president is difficult to answer due to a lack of reliable sources, Washington Post opinion writer Charles Lane argued Friday.

During his testimony to Congress, Cohen claimed he never asked President Trump for a pardon, something the president asserts was a lie. Trump even took to Twitter and insisted that Cohen asked him directly about a pardon, and that Trump responded “no.”

On Friday's "Special Report" All-Star panel, Lane -- along with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley and The Federalist co-founder Ben Domenech -- weighed in on the pardon matter as it factors into the ongoing Russia probe.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL SHOW

Lane began by suggesting that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was still “holding out hope” that the president would pardon him after he was sentenced this week to 47 months in prison on tax and bank fraud charges. But regarding Cohen's pardon testimony, Lane said he could “see it either way” on whether Trump or Cohen was being truthful, adding that Cohen could have gone to “intermediaries” instead of the president.

“I personally would like to know what the real story is about this pardon. I want to know, was it dangled? I want to know, was it sought?” Lane told the panel. “The problem is, of course, is that we have these two guys who aren’t exactly on good terms with the truth who are our best witnesses to it.”

“The problem is ... we have these two guys who aren’t exactly on good terms with the truth who are our best witnesses to it.”

— Charles Lane, Washington Post opinion writer

Lane added that Trump is taking a risk for depicting Cohen as a “liar,” particularly because Cohen testified that he saw no proof of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

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Domenech said Trump “loves dunking” on his political enemies and that their “attitude” toward the president “dictates his attitude” toward them. He added that if House Republicans want to pursue a perjury charge against Cohen, the White House may be forced to prove that Cohen lied about not seeking a pardon.

Meanwhile, Riley noted that Manafort “isn’t out of the woods” just yet as he faces another sentencing next week for criminal behavior.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Ocasio-Cortez, at SXSW, blasts FDR, Reagan and capitalism, says political moderates are 'meh'

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed political moderates at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, calling their views “misplaced” as she defended her progressive politics in a room full of supporters.

“Moderate is not a stance. It's just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” the New York Democrat said Saturday during an interview with Briahna Gray, senior politics editor for the Intercept. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view ‘meh,’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete when ... the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of visions, and the ‘meh’ is just worshipped now, for what?”

The self-declared Democratic socialist also criticized the treatment of minorities throughout American history, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, which she claimed was racist, to Ronald Reagan's policies, which she said "pitted" white working class people against minorities in order "to screw over all working-class Americans,” particularly African-Americans and Hispanics.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ SLAMS FELLOW DEMOCRATS AGAIN OVER 'RACIST AND FALSE' IMMIGRATION TROPES

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right, D-N.Y., speaks with Briahna Gray, a senior politics editor at the Intercept, during South by Southwest on Saturday, March 9, 2019, in Austin, Texas. (Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right, D-N.Y., speaks with Briahna Gray, a senior politics editor at the Intercept, during South by Southwest on Saturday, March 9, 2019, in Austin, Texas. (Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

"So you think about this image of welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was ... this like really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were 'sucks' on our country," she said.

"So you think about this image of welfare queens and what [Reagan] was really trying to talk about was ... this like really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were 'sucks' on our country."

— U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

"And it's this whole tragedy of the commons type of thinking where it's like because ... this one specific group of people, that you are already kind of subconsciously primed to resent, you give them a different reason that's not explicit racism but still rooted in a racist caricature," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "It gives people a logical reason, a 'logical' reason to say, 'Oh yeah, no, toss out the whole social safety net.'"

CAPITOL GRAPPLES WITH COMPLICATED HISTORY ON RACE

Other topics Ocasio-Cortez discussed included the Green New Deal and capitalism, which she said could not be redeemed because it puts profit “above everything else.”

“The most important thing is the concentration of capital, and it means that we prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else, and we seek it at any human and environmental cost… But when we talk about ideas like democratic socialism, it means putting democracy and society first, instead of capital first; it doesn’t mean that the actual concept of capitalistic society should be abolished,” she said.

"When we talk about ideas like democratic socialism, it means putting democracy and society first, instead of capital first; it doesn’t mean that the actual concept of capitalistic society should be abolished."

— U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

During a Q&A session with the audience, television host and author Bill Nye the Science Guy stepped up to the microphone.

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“I’m a white guy,” Nye said. “I think the problem on both sides is fear. People of my ancestry are afraid to pay for everything as immigrants come into this country. People who work at the diner in Alabama are afraid to ask for what is reasonable. So do you have a plan to work with people in Congress that are afraid? That’s what’s going on with many conservatives especially when it comes to climate change. People are afraid of what happens when we try to make these big changes.”

“One of the keys to dismantling fear is dismantling a zero-sum mentality,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “It means the rejection outright of the logic that says someone else’s gain necessitates my loss and that my gain must necessitate someone’s loss. We can give without a take. We’re viewing progress as a loss instead of as an investment. When we choose to invest in our system, we are choosing to create wealth. When we all invest in them, then the wealth is for all of us too.”

"When we choose to invest in our system, we are choosing to create wealth. When we all invest ... then the wealth is for all of us."

— U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

The nine-day music and media festival has attracted many political figures this year. Several 2020 presidential candidates made appearances Saturday, including Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is also considering a presidential bid, also made the pilgrimage.

Ohio's former Republican Gov. John Kasich -- a potential GOP challenger to President Trump -- also spoke at the festival Saturday.

Source: Fox News Politics

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NZ mulls security for sports teams after mosque shooting

On a normal test match morning Hagley Oval in Christchurch would have been a hive of activity.

Mowers would be sweeping the broad, green outfield, ground staff making the last, finicky touches to the test match pitch, players going through warmups, reporters and others huddling and discussing prospects for the day.

But on Saturday morning, the tree-lined oval near the center of Christchurch city was a desolate reminder of the tragic events of a day before. The stadium and the usual bustling boulevards that surround it were deserted as police urged people to stay indoors.

At 1:45 p.m. on Friday afternoon, a gunman dressed in black, military style clothing opened fire on worshipers gathered for afternoon prayers at the Al Noor Mosque, only 10 minutes walk from the stadium.

A bus carrying members of the Bangladesh cricket team which was due to begin its third test match against New Zealand on Saturday had just drawn up on the street near the mosque when the shooting started. Players and team support staff intended to pray at the mosque before continuing to the ground to join teammates and coaching staff.

Players sheltered aboard the bus as a volley of shots rang out. As many as 150 shots may have been fired inside and around the mosque, leaving 39 dead and dozens wounded. Ten more died at a second mosque a few kilometers away.

After a terrifying wait, described in vivid Twitter posts, players were able to leave the bus and walk through leafy Hagley Park to Hagley Oval where, deeply shaken, they waited in their locker room until police allowed them to return to their hotel.

Team performance analyst Shrinivas Chandrasekeran, on Twitter, said "Just escaped active shooters. Heartbeats pumping badly and panic everywhere."

Mohammad Isam, a journalist from ESPN Cricinfo, filmed the players as they made their way from the bus to the ground. They were told not to run but walk briskly and they did so, tension and distress evident in haunted looks and a hurrying pace.

Three hours after the shooting, New Zealand Cricket, in consultation with the Bangladesh Cricket Board and International Cricket Council, announced the test match which would have been played over five days had been canceled.

In cricket, the total cancellation of a test match for reasons other than the weather is a rare and momentous event. In 2002 a scheduled test between Pakistan and New Zealand in Karachi was canceled after a terrorist bombing close to the visitors' team hotel.

In announcing the cancellation, New Zealand Cricket chief executive David White made clear that the events of Friday had forever changed the way in which the country approaches the security of sporting teams. Small and isolated, New Zealand has often considered itself immune from wider world events such as terrorist violence.

"This is shocking. This will change the entire fabric of international sports hosting," White said. "I think everything changes now.

"We'll certainly be having to look at our security in depth. I think the idea of New Zealand being a safe haven is gone now."

New Zealand cricketer Jimmy Neesham expressed a similar sense of shock and loss on Twitter.

"For so long I've watched world events from afar and naively thought we were somehow different in our little corner of the world, somehow safe," Neesham said. "Today is a terrible day. Disgusted and saddened doesn't begin to describe it."

The Bangladesh team was due to leave New Zealand midday Saturday. Isam, who spent most of Friday afternoon and evening with the players, said they had no thoughts of playing cricket and wished only to return to their homes.

___

More AP Cricket: www.apnews.com/cricket and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Source: Fox News World

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Acting Pentagon chief says IS territory nearly cleared

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan says the United States and its partners in Syria have liberated virtually all the territory the Islamic State group once held.

But he's not declaring victory. The insurgents and local forces are still battling over a small slice of land.

Shanahan tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. forces are drawing down in Syria but will maintain a presence to prevent a resurgence of the extremist group that once controlled large swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.

Shanahan is a former Boeing executive who's been the interim Pentagon chief since Jan. 1, when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis left.

President Donald Trump hasn't said whether he'll nominate Shanahan for the Cabinet post.

Source: Fox News National

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For Republicans, national emergency vote brings a dessert dilemma

Do you want ice cream or cake?

As someone who recently celebrated a birthday, I know it’s hard to decide.

The easy solution is an ice cream cake.

Head to Baskin-Robbins. Dairy Queen. Carvel. All we need is ice cream cake.

Congressional Republicans may need to enlist the services of Fudgie the Whale themselves. They too face a dessert dilemma. Ice cream or cake? Funds for a border wall? Or money for a military spending priority in their state or district?

This is where Fudgie comes in.

President Trump’s national emergency declaration plunders various appropriations silos, which Congress targeted for specific Pentagon and “Military Construction” projects. The national emergency redistributes money for the wall. GOPers want the wall. But they also don’t want President Trump to pilfer their pet project back home.

So, maybe the best solution to the quandary is the appropriations equivalent of an ice cream cake.

All lawmakers know right now are the general pots of money from which the Trump administration will loot funds for the wall. But everyone’s in the dark when it comes to specifics.

“I asked for the particulars,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., after having breakfast at the Pentagon with Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

Democratic leaders of the House Appropriations and Armed Services Committees also wrote to Shanahan demanding what programs were on the chopping block.

“We request that you produce the requested documents and information no later than March 21, 2019,” wrote the Democrats.

This is what happens when the power of the purse is ceded to the executive. No one on Capitol Hill knows what’s going on.

The Senate is cruising toward following the House’s lead and voting to terminate the national emergency. The House already voted to undo the president’s action. The Senate will follow suit. At least four Senate Republicans will join all 47 Senate Democrats to cease the national emergency. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is among the four public GOP yeas. Paul says there are about ten other GOPers who will likely vote to halt the national emergency.

“If there is four, there’s ten,” said one Republican senator to Fox.

But there aren’t enough votes in the House or Senate to override a prospective veto by Trump. Sixty-seven yeas are required in the Senate to override a presidential veto.

However, that’s why the list of “particulars,” as Shelby put it, is so important. If senators actually had the concrete information at their fingertips as to which military projects the administration may raid for the wall, it’s possible even more senators could vote to rebuff Trump.

If you’re for the wall, perhaps that’s a good argument to withhold the list until after the Senate’s taken the vote.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, says he’d like to see the docket ahead of time.

“I would certainly support that. I know a number of people who probably would,” said Romney.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., keeps saying that Republicans are having a “spirited discussion” about the vote to disapprove of the national emergency declaration and potential impacts on key military projects. McConnell backed Mr. Trump’s decision to declare the national emergency in an effort to avoid a second government shutdown. But McConnell adds “I advised the president not to take this route.” The Kentucky Republican also says he doesn’t “have a solution as to how this ends.” The only thing that’s clear is the Senate will vote to reject the national emergency declaration, tempting President Trump to issue his first veto.

A vote to overturn the resolution is yet another example of Senate GOP dissension when it comes to the president. In recent months, Republican senators broke with the president on a speedy withdrawal from Syria, how the administration dealt with Saudi Arabia following the death of Jamal Khashoggi and the cancellation of some Russian sanctions. Fox is told Trump was close to facing a “jailbreak” of GOP defections had the government not re-opened when it did following the shutdown.

A vote to overturn the resolution is yet another example of Senate GOP dissension when it comes to the president.

If the Senate approves the package, the House and Senate are aligned and the package goes to President Trump, begging for the veto.

President Obama vetoed his first piece of legislation after only 11 months on the job. President George W. Bush never vetoed a bill until he was in office for five-and-a-half years. President Bill Clinton didn’t use a veto until two-and-a-half years into his presidency.

Presidents have only vetoed 2,500 pieces of legislation in the history of the republic. But the Founders wanted to give Congress one last chance to go over the head of the executive. That’s a veto override.

One of the few things more rare than a veto is a successful veto override.

The gambit requires a two-thirds vote by both bodies of Congress. That’s 67 votes in the Senate, provided all 100 senators cast ballots. And 427 House members cast ballots on the bill to block the national emergency last month. So the yardstick there is 285 yeas. There were 245 members who voted in favor of the bill. Thus, the House fell 40 votes short.

We are not expecting a successful override of a prospective veto of the national emergency. The math simply doesn’t work.

The last unsuccessful attempt to override a veto came in January 2016. President Barack Obama vetoed a Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare. The House voted 241-186, well short of the 285 yeas needed to override. The maneuver never went to the Senate since the override maneuver failed in the House.

Note that the vote to override is based on how many lawmakers take part in the override effort itself, not how many members voted on the bill when it passed both bodies. So, determining a precise number required to override is impossible until the veto override vote concludes.

The last successful veto override came in September 2016. Obama vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The measure allowed families of 9/11 victims to sue those responsible or the attacks, including Saudi Arabia. The Senate voted 97-1 to override Obama; 66 votes were needed. The House voted 348-77 with one lawmaker voting present. And 284 yeas were needed for the override.

The potential veto override attempt will only go to the House, since that’s the body which originated the disapproval legislation of the president’s national emergency declaration. If the House comes up short with the override initiative, the effort dies there. It never moves to the Senate.

That’s an advantage for some Republican senators. They can be for the national emergency. Oppose Mr. Trump plundering money for the wall from projects important to them and know they’ll never have to cast a vote to override the expected veto. GOP senators can spin their votes and positions any way they want.

It’s the ice cream cake of politics. Having it both ways. Getting ice cream and cake, wrapped into one.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Ford names company veterans to lead auto, mobility units

FILE PHOTO: Ford Motor Executive Vice President and President of the Americas Joe Hinrichs addresses the audience during the 100-year celebration of the Ford River Rouge Complex in Dearborn
FILE PHOTO: Ford Motor Executive Vice President and President of the Americas Joe Hinrichs addresses the audience during the 100-year celebration of the Ford River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan U.S. September 27, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo

April 10, 2019

(Reuters) – Ford Motor Co on Wednesday named two company veterans to lead its auto and mobility businesses as the No.2 U.S. automaker shifts its focus to autonomous vehicles and realigns its automobile portfolio.

Joe Hinrichs was named president of its automotive unit and Jim Farley as president, new businesses, technology & strategy, effective May 1. Both the executives will report to Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett, the company said.

“In the past two years, we have made tangible progress in improving the fitness of our business, overhauled our regional strategies, created a winning product portfolio, and are working to transform Ford to succeed in an era of profound change and disruption,” Hackett said.

(Reporting by Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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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