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Kazakhstan renames capital Nur-Sultan in honor of veteran leader

The Akorda, official residence of the Kazakhstan president, is seen amidst the city skyline in Astana
The Akorda (C), official residence of the Kazakhstan president, is seen amidst the city skyline in Astana September 8, 2013. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

March 23, 2019

ALMATY (Reuters) – Kazakhstan renamed its capital Astana as Nur-Sultan on Saturday in honor of veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who unexpectedly resigned this week after almost 30 years in power.

It is the fourth time the city’s name has been changed within six decades, and some residents and opposition figures have protested against the latest renaming, which was made official on Saturday in a decree signed by interim President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

The windswept city of one million people, where temperatures range from -40 degrees Celsius in winter to more than 40C during the summer, was previously called Akmolinsk, Tselinograd and Akmola before becoming Astana, meaning “capital”, after Nazarbayev moved the nation’s capital there from Almaty in 1997.

Authorities have said the many public buildings, events and companies with Astana in their titles will retain their names.

Saying a new generation of leaders was needed, Nazarbayev stepped down abruptly on Tuesday in what appeared to be the first step in a choreographed political transition that will see him retain considerable sway.

The 78-year-old former steel worker and Communist party apparatchik appeared alongside Tokayev at several events this week and the two spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone together.

Nazarbayev, who had ruled the vast oil and gas-rich Central Asian nation since 1989, when it was still part of the Soviet Union, remains the head of the security council and the ruling Nur Otan party.

Nazarbayev’s foe, fugitive banker and opposition politician Mukhtar Ablyazov, has accused him of planning a dynastic succession that would see his daughter succeed him.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Helen Popper)

Source: OANN

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Porzingis takes part in first practice with Mavs

FILE PHOTO: NBA: Miami Heat at Dallas Mavericks
FILE PHOTO: Feb 13, 2019; Dallas, TX, USA; Dallas Mavericks forward Kristaps Porzingis sits on the bench during the game against the Miami Heat at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports - 12158620

March 13, 2019

Kristaps Porzingis participated in his first full practice with the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday.

“I felt good on the court. I felt comfortable, I felt fluid,” Porzingis said of graduating from 3-on-3 workouts. “It feels good to do something physically.”

Porzingis landed with the Mavericks in February when the New York Knicks unloaded the 7-foot-3 All-Star, who hasn’t played this season while recovering from a torn ACL, as the centerpiece of a seven-player swap.

Head coach Rick Carlisle said the Mavericks are following a plan with Porzingis, who will not play this season.

“No issues,” Carlisle said after the workout Wednesday. “He’s made tremendous progress with his rehab, with his conditioning, his strength. This was the next logical progression. He played 3-on-3 yesterday morning with some of the other guys and did extremely well there. This went really well.”

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said he engaged Porzingis about a long-term deal in February. Cuban said his goal is make sure Porzinigis is a member of the franchise for “the next 20 years.”

Porzingis can choose to play next season on a $4.5 million qualifying offer instead of accepting an offer that could be worth as much as $158 million over five years.

New York decided not to sign Porzingis to a rookie extension before the 2018-19 season — allowing him to become a restricted free agent after this season — in part to preserve an extra $10 million in cap space to go after free agents this summer.

Before the trade, the Knicks were projected to have slightly more than $30 million available under the salary cap, enough to lure a max-value contract in free agency.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Interior Department Backtracks On Casino Decision After Tribal Lawsuit

Tim Pearce | Energy Reporter

The Interior Department approved a new tribal casino in Connecticut, reversing its original decision to scuttle the project after a tribe involved sued.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) approved the project in March and published a notice of the approval in the Federal Register Friday. The BIA originally blocked the casino – a partnership between the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes – in April 2017, prompting a lawsuit from the tribes. (RELATED: DOI Spikes Native American Plan To Build A Casino 12 Miles From An MGM Resort)

The reversal negates the lawsuit against the Interior Department, Politico reported. The lawsuit alleged former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke caved to political pressure from MGM Resorts International, which operates a new casino 12 miles away from the site of the proposed tribal casino, in making the earlier decision.

“Now that the approval of our Amendment is secured and our exclusivity agreement with the State of Connecticut is reaffirmed, we will move forward with construction on Tribal Winds Casino in East Windsor and preserve much needed jobs and revenue,” Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes partnered together in 2014 to create a private company that would build the Tribal Winds Casino off reservation land. Memos circulated within the Interior Department suggested Interior officials intended to sign off on the project.

US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke arrives at the US Capitol prior to the service for former President George H. W. Bush in Washington, DC, USA, 03 December 2018. Shawn Thew/Pool via REUTERS

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke arrives at the U.S. Capitol prior to the service for former President George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C., Dec.  3 2018. Shawn Thew/Pool via REUTERS

Zinke’s action provoked an inspector general investigation into the former secretary to search for improper political influence.

The situation arose out of a 2017 state law that required the Department of the Interior to sign off on amended agreements between the tribes and the state of Connecticut. Lawmakers in the state legislature are now debating on scrapping the law, AP reported.

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Source: The Daily Caller

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House Speaker Pelosi: Democrats’ views vary on action post-Mueller report

FILE PHOTO: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stands during a meeting with European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Capitol Hill in Washington
FILE PHOTO: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stands during a meeting with European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

April 22, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Democrats’ views vary on how to proceed after last week’s release of a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday.

In a letter to fellow Democratic lawmakers, Pelosi said it is “important to know that the facts regarding holding the president accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.” She added that President Donald Trump engaged in highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior “whether currently indictable or not”.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Rotten Tomatoes Purges 50,000 User Ratings After Captain Marvel Review Bomb

Tens of thousands of reviews for the film Captain Marvel were purged from the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, but the deletions didn’t appear to improve the movie’s approval rating by much.

Screenshots of Rotten Tomatoes early Friday showed over 58,000 people had scored the movie an audience rating of 31 percent.

Later in the day, however, the amount of user ratings was inexplicably reduced to just over 4,200.

But the removal of over 50,000 reviews barely managed to eke the audience rating up five notches to 36 percent.

The review bomb and censorship effort comes in the wake of Rotten Tomatoes announcing last month it would take measures to weed out reviews from trolls attempting to smear movies before they’re released.

“Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling,” a blog post from the site read last month, revealing a new system which would only allow users to rate movies which have already been released.

The film, which debuted in US theaters Friday, has been at the center of a culture war amid accusations it promotes “Social Justice Warrior” politics after lead actress Brie Larson commented last month critics and press reviewing her movies appeared to be “overwhelmingly white male.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly last month, Larson added the film also contains aspects of “intersectional feminism.”

While Rotten Tomatoes is censoring users, a new comment system named Dissenter from the social media site Gab is still allowing users to make reviews on the site and has currently racked up over 3,000 comments.


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Source: InfoWars

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Suspect in fatal hit-and-run left behind teenager before fleeing, Dallas cops say

The driver of a black Chevy Silverado that slammed into a group changing a tire on the side of the Dallas North Tollway early Sunday—killing three—left a 13-year-old behind before fleeing the scene, authorities said.

The three men killed were identified as Christopher Pham, 22, David Nguyen, 23, and Hieu Minh Doan, 22, who graduated from the University of Texas last year with a degree in biomedical engineering, according to The Dallas Morning News. The report said a man and woman inside the Toyota Rav4 were also injured. They were reportedly headed to a concert.

The teenager who was left behind was treated at a hospital and released into his mother’s care, Fox 4 reported. The suspect was not identified but will be charged with manslaughter and failure to stop and render aid.

Source: Fox News National

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'RUN!': NZ shooting victims recount horror, mourn the lost

They had walked that once innocuous stretch of sidewalk side-by-side so many times. Every Friday, Yasir Amin and his dad had ambled along the path toward the mosque where they prayed together in peace, a routine so serene and so ordinary that Amin was nearly blinded by confusion when the man drove up with the gun.

Amin and his father, Muhammad Amin Nasir, were just 200 meters from the Al Noor mosque on Friday when everything went wrong. They had no idea that a white supremacist had just slaughtered at least 41 people inside the mosque's hallowed halls, or that more people would be killed at a second mosque soon after. All they knew was that a car that had been driving by had suddenly stopped. And a man was leaning out the car's window, pointing a gun at them.

"RUN!" Amin screamed.

The bullets began to fly. The men began to run. But at 67, Nasir couldn't keep up with his 35-year-old son. And so he fell behind, by two or three fateful steps.

Amid the blasts, Amin turned to scream at his father to get down on the ground. But his father was already falling.

The gunman drove away. A pool of blood poured from Nasir's body.

"Daddy!" Amin screamed. "Daddy! DADDY!"

Amin had never seen anyone shot before. He left Pakistan for Christchurch five years ago, and was embraced by a multicultural city that felt like the safest place on earth. His father, who farms vegetables, wheat and rice back in Pakistan, also fell for the leafy green city at the bottom of the world.

And so Nasir began making routine visits to see his son, sometimes spending up to six months in New Zealand before returning to Pakistan to tend to his crops. Nasir had been in town only three weeks for his most recent visit when he was shot three times on the street of the city he had adopted as a second home.

From the ground, Nasir stared up at his son, unable to speak, tears running down his face. Amin ran to his car to grab his phone and called the police. Officers quickly arrived, and soon the father and son were in an ambulance racing to the hospital.

Nasir had always been more than just a dad to Amin. When Amin was just 6, his mother died, leaving Nasir to raise him along with his four siblings. Nasir became both a father and a mother, a reliable source of laughter with a huge heart. He embraced Amin's new community of New Zealand friends as if they were his own family. And in turn, the community embraced Nasir — so much so, that it initially confused him.

The elder man was baffled by the constant chipper greetings of "Hello!" he received whenever he dropped Amin's children off at school. Why do they keep saying that to me? he asked his son. Amused, Amin explained that the locals were simply trying to welcome him, their own version of the Arabic peace greeting, "As-Salaam-Alaikum."

Amin chuckled at the memory on Saturday, one day after he brought his father to the hospital. Nasir remains in an induced coma with critical injuries, though his condition has stabilized. The bullets pierced his shoulder, chest and back.

Like many other victims struggling to cope with the horrific events of Friday that left 49 dead, Amin made his way to Hagley College near the hospital. The college was serving as a community center for the grieving, and members of the public poured in with meals and drinks, doling out hugs and words of support to those in need.

Outside the college, Javed Dadabhai mourned for his gentle cousin, 35-year-old Junaid Mortara, who is believed to have died in the first mosque attack. As of Saturday, many families were still waiting to find out if their loved ones were alive.

"He's very punctual, so he would've been there at a dime. He would've been there at 1:30," Dadabhai said, a reference to the time of the attack, which began soon after.

His cousin was the breadwinner of the family, supporting his mother, his wife and their three children, ages 1 to 5. Mortara had inherited his father's convenience store, which was covered in flowers on Saturday.

Mortara was an avid cricket fan, and would always send a sparring text with relatives over cricket matches when Canterbury was facing Auckland.

"The sad thing is he was actually due to come up to Auckland next weekend for a family wedding," Dadabhai said. "We were due to have a catch-up. But I never knew a more shy, soft-spoken kind of person. ... As cousins, you'd kind of make fun of the fact when someone's so gentle like that, but he's leaving a huge void."

The long wait for information on the status of the dead was particularly painful because Muslim tradition calls for burials within 24 hours of a person's death.

Dadabhai said the community was trying to be patient, because they understood there was a crime scene involved. "But it's hard, because until that happens, the grieving process doesn't really begin," he said.

For some families, patience had worn thin by Saturday, and frustration erupted as they waited to find out the status of their relatives.

Ash Mohammed, 32, of Christchurch, pushed through a police barricade outside the Al Noor mosque Saturday morning, desperate for information, before police held him back.

"We just want to know if they are alive or dead," he could be heard telling an officer at the barricade.

In an interview later, Mohammed said he was desperate for information about his brothers, Farhaj Ashashan, 30, and Ramazvora Ashashan, 31, and his father, Asif Vora, 56, who were all at the mosque on Friday.

"We just want to know, are they alive or not alive so we can start the funerals," he said. "The hospital's not helping, cops not helping. Somebody has to help get the answers."

As Amin waited and worried over the fate of his father, he was also focused on trying to protect the youngest members of his family. He and his wife have so far tried to shield their children from hearing about the attack. But on Friday, Amin's wife briefly turned on the news and an image of an ambulance popped onto the screen. Their 5-year-old son immediately dove under a table, assuming there was an earthquake. Christchurch, no stranger to disaster, suffered a devastating quake in 2011 that left 185 dead.

Though his relatives back in Pakistan now fret that New Zealand is too dangerous, Amin believes Christchurch is the safest place in the world. And he hopes that his funny, fiercely loving father will pull through, so they can immerse themselves once again in the friendly hellos and the peaceful Friday prayers they have long cherished.

Like Amin, Farid Ahmed refuses to turn his back on his adopted home. Ahmed lost his 45-year-old wife, Husna Ahmed, in the Al Noor mosque attack, when they split up to go to the bathroom. The gunman livestreamed the massacre on the internet, and Ahmed later saw a video of his wife being shot dead. A police officer confirmed she had passed away.

Despite the horror, Ahmed — originally from Bangladesh — still considers New Zealand a great country.

"I believe that some people, purposely, they are trying to break down the harmony we have in New Zealand with the diversity," he said. "But they are not going to win. They are not going to win. We will be harmonious."

___

Associated Press videojournalist Haruka Nuga contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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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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Joe Biden may have just stepped into the 2020 ring, but he’s wasted no time in throwing punches at President Trump.

Former Vice President Biden appeared on “The View” Friday in his first interview since officially announcing he is running for the White House on Thursday.

After batting away a softball opening question from host Joy Behar about why he took so long to enter the race, the ex-VP delivered what is likely to be his campaign’s major message.

Asked about the comment in his announcement that a battle is underway for “the soul of this nation,” Biden replied: “What I mean by that is we are not — this is not who we are the way we’re treating people. It’s not who we are as a nation when we’re talking about things like the reason for your problem is the other.

JOE BIDEN’S SENIOR ADVISER IN 2016: ‘WE DON’T NEED WHITE PEOPLE LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RIGHT NOW’

“It really is what I said and I really mean it and I wrote an article at the time in “The Atlantic” magazine when Charlottesville happened. This is not who we are. It’s about decency, honor, including everyone. The idea to compare these racists and not condemn them. Neo-Nazis — I don’t ever remember that happening in an administration in well over 100 years.

“I found myself thinking — by the way I travel around the world a lot as vice president and since then I have as well. The rest of the world — I mean, they look at us like my god — what happened to America?”

Behar then asked Biden how he plans to win over “blue-collar voters, a group that Trump won.”

“By making the case that we have to restore dignity to work. Think about this. The way we treat ordinary hard-working Americans who are middle class and working class people fighting to get in the middle class is we treat them like they’re a means to an end as opposed to an ends to themselves,” Biden said.

TRUMP ASSESSES 2020 DEMS; TAKES SWIPES AT BIDEN, SANDERS; DISMISSES HARRIS, O’ROURKE; SAYS HE’S ROOTING FOR BUTTIGIEG

“Go out. When’s the last time we went out and thanked the guy who kept the sewer from overflowing into your basement. What about the woman up on a bucket reconnecting a connection?

“Think about what we don’t do guys. It’s all been about dividing. There’s a real opportunity, incredible opportunity if we just treat each other with more decency.

“My dad had an expression. He said, ‘Joey, a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, it’s about your place in the community, it’s about your place in society and your self-worth. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say it’s going to be okay and mean it.’

“Think about how many people can’t do that today. This president has done nothing to help that group.”

BIDEN VOWS THAT ‘AMERICA IS COMING BACK,’ SPARKING ‘MAGA’ COMPARISONS

Biden’s appearance came after President Trump took a swipe at him in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

“I think we are calling him ‘Sleepy Joe’ ’cause I’ve known him for a while. Is he a pretty sleepy guy? He won’t be able to deal with [Chinese] President Xi, I will tell you. That’s a different level of energy and, frankly, intelligence. So I sort refer to him as ‘Sleepy Joe.’ A lot of people wanted me to change the word ‘sleepy’ to something else that rhymes with it,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “I thought it was too nasty.

“He’s not going to be able to do the job.”

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Biden officially announced his candidacy in a video Thursday morning, going directly after Trump.

“If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen,” Biden said in the video.

Source: Fox News Politics

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A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

April 26, 2019

By Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s board has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to hunt for a new chief executive, ideally a woman who can tackle its regulatory and public perception issues, two people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo’s ambition to become the only major U.S. bank with a female CEO underscores the need to restore its image with a wide range of constituents, including customers, shareholders, regulators and politicians, after it became mired in a scandal in 2016 for opening potentially millions of unauthorized accounts.

Former CEO Tim Sloan left abruptly last month, becoming the second CEO to leave the bank in the scandal’s fallout.

The board plans to approach Citigroup Inc’s Latin America chief Jane Fraser, one of the sources said. During Fraser’s 15-year tenure at Citigroup, she has gained experience running consumer and commercial businesses as well as its private bank.

Fraser could not be immediately reached for comment.

The board also discussed approaching JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Marianne Lake, but after the bank named her to run JPMorgan’s consumer lending business last week, that option became less viable, the source added. The board wants someone who can convince regulators, employees, investors and customers that the bank has fixed problems underpinning the sales scandal, the sources said.

The bank’s board feels that choosing a woman might please lawmakers in Washington who have been critical not only of Wells Fargo’s misbehavior, but of the broader banking industry for a lack of diversity and gender equality, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It also believes that such a move could bolster Wells Fargo’s image with the households of customers where women play a leading role in managing finances, one of the sources added.

The new CEO will also have to resolve litigation and regulatory matters. There are 14 outstanding consent orders with government entities, as well as probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

To be sure, Spencer Stuart will approach and consider several male candidates for the CEO job as well, one of the sources said. The top priority is to find an external candidate who can navigate the bank’s regulatory issues, the source added.

Finding an outsider who meets all those qualifications and wants the job will be difficult, the sources said. There are few people with the necessary experience, even fewer of those who are women, and it is not clear if any of the obvious candidates would be open to taking the role.

The sources asked not to be identified because Wells Fargo’s board deliberations are confidential.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Spencer Stuart declined to comment.

Wells Fargo’s board has not made any public statements about its requirements for a new CEO, beyond Chair Betsy Duke saying the job should attract the “top talent in banking.”

The board wants to complete the search within the next three to six months, one of the sources said.

STALLED SHARES

After Sloan’s ouster, Wells Fargo’s board appointed Allen Parker, who had been general counsel, as interim CEO. The board has said it is looking for an external candidate as a permanent replacement. It is not clear whether Parker will stay at the bank.

Others whose names have been mentioned by analysts, recruiters and industry sources as perspective CEO candidates include Alphabet Inc finance chief Ruth Porat and Bank of America Corp’s chief technology officer Cathy Bessant.

Wells Fargo shares have stalled since Sloan’s departure on March 29th, while the KBW Bank index has rallied more than 7 percent.

Wells Fargo would be “the best stock on earth to buy” if it had the right CEO, said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Donaldson Capital Management in Indiana.

Donaldson held about 50,000 Wells Fargo shares, but sold the stake last year as problems mounted. The CEO change could convince him to re-invest, depending on who it is, he told Reuters.

“It would be very smart for them to get a woman,” he said.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Greg Roumeliotis and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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