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EU Commission backs almost 1 billion euro post-bailout grant to Greece

FILE PHOTO: A man stands next to a kiosk selling Greek and EU flags in Athens
FILE PHOTO: A man stands next to a kiosk selling Greek and EU flags in Athens, Greece, June 21, 2018.REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo

April 3, 2019

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission recommended on Wednesday the disbursement of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in a grant to Greece as part of its post-bailout program after Athens passed reforms required by creditors.

The move, that needs to be endorsed by euro zone finance ministers at their meeting on Friday, will boost Greece’s already large cash buffers and make it easier for the country borrow at more favorable rates when it returns to full market financing after years of financial support from EU creditors and the International Monetary Fund.

Greece exited its last bailout in August.

The Commission decision followed last week’s approval by the Greek Parliament of a reform to facilitate banks’ recovery of debt that went bad, a move that is expected to reduce the large burden of non-performing loans on Greek lenders’ balance sheets.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Jan Strupczewski)

Source: OANN

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Schumer, Rick Scott Feuding Over Puerto Rico Aid

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., are embroiled in a growing feud over aid for Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria, Politico reports.

Scott said during his campaign that he would stand up for Puerto Rico, and he said in a floor speech shortly after his win that he would be a “voice for the people of Puerto Rico.” However, Democrats deny that Scott has kept his promise, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasting the Republican for siding with President Donald Trump on disaster relief.

“This is a great example of why people hate politics. Not only did [Schumer] block a bipartisan bill, now he’s lying about it,” Scott tweeted on Sunday. “Our bill doesn’t strip funding for P.R. It includes $600 mil in nutrition assistance funding for P.R. that I fought to get in the bill.”

“We all know [Trump] took all aid for Puerto Rico but nutrition assistance out of the bill,” Schumer responded. “The bill has none of the long-term recovery & resilience aid PR has asked for repeatedly. Stop the bull. Stand up to the President.”

Scott replied: “The truth is, you’re more than happy to give Puerto Rico nothing if it helps prolong a political fight with Trump. That’s shameful.”

“Senator Scott's energy would be better spent working with the Governor of Puerto Rico to urge Leader [Mitch] McConnell to stop blocking proposals that provide much-needed aid to Puerto Rico, instead of criticizing the people who are trying to actually help,” said a spokesperson for Schumer.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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ACLU Concerned About ICE's Use of License-Plate Database

Immigration agents have been utilizing a massive, privately run database of license plates from vehicles nationwide to track down people who may be in the country illegally, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.

The database contains billions of records on the details of vehicle locations recorded by traffic cameras and scanners used in parking lots and toll roads to monitor the movement of vehicles.

Although police have long used these devices to track criminal suspects and catch traffic offenders, the ACLU said the records they obtained from the Department of Homeland Security via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal an expanding network of surveillance that seems to have few legal limitations.

"The ACLU's grave concerns about the civil liberties risks of license plate readers take on greater urgency as this surveillance information fuels ICE's deportation machine," said Northern California ACLU staff attorney Vasudha Talla in a blog post.

ICE has been able to access driver-location information gathered from businesses in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas, the ACLU records show, and thousands of ICE employees have access to the database.

Critics say innocent people are thus subjected to an improper level of government surveillance, because the scanners record license-plate data on every passing car, and not just those owned by suspects.

Making matters worse for civil liberties, police can access years of data without getting permission from a judge, while, for example law enforcement agencies must get warrants to legally use GPs-tracking devices.

Source: NewsMax America

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Over 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have fled from last Islamic State Syria enclave: SDF

FILE PHOTO: Surrendering families of Islamic State militants in the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria
FILE PHOTO: Surrendering families of Islamic State militants in the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria, March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Issam Abdallah/File Photo

March 17, 2019

BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) – The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Sunday over 60,000 people, mostly civilians, had flooded out of the Islamic State militant group’s last enclave in eastern Syria since a final assault to capture it began over two months ago.

SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told journalists that 29,600 people, the majority of whom were families of fighters of the group, had surrendered since the U.S.-backed forces led by the Kurdish YPG laid siege to the town of Baghouz and its hinterland on the Euphrates River.

Among them were 5,000 militants, the SDF said.

Another 34,000 civilians were evacuated from Baghouz, the last shred of territory held by the jihadists who have been driven from roughly one third of Iraq and Syria over the past four years, Gabriel said.

The group said that 1,306 “terrorists” had been killed alongside many who were injured in the military campaign that began on Jan. 9 while 82 SDF fighters had been killed and 61 injured.

The SDF said another 520 militants were captured during special operations conducted in the last militant bastion that comprises a group of villages surrounded by farmland where IS fighters and followers retreated as their “caliphate” was driven from once vast territories.

Former residents say hundreds of civilians have been killed in months of heavy aerial bombing by the U.S. led coalition that have leveled to the ground many of the hamlets in area along the border with Iraq.

The SDF has mostly transferred the tens of thousands who have fled Islamic State’s shrinking territory in recent months to a camp at al-Hol in the northeast.

The United Nations says the camp now holds around 67,000 people, 90 percent of them women and children – well beyond its capacity. Camp workers say they do not have enough tents, food or medicine. They have warned of diseases spreading.

(Writing by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: OANN

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Former Canadian minister says more revelations to come in scandal surrounding Trudeau

FILE PHOTO: Jane Philpott, when she was newly appointed president of the Treasury Board, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
FILE PHOTO: Jane Philpott, when she was newly appointed president of the Treasury Board, signs a book in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, January 14, 2019. REUTERS/Patrick Doyle/File Photo

March 21, 2019

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) – A Canadian cabinet minister, who had quit in protest over the government’s handling of a corruption scandal, said she and others had more to say about the matter, indicating more pain to come for embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau has been on the defensive since Feb. 7 over allegations that top officials working for him leaned on former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, last year to ensure that construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial.

“There’s much more to the story that should be told,” former treasury board president, Jane Philpott, told Macleans’ magazine in an interview released on Thursday.

“I believe we actually owe it to Canadians as politicians to ensure that they have the truth,” she said. Philpott added that she and Wilson-Raybould had more to say but did not elaborate further. Philpott, a close political ally of Wilson-Raybould, quit on March 4.

Trudeau has denied any political interference to protect SNC-Lavalin from a bribery trial.

The crisis may threaten Trudeau’s reelection chances in the upcoming October vote. Polls show Trudeau’s center-left Liberals, who as recently as January looked certain to win the election, could lose to the official opposition Conservatives.

As well as the two ministers, the affair has claimed Trudeau’s closest political aide and the head of the federal bureaucracy. A Liberal legislator who backed Wilson-Raybould quit on Wednesday to sit as an independent.

Trudeau suffered further potential embarrassment on Thursday when SNC-Lavalin Chief Executive Neil Bruce denied he had told government officials that 9,000 jobs could be at risk if the firm was found guilty of offering bribes to Libyan officials.

Trudeau has often referred to the 9,000 potential job losses as a reason for helping the firm, which wanted to take advantage of new legislation to pay a large fine rather than be prosecuted.

“Until we are able to put this behind us, it’s pretty difficult to grow our Canadian workforce,” Bruce told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday.

Asked whether he had mentioned a specific number of jobs that could be at risk, he replied: “No, we never gave a number.”

A court conviction would bar SNC-Lavalin from bidding on federal government contracts for 10 years.

Bruce added that if the company’s share price continued to suffer, it might become a takeover target. He played down comments by officials that the company might move abroad.

SNC-Lavalin’s headquarters are in the populous province of Quebec, where the Liberals say they need to pick up more seats in the October election to retain a majority government.

Trudeau has dismissed calls for a public inquiry, noting the House of Commons justice committee was probing the matter. That committee – dominated by Liberal legislators – shut down its inquiry on Tuesday, saying no more action was needed.

In protest, the Conservatives forced the House to sit through the night on Wednesday casting votes on hundreds of confidence motions. The marathon continued into Thursday.

“We’ll keep fighting and we hope Canadians join us in this cause and raise their voices,” Conservative legislator Michelle Rempel told reporters.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Source: OANN

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Barr rules to keep asylum seekers in detention during deportation proceedings

Attorney General William Barr has ruled that asylum seekers facing removal who show they have a “credible fear” of being returned to their homeland will no longer be eligible for release on bond -- meaning they will have to remain in detention while their cases are pending.

The decision is Barr’s first immigration-related ruling since being confirmed as attorney general and comes as the Trump administration clamps down on illegal immigration amid a surge at the border. The attorney general has the authority to overturn prior rulings made by immigration courts, which fall under the Justice Department.

COURT TEMPORARILY BLOCKS HALT TO TRUMP POLICY FORCING ASYLUM-SEEKERS TO STAY IN MEXICO 

"The question presented is whether aliens who are originally placed in expedited proceedings and then transferred to full proceedings after establishing a credible fear become eligible for bond upon transfer. I conclude that such aliens remain ineligible for bond, whether they are arriving at the border or are apprehended in the United States," the decision states.

The ruling was almost immediately panned by civil rights and immigration rights groups, with the American Civil Liberties Union calling it unconstitutional and vowing to sue.

"This is the Trump administration’s latest assault on people fleeing persecution and seeking refuge in the United States,” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “Our Constitution does not allow the government to lock up asylum seekers without basic due process. We'll see the administration in court."

Barr's ruling pertains to those who clear a "credible fear" interview and are facing removal.

The decision doesn't affect asylum-seeking families because they generally can't be held for longer than 20 days. It also doesn't apply to unaccompanied minors.

Barr's ruling takes effect in 90 days and comes amid a frustrating time for the administration as the number of border crossers has skyrocketed. Most of them are families from Central America who are fleeing violence and poverty. Many seek asylum.

There were a total of 161,000 asylum applications filed in the last fiscal year and 46,000 in the first quarter of 2019, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts.

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Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, said the number of decisions by immigration judges that the administration of President Trump has referred to itself for review is unprecedented. The administration — under both Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions — has reviewed a total of 10 immigration rulings. That's compared to four under all of President Barack Obama's tenure and nine during George W. Bush's.

"This has been a really unprecedented use of power to influence the immigration system," Pierce said.

Fox News' Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Government’s Counterproductive War Against Smoking

Canada’s federal government wants cigarettes to self-extinguish when we stop smoking them, believing this will reduce incidents of death and injury from fires caused by careless smoking.

Thus, since 2005 the government has mandated the use of reduced ignition propensity (RIP) materials in the manufacture of all cigarettes. However, the government’s high cigarette taxes prompt many smokers to buy non-RIP contraband cigarettes, which, as it turns out, may actually be the safer product.

RIP Cigarettes Counterproductive?

Jack Burt, acting deputy chief of the London, Ontario Fire Department said , “In the 10 years after Canada enforced the rule on self-extinguishing cigarettes, there was a 30 per cent drop in fire deaths associated with cigarette smoke.” Curiously, the same figure was touted by the World Health Organization (WHO), which tells us: “A 2013 report by the United States National Fire Protection Association suggests that the adoption of the RIP standard by US states appears to be the “principal reason for a 30% decline in smoking material fire deaths from 2003 to 2011.”

However, results of a study by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission “suggest that it is premature to conclude that use of the RIP cigarette alone will greatly reduce the threat of unintentional fires ignited by cigarettes involving mattresses or soft furnishings …” Similarly, an analysis by Injury Prevention notes that “Technical tests show little to no difference between fire safe [RIP] or conventional cigarettes in realistic settings.”

In fact, RIP regulations may even be counterproductive due to side effects of the product, as well as how smokers use the product. In New York, where RIP laws took effect in 2004, smoking-related fire statistics show that “The frequency of a smoker’s home catching on fire has actually increased since the law went into effect.” But if RIP cigarettes increase the likelihood of a fire, why are there fewer fires? Simple. Fewer people are smoking.

From 2001 to 2015, the smoking rate in Canada dropped by 31.7% (see here and here ). Thus, the credit attributed to the government’s RIP regulation appears to be completely overstated. This is not surprising. Governments love to claim credit for events they had nothing to do with.

The Government’s Perspective

In Canada, the government apparently believes in the life saving benefits of its RIP regulation, which was enacted because the government says it “is responsible for helping the people of Canada maintain and improve their health.” But if the government is so concerned about our health, why does it impose onerous taxes on RIP cigarettes, thus pushing many smokers into the supposedly unhealthy non-RIP black market?

The stock answer from politicians and bureaucrats to such logical questions is that they are burdened by the thankless and daunting task of balancing priorities. The political rationale would go something like this: “RIP cigarettes are purchased by a majority of smokers, and high tobacco taxes are turning smokers into ex-smokers. Taxation and regulation have proven to be highly effective.” However, as with the RIP regulation, taxation also appears to be ineffective.

Tobacco Taxes do Not Achieve the Government’s Goal

The government says “Tobacco taxation is known to be one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking, and to keep tobacco products out of the hands of young people.” Wrong on both counts, as a Financial Post article explains :

Since the sale of contraband tobacco products is illegal, the vendors of such tobacco pay no heed to restrictions on the age of purchasers. So, unsurprisingly, contraband has become a popular source of tobacco consumption for minors.

According to Health Canada [a government agency], 35% of Canadians smoked in 1985. That fell to just over 30% by the early 1990s and has continued to fall almost every year since then regardless of the tobacco tax rate. In fact, the rate of decline in smoking in the eight years following the 1994 tax cut was greater than the decline in the eight years after taxes were raised in 2002.

The government’s own statistics refute its claim that tobacco taxation is an effective way to reduce smoking, yet the taxes remain as a smokescreen to raise revenue for the government.

Conclusion

The efficacy of RIP regulations is very much in doubt, with evidence suggesting they may even be counterproductive. Furthermore, aside from smoking-related-fires, the manner in which RIP cigarettes are manufactured and smoked may actually pose greater risks to the health of smokers as compared to non-RIP cigarettes.

Vaping products are a much healthier alternative for smokers and far less likely to be the source of unintended fires, as compared to RIP and non-RIP cigarettes. However, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Canada’s Minister of Health, said “We’re .. placing restrictions on the promotion of vaping products while allowing adults to legally access them as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes …” So, having acknowledged that cigarettes are more harmful to our health than vaping, the government somehow feels it is prudent to prevent vendors of vaping products from persuading cigarette smokers to kick the habit.

Politicians and bureaucrats appear to be more dangerous to our health than smoking.



What can we learn from the ancient Greeks that we can apply today?

Source: InfoWars

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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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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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President Trump on Friday said he “let everybody testify” in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, amid a heated battle this week between the White House and congressional Democrats over subpoenas for testimony from former and current administration officials.

The president, departing the White House on Friday for Indianapolis, touted his administration’s transparency throughout the nearly two-year-long Russia investigation led by Mueller and his team. The president said his administration gave “1.4 million” documents as part of the probe.

TRUMP CLAIMS HE ‘NEVER’ TOLD MCGAHN TO FIRE MUELLER, SAYS HE ‘COULD HAVE DONE IT’ HIMSELF

“I let White House Counsel Don McGahn testify—I let everybody testify. I think McGahn did for 30 hours. I said I want everybody to testify,” Trump told reporters.

“I let everybody testify. There’s never ever been transparency like this,” he continued. “So we got a great ruling, we got the ruling which I knew we were going to get because I have nothing to do with Russia nor the campaign.”

The president underscored the findings in Mueller’s nearly 500-page report, which was released to the public and Congress in a redacted format last week. The report revealed that the special counsel did not find evidence of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia—a conclusion Trump has touted and repeated for days.

“With all of this transparency, we finish. No collusion, no obstruction,” Trump said Friday. “But then I get out, the first day, they say, ‘let’s do it again.’ I say, that’s enough, we have to run a country. We have a very great country to run.”

Trump was referring to the sweeping Trump-focused investigations in the House of Representatives. This week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., subpoenaed McGahn to testify before his panel. The White House blocked McGahn’s testimony, and the president vowed to fight “all” congressionally-issued subpoenas.

“Go through it with the House, the Senate, no collusion, no collusion; no obstruction, no obstruction—again? We have to go through it?” Trump said. “This is a pure political witch hunt. The only thing I did is make this country stronger.”

The president added: “So if I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I’ve been a great president and the Democrats don’t like it.”

But despite his comments, Mueller did not come to a conclusion on the matter of whether the president obstructed justice—rather, the report revealed an array of controversial actions and requests made by the president that were examined as part of Mueller’s obstruction inquiry.

“On June 17, 2017, the president called [White House Counsel Don] McGahn at home and directed him to call the Acting Attorney General and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre,” the report stated, referencing the Watergate scandal.

TRUMP VOWS TO FIGHT ‘ALL’ SUBPOENAS AGAINST ADMINISTRATION, CALLS DEMAND FOR MCGAHN TESTIMONY ‘RIDICULOUS’ 

The report also revealed that when the media reported on the president’s request for McGahn to have Mueller removed, the president directed White House officials “to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a record stating he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed.”

“McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening,” the report said.

The report went on to say that two days after the initial request to McGahn, the president made another attempt to “affect the course of the Russia investigation.”

McGahn’s interview with investigators factored prominently into this section, including a claim that McGahn disobeyed Trump’s call to have him seek Mueller’s removal.

This week, the president said he “never” told McGahn to fire Mueller, and that if he wanted to remove the special counsel, he “could have done it” himself.

Source: Fox News Politics

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