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Explainer: Five ways Trump’s moves to stem border surge have hit hurdles

Central American migrants walk during their journey towards the United States, in Villa Comaltitlan
Central American migrants walk during their journey towards the United States, in Villa Comaltitlan, Mexico April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

April 18, 2019

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – Grappling with a ballooning number of migrants at the U.S. southern border, President Donald Trump has suggested increasingly bold steps to fulfill his signature campaign pledge to stem illegal immigration.

Yet many of his administration’s ideas have been hindered by legal, practical and political obstacles.

Meanwhile, the flow of migrants seeking asylum or a better life in the United States continues to swell. By March, the number of illegal entrants into the country had surged to the highest level in more than a decade.

On Wednesday, the acting director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan visited the Texas border to underscore the administration’s concerns about a growing crisis.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Thursday that the agency would set up two temporary tent facilities in Texas to process migrants, each with a capacity to hold up to 500 people. Such camps have been criticized by Congress members for holding migrants too long and not providing adequate places to sleep or shower.

The president, whose statements and tweets suggest a rising level of frustration, recently cleaned house at the Department of Homeland Security, firing Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and several other high-ranking staff. He has vowed to move in a “tougher direction.”

But a look at several significant Trump Administration ideas or policies shows the difficulty the president faces in trying to reverse the tide of migration, which today is largely driven by poverty, corruption, crime and other factors in Central America.

Some examples of administration proposals or policies that have run, or may run, into trouble:

DETAIN ASYLUM SEEKERS INDEFINITELY

U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday issued a ruling that allows asylum seekers who cross the border illegally to be held without bond as they challenge their deportation – a decision affecting perhaps tens of thousands of migrants. It was the latest move by top justice officials seeking to reshape legal precedent in the country’s U.S. immigration courts.

(See graphic here on such actions: https://tmsnrt.rs/2XmGDDg)

Rights groups have already threatened to sue over the measure – which goes into effect in 90 days – and as a practical matter, additional detention space would be needed, requiring funding from Congress. Until that happens, many migrants are likely to continue to be released with an order to appear in court.

SEND IMMIGRANTS TO SANCTUARY CITIES 

Earlier this month, Trump proposed sending “an unlimited supply” of immigrants who are fighting deportation to so-called sanctuaries – the hundreds of cities, counties and states where law enforcement limits its cooperation with Trump’s crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.

Immigration experts said it would be costly to transport migrants from the border and would require shifting funds from Border Patrol and other operations. In addition, the migrants would be free to move elsewhere once released.

CLOSE THE BORDER WITH MEXICO

The administration recently backed off a threat to shut the southern border, one of the busiest in the world, amid opposition from Democrats as well as often Republican-friendly business groups. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the idea an “economic calamity.”

MAKE ASYLUM SEEKERS WAIT IN MEXICO

One of the boldest proposals by the Trump administration has been to tap a little used clause in immigration law to send hundreds of migrants who ask for asylum in the United States back to border towns in Mexico to wait months – or potentially years – for their cases to be resolved in U.S. courts.

Local Mexican officials say their towns are already overwhelmed with migrants who have nowhere to live and few job prospects, while immigration advocates say those who are stuck in Mexico often have trouble finding lawyers and receiving proper notice for their U.S. hearings. A federal judge ordered a halt to the policy but an appeals court said it could continue while the administration appeals.

DETAIN MIGRANT CHILDREN

The current wave of migrants includes many more families, as opposed to the single men who flocked north in the past. That has caused the administration to take another look at a 1997 agreement, known as the Flores settlement, that strictly limits detention of children.

The administration has said repeatedly that t wants to scrap the legal deal and propose new regulations. It is unclear where – and with what funding – the government would detain the youngsters. Legal challenges to this proposal have been in the works from the moment it was announced.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Julie Marquis)

Source: OANN

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Trump’s North Korea envoy Biegun: a capable man in an impossible job?

FILE PHOTO: Stephen Biegun the US special representative for North Korea returned to South Korea after visiting Pyongyang
FILE PHOTO: US special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun (R), shakes hands with South Korea's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Lee Do-hoon (L) prior to their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea 09 February 2019. KIM MIN-HEE/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

February 23, 2019

By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Days before a second U.S.-North Korea summit, much rests on the shoulders of a former auto executive trying to find common ground between an American president seeking a big foreign policy win and a North Korean leader who seems unlikely to hand him one.

Stephen Biegun, named Donald Trump’s special envoy for North Korea six months ago, flew to Hanoi ahead of the Feb. 27-28 meeting in the Vietnamese capital where Trump hopes to get closer to his goal of persuading Pyongyang to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.

In meetings with his North Korean counterpart, Biegun, a 55-year-old former Ford Motor Co executive, aims to hammer out a joint summit statement showing concrete progress beyond vague commitments agreed by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their first meeting in June.

It’s a tall order, even for someone accustomed to tough assignments.

Before joining Ford as head of international government relations, Biegun was handed the job of giving Sarah Palin a crash course in foreign policy when she was John McCain’s 2008 presidential running mate.

Such experience could prove helpful in explaining what is achievable to Trump, who came into office similarly lacking in diplomatic experience and has set his sights on North Korea as one issue he can tout as a major success that has eluded his predecessors.

While Biegun worked for decades as congressional staffer and as a White House foreign policy aide under President George W. Bush, his latest appointment was initially greeted with skepticism, given he was primarily a Russia specialist with little exposure to the complex North Korea problem.

But several North Korea experts who have since advised Biegun told Reuters they have been struck by how methodical he was in taking the time to talk to as many of them as possible and described him as a quick learner.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico who is among those who has met Biegun, said was encouraged by the way Biegun had made up for his lack of specialist knowledge by seeking out the right people.

“What he’s been doing is learning and gathering things. I’m impressed by what he’s done – he’s got good advisers.” 

A 16-member team Biegun took with him to Pyongyang for three days of talks earlier this month included missile experts, nuclear experts and specialists in international law.  

A Capitol Hill staffer whose Democratic Party has been critical of Trump’s personal approach to North Korea, said Biegun’s attitude appeared “much more realistic than what we’ve heard from the administration thus far.”

“He really stands head and shoulders above the rest … and comes to this a with a relatively fresh set of eyes, and as someone who isn’t making old assumptions but also who isn’t making the wrong assumptions.”

Biegun has also won admirers in South Korea, where one former senior diplomat said he clearly had experience in handling complex issues and knew how Washington works. “Among all the nuclear envoys I’ve seen for decades, he must be the weightiest,” he said.

However, it will take more than intelligence, gravitas, an open mind and political savvy to convince North Korea to abandon a nuclear weapons program its ruling family has long seen as essential to its survival.

Biegun has avoided formal media interviews, but did deliver a wide-ranging speech at Stanford University on Jan. 31, when he admitted that despite months of U.S.-North Korea talks, the two sides still had no agreed definition of the term “denuclearization.”

And in spite of Trump’s declaration after the last summit that the nuclear threat from North Korea was over, the country has yet to agree to freeze production of fissile material and its missile program, despite a de facto moratorium on nuclear and missile testing since 2017.

Biegun has said he will be seeking both in Hanoi and will also be looking to agree a roadmap for a possibly lengthy post-summit negotiation process.

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, MILITARY DOUBTS

Yet neither the U.S. intelligence community, nor regional military commanders believe North Korea will agree to give up all of its nuclear weapons.

While welcoming an easing of tensions, critics worry the Trump administration – Biegun included – is now following Pyongyang’s playbook by dropping past demands for complete denuclearization before any concessions.

Trump and U.S. officials insist North Korea’s complete and verified denuclearization remains the ultimate goal, but experts say the mechanics of a negotiated process mean this could take many years – if it happens at all.

Trump’s close involvement could prove a mixed blessing for Biegun.

Unlike predecessors, Biegun has had significant direct contact with Trump, including involvement in White House talks with North Korean officials and an Oval Office meeting with the president in December.

But Trump has sometimes demonstrated a tendency to ignore advisers and act on impulse.

Biegun, according to a veteran American North Korea hand,” is a prisoner … of a president who has no interest in the substance of the issues.” “The president’s priority is himself – his brand,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Biegun is also beholden to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a trusted Trump aide with a reputation for following the president’s marching orders and for rarely contradicting him.

While Pompeo has overall control of North Korea policy, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, known for hawkish views on a range of global issues, has appeared to fade into the background on North Korea since his calls for the nation’s rapid disarmament nearly derailed the first summit.

The extent of Bolton’s involvement in the Hanoi meeting remains unclear.

Analysts say that for Biegun’s methodical approach to prevail he will need to deliver a semblance of progress in Hanoi. They warn Trump’s taste for a showy moment and apparent lack of patience with the sort of detailed drawn-out haggling any lasting deal will require could complicate Biegun’s task.

A photo Trump tweeted on Christmas Day showing him reading a memo at his desk in the Oval Office while Biegun and White House adviser Allison Hooker stand on his side, looking on, captured the awkwardness of his subordinates’ role. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1077311502615490560

Toby Dalton, of the Nuclear Policy Program at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was among Biegun’s advisers, noted he had left himself ample leeway in his Stanford speech for a reason.

“This reflects uncertainly about what U.S. policy is,” he said. “U.S. policy is what the president says it is on any given day.”

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Hyonhee Shin in SEOUL; Editing by Mary Milliken and Tomasz Janowski)

Source: OANN

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German lawmakers challenge deputy finance minister’s Goldman link in bank merger

FILE PHOTO: Outside view of the Deutsche Bank and the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt
FILE PHOTO: Outside view of the Deutsche Bank and the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

March 19, 2019

By John O’Donnell and Arno Schuetze

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German lawmakers on Monday criticized deputy finance minister Joerg Kukies and Goldman Sachs, alleging a conflict of interest in the U.S. investment bank advising state-backed Commerzbank on a possible merger with Deutsche Bank.

Kukies, who was formerly co-head of Goldman Sachs <GS.N> in Germany, left the Wall Street firm a year ago to become deputy German finance minister.

Kukies has since advocated a merger between Commerzbank <CBKG.DE> and Deutsche Bank <DBKGn.DE>, which unions warn could mean up to 30,000 job cuts, people familiar with the matter say.

Goldman Sachs is advising Commerzbank on the $28 billion plus deal deliberations, people familiar with the matter said.

“It’s a conflict of interest,” Fabio De Masi, a prominent leftist lawmaker in the German parliament, said, pointing to the state’s 15 percent stake in Commerzbank.

A spokesman for Kukies told Reuters there was no conflict of interest and that he had worked in the trading department at Goldman Sachs, which was “strictly separated” from bankers who advised on mergers.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

“In his 17 years at Goldman Sachs, Joerg Kukies exclusively worked for the sales and trading sector with no responsibility for the advisory/mergers and acquisitions section,” the spokesman for Kukies said.

Although confirmation of merger talks between Germany’s two largest banks, following months of speculation, has boosted their share prices, it has also triggered opposition and concerns over the impact on employment.

The issue is a highly emotive one in Germany and in its Tuesday edition, top-selling tabloid newspaper Bild raised a question mark over Kukie’s future in the government.

“When 30,000 jobs are on the line, the government must avoid the impression of a conflict of interest,” De Masi added.

This was echoed by Danyal Bayaz, a German parliamentarian and finance expert from the country’s Green party.

“In the financial crisis, we saw that government and finance were too interconnected. Ten years later, we don’t want to have the same. We want a strict separation from politics and industry,” Bayaz said.

“It is important to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest,” he added.

(Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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Sweden releases alleged Russian spy from custody

A Swedish prosecutor says that a computer specialist suspected of spying for Russia has been released from custody.

Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist says the evidence against Kristian Dmitrievski "is such that the suspect cannot complicate the investigation."

Ljungqvist said Friday he cannot comment further because the case is "sensitive."

Dmitrievski, 45, was arrested Feb. 26 by Sweden's domestic security agency SAPO as he met with a Russian intelligence officer working at Russia's Embassy in Stockholm under diplomatic cover. SAPO said the Russian officer had recruited Dmitrievski and that criminal activity had been going on at least since 2017.

Dmitrievski has not been charged.

The Associated Press has identified the diplomat as Yevgeny Umerenko, who has left Sweden, according to the Swedish Foreign Ministry. The reason for his departure was not known.

Source: Fox News World

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Next DHS Secretary should be Kevin McAleenan, former CBP Chief Mark Morgan says

Amid Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation as Homeland Security secretary on Sunday, the department's commissioner, Kevin McAleenan, has stepped in as acting director, and Obama-era border patrol chief Mark Morgan says McAleenan is the right man for the job.

Calling McAleenan "extremely intelligent," Morgan explained that the new acting secretary comes to the Homeland Security position with more than a decade of experience working specifically in the border security domain.

"He's seen this and been there every day, working hard, since 2014 -- from the start to where we're at now," Morgan said during an appearance on "Fox & Friends" on Monday morning.

The decision to make McAleenan the acting secretary is somewhat controversial, as it supercedes Deputy Secretary Claire Grady, who should be next in line for the role after Nielsen departs. Nielsen said she will stay on through April 10 to assist in the transition, but there are some issues that need to be ironed out in order for McAleenan to formally take the role.

KEVIN McALEENAN, NEW ACTING DHS BOSS, HAS LONG RECORD IN BORDER SECURITY

The DHS has come under fire over the last two years first over the initial choice of Nielsen as Secretary, given that her background was in cybersecurity, and in recent months, for practices involving separating children from their families at the border

The DHS has come under fire over the last two years first over the initial choice of Nielsen as Secretary, given that her background was in cybersecurity, and in recent months, for practices involving separating children from their families at the border (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

FORMER ACTING ICE DIRECTOR TOM HOMAN: TRUMP MADE THE RIGHT MOVE PICKING McALEENAN FOR DHS

Morgan continued by discussing that a high-level change gives a "jump-start" to the department and signals a new direction. DHS has come under fire over the past two years first over the initial choice of Nielsen as secretary, given that her background was in cybersecurity and, in recent months, for practices involving separating children from their families at the border.

The combination of the 1997 Flores argeement and the TVPRA comprises the government's "catch-and-release" policy -- barring DHS from keeping children in custody and away from their families for more than 20 days. The TVPRA rules that unaccompanied minors from Mexico or Canada are sent back to their home countries, but if they are from Central America, they remain in the United States, Morgan said.

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Morgan agreed with host Brian Kilmeade, however, that the issue of family separation was brought about by a contradiction of policies taken on by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in which he maintained that parents here illegally had to be sent back to their native countries, but kids would stay, often in a shelter.

"Congress has to fix those laws," Morgan said.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Why We Don't Trust Our Institutions

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This week, special counsel Robert Mueller released his long-awaited report on alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to impact the 2016 election. His conclusion: no collusion. It's been apparent for quite some time that Mueller would end up here -- every indictment has been based on an ancillary crime, not the chief question of election conspiracy. Nonetheless, the final result came as a bombshell.

That's because for two years, the mainstream media have treated Trump-Russian collusion as a reality. Facts would eventually arrive to fill in the gaps in the narrative. Surely, Trump's presidency would crumble when the deus ex machina, the Mueller report, arrived.

But that didn't happen. And so the media are left with unending egg on their faces, having suggested continuously for years that Trump was illegitimately elected, and that his campaign had engaged in treasonous activity to prevent the rightful president, Hillary Clinton, from assuming office.

That narrative found support in leaders from the Democratic intelligence community. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of the House Intelligence Committee spent years camping outside CNN headquarters in a pup tent, ready at a moment's notice to suggest access to secret information that would certainly take down the president. Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Trump of treason, standing on his resume to do so. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that Watergate "pales" beside allegations of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe suggested that Trump could be a Russian cat's paw. Former FBI Director James Comey implied that Trump had fired him for nefarious reasons, not because Trump was angry with Comey for failing to announce that Trump wasn't under investigation.

Our intelligence leadership, in other words, humiliated themselves.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Cook County prosecutors agreed to drop charges against alleged hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett, who alleged that he was beaten by two white men in the middle of the night on the streets of Chicago. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the dropped charges a "whitewash." Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson bashed Smollett's defense team, explaining, "They chose to hide behind secrecy and broker a deal to circumvent the judicial system."

Why have key institutions betrayed their initial mission? Mission creep. The job of the media is to objectively cover stories, not to drive narratives. The job of the intelligence community is to diligently follow evidence, not to follow its cognitive bias. The job of the state's attorney is to prosecute crime, not to play politics.

Without defined roles, our institutions crumble. Treating institutions as mere tools to be wielded in pursuit of some higher goal leads to the destruction of those institutions; they become little more than weapons, aimed by those in power. That's dangerous stuff. We should be able to trust our press. If we can't, then we can no longer base our republican decision-making on a common set of facts. We should be able to trust our intelligence community and our prosecutors. If we can't, then we can't support granting them the power they require to protect us.

But protecting institutions has taken a back seat to do-goodism. "Objective" journalists see themselves as crusaders; political members of the intelligence community see themselves as protectors; prosecutors see themselves as emissaries of social justice rather than as part of a broader, more objective system of determining guilt and innocence. Institutions only mean more than the people who comprise them when the people who comprise them value the institutions more than their own politics. That's being lost. The result is the continued atomization of our society.

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BOJ may ease further, say small but growing number of economists: Reuters poll

A security guard walks out from the Bank of Japan headquarters building as petals of cherry blossoms are seen on the ground in Tokyo
FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks out from the Bank of Japan headquarters building as petals of cherry blossoms are seen on the ground in Tokyo April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Yuya Shino

February 21, 2019

By Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan’s next move will be to loosen its already super-easy monetary policy, a small but growing contingent of economists say, amid risks of a slowdown and skepticism inflation will hit the central bank’s target.

Most economists polled by Reuters — 29 of 38 — still expect the BOJ’s next step would be to scale back its massive stimulus program.

But nine analysts — up from five in last month’s poll — said the central bank would instead boost stimulus with steps such as buying even more assets to flood the financial system with cash and tweaking the wording in forward guidance.

U.S.-China trade friction and an upcoming sales tax hike in October are casting a pall over the economy.

“If the risk of a recession rises, the BOJ will likely ease further,” said Hiroshi Ugai, chief economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan, one of the nine.

Nearly all economists polled — 33 of 36 — said they disagreed with the BOJ’s insistence that inflation was maintaining momentum toward reaching 2 percent. The latest Reuters poll was taken Feb 7-20.

Last month, the central bank cut its inflation forecasts but maintained the status quo in its massive stimulus program as Governor Haruhiko Kuroda warned of growing economic risks from trade protectionism and faltering global demand.

Many economists who forecast the central bank will scale back stimulus said that will happen sometime in 2020 or later.

Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics, said the BOJ has already missed a chance to normalize policy, before the sales tax hike, due to rising global uncertainty.

“The BOJ will stick to the current yield curve target at least until they confirm the impact of consumption tax hike is limited as expected,” he said.

Among possible steps for normalization, the BOJ could expand its 10-year Japanese government bond yield fluctuation from a 0.2 percentage point band and raise its yield target from around zero percent, economists said.

The median in the poll projected the nationwide core consumer price index, which includes oil products but not fresh food costs, would rise 0.8 percent in both fiscal 2019, which starts in April, and fiscal 2020.

That’s lower than the BOJ, which sees core CPI rising to 1.1 percent in the coming fiscal year and 1.5 percent in fiscal 2020.

The BOJ will place emphasis on core CPI projections to include the effects from the planned sales tax hike when the bank releases its next outlook report in April, the Nikkei business daily reported earlier this month.

Previously the central bank focused on core CPI excluding the tax hike effects but policymakers think those will be offset by government measures such as free education, the report said.

Economists projected Japan’s economy will contract 2.5 percent in the October-December quarter due to the sales tax hike but eke out 0.7 percent growth in all of fiscal 2019.

For the following fiscal year, growth is expected to slow to 0.5 percent, the poll showed.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Polling by Khushboo Mittal; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Jonathan Cable)

Source: OANN

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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