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Those Pushing Collusion Hoax Must Face Consequences

Tucker Carlson called for consequences for those who pushed the Trump-Russian collusion narrative if the report by special counsel Robert Mueller shows none in a monologue delivered on the Thursday broadcast of his FOX News show.

For now, we’d like to take a second to put this entire, sprawling story in perspective. Our job on this show is to remember things, to create a record of what’s happened in this country over the past few years, and what’s happened to it. Our grandchildren will want to know. If the left has its way, they will never see the details. It will all be whitewashed, like so much else in our history. So let’s recall, for the record, what the Robert Mueller investigation is about, why we got a special counsel in the first place. The point wasn’t to discover whether the president fudged deductions on his tax returns thirty years ago. It wasn’t to find out whether he wanted to build another hotel in foreign country. From its first day, the Mueller investigation was justified by a single question: Did Donald Trump collude with the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election? Did the president betray his country? For close to three years, Democrats have told us that, yes, he did:

BETO: It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt that if there was not collusion, there was at least the effort to collude

(edit)

ADAM SCHIFF: I think there’s plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight

(edit)

MAXINE WATERS: There’s more to be learned about it. I believe there has been collusion.
(edit)

JOHN PODESTA: It's starting to smell more and more like collusion

(edit)

NANCY PELOSI: We saw cold, hard evidence of the Trump campaign, the Trump family eagerly intending to collude possibly with Russia.

If you grew up in this country, it’s hard to shrug off charges like the ones you just heard. Maxine Waters is an irrelevant person, a living sideshow. But Nancy Pelosi is hardly that. She is the speaker of the House of Representatives. She’s third in line to the presidency. Adam Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He’s privy to the most highly-classified information our government possesses. John Podesta was the Chief of Staff in one White House and a senior advisor in another. Beto O’Rourke has raised more money than anyone else running for president in 2020. These are not peripheral figures. They are the most serious people in the modern Democratic Party. We took them seriously. We felt we had a duty to understand why they were calling the president of the United States a traitor. So we asked them. We interviewed a number of them on this show. One of the most persistent accusers was congressman Eric Swalwell of California, who is also a member of the House intelligence committee. If there was indeed evidence of collusion with Russia, Swalwell would have it. Yet he never produced any. We asked him repeatedly. Swalwell accused us of cutting him off, of not letting him make his case on the air. Finally, in frustration, we offered him a full half an hour, live on this show to do that:

CARLSON: If you have any evidence at all of collusion, any, and I don't care how small it is, I will give the floor to you and I mean that. I want to wrap this up. I'm sure you do too.

Months later, Swalwell accepted our invitation. He never produced a single piece of evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with anyone. Instead, he accused us of working for a foreign power. We asked Swalwell why the public couldn’t see a memo related to the Russia investigation. Here’s how he responded:

CARLSON: In the case of today's memo, what specifically have I espoused that empowers threats to our country?

SWALWELL: You are peddling the narrative that the Trump administration is putting out, which also is the Putin narrative because they are retweeting this with their Russian bots. If you're on the same side as WikiLeaks and Putin ---

CARLSON: I wonder, do you perceive the total collapse -

SWALWELL: If you're on the same side as WikiLeaks and Putin, you should take a step back and wonder whose bidding are you really doing?

For wanting to see a government document that he himself had seen, Congressman Swalwell suggested we were treasonous. There’s been a lot of talk like that over the past couple of years. It has completely changed Washington. People in this city are afraid. They watch what they say. They don’t send emails. They worry about being denounced. Demagogues like Swalwell have terrified them. From the beginning of this investigation, there has been virtually no honest public debate about what’s happening. Watch this exchange from the early days of the administration. Congressman Adam Schiff appeared on this show. We asked a simple, fact-based question about what we know and what we don’t know: Are we certain the Russian government hacked John Podesta’s email account? Here’s how Schiff responded:

CARLSON: Can you look right into the camera and say I know for a fact the government of Vladimir Putin was behind the hacks of John Podesta's email?

SCHIFF: Absolutely. The government of Vladimir Putin was behind the hacks of our institution and the dumping of information --

CARLSON: Of John Podesta's email?

SCHIFF: Not only in the United States, but also in Europe.

CARLSON: You know what? You are dodging.

SCHIFF: And, Tucker, you are --

CARLSON: Look and say I know they did John Podesta's email. They hacked those.

SCHIFF: And I think that Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave and you are carrying water for the Kremlin.

CARLSON: I'm not carrying water. Look, you are sitting member of congress on the Intel committee and you can't say they hacked --

SCHIFF: You're going to have to move your show to RT, Russian Television.

To this day, even the most basic questions about the Russia story remained unanswered. Meanwhile we’ve upended our entire foreign policy, we’ve put Americans in prison, all on the basis of charges nobody was willing to prove. “How do we know that, Congressman?” “Shut up. You’re a Russian agent.” The conspiracy hawks seemed totally impervious to shame or reason. You couldn’t debate them, because they wouldn’t engage. They just threw slurs. They felt no need to demonstrate any of it was true:

MARGARET HOOVER: At what point do you draw the line and not accuse the president of the United States without any evidence of being an agent of Russia?

SWALWELL: Yeah. He’s betrayed our country, and I don’t say that lightly. I worked as a prosecutor for 7 years

HOOVER: But betraying the country — by the way, we want evidence before you say that, but you said an agent of Russia.

SWALWELL: Yeah. He works on their behalf

HOOVER: But as a prosecutor that wouldn’t be evidence in court. You know the difference between hard evidence and circumstantial evidence I’m still not hearing evidence that he’s an agent of Russia.

SWALWELL: I think it’s pretty clear. It’s almost hiding in plain sight.

It wasn’t just Swalwell and Schiff. Some of the most respected, supposedly sober figures in our society engaged in this behavior. They said things that were so reckless and damaging to our country, that it was almost hard to believe it was happening. Keep in mind as you watch this clip that not so long ago, John Brennan was the Director of the CIA, the most powerful intelligence agency in the world:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: McClatchy is reporting right now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen took a secret summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign according to two sources familiar with the matter. Confirmation of the trip would confirm part of the Steele Dossier.

JOHN BRENNAN: The reports that Mr. Cohen was in Prague despite his repeated denials. There is more and more indications that there is something here that is far, far from being anything near a witch hunt.

Michael Cohen was in Prague, meeting with his Russian handlers. That’s Brennan’s claim. You’d think if anyone would know that, it would be the CIA director. The CIA knows all. Except, perhaps, on this one question, Michael Cohen himself might know more. Cohen was asked about it when he testified before congress. Cohen had no reason to protect Donald Trump, and many reasons to hurt him. Here’s what he said:

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): Have you ever been to Prague?

Cohen: I’ve never been to Prague. I’ve never been to the Czech Republic.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): I yield the balance of my time.

At the same hearing, Cohen also told congress than in all his years as Donald Trump’s personal attorney, one of the most intimate relationships in Trump’s life, he’d never seen any evidence of collusion with Russia. Any fair person would consider that the end of this story. Case closed. But it was too late. By that point, the Russia investigation had become a ratings bonanza for the cable news channels. They had no incentive to admit defeat, or even acknowledge reality. So they continued as they had since the inauguration, as if the story was entirely real. Night after night, they brought us an endless parade of screamers, buffoons and halfwits, all claiming knowledge of the conspiracy. Here, to pick one among a thousand examples, is self-described intelligence expert Malcolm Nance delivering his analysis on MSNBC:

MALCOLM NANCE: When Benedict Arnold gave the plans to West Point, to Major André, and they captured Major André, they didn't have any real information linking those plans to Benedict Arnold other than the fact that he was in his presence at one point during that day, but everyone knew it was treason when they caught the man and they hung him. So, at some point there's going to be a bridge of data here that is going to be unassailable.

Thanks for the history lesson: they hung him. Let’s hang this guy. After a while, voters started to agree. Thanks to propaganda like this, 53 percent of registered voters now believe the Trump campaign quote “worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election.” Among Democrats, fully 67 percent believe that Russia somehow rigged the vote tally. Nobody’s ever explained how the Russians might have done that, but of course they did. Russia rigged the election. CNN says so every night.

There need to be consequences for this. Once the Mueller report appears and it becomes incontrovertible that, whatever his faults, Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, the many people who’ve persistently claimed on the basis of no evidence that he did collude with the Russians must be punished. Not indicted or imprisoned, but thoroughly shamed and forced to apologize. If Republicans spent three full years falsely claiming that Barack Obama colluded with the government of Iran, would those who claimed it, ever work in politics or media again? That’s a rhetorical question.

Lying and recklessness should never be ignored. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the premise that Saddam Hussein possessed massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Many of us believed it. But the claim was false. Thousands of Americans died. Trillions were wasted. Nobody was punished. To this day, Max Boot takes a paycheck from the Washington Post. Bill Kristol appears on MSNBC. John Bolton is this country’s National Security Advisor. There were no consequences to their foolishness and dishonesty. None. And so we started a series of eerily similar wars, all with entirely predictable results. Nobody learned anything.

Will we learn anything from the Russia collusion hoax? Or will the same cast of liars and buffoons simply move on to the next scam? “Climate Change! The Green New Deal! We can’t give you details. It’s too important. Obey or else!” That could easily happen. In fact it will happen, for certain, unless we remember exactly what we’ve just seen.

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Federal program to help wounded, slain police officers is generating ‘absurd results,’ Grassley says

A Justice Department program intended to financially assist law enforcement officers who have been injured or killed in the line of duty has an application process that is generating “absurd results” – and something must be done about it, Sen. Chuck Grassley says.

The Iowa Republican, in a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General William Barr this week, is asking for a review of the Public Safety Officers Benefits Program after officers say they have been denied help over wildly differing interpretations of the program’s requirements for compensation.

“My staff spoke with [an] injured officer who was denied benefits because, in an effort to fight through his disability, he would work around his home fixing old motorcycles and snowmobiles,” Grassley wrote. “A police officer who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury after an on-duty vehicle collision was denied disability benefits because he held several short-term part-time positions. In 2015, this injured officer worked at Home Depot, Inc., Garda Great Lakes, Inc., and the City of St. Paul and earned a combined total of $9,551.11 for the year."

FAMILIES OF SERIOUSLY-INJURED POLICE OFFICERS SAY HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS ARE FAILING THEM

The PSOB, which “provides death and education benefits to survivors of fallen law enforcement officers, firefighters, and other first responders, and disability benefits to officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty,” gives out lump-sum awards after reviewing around 900 claims each year, it previously has told Fox News, with funding for it approved annually by Congress. The lump-sum awards can be as high as $360,000.

But Grassley says vague language written into the program’s rules for approving or denying applications is getting in the way of some officers receiving that kind of help.

“According to statute, a public safety officer is eligible for benefits if they have ‘become permanently and totally disabled,’ as a result of a “catastrophic injury.’ The statute further defines ‘catastrophic injury’ as an injury which ‘permanently prevent[s] an individual from performing any gainful work,” he wrote. “DOJ subsequently issued regulations further defining ‘gainful work’ as ‘full-or-part-time activity that actually is compensated or commonly is compensated.’

Grassley goes on to say that the “lack of clear and reasonable guidance here can, and apparently has, led to absurd results."

“In theory, for example, the simple act of washing family dishes in the controlled, safe environment of one’s own house could qualify as a commonly compensated role because a dishwasher is a commonly compensated position—in restaurants,” he wrote to Barr.

Grassley concludes his letter by asking the attorney general to create a claims manual to “help remove ambiguity, establish uniform best practices, and ensure predictable results” and for the Justice Department to “thoroughly review its definition and interpretation of the PSOB requirements."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“If Congress had intended for any activity that could be compensated under some conditions that are likely totally irrelevant to a disabled public safety officer to disqualify that person from receiving benefits, then it would not have added the word ‘gainful’ in the statute,” he said.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication of this article.

Source: Fox News National

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Pakistan says Indian aircraft bomb its territory

Pakistan's military spokesman tweeted that Indian aircraft crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday and carried out an airstrike but said there were no casualties from the attack.

Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor said the Indian "aircrafts" crossed into the Pakistan-controlled Muzafarabad sector of Kashmir. He added that Pakistan scrambled fighter jets and before turning back, the Indian jets they "released payload in haste," near Balakot, on the edge of Pakistani-ruled Kashmir.

There has been no comment from India.

The incursion could have been in retaliation for a deadly Feb. 14 suicide bombing in India's half of Kashmir that killed at least 40 troops. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility. The bomber who made a video before the attack was a resident of Indian Kashmir.

Pakistan and India both lay claim to a united Kashmir.

Source: Fox News World

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Florida man arrested for allegedly throwing cookie at girlfriend

A Florida man was arrested for domestic battery after he reportedly threw a cookie at his girlfriend.

Wade Smith, 41, of Zephyrhills, was taken into custody on Sunday after deputies with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office were called to the home he shares with his girlfriend, WFLA reported.

SAN ANTONIO MAN ALLEGEDLY PISTOL-WHIPPED EX FOR REVEALING HIS CRIMINAL PAST TO NEW GIRLFRIEND

Smith's girlfriend reportedly told investigators that he "threw a hard piece of cookie and hit her in the forehead," which deputies noted was red when they responded to the scene.

The 41-year-old, according to the news station, confessed to authorities that he threw the cookie at her.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Online records from the sheriff's office indicate Smith was booked at the Pasco County Jail in Land O' Lakes on $500 bond.

Source: Fox News National

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Tucker Calls For Roger Stone Pardon, Thinks Adam Schiff And Eric Swalwell Should Resign In Disgrace

Tucker Carlson on Friday called for President Donald Trump to pardon Roger Stone “very soon,” while asserting that Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell should resign from office for peddling the Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

“This has been a disaster,” Carlson said on his show, hours after special counsel Robert Mueller sent his Russia investigation report to the Justice Department.

Agency officials said the report marks the end of the 22-month-long investigation, and no further indictments will be issued. The probe ends without any Trump associates being charged with conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Stone was indicted on Jan. 24 on charges related to his testimony in 2017 before the House Intelligence Committee. (RELATED: Mueller Submits Report To Justice Department)

“And what about the victims of this monstrosity? Roger Stone is facing life in prison,” Carlson said.

“All to find collusion. But there was no collusion. Stone is still looking at life in prison. Where is Roger Stone’s pardon? His pardon from the president? Let’s hope it comes very soon.”

Carlson also called out Schiff, Swalwell and CNN’s Jeff Zucker for promoting collusion conspiracy theories throughout the investigation.

WATCH: Tucker Calls On Trump To Pardon Roger Stone

“How can we let the people who are responsible for it continue as if it never happened?” the Fox News host asked.

“How can Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff keep their seats in the House of Representatives? They should resign. How can Jeff Zucker remain at CNN after we now know that much of what his network told us for two years is a total lie?”

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Source: The Daily Caller

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Comedian leads Ukraine presidential vote, runoff in 3 weeks

Early results Monday in Ukraine's presidential election showed a comedian with no political experience maintaining his strong lead against the incumbent in the first round, setting the stage for a presidential runoff in three weeks.

With over 70 percent of the polling stations counted, Volodymyr Zelenskiy had 30 percent support in Sunday's vote, while President Petro Poroshenko was a distant second with just over 16 percent.

Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko trailed behind in third with 13 percent support.

The strong showing for the 41-year-old Zelenskiy reflects the public longing for a fresh leader who has no links to Ukraine's corruption-ridden political elite and can offer a new approach to settling the grinding five-year conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has left 13,000 dead since 2014.

"This is only the first step toward a great victory," Zelenskiy said.

The top two candidates advance to a runoff on April 21. Final results are expected to be announced later Monday.

Zelenskiy dismissed suggestions that he could pool forces with Tymoshenko to get the backing of her voters in the second round in exchange for forming a coalition following parliamentary elections in the fall.

"We aren't making any deals with anyone," he said. "We are young people. We don't want to see all the past in our future, the future of our country."

Like the character he plays in a TV sitcom, a schoolteacher-turned-president, Zelenskiy made fighting corruption a focus of his candidacy. He proposed a lifetime ban on holding public office for anyone convicted of graft. He also called for direct negotiations with Russia on ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The election was marred by allegations of widespread vote buying. Police said they had received more than 2,100 complaints of violations on voting day alone in addition to hundreds of earlier voting fraud claims, including bribery attempts and removing ballots from polling places.

Zelenskiy's headquarters alleged multiple voting and other cheating on the part of Poroshenko's campaign, but election officials said the vote took place without significant violations.

"No systematic violations took place on either the election day or the night following the election when votes were being counted at the local polling stations," said Central Election Commission head Tetyana Slipachuk.

Poroshenko looked somber as the votes came in, but visibly relieved about surpassing Tymoshenko to advance to the runoff.

"I critically and soberly understand the signal that society gave today to the acting authorities," he said. "It's a tough lesson for me and my team. It's a reason for serious work to correct mistakes made over the past years."

Still, it's not clear whether he could adjust his campaign enough to meet Zelenskiy's challenges over the next three weeks.

Poroshenko, 53, a confectionery tycoon before he was elected five years ago, saw his approval ratings sink amid Ukraine's economic woes and a sharp plunge in living standards. Poroshenko campaigned on promises to defeat the rebels in the east and to wrest back control of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 in a move that has drawn sanctions against Russia from the U.S. and the European Union.

Asked about Sunday's vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, refrained from commenting on Zelenskiy's strong performance, but indicated that the Kremlin would like to see a change of government.

"We would like to see not a party of war at the helm in Ukraine, but a party that aims at a gradual settlement in eastern Ukraine," he told reporters.

A military embezzlement scheme that allegedly involved top Poroshenko associates as well as a factory controlled by the president dogged Poroshenko before this election.

After the vote, Poroshenko lashed out at Zelenskiy, describing him as a pawn of self-exiled billionaire businessman Igor Kolomoyskyi, a charge that Zelenskiy denies.

"Fate pitted me against Kolomoyskyi's puppet in the runoff," he said.

Zelenskiy quickly shot back, saying mockingly that it's impossible to say whether a corrupt official allegedly involved in the military embezzlement scheme was Poroshenko's puppet, or the other way round.

With the lineup for the presidential runoff becoming clear, voters were picking sides.

"Poroshenko is taking the country forward," said Serhiy Poltorachenko, a bank employee. "He made mistakes, but promised to correct them. Poroshenko will win, because Ukrainians won't like to have a clown at the country's helm."

Petro Demidchenko, a 38-year-old office worker, said he was supporting Zelenskiy.

"We don't know what to expect from Zelenskiy, but over the past five years we have found out what to expect from Poroshenko — corruption, soaring prices, continuing war and poverty," he said.

___

Mstyslav Chernov in Kiev, Ukraine and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial delayed until June

Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in New York City is being delayed until June 3.

Court spokesman Lucian Chalfen confirmed the delay on Monday. The fallen film mogul is still expected to appear at a pretrial hearing March 8.

Weinstein's trial had been slated for May 6, but that date was agreed on before he shook up his defense team with four new lawyers.

Weinstein lawyers Jose Baez and Ronald Sullivan are starting a trial in Brooklyn on Tuesday that's expected to take up to 10 weeks.

In December, Weinstein lost a hard-fought bid to get the case thrown out.

The 66-year-old producer is charged with raping an unidentified acquaintance in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.

He denies all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

Source: Fox News National

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FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

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The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

CLICK HERE FOF THE FOX NEWS APP

After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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