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Why Ballot Fraud Is as Big as Texas, Despite Local Enforcers

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CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Although part of her job description is making sure elections are fair and square, Nueces County Clerk Kara Sands hadn’t given much thought to ballot fraud until a constable candidate from a nearby suburb visited her office in May 2016.

The ex-cop was familiar with how voter fraud worked, Sands said, and “he was afraid that people in Robstown were using the mail-in ballots illegally” in a Democratic primary runoff.

That galvanized the Republican official, and it wasn't long before her second-floor office became a repository of voter mischief: Cardboard boxes, ballot application envelopes, voter registration lists and other papers heaped on an aged beige couch, a round wooden table and the across the floor. Atop one stack of papers: a list of mail-in ballot applications all signed and witnessed by the same person, a clue to illegal ballot-harvesiting.

Because much of the fraud involves unwitting older voters and the homebound, Sands also visits local nursing homes and knocks on the doors of voters from whom she has received complaints.

Kara Sands, county clerk: “People don’t even realize their votes are being stolen." 

Neuces County

“People don’t even realize their votes are being stolen,” Sands said. “The harvesters come along at election time and bring food, they have these neighborhoods mapped out and they can go door to door and build relationships. Mostly elderly people are being victimized and they don’t even know it.”

Texas leads the nation in prosecutions of election fraud – since January 2018, 33 people have been convicted of election crimes in cases brought by the state attorney general’s office, and 13 more have cases pending.

Still, many election experts believe that only hints at the fraud actually taking place. Texas, then, may hold lessons as voter mischief, especially involving mail-in ballots, is receiving intense national scrutiny: Last November, legal third-party ballot harvesting in California may have helped Democrats score upsets in congressional races, while in North Carolina similar but illegal harvesting operations prompted officials to call a new election.

Texas is like every other state in that it does not have a well-financed bureaucracy responsible for safeguarding ballot integrity. Instead, this duty largely falls to – and is jealously guarded by -- local officials in each of the state’s 254 counties.

As a result, even in Texas, exposing election fraud relies on a disorganized, ad hoc group of aggrieved candidates and political partisans who suspect foul play. Even then, they must hope to find an official like Sands willing to take on the painstaking work required to identify and investigate potentially fraudulent ballots.

In policing vote fraud, "it’s mostly just people on the ground who report incidents.”

Andy Jacobsohn//Dallas Morning News 

“Once in a while you see the secretary of state’s offices take the lead in these in some states, but it’s mostly just people on the ground who report incidents,” said Jason Snead, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who maintains a national database that tracks voter fraud cases across the country.

These tipsters usually encounter a system geared to dismiss their claims, according to Dallas attorney (and former judge) Dan Wyde, who has represented several candidates who believe they lost because of mail-in ballot shenanigans. Wyde said local officials and courts often lack the will or the resources to handle these cases.

“The judges are under pressure not to grant a new election, and to affirm or bless the system,” said Wyde, who represented a justice of the peace candidate who unsuccessfully challenged a 2010 Democratic primary in Dallas County. Wyde put on 40 witnesses.  

“This is the kind of thing where it has to be the candidate that is reporting it, and they have this vested interest, so it’s hard to find a neutral party to come in and look and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go,’” Wyde said.

Fraud or Voter Suppression?

Local control of elections is often an obstacle to voter fraud investigations, both in Texas and around the country. Jonathan White, an assistant attorney general and the state’s top investigator of voting violations, was reminded of that in June 2017. That’s when he met with officials from the Dallas County district attorney’s office, including assistant DA Andy Chatham, to discuss a series of complaints from senior citizens on the west side of the city who said they had received mail-in ballots for the May municipal election that they had not requested, indicating their signatures on the application may have been forged.

Some said a man had knocked on their door, claimed he worked for the county and was there to collect their ballots.

Chatham dashed any notion of the state’s attorneys getting involved.

“This is a constitutional issue,” Chatham told White, pointing to statutes that allow for witnesses and assistants in the voting process. “We can handle it, but I can tell you, there is no vast voter fraud ring in Dallas.”

Ex-Attorney General and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott: He's accused of targeting Democrats and minorities with fraud enforcement.

Joel Martinez/The Monitor via AP

In this case he was right. The sleuthing in Dallas netted one suspect: Miguel Hernandez, a small-time drug offender, who pleaded guilty to filling in a single mail-in ballot. The unusual thing about this case was the sentence: Hernandez received 180 days in county jail for the misdemeanor, while the vast majority of election fraud convictions in Texas end in plea deals, probation and no jail time. Hernandez, though, was on probation for other crimes when he violated the election law.

White’s heard the objection before -- there’s no significant election fraud in the state. Chatham’s resistance was mild in comparison to the protests of others.

Civil rights groups and others who argue for ballot access also resist voter fraud investigations.

When then-Attorney General Greg Abbott announced in 2005 he was allocating $1.4 million of a federal crime-fighting grant to investigate alleged voter fraud, civil rights groups claimed the action targeted Democrats and minorities and newspapers ran editorials criticizing the move, insisting it would discourage voters.

The Texas Democratic Party and several other plaintiffs, including a city council member in Texarkana who had previously pleaded guilty to unlawfully assisting a mail-in voter, sued the Republican Abbott, who became state’s governor in 2015. They lost. 

Another impediment to electoral fraud crackdowns has been the efforts, mostly led by Republicans, to pass voter ID laws to clamp down on fraudulent in-person voting. Because so little effort is spent investigating such cases, no one knows how many people vote multiple times, or how many convicted felons or illegal immigrants cast ballots. But the consensus is these are rare occurrences and the focus on this form of abuse has given ammunition to those who  crusade for more liberal voting laws and dismiss allegations of voter fraud as political interference into voters’ rights.

This, in turn, reduces efforts to combat mail-in ballot fraud, an abuse that few dispute. For example, in a 2014 ruling on the constitutionality of a Texas voter ID, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos noted, “[W]hile there is general agreement that voting fraud exists with respect to mail-in ballots, the same was not demonstrated to be a real concern with in-person voting.”

Lon Burnam, a Democrat who teamed with a Tea Party group: “Republicans claim a lot of crap around elections, but this was real.”

Nevertheless, election fraud cases often start with aggrieved parties and partisan political operatives rather than eagle-eyed state officials. That’s what happened in some mostly Democratic precincts of Tarrant County, which long been rumored to be a haven for mail-in ballot harvesting.

The investigation started with an unlikely alliance of former Democratic state Rep. Lon Burnam and Direct Action Texas, a Tea Party-backed operation that supports a particularly conservative wing of the state Republican Party.

Burnam was a nine-term incumbent when he was defeated in the Democratic primary in March 2014 by 111 votes. He filed a lawsuit challenging the election, but money issues forced him to drop it.

“I’ve always been in favor of vote-by-mail programs,” Burnam said. “There’s a line there that you cannot step over, and it is defined by legislation. But we need to enforce that law, and it turns out it’s very hard to find out when people do cross that line.”

Tea Party-aligned outfit checks mail-in ballot applications.

Direct Action Texas

A year later, when Burnam heard Direct Action was pulling ballot applications and poring over signatures, looking for forgeries and other inconsistencies in the May 2015 general election in Tarrant County, he called them. They were sympathetic and together these unlikely partners launched a crusade to gather mail-in ballot applications and ballot envelopes to determine just what was going on.

Burnam joined Aaron Harris, then executive director of Direct Action, and a couple of Democratic consultants and headed over the Tarrant County Elections Administration office.

The group inspected the applications for the mail-in ballots. Within an hour, Harris and Burnam realized that the applications were filled out in a machine-like fashion, each address and name of the requestor scrawled in identical handwriting on scores of ballots.

“Republicans claim a lot of crap around elections, but this was real,” Burnam said.

The Mechanics of Mischief

At least half of that comment was surely gratifying to one Republican, Christine Welborn. As director of election integrity for Direct Action, she spends many days at her desk in an aged bleached concrete office building in the suburbs of Fort Worth sifting through mail-in ballot applications. As she demonstrated in January, the work is simple, but laborious. Applications for a ballot by mail must be signed by the voter. Using voter registration applications, Welborn verifies the signatures of the applicant on each document. If they don’t match, it’s a sign of trouble and it needs to be investigated. A person other than the voter can sign as a witness, provided they indicate their relationship to the applicant, but they cannot forge that voter’s name, then send it in.

Top image credit: A detail from this image on an official Texas registration site.

Texas Secretary of State

Welborn shows one such instance – the signatures clearly are mismatched, and yet the ballot application is signed by a witness, as required.

“You see this ballot application, you see this signature and you see this signature,” Welborn said, poring over a stack of copied papers. “Then you look at the original signature from the voter’s registration to vote. And it’s clear that someone other than the voter applied for a mail-in ballot.”

Direct Action has analyzed several elections around the state, from the urban areas to rural counties and heading to points south and east. In some cases, there’s nothing. When Welborn and her associates find potential issues, they send their findings to the state, which takes it from there. Tipsters rarely hear back from investigating agents. Sometimes, there is nothing to find, and dead-ends are part of the job.

Her work, though, has led to one confirmed case by the state.  

Four Tarrant County women were arrested in October for providing false signatures on mail-in ballot applications for the 2016 Democratic primary, based on the initial findings of Direct Action. Among those arrested was Leticia Sanchez, a veteran vote canvasser whose name has shown up as a paid employee of several local candidates over the years. The case is still pending.

“We’ve done this in mostly Democratic races,” Welborn said. “Whatever party, our goal is not to choose who wins and loses, our goal is to find the fraud. You know they don’t want election fraud any more than anyone else.  Everyone, regardless of their politics, wants clean elections.”

Although Direct Action has filed complaints against some Republicans, its partisan bent makes it subject to attack, especially by critics who argue that its work, and its calls to reform mail-in ballots, are really aimed at suppressing minority votes.

Domingo Garcia, Hispanic leader: “They’re trying to rig it so people who are Latino and African-American don’t vote.” 

domingogarcia.com

At a press event at a park on Fort Worth’s north side in the fall of 2016, shortly after Direct Action’s announced its findings that resulted in the October arrests, former Democratic state Rep. Domingo Garcia, a leader in the Dallas/Fort Worth Hispanic community, made it clear he felt Direct Action’s work was politically motivated, aimed at discouraging minority voters who tend to cast ballots for Democrats. 

“We believe there’s a clear attack to rig the system,” Garcia said. “They’re trying to rig it so people who are Latino and African-American don’t vote.” But, he also noted that real instances of voter fraud should be pursued: “Any political thug who is doing it should be reported. “

The investigation in Tarrant County, part of the large Dallas-Fort Worth area, prompted the first reform of mail-in ballot laws in over a decade. State lawmakers passed Senate Bill 5 in 2017, creating heavier penalties for tampering with mail-in ballots and applications, including a provision that would hold a candidate or party responsible if any low-level ballot harvester can be traced to them.

The measure, like Abbott’s 2005 announcement of a crackdown on election fraud, drew criticism from some quarters although by now it was tempered, even timid.

 “I’m kind of here to encourage the Senate to figure out not just criminal penalties,” Matt Simpson, legislative director of the ACLU of Texas, said during testimony on the state senate bill. “Are there civil penalties, are there administrative penalties, are there alternatives to turning to already-filled prisons and jails?”

“We have concerns on the criminal penalty enhancements,” added Yannis Banks, legislative liaison for the Texas NAACP. He worried that having political conversations, or even helping close friends, might end up in breaking the law if an encouragement to vote a specific way were made.

“It would be a shame if someone helping someone were punished,” Banks said.

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Scrapping India’s trade privileges could hit U.S. consumers, senators say

FILE PHOTO: Man holds the flags while people take part in the 35th India Day Parade in New York
FILE PHOTO: A man holds the flags of India and the U.S. while people take part in the 35th India Day Parade in New York August 16, 2015. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

April 13, 2019

By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A U.S. plan to end preferential duty-free imports of up to $5.6 billion from India could raise costs for American consumers, two U.S. senators have told their country’s trade office, urging a delay in adopting the plan, and seeking more negotiations.

If President Donald Trump presses ahead with his plan to end the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for India, it could lose the status in early May, Indian officials have said, raising the prospect of retaliatory tariffs.

India is the world’s largest beneficiary of the GSP, dating from the 1970s, but trade ties with the U.S. have widened over what Trump calls its high tariffs and concerns over New Delhi’s e-commerce policies.

“While we agree that there are a number of market access issues that can and should be addressed, we do remain concerned that the withdrawal of duty concessions will make Indian exports of eligible products to the United States costlier,” the senators, John Cornyn and Mark Warner, wrote.

“Some of these costs will likely be passed on to American consumers”.

In their Friday letter, the co-chairs of the Senate’s India caucus of more than 30 senators called for withdrawal to be delayed until the end of India’s 39-day general elections, which began on Thursday, with results expected on May 23.

Allowing for talks to continue beyond the elections would underscore the importance of the trade ties, presenting an opportunity to resolve market access issues and improve the overall U.S.-India relationship for years to come, they added.

If the United States scraps duty-free access for about 2,000 product lines, it will mostly hurt small and medium businesses in India, such as makers of engineering goods.

Despite close political ties, trade between India and the United States, which stood at $126 billion in 2017, is widely seen to be performing at nearly a quarter of its potential.

Trade relations suffered in the past few months after India adopted new rules on e-commerce reining in how companies such as Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc-backed Flipkart do business.

Last June, India said it would step up import duties varying from 20 percent to 120 percent on a slew of U.S. farm, steel and iron products, angered by Washington’s refusal to exempt it from new steel and aluminum tariffs.

But it has since repeatedly delayed adopting the higher duties.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Writing by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Krishna N. Das and Clarence Fernandez)

Source: OANN

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Avianca Brasil to fly from airport that had required upfront payment

FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A318 of Avianca Brazil prepares to land at Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro
FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A318-100 airplane of Avianca Brazil prepares to land at Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes/File Photo

April 12, 2019

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Struggling carrier Avianca Brasil will be able to fly on Friday from Brazil’s largest airport, located in Guarulhos, a day after the airport operator said it would only allow their flights there if it received upfront payment daily.

A source with knowledge of the matter said Avianca Brasil paid airport operation fees upfront at the Guarulhos airport on Friday and that it had committed to paying necessary fees for weekend operations as well.

Avianca Brasil filed for bankruptcy protection in December and has been running up debts with lessors and airport operators as it continues to carry out most of its scheduled flights. The airline is very low on cash and fell behind on its payroll in March, the company has said.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: OANN

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Indian minister says extreme poverty falling, to end by 2031

FILE PHOTO: Woman carries stuffed toys through a dump site in Mumbai
FILE PHOTO: A woman carries stuffed toys through a dump site on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo

April 15, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s finance minister said on Monday fast economic growth and rapid urbanization would slash the number of people in extreme poverty by 2021 and end it completely in the decade after that.

More than 21 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2011, when the last census was taken, according to the World Bank.

The economy is a major issue in a staggered general election that began on Thursday and will end on May 19, with the main opposition Congress party rejecting a rosy picture Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been presenting.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who heads the BJP’s publicity department in the election, said the number of people who live in poverty would drop to below 15 percent in the next three years and to a negligible level in the 10 years after that.

“Urbanization will increase, the size of the middle-class will grow and the economy will expand manifolds,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/notes/arun-jaitley/why-jammu-and-kashmir-and-new-approach-to-terrorism-will-remain-a-key-political-/995970470591501.

“These will add to the number of jobs, and as the experience of the past three decades have shown in the liberalized economy, every section of citizens will benefit.”

Economic growth in recent years had generated enough revenue for states to work more on poverty alleviation, job creation and improving healthcare and education, he said.

But the Congress has taken issue with such assertions, in particular, pointing to leaked government data that showed unemployment rose to its highest level in at least 45 years in 2017/18.

Jaitley said economic problems could be addressed as India remained the world’s fastest growing major economy.

But he said restoring peace in the insurgency-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir was the most important issue facing the country.

“The issue of Jammu and Kashmir and terror continues to remain the biggest challenge before India,” he said.

“It relates to our sovereignty, integrity and security.”

Modi has won public praise by taking a tough line on neighboring Pakistan, which India accuses of backing separatist militants in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan denies that.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: OANN

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Feds now probing El Chapo’s wife over kingpin’s daring 2015 prison escape

With drug kingpin El Chapo finally behind bars, the feds are now pursuing his glamorous young wife, “La Reinita” or the little queen, The Post has learned.

EL CHAPO'S WIFE TO LAUNCH FASHION BRAND IN MOB BOSS' NAME

“She’s being investigated for conspiracy in this country,” a federal law enforcement source told The Post. “She is being looked at for her part in El Chapo’s escape.”

Emma Coronel Aispuro, 29, a leggy brunette and former teenage beauty queen who was born in the US and holds dual Mexican and American citizenship, continues to use cash from her husband Joaquin Guzman Loera’s drug empire to support her lavish lifestyle, the source said.

She has not been charged with a crime in either Mexico or the US, but during El Chapo’s trial in Brooklyn federal court earlier this year — which ended in a drug trafficking conviction that could bring a life sentence — a witness recounted her alleged role in her husband’s daring escape from a Mexican prison in July 2015.

Damaso Lopez Nunez, the drug lord’s longtime lieutenant, said El Chapo, now 62, contacted him soon after his capture by Mexican Marines in February 2014. Before that, the drug kingpin had been on the lam for more than 13 years.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Lopez said his boss asked him to “meet with the mother of the twins,” referring to Coronel, with whom he has two 7-year-old daughters. Coronel is also the daughter of one of El Chapo’s former drug-trafficking partners in the Sinaloa cartel, Ines Coronel Barreras, who was convicted on weapons charges and marijuana trafficking in 2017. He is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico.

Coronel told Lopez that her husband was “taking the risk … and thinking of escaping from prison,” Lopez said in court.

Coronel “was giving us his messages,” Lopez said during his testimony in January. He described her as a go-between who delivered communiques to the lieutenants building the ventilated, mile-long tunnel the drug kingpin would famously use to escape. The entrance to the tunnel was through El Chapo’s prison bathroom.

Lopez, who was known by his underworld alias El Licenciado and whose main job was to bribe public officials, said he had a meeting in May or June of 2014 with Coronel and some of El Chapo’s sons. Lopez said they discussed buying a plot of land near the prison so that they could dig the tunnel — a project that took months to complete.

Coronel allegedly told Lopez to procure weapons and an armored truck to be used in the break-out, which took place July 12, 2015.

El Chapo escaped on a motorcycle that was used to spirit him through the tunnel. When he emerged, Coronel was among those who greeted him at the exit, the federal source previously revealed to The Post.

El Chapo was then driven to a warehouse and later flown to a hideout, Lopez testified.

He was finally captured by Mexican law enforcement working with US federal agents nearly six months later in Sinaloa in January 2016, and extradited to the US a year later.

When El Chapo’s trial began in Brooklyn in November, Coronel was a daily fixture in the courtroom although authorities would not allow her to speak to her husband, whom she hadn’t seen since his January 2017 extradition.

Source: Fox News National

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Mexico frees 6 water rights activists after years in prison

The Mexican government has freed six activists who fought to protect their community's water supply, acknowledging that their rights were "seriously violated" during more than a dozen years in jail.

The six activists from the town of Tlanixco had been sentenced to up to 50 years for the death of a Spanish flower grower. Tlanixco residents had claimed their drinking water supplies were being soaked up by commercial flower growers in a neighboring town.

Government authorities declined to continue fighting appeals by the six activists.

The government's top human rights official says President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador's administration is currently reviewing 538 cases involving people who may have been unfairly jailed. Alejandro Encinas said Thursday the pending cases often involve people fighting to defend water and land rights.

Source: Fox News World

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Biden tops 2020 Iowa presidential poll, Sanders gains momentum

FILE PHOTO: Munich Security Conference in Munich
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is seen during the annual Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany February 16, 2019. REUTERS/Andreas Gebert

March 10, 2019

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden topped a poll of Iowa voters on Saturday that also showed Senator Bernie Sanders gaining momentum against him in the No. 2 spot.

Biden, who has not announced whether he is running in the 2020 election, is the first choice for president of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers with 27 percent in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll. Sanders, 77, got 25 percent.

“If I’m Joe Biden sitting on the fence and I see this poll, this might make me want to jump in,” J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, which conducted the poll, told the Des Moines Register.

The newspaper’s Iowa poll has a long track record of relative accuracy in the state that kicks off the presidential nominating process. In this cycle, Iowa will hold the first contest in the Democratic race in February 2020.

Nearly 65 percent of the voters said Biden, 76, who was also a U.S. senator first elected in 1972, has more experience than any other candidate and should enter the race, while 31 percent said his time as a candidate has passed.

Sanders, a progressive populist who held a rally in Iowa as the poll was being conducted last week, gained 6 percentage points from 19 percent in the group’s previous poll released in December. Biden fell 5 percentage points from 32 percent in the last poll.

At least a dozen major candidates already have jumped into the Democratic contest to pick a nominee to challenge Republican President Donald Trump, and Democrats are still waiting for decisions in coming weeks from other big names such as Biden and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas.

In most national polls of Democrats, Biden has a solid lead while Sanders, who lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, typically is in second. In those polls, Senator Kamala Harris of California has vaulted into third ahead of other senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

    In the Iowa poll, Warren was third with 9 percent of voters, and Harris was fourth with 7 percent. O’Rourke got 5 percent of voters, down 6 percentage points from December.

    It was the Register’s first Iowa poll since candidates began jumping into the race at the beginning of the year. The poll also surveyed support of likely Iowa caucus-goers on issues that have dominated the early discussion and drawn support from most of the Democratic presidential contenders.

The Green New Deal, a proposal by Democrats in Congress to tackle climate change, was supported in full by 65 percent of the Democratic voters, partially by 26 percent, with 4 percent not supporting. The deal would fund government programs on clean energy and make buildings energy efficient while helping to address poverty.

Support was also measured for Medicare-for-all, a plan first proposed by Sanders in 2017, to replace the current mix of private and government financed healthcare coverage with a universal coverage plan funded solely by the government. It was supported by 49 percent of the likely caucus-goers, partially by 35 percent, with 11 percent not supporting.

   

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, additional reporting by John Whitesides; editing by Richard Chang)

Source: OANN

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Logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro
FILE PHOTO: A logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 24, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp on Friday reported first-quarter profit fell sharply on lower oil and gas prices and weakness in its refining and chemicals businesses that offset modest production gains.

The largest U.S. oil producer’s first quarter earnings fell to $2.35 billion, or 55 cents a share, from $4.65 billion, or $1.09 a share, a year ago.

Analysts had expected Exxon to earn 70 cents per share, according to Refinitiv Eikon estimates.

Shares were trading down about 2.7 percent in premarket trading on Friday.

Exxon’s oil equivalent production rose 2 percent to 4 million barrels per day, up from 3.9 million bpd in the same period the year prior. The company said its output in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. shale basin, rose 140 percent over a year ago.

(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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A Baha’i advocacy group has expressed concerns over the fate of minority Baha’is at the hands of Yemen’s Houthi rebels ahead of the appeals hearing for one of the community leaders sentenced to death.

The Baha’i International Community said in a statement Friday that the hearing for Hamed bin Haydara, detained in 2013 and sentenced to death last year on espionage and apostasy charges, is due on Tuesday.

The statement quotes Bani Dugal, the Baha’i community representative at the United Nations, as saying the prosecution hasn’t addressed Haydara’s appeal but is instead making “absurd, wide-ranging accusations.”

International rights groups have decried the prosecution of Yemeni Baha’is by the Iran-backed Houthis.

Iran has banned the Baha’i religion, which was founded in 1844 by a Persian nobleman considered a prophet by followers.

Source: Fox News World

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

April 26, 2019

By Rupam Jain and Hameed Farzad

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani encouraged newly-elected lawmakers to participate in the peace process with the Taliban as he opened on Friday the first session of parliament since a controversial election.

Ghani has invited thousands of politicians, religious scholars and rights activists to an assembly known as a loya jirga next week to discuss ways to end the 17-year war.

Several opposition leaders have said they will boycott the four-day assembly in Kabul, saying it was pulled together without their input and is being used by Ghani as he seeks a second term in a September presidential election.

“We have presented the peace plan on a regular basis and we are committed to it,” Ghani said in the first session since parliamentary elections marred by technical problems, militant attacks and accusations of voting fraud last year.

“Based on this plan, there will be no peace deal and negotiation that does not have the green card of the parliament,” he added.

Officials from the United States and the Taliban have held several rounds of talks to end the Afghan war.

U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has reported some progress toward an accord on a U.S. troop withdrawal and on how the Taliban would prevent extremists from using Afghanistan to launch attacks as al Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

The insurgents have so far rejected U.S. demands for a ceasefire and talks on the country’s political future that would include Afghan government officials.

The loya jirga, a centuries-old institution used to build consensus among competing tribes, factions and ethnic groups, is an attempt by Ghani to influence the peace talks and cement his position for a second term, Afghan politicians and Western diplomats say.

Amid growing political divisions in Kabul, opposition politicians have demanded that Ghani step down when his mandate ends next month, and give way to an interim government to oversee peace talks with the Taliban. Ghani has ruled that out.

The country’s top court said last week Ghani can stay in office until the presidential election in September.

(Reporting by Hameed Farzad, Rupam Jain, Editing by Darren Schuettler)

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Thursday defended special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation while slamming former President Barack Obama’s administration for being slow to take action on Russian interference in U.S. elections and ex-FBI Director James Comey for telling Congress the agency was investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Our nation is safer, elections are more secure, and citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence schemes,” Rosenstein said in a speech to the Armenian Bar Association, marking his first public remarks after the Mueller report was released, reports CBS News.

He also pointed out that the investigation revealed a pattern of computer hacking and the use of social media to undermine elections as “only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration also made “critical decisions,” including choosing not to publicize the full story about Russian hackers and social media trolling, “and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” said Rosenstein.

He noted that the Mueller probe began after Comey disclosed during a hearing before Congress that President Donald Trump “pressured him to close the investigation and the president denied that the conversation occurred.”

Rosenstein said two years ago, when he was confirmed, he was told by a Republican senator that he would be in charge of the probe and that he’d report the results to the American people.

However, he said he didn’t promise to do that, because it is “not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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