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Alan Dershowitz: ‘Obstruction’ section of Mueller report what I’m going to read first

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Monday that he plans to "skim over" the parts of the redacted Mueller report discussing President Trump's relationship with Russia because he believes the part relating to whether Trump obstructed justice will be the more interesting section.

It was announced Monday that a redacted version of the full 400-page investigation by Robert Mueller is set to be made public on Thursday.

Dershowitz said during an appearance on "America's Newsroom" that he believes any redactions made by Attorney General William Barr in the new report will be "few and far between," but are necessary to maintain the privacy of individuals in the investigation who are not facing criminal charges.

TRUMP MAINTAINS 'NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION,' SAYS IT'S TIME TO 'INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS' IN RUSSIA PROBE 

"I'm going to skim quickly the Russian matter because I will conclude probably there is no evidence there," Dershowitz said.

"The most interesting thing will be to look at obstruction of justice," he added. "The obstruction case is based largely on what the president said openly in tweets and press conferences. I think we'll see a different analysis of the law as to whether a president can commit obstruction of justice if he fires somebody like (former FBI director James) Comey, who he is entitled to fire," Dershowitz added.

ROGER STONE TO JUDGE: LET MY LAWYERS SEE THE FULL MUELLER REPORT

The professor said there was rightful outrage when Comey revealed details about the investigation into Hillary Clinton, despite there being no indictments, because it was not the role of the prosecutor to express his or her personal opinions about the situation. However, in the case of Mueller's report, he says, people want to hear "everything about everybody."

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"The real question is why do we have a double standard?" Dershowitz asked.  "Why were we furious, I was, when Comey went after Hillary Clinton beyond saying we're not going to indict her and now we want to hear everything about everybody who was in the [Mueller] report even though they haven't been indicted. Where does that double standard come from?"

Source: Fox News Politics

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Exclusive: Lebanese draft budget reduces deficit to below 9 percent of GDP – finance minister

FILE PHOTO: Lebanese Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil holds news briefing in Beirut
FILE PHOTO: Lebanese Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil holds a news briefing in Beirut, Lebanon December 4, 2018. REUTERS/Dalati Nohra/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

April 17, 2019

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s draft budget for 2019 projects a deficit of less than 9 percent of GDP compared to 11.2 percent in 2018 and includes “wide reductions” in spending based on the need for “exceptional austerity measures”, the finance minister said.

The budget, seen as a critical test of the heavily indebted state’s determination to reform, is based on an economic growth forecast of 1.5 percent in 2019, which could rise to around 2 percent as the economy picks up, Ali Hassan Khalil told Reuters.

The draft budget projects a primary surplus compared to a deficit in 2018, he added.

“The most important thing is that we have put ourselves on the path of dealing with the accumulated deficit,” Khalil said. The draft represented an “introduction to more deficit reductions in the 2020 and 2021 budgets,” he said.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Tom Perry; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: OANN

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Volkswagen boss says U.S. tariffs could cost up to 2.5 billion euros: Financial Times

Diess, Volkswagen's new CEO, poses during the Volkswagen Group's annual general meeting in Berlin
FILE PHOTO: Herbert Diess, Volkswagen's new CEO, poses during the Volkswagen Group's annual general meeting in Berlin, Germany, May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

February 21, 2019

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The biggest threat to Volkswagen’s 2019 profit is potential tariffs from the United States, Chief Executive Herbert Diess told the Financial Times.

“It’s becoming tense once again,” Diess told the FT. “You know it’s a pity because we can’t solve it from the car industry [alone]. It’s more of a tariffs negotiation between Europe and the United States.”

Analysts at London-based Evercore ISI said tariffs could cost Volkswagen 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion) a year, about 13 percent of expected earnings.

“In the worst-case situation, that would probably be close to the real figure,” Diess said of the Evercore projection.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by David Goodman)

Source: OANN

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Notre Dame’s destruction was ‘bound to happen’ after years of neglect and lack of upkeep, expert claims

The massive inferno that engulfed Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral left in its wake a blackened shell of a historic monument that survived nearly 900 years of tumultuous French history.

The cathedral – immortalized in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” – was undergoing a massive $6.8 million renovation project when the blaze broke out. It was an effort to turn back the clock on centuries of neglect of the beloved monument.

A hole is seen in the dome inside Notre cathedral in Paris. (Christophe Petit Tesson, Pool via AP)

A hole is seen in the dome inside Notre cathedral in Paris. (Christophe Petit Tesson, Pool via AP)

One heritage expert said the destruction of this magnitude was “bound to happen” sooner or later.

This picture shows charred debris inside Notre Dame cathedral Tuesday April 16, 2019. Firefighters declared success Tuesday morning in an over 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers.

This picture shows charred debris inside Notre Dame cathedral Tuesday April 16, 2019. Firefighters declared success Tuesday morning in an over 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers. (Ludovic Marin via AP)

"The lack of real upkeep and daily attention to such a major building is the cause of this catastrophe,” Jean-Michel Leniaud, president of the scientific council at the national Heritage Institute told AFP. “This is not about looking for people to blame. The responsibility is collective because this is the most loved monument in the country.”

NOTRE DAME’S GOLDEN ALTAR CROSS SEEN GLOWING AS IMAGES EMERGE FROM INSIDE SHOWING FIRE-RAVAGED CATHEDRAL

Middle Ages specialist Claude Gauvard told AFP that not enough had been spent on maintenance at the revered building.

"The ongoing works finally got started -- and it was high time, and perhaps even a little late,” she said. “I went up to the foot of the spire (before the renovations began) and some of the brickwork was disjointed, held in place by a grate to prevent it falling.”

Firefighters declared success Tuesday in a more than 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers and the purported Crown of Christ.

Firefighters declared success Tuesday in a more than 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers and the purported Crown of Christ. (Christophe Petit Tesson, Pool via AP)

On Tuesday, the cathedral’s iconic twin bell towers remained visibly intact as experts swarmed the building to assess the destruction.

Firefighters declared success Tuesday in a more than 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers.

Firefighters declared success Tuesday in a more than 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

HERO PRIEST SAVES PRECIOUS ARTIFACTS FROM NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL FIRE, BUT THE FATE OF MANY TREASURES REMAINS UNKNOWN

Peter Fuessenich, who oversees all construction work for the Gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany, told broadcaster RTL on Tuesday that it could take decades to repair the damage.

“It will certainly take years, perhaps even decades, until the last damage caused by this terrible fire will be completely repaired,” he said, adding that it was “a tragedy with a European dimension.”

The 12th-century church is home to an 18th-century organ, relics, stained glass and other works of art of incalculable value, and is a leading tourist attraction.

Repairing the cathedral — including the 800-year-old wooden beams that made up its roof — presents challenges.

TOURIST SEARCHING FOR PEOPLE IN 'HISTORIC' NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL PHOTO TAKEN ONE HOUR BEFORE FIRE

The cathedral's roof cannot be rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire because "we don't, at the moment, have trees on our territory of the size that were cut in the 13th century," Bertrand de Feydeau, vice president of preservation group Fondation du Patrimoine, told AP.

He said the roof restoration work would have to use new technologies.

The 12th-century church is home to relics, stained glass and other works of art of incalculable value, and is a leading tourist attraction. Its organ dates to the 1730s and was constructed by Francois Thierry.

NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL'S 7 MOST ICONIC MOMENTS IN FILM

Junior Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters Tuesday that "some weaknesses" had been identified in the structure of the cathedral.

 Experts are assessing the blackened shell of Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral to establish next steps to save what remains after a devastating fire destroyed much of the almost 900-year-old building.

 Experts are assessing the blackened shell of Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral to establish next steps to save what remains after a devastating fire destroyed much of the almost 900-year-old building. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

"Globally the structure is holding up well, but some weaknesses have been identified particularly in the vault and the gable of the northern transept, which have to be secured," he told reporters at the scene.

Paris Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire described authorities' "enormous relief" at salvaging pieces such as the Crown of Christ, which were quickly transported to a "secret location" by officials after the fire.

The Rose windows – a trio of immense round stained-glass windows over the cathedral’s three main portals that date back to the 13th center, were also saved, Aupetit told reporters.

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Meanwhile, three of France’s richest businessman - Bernard Arnault, Francois-Henri Pinault and his billionaire father Francois Pinault – have pledged nearly $340 million to help finance repairs.

“I hope I will see that cathedral again in my lifetime and that I will celebrate a mass there. I'm 67 now and if all goes well, even if it takes 10 years, I will be 77 and still able to do it," Monsignor Patrick Chauvet, the rector of Notre Dame, told France Inter radio.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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NASCAR notebook: Suarez embraces mentor role

NASCAR: O'Reilly Auto Parts 500-Qualifying
Mar 29, 2019; Fort Worth, TX, USA; Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Daniel Suarez (41) during qualifying for the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

March 30, 2019

FORT WORTH, Texas – As he did for much of his racing career, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Daniel Suarez forged his own path in qualifying Friday night for the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 (on Sunday, March 31 at 3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

While his fellow competitors hesitated to make a lap, Suarez darted out onto the track alone. Ultimately, he was rewarded with a fourth-place qualifying effort at Texas Motor Speedway.

Suarez faced a similar challenging situation in NASCAR. No other Mexican driver had ascended through the top national tours to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series — until Suarez arrived as part of the Drive 4 Diversity program.

As a teenager, Suarez gained experience and exposure on the short tracks of Mexico. At 19, he added the NASCAR K&N Pro Series to his schedule. Visits to Richmond Raceway, Iowa Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway prepared him for that next leap, but Suarez still lacked that mentor he could rely on to avoid the pitfalls of aspiring racers.

“I watched Adrian Fernandez a lot,” Suarez said of the 54-year-old Mexico City racer who ran 10 Xfinity Series races between 2005-2008. “But when I came here to the U.S., I didn’t have anyone from Mexico or Latin America that I could go to to ask a question.”

Now, Suarez serves as a role model for other aspiring Hispanic racers.

“Today, there are a handful of kids that call me from Mexico that want to come here and are asking for my advice,” Suarez added. “Slowly, I am becoming ‘that guy’ for a lot of kids in Mexico. I’m very proud to be able to help them and try to be that person that I didn’t have when I was coming here.”

This year, Suarez has found a new home with Stewart-Haas Racing. He’s experiencing a level of comfort with crew chief Billy Scott and the No. 41 SHR Ford Mustang team that was missing in his meteoric rise to Cup. Last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, Suarez posted his second top-10 finish of the season. Plus, his fourth-place qualifying run last night was his best since joining the team.

“I’m happier,” Suarez said. “It’s always good to be with a group of guys like this. Last year, I wasn’t happy. It was just a little bit different and this year I’m more relaxed and just hoping to do my thing and I feel like we have more speed. Last year, there was a lot of inconsistency. Right now, I feel like we’re consistent and moving in the right direction.

“Last year was different, but for sure I’m more happy and more relaxed. My team, Billy Scott is a great crew chief. I have great engineers and a lot of good people behind me and I feel like we’re gonna do great things together. We just have to be patient and try to keep working in the direction we’re going so far. I don’t feel like we are where we want to be yet, but we have to be patient.”

JIMMIE JOHNSON IS GOING THE DISTANCE

Jimmie Johnson knows how to pace himself through the NASCAR season.

His effort has paid off with seven Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series titles and 83 career wins.

While many of his fellow competitors will head for the beach for spring break in two weeks, Johnson will compete in the 2019 Boston Marathon. After spending the last four months training for his first full marathon, the 43-year-old racer feels he’s up for the task.

“It is probably an hour most days, and maybe two days where it is an hour and a half or two hours for a run just to get the mileage in,” Johnson said. “It is a lot less than I have done in years past training for triathlons and some cycling events I have done. Running is much more efficient. You can get a lot done in a shorter period of time.

“I am thankful that the bulk of my mileage is behind me and I am starting a process called tapering. This week mileage cuts back, next week even more and then the following week we are at the marathon. We’ve tore the body down, now it is time to rebuild it and get ready and heal up to run my 26.2 on April 15th.”

This year’s NASCAR schedule was ideal for Johnson to knock the Boston Marathon off of his bucket list. With Richmond being a Saturday night race, Johnson has a full day to recover before undertaking the challenge.

“I do feel good,” Johnson said. “I lost a month due to an injury and a cold. I know that is going affect my goal in a sense, but to go run such a major event on Patriots Day and what I hear about the experience, I’m just excited to have that chance. It’s going to be a fun day.”

FINAL PRACTICE HIGHLIGHTS

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin was fastest in final practice for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series with a speed of 186.987 mph. Hamlin has made 26 series starts at Texas Motor Speedway posting two wins (2010 sweep) and 12 top 10s.

“The car has got good speed, said Hamlin following final practice. “I’m happy about that for sure. Just traffic is where we’re really trying to work on our car and trying to get it handling the best that we can.”

Polesitter Jimmie Johnson was fifth on the speed chart in final practice, but also led the best 10 consecutive lap averages chart with an average speed of 184.366 mph. Johnson has visited Victory Lane seven-times at Texas; including once from the pole (2012).

–By Lee Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service. Special to Field Level Media.

Source: OANN

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Dem Stacey Abrams still not conceding defeat, claims GOP stole Georgia election

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams questioned the legitimacy of her 2018 loss during an event in New York City on Wednesday, saying she refuses to concede the race to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, while accusing the GOP of stealing the election.

"Despite the final tally and the inauguration [of Gov. Brian Kemp] and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have a very affirmative statement to make: We won," she told the crowd at the annual convention of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network.

ALYSSA MILANO PUSHES AGAINST GEORGIA ABORTION BAN, GEORGIA PUSHES BACK

Abrams ran as a Democrat and would have been the first African-American woman governor in America had she won. She lost to Kemp by more than 54,000 votes, but has repeatedly refused to concede the outcome.

"Concession needs to say something is right and true and proper," Abrams said, according to the Washington Examiner. "You can't trick me into saying it was right."

STACEY ABRAMS SAYS SHE CAN’T DEFEAT BRIAN KEMP IN GEORGIA GOVERNOR RACE; WILL SUE OVER MISMANAGEMENT OF STATE'S ELECTION

During her campaign, Abrams was backed by big-name celebrities and prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama. The results were mired in controversy because Kemp, who was Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, oversaw the election.

Civil rights groups have accused Kemp of suppressing low-income people and minorities of their voting rights using the state's "exact match" law. The law requires election officials to flag any voter registration application if the identifying information doesn't match the voter's information in existing records.

A group backed by Abrams filed a federal lawsuit in January over the alleged voter suppression. Kemp has denied that he disenfranchised voters for his own benefit.

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Abrams' name has been floated as a possible running mate for former Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering a 2020 Democratic White House bid. It has also been rumored that Abrams is considering her own 2020 presidential run.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Abandoned vehicle found near Mexico border amid search for missing California girl, 2 murder suspects

Authorities in California searching for a missing teenage girl who was last seen with two murder suspects located an abandoned vehicle connected to the trio on Friday near the border with Mexico.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Friday on Facebook that an empty white BMW 4-door sedan was found by San Diego Police in San Ysirdo.

The vehicle was the same car that Alora Benitez, 15, was last seen in on Wednesday morning with her 40-year-old mother, Maricela Mercado and a 39-year-old man identified as Roman Cerratos.

WOMAN CAUGHT ON CAMERA DUMPING PUPPIES NEXT TO DUMPSTER BEHIND STORE IN COACHELLA, CALIFORNIA

Both adults are considered "armed and dangerous" and are suspects in a murder investigation. The victim, Jeffrey Appel, 32, was found dead Tuesday in the front seat of a white Audi in the city of Carson, California.

Authorities are searching for Alora Benitez, who has been missing since Wednesday. She was last seen with Roman Cerratos, and her mother, Maricela Mercado, who are murder suspects and also missing.

Authorities are searching for Alora Benitez, who has been missing since Wednesday. She was last seen with Roman Cerratos, and her mother, Maricela Mercado, who are murder suspects and also missing. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department)

"Her family is concerned for her safety," police said.

Authorities have not revealed how Appel was killed, or what may have motivated the slaying. The trio had last been seen driving in the BMW sedan that had a Nevada license plate that read "MARIMAR."

2017 DELPHI MURDERS OF 2 TEENAGE GIRLS MOVING IN 'NEW DIRECTION,' INDIANA STATE POLICE SAY

Alora is described by police as 5-feet 2-inches, 100 pounds, Hispanic with brown hair and brown eyes.

The missing teenager spurred authorities to issue an Amber Alert in Southern California, which at one pointed extended to Nevada, according to FOX11.

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Anyone with information on the murder or missing girl is urged to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.

Source: Fox News National

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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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