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Martin Shkreli is Being Tortured in Prison

Though our media these days loves to complain about alleged injustices in our justice system, they’re absolutely giddy that Martin Shkreli is reportedly being locked up in solitary confinement. 

From New York Daily News:

“Pharmo Bro” Martin Shkreli won’t be doing much shot-calling anymore.

He was reportedly tossed into solitary confinement following a report last month that claimed he was still running his business from behind bars, according to a Forbes report Monday.

The Wall Street Journal described in early March how Shkreli used a contraband cell phone to make decisions at Phoenixus AG, including firing his handpicked chief executive, Kevin Mulleady. Shkreli later allegedly agreed to make it a suspension.

His alleged infraction is trying to run his business from prison. 

What a menace to society! 

What next, is he going to file his own taxes?!

Solitary confinement is a form of torture. While no one generally cares about murderers or violent criminals being subject to it, putting non-violent criminals in solitary confinement is sickening. 

The only reason Shkreli was locked up in the first place is because our overlords wanted some pleb to use as a scapegoat to atone for the sins of Big Pharma. 


Alex Jones presents a report by Infowars’ Greg Reese that explores any possible reasons why rapper Nipsey Hussle was gunned down in Los Angeles while creating a documentary that exposes a proven cure to HIV, a disease that many believe was created to target people of African origin around the world.

Shkreli was hounded for raising the price of a rare drug (which insurance companies had to pay for) in order to fund research on developing a better drug. He gave away the drug at a discount or for free to people who couldn’t afford it. 


[Embed begins at 1:48:20 with Shkreli giving his side of the story.]

He ran a small company, considering the industry, and this affected relatively few people. 

He was later brought up on totally unrelated charges, convicted of “fraud” and sentenced to seven years in prison. Even though none of his investors lost money, he was forced to issue a mea culpa and browbeat himself as though he was before a Soviet show trial.

Meanwhile, the Sackler family reportedly knowingly lied about the addictiveness of their drug Oxycontin to get millions of Americans hooked on synthetic heroin for profit. 

They made billions of dollars in the process and yet they’re all sitting pretty and are reportedly exploring bankruptcy in order to keep themselves from having to pay off the millions of families whose lives they’ve ruined.

As 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said last week on the Jimmy Dore show, this family belongs in jail.

While Martin Shkreli is being tortured in prison through solitary confinement the Sacklers are living free.

Source: InfoWars

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Government Spending: A Horror Story

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That 90% of Silicon Valley start-ups fail is often mentioned in these columns, and it’s in many ways the theme of my upcoming book, They’re Both Wrong. Investor and writer Andy Kessler alerted me to the number, and it’s one that anyone aiming to understand economics should internalize.

The 90% number is a reminder that bad ideas in Silicon Valley quickly fail. The Valley’s immense wealth isn’t an effect of constant success; rather it’s a certain consequence of persistent failure that forces constant learning and improvement. What makes no sense dies with great rapidity in northern California, so that good ideas can be born.

The truth about Silicon Valley’s economics is an inconvenient one for members of the right convinced that the center of technological innovation is a hive of socialists. Please. The latter is a myth that the overly sensitive have chosen to focus on in order to promote their alarmist narrative about the U.S. going the way of Venezuela, or Greece, or Zimbabwe.

Just the same, the Valley’s relentlessly capitalist ways similarly mock members of the left who defend government spending as compassionate. No, it’s waste. Plain and simple. All wealth is initially created in the private sector, and government spending is the wasteful consequence. We know it’s wasteful because we know that bad ideas in government almost never die. What’s mindless persists. Government is the polar opposite of superrich Silicon Valley.

Let’s never forget that all government workers used to not be government workers. And all money that funds government activity used to not be held by government until politicians taxed it away for political consumption. Stated simply, government spending is the private sector minus merit, and minus the persistent failure and possibility of failure without which talent and innovation cannot be realized.

While what fails in the private sector is mothballed, what belly flops in the governmental sphere is frequently rewarded with more taxpayer funds. That’s why government waste is a first order redundancy. Of course it's waste. Absent the possibility of investor withdrawal whereby what makes no sense is rapidly starved of resources, what’s ridiculous just grows and grows.

Which brings us to a front page Wall Street Journal article from Tuesday. Even though airplanes can transport passengers from Chicago to St. Louis in less than 1 hour, Amtrak (our national train service) has a train route in place that can similarly transport passengers between the two cities. The problem is that what takes less than an hour by plane takes 5 ½ hours by train. Sadly, the Amtrak story gets worse.

As the Journal went on to report, “a fast-rail project is under way in Illinois.” It’s hard not laugh while typing, but this project will push the top speed of Amtrak trains traveling from Chicago to St. Louis up to 110 miles per hour, thus “shaving just an hour” off a trip that as previously mentioned takes 5 ½ hours. Fear not, the story gets even worse.  

You see, $2 billion was spent so that Amtrak trains traveling between STL and Chicago would take 4 ½ hours instead of 5 ½. Unsurprisingly, this non-improvement isn’t or won’t impress passengers. The present expectation is that, assuming top speeds of 110 mph, “the share of people who travel between the two cities by rail could rise just a few percentage points.” On its own, American Airlines already flies seven times per day from Chicago to St. Louis. In an hour.  

So while there are countless stories and lessons about the folly of government spending, the waste of $2 billion on something that makes no economic sense loudly exposes the horrors of Congress controlling so much of the wealth first created in the real world. The waste is monstrous. And this is just Amtrak. Ideally the Amtrak story instructs.

Ideally it’s a reminder that with government spending, it’s not a Democrat or Republican thing. Politicians exist to spend, so the cost of government grows and grows regardless of the Party in charge.

Readers would be wise to consider how the money is spent. The federal government costs close to $4 trillion each year, and with Amtrak in mind, readers might imagine all the other waste taking place across various federal programs. Crucial here is that the nearly $4 trillion used to be in the private sector.

Now it’s not, which means close to $4 trillion is annually allocated by politicians in obnoxiously obtuse fashion. That it’s misallocated is a blinding glimpse of the obvious. When failure doesn’t inform one’s actions, the inevitable result is economy-sapping waste.

It cost Amtrak $2 billion to “improve” service that was never necessary, while $500,000 was all it took for Peter Thiel to purchase 10 percent of Facebook in 2004. With the long history of nosebleed federal spending very much in mind, how many Facebooks have been suffocated by government waste that economists laughably tell us stimulates economic growth?

This is not a partisan issue. It’s one of common sense. Government, whether run by Republicans or Democrats, can only mis-appropriate what’s precious. Sane people on each side should energetically oppose the falsehood that is “government spending” simply because it’s not government spending.

"Government spending" is a horror story that cannot be stressed enough simply because it has everything to do with suffocating the amazing under the gargantuan weight of what has to be flamboyantly dumb by virtue of failure informing none of it. Call "government spending" what is: freedom-sapping economic contraction that robs us of trillions worth of experimentation necessary to employ us much better, improve our living standards, and substantially elongate our lives. 

John Tamny is a speechwriter and writer of opinion pieces for clients, he's editor of RealClearMarkets, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). His new book is The End of Work, about the exciting explosion of remunerative jobs that don't feel at all like work.  He's also the author of Who Needs the Fed? and Popular Economics. He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com.  

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The Latest: Daughter IDs 2 of 4 dead at North Dakota company

The Latest on bodies found at a business in the Bismarck, North Dakota, suburb of Mandan (all times local):

11 a.m.

A married couple who had recently bought their dream home were among the four people found slain at a property management company in the North Dakota city of Mandan.

Briann Miller of Girard, Illinois, tells The Associated Press that her 45-year-old mother, Lois Cobb, and 50-year-old stepdad, Bill Cobb, were killed. Police haven't released the names of the victims found Monday at RJR Maintenance and Management.

Bill Cobb was a maintenance supervisor and Lois was an account specialist. Miller says police didn't give her any details about how they died.

Miller says the Cobbs came to North Dakota from Illinois about six years ago. She says they never gave any indication to her of any problems at work.

Police on Monday said they hadn't identified a motive. Police plan to hold a midday news conference Tuesday to release more details.

___

9:30 a.m.

Police in North Dakota are planning to release more information in the deaths of four people whose bodies were found Monday at a property management company in Mandan.

Authorities called a midday news conference to discuss the slaying of three men and one woman whose bodies were found at RJR Maintenance and Management. Police haven't identified the victims or said how they were killed.

Chief Jason Ziegler says police don't have a motive and the killer is not among the dead. But he's also said police believe the public isn't in danger.

The business was quiet Tuesday morning, with only one officer visibly on scene and a few people showing up to pay rent.

Apartment renter Henry Wilson says he's saddened by what happened.

Source: Fox News National

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U.S. official denounces ‘choreographed’ visits to China’s Xinjiang

FILE PHOTO: With Xinjiang’s fabled Tianshan mountains in the background, what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre is seen in Turpan
FILE PHOTO: With Xinjiang’s fabled Tianshan mountains in the background, what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre is seen in Turpan in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

March 24, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – “Highly choreographed” tours to Xinjiang organized by the Chinese government are misleading and propagate false narratives about the troubled region, a U.S. official said, after China announced plans to invite European envoys to visit.

China has been stepping up a push to counter growing criticism in the West and among rights groups about a controversial de-radicalization program in heavily Muslim Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia.

Critics say China is operating internment camps for Uighurs and other Muslim peoples who live in Xinjiang, though the government calls them vocational training centers and says it has a genuine need to prevent extremist thinking and violence.

China’s foreign ministry said late last week it would invite Beijing-based European diplomats to visit soon. Diplomatic sources said the so-far informal invitation had gone specifically to ambassadors and was planned for this week.

A U.S. government official, asked by Reuters if the U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, had been invited to visit Xinjiang, said there were no meetings or visits to announce.

“Highly choreographed and chaperoned government-led tours in Xinjiang have propagated false narratives and obfuscated the realities of China’s ongoing human rights abuses in the region,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The visit this month would be the first by a large group of Western diplomats to the region since international concern about Xinjiang’s security clampdown began intensifying last year. Hundreds have died in unrest in Xinjiang in recent years.

Several groups of diplomats from other countries have already been brought to Xinjiang on tightly scripted trips since late December to visit the facilities.

There have been two visits by groups including European diplomats to Xinjiang this year. One was a small group of EU diplomats, and the other by a group of diplomats from a broader mix of countries, including missions from Greece, Hungary and North African and Southeast Asian states.

A Reuters journalist visited on a government-organized trip in January.

The U.S. official described what was happening in Xinjiang as “a highly repressive campaign”, and said claims that the facilities were “humane job-training centers” or “boarding schools” were not credible.

“We will continue to call on China to end these counterproductive policies, free all those who have been arbitrarily detained, and cease efforts to coerce members of its Muslim minority groups residing abroad to return to China to face an uncertain fate.”

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has rejected all foreign criticism of its policies in Xinjiang, and says it invites foreigners to visit to help them better understand the region.

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said China’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang marked the worst human rights abuses “since the 1930s”.

The issue of Xinjiang adds another irritant to already strained ties between Washington and Beijing, who are trying to end a bitter trade war and have several other areas of disagreement, including the disputed South China Sea and U.S. support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan.

Late last year, more than a dozen ambassadors from Western countries, including France, Britain, Germany and the EU’s top envoy in Beijing, wrote to the government to seek a meeting with Xinjiang’s top official, Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo, to discuss their concerns about the rights situation.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has weighed sanctions against senior Chinese officials in Xinjiang, including Chen.

Two diplomatic sources told Reuters on Saturday that government officials had said a meeting with Chen was not being offered to the European ambassadors, and that the trip was not to discuss human rights but to talk about China-Europe cooperation on President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road project.

It remains unclear whether they would accept the invitation, though the two sources said it was unlikely.

The European Union’s embassy in Beijing has declined to comment on the invitation.

Xi is currently in Europe on a state visit to Italy, Monaco and France. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang goes to Brussels next month for a China-EU summit.

EU leaders said on Friday the bloc must recognize that China is as much a competitor as a partner.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Editing by Sam Holmes)

Source: OANN

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EU hits Nicaragua on rights, seeks sanctions as talks resume

The European Parliament has approved a strongly worded resolution criticizing the Nicaraguan government on human rights and calling for sanctions.

The resolution asks the European Union External Action Service and member nations for "targeted and individual sanctions" such as visa bans and asset freezes against the Central American nation and "individuals responsible for human rights abuses."

EU Parliament member Ana Gomes confirms that the resolution was approved by a vote of 332 to 25, with 39 abstentions. Resolutions of this kind do not set EU policy.

Thursday's resolution came as talks between President Daniel Ortega's government and the opposition group Civic Alliance resumed in Managua.

Opposition delegates to the talks are demanding the release of hundreds of people considered political prisoners.

Source: Fox News World

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Mnuchin has fiery exchange with Rep. Maxine Waters during hearing

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin got into a fiery exchange with U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters on Tuesday during a committee hearing with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

At the end of a three-and-half-hour testimony before the House Appropriations Committee and Financial Services Committee, which is chaired by Waters, Mnuchin interrupted the hearing to remind the committee of a prior agreement that he would be able to leave by 5 p.m.

Mnuchin said that he was scheduled to meet with a senior official from the Bahrain government. After running overtime, he said he would be willing to stay until 5:15 and return at a later date to testify before Congress.

"It will be embarrassing if I keep this person waiting for a long period of time," Mnuchin said.

His departure, however, did not come without a heated back-and-forth with Waters.

"Unfortunately, we are all pressed for time," said the California congresswoman, whose committee grilled Mnuchin about his plans to respond to Democrats’ requests for access to President Trump’s tax returns.

MAXINE WATERS REIGNITES CALLS  TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT TRUMP, ACCUSES HIM OF 'CONSPIRING WITH THE KREMLIN AND OLIGARCHS OF RUSSIA'

Waters refused to formally dismiss Mnuchin, whom she asked to stay for an additional 10 minutes, Bloomberg reported. "This is a new way and it's a new day. And it's a new chair. And I have the gavel," she said.

Mnuchin said he'd “rethink” whether he would return to sit before the committee if he was going to be poorly treated.

"If you'd wish to keep me here so that I don't have my important meeting and continue to grill me, then we can do that," he said. "I will cancel my meeting and I will not be back here. I will be very clear if that's the way you'd like to have this relationship."

After Waters proceeded to continue with the hearing, Mnuchin again chimed in to clarify whether or not Waters was “instructing” him to stay, and therefore, cancel his meeting.

CANDACE OWENS EXPLODES AT TED LIEU MID-HEARING AFTER HE PLAYS SHORT CLIP OF HER HITLER COMMENTS

"You made me an offer that I accepted," Waters said. "No, I'm not ordering you. I said you may leave anytime you want and you said OK.”

Mnuchin replied that he could not leave until Waters dismissed him. “You're supposed to take the gavel and bang it,” he said.

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Waters then interrupted him, saying, “Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee."

Mnuchin was eventually advised by staff that he was not obligated to stay and could leave. Before Waters ended the hearing at 5:30 p.m., Mnuchin withdrew his offer to return before the committee in May.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Iran says U.S. pressures on Iran, Venezuela making oil market fragile

FILE PHOTO: Iran's Oil Minister Zanganeh arrives for an OPEC meeting in Vienna
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh arrives for a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, Austria, November 30, 2016. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/File Photo

April 14, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran’s oil minister said on Sunday that U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela and tensions in Libya have made the supply-demand balance in the global oil market fragile, and warned of consequences for increasing pressures on Tehran.

Oil prices have risen more than 30 percent this year on the back of supply cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and U.S. sanctions on oil exporters Iran and Venezuela, plus escalating conflict in OPEC member Libya.

“Oil prices are increasing every day. That shows the market is worried,” Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

“Venezuela is in trouble. Russia is also under sanctions. Libya is in turmoil. Part of U.S. oil production has stopped. These show the supply-demand balance is very fragile,” Zanganeh said.

“If they (the Americans) decide to increase pressures on Iran, the fragility will increase in an unpredictable way,” he added.

Zanganeh said one of the consequences of pressure on Iran was a rise in fuel prices in the United States.

“Mr. Trump should choose whether to add more pressure on Iran or keep fuel prices low at gas stations in America,” Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the oil ministry’s news agency SHANA.

The U.S. reimposed sanctions on Iran in November after pulling out of a 2015 nuclear accord between it and six world powers. The sanctions have already halved Iranian oil exports.

U.S. President Donald Trump eventually aims to halt Iranian oil exports, choking off Tehran’s main source of revenue. Washington is pressuring Iran to curtail its nuclear program and stop backing militant proxies across the Middle East.

OPEC and its allies meet in June to decide whether to continue withholding supply. Though OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, is considered keen to keep cutting, sources within the group said it could raise output from July if disruptions continue elsewhere.

The producer group’s supply cuts have been aimed largely at offsetting record crude production in the United States.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Source: OANN

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Alex Jones – Info Wars

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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.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

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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