CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela's government is laying out accusations against a jailed top aide to opposition leader Juan Guaido.
Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez went on state television Saturday alleging that Roberto Marrero was the ringleader of a plot to bring hitmen from Central America to Venezuela to carry out assassinations.
He showed screen grabs of cell phone conversations that he said are proof Marrero was orchestrating the hitmen's payment.
Marrero was taken from his home in the middle of the night by masked agents Thursday in a dramatic operation that has drawn international condemnation.
President Nicolas Maduro has refrained from having Guaido arrested, but analysts say Marrero's detention was a clear attempt to weaken his political foe.
Guaido characterized the operation as a sign that Maduro is losing his grip on power.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who on Tuesday announced his candidacy for president, will leave a lasting impact win or lose, Matthew Continetti, the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, said.
Sanders is the twelfth candidate to launch a campaign or an exploratory committee and has raised over $4 million dollars within 24 hours, which exceeded all of his competitors in the same timeframe.
Continetti was joined by Byron York, the Washington Examiner chief political correspondent and NPR's Mara Liasson on the "Special Report" "All-Star" panel.
Continetti pointed out that Biden's reluctance to enter the race has “created a vacuum” for business-friendly Democrats and that “poor Amy Klobuchar” is all alone in rejecting the progressive call for free college tuition for all.
“She needs reinforcements. Otherwise, this will not be Barack Obama’s party, won’t be Hillary Clinton’s party. It will be Bernie Sanders’ party and that helps Donald Trump,” Continetti said.
York referred to Sanders as the “big sensation” in 2016 because “no big-name Democrats” challenged Hillary Clinton and also drew attention to the Democrat Socialist’s age.
“Bernie will be 79 years old on Election Day. That is older than Ronald Reagan was when he left office after eight years. That is really, really pushing the limit,” York said.
Meanwhile, Liasson told the panel that Sanders is the “victim of his own success” since the majority of the other Democratic candidates have embraced his far-left ideology, asking why anyone needs a “cranky old guy from Brooklyn” versus the “young, exciting people who agree with him on almost everything.”
Most voters think President Donald Trump has tried to interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of collusion between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russia, a Fox News poll found.
The survey released Sunday, showed 52 percent of respondents think Trump has tried to interfere, while 36 percent said he has not.
In other findings, the poll found:
52 percent of voters approve of Mueller's investigation; 36 percent disapprove.
29 percent trust Trump to tell the truth on the Russia matter compared with 45 percent who trust Mueller.
44 percent say Trump coordinated with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign; 42 percent disagreed.
80 percent of respondents say the Mueller report should be made public; 11 percent say it should not.
41 percent say there is "no chance at all" Mueller's report will change their opinion of the president; 50 percent say there is at least a small chance their opinion could change.
The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
In an address to the nation’s parliament, Sri Lanka’s Defense Minister said that the Islamic terror attacks on luxury hotels and churches which killed nearly 300 people and injured hundreds more were a response to the New Zealand mosque shooting.
“Investigations reveal that this attack was carried out in response to the Christchurch Mosque Attack in New Zealand on Muslims. There was a security lapse leading to this devastation in Sri Lanka,” said Ruwan Wijewardene.
The defense minister confirmed that two domestic Islamist terror groups were responsible for the bloodshed.
50 people were killed and 50 injured when a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15.
Quite how murdering hundreds of Christians in a totally different country is a legitimate response to the actions of a single lunatic in New Zealand remains unknown.
As we previously highlighted, while world leaders were quick to offer condolences to the “Muslim community” following the mosque attack, many of them appear afraid to even use the word “Christians” when discussing the Sri Lanka attack.
Meanwhile, the media has once again made the issue about the reaction of the “far-right” and not the fact that Christians are the most persecuted and killed religious group on the planet.
White supremacist massacres Muslims in New Zealand: let's talk about the far-right
MOSCOW – Five years into Ukraine's conflict with Russia, Moscow seems to have Ukraine pinned against the ropes. Ukraine's ambition of joining the EU and NATO is indefinitely stalled. It has no realistic way to reclaim control of Russian-annexed Crimea, or to end the war with Russia-backed separatists in the east.
It's no wonder a comedian is leading in the polls for Sunday's presidential election.
The Kremlin has long seen Ukraine's plan to join NATO as a threat that must be fended off at all costs, and its calculations that the conflict in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region would scuttle the nation's membership bid seems to have worked.
Both NATO and the EU have made it clear they are not going to put Ukraine on a track to membership any time soon.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of TikTok application is seen on a screen in this picture illustration taken February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Illustration/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – An Indian court’s call for a ban on the popular video app TikTok will hurt free speech rights, China’s Bytedance Technology Co has said in a request for the Supreme Court to quash the directive.
Bytedance is one of the world’s most valuable start-ups and its TikTok app lets users create and share short videos with special effects. It has become popular in rural India, where most of a population of 1.3 billion lives.
TikTok, whose video-only interface makes it easier to use than platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, has been downloaded more than 240 million times in India, says app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
A ban “amounts to curtailing of the rights of the citizens of India…who have been using the platform everyday to express themselves and create content,” the company said in a court filing reviewed by Reuters, asking for the order to be quashed.
The company’s Monday filing is not public and has not previously been reported. The Supreme Court has set next Monday for a hearing.
Bytedance did not respond to a request for comment. India’s information technology ministry also did not respond.
Last week, a court in the southern state of Tamil Nadu asked the federal government to ban TikTok, saying it encouraged pornography and made child users vulnerable to sexual predators.
TikTok’s inappropriate content was a dangerous aspect of the app, it added.
Jokes, clips and footage related to India’s movie industry dominate the platform, along with videos in which young people, sometimes scantily clad, lip-sync and dance to music.
Bytedance said users flagged only a tiny proportion of TikTok videos, showing that a “very minuscule” proportion of its content was considered inappropriate or obscene. TikTok was primarily used to circulate amusing videos, it added.
It also argued that it could not be held liable for content posted by users.
Some of TikTok’s content was “unbearable”, M. Manikandan, the minister for information technology in Tamil Nadu told Reuters in February, and a Hindu nationalist group close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also called for a ban.
In its filing, the company said TikTok had experienced immense success in India, which fueled controversy. Bytedance employs more than 250 people in India and plans more investment as it expands the business, it added.
The BJP is tracking conversations on TikTok, the party’s information technology chief, Amit Malviya, has previously told Reuters, calling it a brilliant medium for creative expression.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil; Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Sudarshan Vardhan; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Clarence Fernandez)
FILE PHOTO – Otto Frederick Warmbier (C), a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea since early January, is taken to North Korea’s top court in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo March 16, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo
April 26, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States did not pay any money to North Korea as it sought the release of comatose American student Otto Warmbier.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump had approved payment of a $2 million bill from North Korea to cover its care of the college student, who died shortly after he was returned to the United States after 17 months in a North Korean prison.
Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London, Britain, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Gerhard Mey
April 26, 2019
By Hanna Rantala
LONDON (Reuters) – Irish rockers The Cranberries are saying goodbye with their final album released on Friday, a poignant tribute to lead singer Dolores O’Riordan who died last year.
“In the End” is the eighth studio album from the band that rose to fame in the early 1990s with hits likes “Zombie” and “Linger”, and includes the final recordings by O’Riordan, who drowned in a London hotel bath in January 2018 due to alcohol intoxication.
Work on the album began during a 2017 tour and by that winter, O’Riordan and guitarist Neil Hogan had penned and demoed 11 tracks.
With O’Riordan’s vocals recorded, Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler completed the album in tribute to her.
“When we realized how strong the songs were, that was the deciding factor really… There was no point… trying to ruin the legacy of the band,” Noel Hogan said in an interview.
“It was obvious that Dolores wanted this album done because when you hear the album, you hear the songs and how strong they are, and she was very, very excited to get in and record this.”
The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with another singer. O’Riordan replaced him a year later and the group went on to become Ireland’s best-selling rock band after U2, selling more than 40 million records.
O’Riordan, known for her strong distinctive voice singing about relationships or political violence, was 46 when she died.
“She was actually in quite a good place mentally. She was feeling quite content and strong and looking forward to a new phase of her life,” Lawler said.
“A lot of the lyrics in this album are about things ending… people might read into it differently but it was a phase of her personal life that she was talking about.”
The group previously announced their intention to split after the release of “In The End”.
“We are absolutely gutted we can’t play (the songs) live because that’s something that’s been a massive part of this band from day one,” Noel Hogan said.
“A few people have said to us about maybe even doing a one off where you have different vocalists… as kind of guests of ours. A year ago that’s definitely something we weren’t going to entertain but I don’t know, I think it’s something we need to go away and take time off for the summer and have a think about.”
Critics have generally given positive reviews of the album; NME described it as “(seeing) the band’s career go full-circle” while the Irish Times called it “an unexpected late career high and a remarkable swan song for O’Riordan”.
Their early songs still play on the radio. This week, “Dreams” was performed at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead in Londonderry last week as she watched Irish nationalist youths attack police following a raid.
“We wrote them as kids, as a hobby and 30 years later they are on radio and on TV, like all the time… That’s far more than any of us ever thought we would have,” Noel Hogan said.
“That would make Dolores really happy because she was very precious about those songs. Her babies, she called them and to have that hopefully long after we’re gone… that’s all any band can wish for.”
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; additoinal reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Susan Fenton)
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
April 26, 2019
By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.
The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.
(View Warren’s military housing bill here. https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dy5aht)
(Read Reuters’ Ambushed at Home series on military housing here. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-military)
The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.
The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.
The measure would also require private landlords to cover moving costs for at-risk families, and healthcare costs for people with medical conditions resulting from unsafe base housing, ensuring they receive continuing coverage even after they leave the homes or the military.
“This bill will eliminate the kind of corner-cutting and neglect the Defense Department should never have let these private housing partners get away with in the first place,” Warren said in a statement Friday.
The proposed legislation comes after February Senate hearings where Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, slammed private real estate firms for endangering service families, and sought answers about why military branches weren’t providing more oversight.
Her legislation would direct the Defense Department to allow local housing code enforcers onto federal bases, following concerns they were sometimes denied access. Warren’s office said a companion bill in the House of Representatives would be introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico.
In response to the housing crisis, military branches are developing a tenant bill of rights and hiring hundreds of new housing staff. The branches recently dispatched commanders to survey base housing worldwide for safety hazards, resulting in thousands of work orders and hundreds of tenants being moved. The Defense Department has pledged to renegotiate its 50-year contracts with private real estate firms.
Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar
(Reuters) – Deloitte quit as Ferrexpo’s auditor on Friday, knocking its shares by more than 20 percent, days after saying it was unable to conclude whether the iron ore miner’s CEO controlled a charity being investigated over its use of company donations.
Blooming Land, which coordinates Ferrexpo’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, came under scrutiny after auditors found holes in the charity’s statements.
Ferrexpo on Tuesday said findings of an ongoing independent investigation launched in February indicated some Blooming Land funds could have been “misappropriated”. It did not provide any details or publish its findings.
Shares in Ferrexpo, the third largest exporter of pellets to the global steel industry, were 23.4 percent lower at 206.1 pence at 1022 GMT following news of Deloitte’s resignation.
“Ferrexpo’s shares are deeply discounted vs peers … following the resignation of Deloitte, we expect downside risks to dominate Ferrexpo’s shares near term.” JP Morgan analyst Dominic O’Kane said in a note on Friday.
Swiss-headquartered Ferrexpo did not provide a reason for the resignation of Deloitte, which declined to comment, while Blooming Land did not respond to a request for comment.
Funding for Blooming Land’s CSR activities is provided by one of Ferrexpo’s units in Ukraine and Khimreaktiv LLC, an entity ultimately controlled by Ferrexpo’s CEO and majority owner Kostyantin Zhevago, Ferrexpo said on Tuesday.
Ferrexpo’s board has found that Zhevago did not have significant influence or control over the charity, but Deloitte said it was unable reach a conclusion on this.
Reuters was not immediately able to contact Zhevago.
In a qualified opinion, a statement addressing an incomplete audit, Deloitte said it had been unable to conclude whether $33.5 million of CSR donations to Blooming Land between 2017 and 2018 was used for “legitimate business payments for charitable purposes”.
Deloitte said on Tuesday that total CSR payments made to Blooming Land by Ferrexpo since 2013 total about $110 million.
Ferrexpo, whose major mines are in Ukraine, has said that the investigation was ongoing and new evidence pointed to potential discrepancies.
Zhevago, 45, who ranked 1,511 on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires for 2019 with a net worth of $1.4 billion, owns the FC Vorskla soccer club and has been a member of Ukraine’s parliament since 1998.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev; editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Bernard Orr)
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba, Mozambique April 26, 2019 in this still image obtained from social media. SolidarMed via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
April 26, 2019
By Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer
JOHANNESBURG/LUANDA (Reuters) – Cyclone Kenneth killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.
The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280 km per hour (174 mph) when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.
It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swathe of southern Africa.
The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600 millimeters of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice that brought by Cyclone Idai.
One woman in the port town of Pemba died after being hit by a falling tree, the Emergency Operations Committee for Cabo Delgado (COE) said in a statement, while another person was injured.
In rural areas outside Pemba, many homes are made of mud. In the main town on the island of Ibo, 90 percent of the houses were destroyed, officials said. Around 15,000 people were out in the open or in “overcrowded” shelters and there was a need for tents, food and water, they said.
There were also reports of a large number of homes and some infrastructure destroyed in Macomia district, a mainland district adjacent to Ibo.
A local group, the Friends of Pemba Association, had earlier reported that they could not reach people in Muidumbe, a district further inland.
Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the storm could require another major humanitarian operation in Mozambique.
“Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the government’s limited resources,” he said in a statement.
FLOOD WARNINGS
Shaquila Alberto, owner of the beach-front Messano Flower Lodge in Macomia, said there were many fallen trees there, and in rural areas people’s homes had been damaged. Some areas of nearby Pemba had no power.
“Even my workers, they said the roof and all the things fell down,” she said by phone.
Further south, in Pemba, Elton Ernesto, a receptionist at Raphael’s Hotel, said there were fallen trees but not too much damage. The hotel had power and water, he said, while phones rang in the background. “The rain has stopped,” he added.
However Michael Charles, an official for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said heavy rains over the next few days were likely to bring a “second wave of destruction” in the form of flooding.
“The houses are not all solid, and the topography is very sandy,” Charles said.
In the days after Cyclone Idai, heavy inland rains prompted rivers to burst their banks, submerging entire villages, cutting areas off from aid and ruining crops. There were concerns the same could happen again in northern Mozambique.
Before Kenneth hit, the government and aid workers moved around 30,000 people to safer buildings such as schools, however authorities said that around 680,000 people were in the path of the storm.
(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alexandra Zavis)
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