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Kosovo-Serbia tensions disrupts climate conference

An international climate conference in the Western Balkans has been disrupted over tensions between Kosovo and Serbia.

Delegations from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia gathered Friday in Tirana to appeal to Western ambassadors and donors for more climate project funding.

But Serbia's delegation insisted that Kosovo couldn't be represented with its national flag, and that it needed to participate under the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK, logo.

Kosovo Environment Minister Fatmir Matoshi considered that unacceptable and walked out along with Albania's representative. The conference proceeded, but only with technical experts.

UNMIK governed Kosovo from 1999-2008 following NATO's intervention to stop a bloody Serb crackdown there. The U.N. mission has had a reduced presence after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Belgrade doesn't recognize.

Source: Fox News World

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Death toll in floods in Indonesia’s Papua rises to nearly 80

eople stand as they look at damaged houses after a flash flood in Sentani, Papua
People stand as they look at damaged houses after a flash flood in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia, March 17, 2019 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Gusti Tanati/ via REUTERS

March 18, 2019

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Authorities in Indonesia raised the death toll from floods and landslides in the easternmost province of Papua to nearly 80 on Monday as President Joko Widodo called for the urgent evacuation of victims from devastated communities.

The deadly floods and landslide struck at the weekend after torrential rain fell across the Cyclops mountain range, much of which has been stripped of tree cover by villagers chopping fire wood and farmers cultivating plantations.

The death toll shot up to nearly 80 from 58 on Sunday as rescuers found more victims as they struggled to clear mud, rocks and shattered trees from the area near the provincial capital of Jayapura, including a 70 km stretch of road.

With 43 people missing, Widodo urged rescuers to step up their efforts.

“What is most important is handling the evacuation,” he said in a statement posted on Instagram.

More than 4,000 people have been displaced and are sheltering in tents, schools, and public buildings.

Disaster authorities have warned provincial officials of the danger of flash floods due to deforestation, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of the national disaster mitigation agency.

The central government sent supplies of seedlings last year, hoping to help restore some forest cover, he said.

(Reporting by Jessica Damiana; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor)

Source: OANN

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2019 Draft: Winners and Losers

NFL: NFL Draft
Apr 25, 2019; Nashville, TN, USA; T.J. Hockenson (Iowa) is selected as the number eight overall pick by the Detroit Lions in the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft in Downtown Nashville. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

April 26, 2019

Only the first 32 picks are in the books, but the winners and losers after Day One of the NFL draft were abundantly obvious.

Here’s a look at the best and worst of the first round:

Winners:

Detroit Lions: TE T.J. Hockenson, No. 8 overall

A tight end at No. 8 feels rich, especially when you consider the last top-10 tight end in the NFL draft was Eric Ebron, who disappointed in Detroit after going 10th overall in 2014.

Don’t fret, Lions fans. Hockenson is a far more complete and much safer prospect than Ebron, but he still has plenty of upside. His blocking is well documented — he regularly handled defensive ends and often buried linebackers and defensive backs at Iowa — but he is also an excellent receiver.

Hockenson isn’t as athletic as Hawkeye teammate Noah Fant, but he’s a much better route-runner, showing the nuance to set up defenders and find soft spots in zones. He’s also far from a slouch as an athlete, with the speed to threaten up the seam and the power to bulldoze defenders after the catch.

Buffalo Bills: DT Ed Oliver, No. 9 overall

With plenty of pre-draft smoke connecting Oliver to the New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, New York Giants and even the Atlanta Falcons via a trade-up, it seemed the Bills wouldn’t have a shot at him. Instead, after surprise picks at Nos. 4 and 6 overall, Oliver slid right into Buffalo’s lap.

With Kyle Williams retiring, the Bills needed more interior pass rush, and Oliver’s athleticism will fit very well next to 2017 third-round pick Harrison Phillips. Oliver isn’t nearly as polished as a pass rusher as Aaron Donald was when he came out in 2014, but he has comparable explosiveness for his size and will be a disruptor — if not a finisher — from Day 1.

Washington Redskins: QB Dwayne Haskins, No. 15 overall; OLB Montez Sweat, No. 26 overall

Leaks sprung like crazy from Washington over the last few days, painting an unflattering picture of an organization in disagreement. Reports on Thursday said owner Dan Snyder and team president Bruce Allen loved Haskins, while head coach Jay Gruden and some others preferred Daniel Jones.

But Washington wound up with the better prospect, and did so without having to trade up. Despite being a redshirt sophomore and one-year starter, Haskins is far more mentally advanced than most college quarterbacks. He ran a pro-style offense and read the field very well at Ohio State, and he has an excellent arm and the accuracy to hit open receivers at all three levels.

Haskins should fit well in Gruden’s scheme — assuming Gruden is there beyond 2019, which is far from certain — and he could be afforded the opportunity to sit behind Case Keenum or Colt McCoy. Washington’s franchise is almost infamous for its instability, but this pick could very well bring a long-term answer at the game’s most important position.

With a trade back into Round 1 later Thursday night, Washington got another dynamite player in Montez Sweat, who slid due to reported medical and character concerns. I don’t love the price Washington paid — a 2020 second-round pick to jump from No. 46 to No. 26 — but Sweat is extremely explosive and should fit in well opposite Ryan Kerrigan.

Losers:

New York Giants: QB Daniel Jones, No. 6 overall; DT Dexter Lawrence, No. 17 overall; CB DeAndre Baker, No. 30 overall

Washington’s gains were indirectly a result of a division rival’s worrisome decisions.

If you have conviction about a quarterback, you should take him at your first opportunity, and the Giants did. But that doesn’t mean they picked the right quarterback.

Despite his cerebral reputation — as a Duke product who has worked with David Cutcliffe and Peyton and Eli Manning — Jones needs plenty of work. He ran a lot of half-field reads and worked primarily short and intermediate with the Blue Devils. He also made far too many poor decisions for a player whose arm is just OK. This one will look especially rough if Haskins develops into a star and Jones does not.

The Giants’ pick at No. 17 also raised some eyebrows. Lawrence is an excellent run defender but might never be a great pass rusher. If he tops out as a solid pocket pusher who gets to QBs now and then, he might only play 55 percent of the snaps. That’s not a great return for the top asset that the trade of Odell Beckham Jr. brought back.

It’s also odd that the Giants traded Damon Harrison with the intention of moving Dalvin Tomlinson to nose tackle… and then added another nose tackle. They also have B.J. Hill, a promising third-round pick who had 5.5 sacks as a rookie. An edge rusher — and Sweat was there for the taking — would have made much more sense.

Getting Baker at No. 30 gives the Giants a nice, instinctive cover man, but they had to give up fourth- and fifth-round picks to get him.

Overall, that’s just too many question marks for a roster that needs a lot of work.

Oakland Raiders: DE Clelin Ferrell, No. 4 overall; RB Josh Jacobs, No. 24 overall; S Johnathan Abram, No. 27 overall

On one hand, the Raiders drafted three very good players and filled three holes. On the other, they made some questionable decisions when it came to value.

Very few evaluators pegged Ferrell as a top-10 pick, and virtually nobody had him going in the top five. It’s unclear if the Raiders tried to move down to add value while still getting Ferrell, but even if they tried and failed, there were better ways to get their guy.

It’s possible, perhaps probable, that Ferrell would have been available closer to the Raiders’ second pick at No. 24 than to their first at No. 4. With plenty of draft capital at their disposal, they could have worked the draft board and traded up into the mid-teens to grab him.

The player they wound up taking at No. 24, Jacobs, is an excellent talent and a well-rounded back who can block and catch. Still, there’s a convincing argument to be made that it’s never worth drafting a running back in the first round, given the fungibility and short shelf life at the position.

It’s harder to quibble with Abram, who brings tremendous physicality and energy, but his selection does appear to be a sign that former first-round pick Karl Joseph doesn’t have a future with the team.

With three first-round picks, including one in the top five, the Raiders simply could have gotten more value.

Houston Texans: OT Tytus Howard, No. 23 overall

Perhaps Howard was the top-ranked offensive tackle on Houston’s board. And he might very well develop into an excellent player.

But this feels like a reach at a position of (dire) need. Jonah Williams was the first tackle off the board at No. 11, and the Philadelphia Eagles swooped in to nab Andre Dillard, the best pass protector in the draft, one pick in front of the Texans. Houston could have ensured itself Dillard with a modest trade-up, or it could have simply taken Jawaan Taylor, who some consider a top-10 prospect and was still on the board.

Instead, they opted for a raw, small-school prospect who might not be ready to start but could be forced into the lineup to protect Deshaun Watson. That sounds a lot like current left tackle Julién Davenport, who has not worked out thus far.

–By David DeChant, Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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UK economy grows as factories get boost from pre-Brexit stockpiling

A worker at perforating company Bion uses a machine at the factory in Reading
A worker at perforating company Bion uses a machine at the factory in Reading, Britain September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/Files

April 10, 2019

LONDON, (Reuters) – Britain’s economy unexpectedly grew in February, helped by clients of manufacturers rushing to stockpile goods ahead of Brexit, official data showed on Wednesday.

Gross domestic product grew by 0.2 percent from January, the Office for National Statistics said.

Economists taking part in a Reuters poll had expected zero growth.

Britain’s economy has held up better than many economists expected since the 2016 Brexit referendum although it has slowed ahead of its departure from the European Union and as the world economy loses momentum.

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that Britain would grow by 1.2 percent in 2019 — as long as it avoids the shock of a no-deal Brexit. That would be faster than Germany’s 0.8 percent and only a touch slower than France’s 1.3 percent.

However, Britain still looks set for its weakest growth in a decade this year, according to forecasts from the IMF and the Bank of England which assume a Brexit deal will be done.

Prime Minister Theresa May will seek a new delay to Brexit when she meets EU leaders on Wednesday, just two days before Britain is due to leave the bloc without the cushion of a transition deal.

Wednesday’s data showed that over the three months to February, the economy grew by 0.3 percent, holding at the same pace as in January — which was revised up from a previous estimate — and stronger than a forecast of 0.2 percent in the Reuters poll.

Manufacturing output jumped by 0.9 percent in February from January, stronger than all forecasts in the Reuters poll and accounting for about half of the overall economic growth rate.

The ONS said it seen signs that clients of manufacturers were stockpiling goods to get ahead of any border delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit which was scheduled for March 29 but was subsequently delayed.

An ONS official said orders were being brought forward to beat the Brexit schedule, suggesting a likely drag on the numbers for coming months.

The statistics office said it could not quantify the impact of stockpiling on the data.

Britain’s dominant services sector grew by 0.1 percent in monthly terms in February, held back by the 12th fall in a row in the financial services sector – the longest such run on record — while construction rose by 0.4 percent.

There were signs that the slowdown in the global economy was also weighing on Britain’s economy.

Export volumes fell by 0.4 percent in the three months to February from the three months to November while imports jumped by 6.8 percent.

So far, Britain’s exporters have shown no sign of being helped by the fall in the value of the pound caused by the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The ONS said it could not say whether the increase in imports was driven by pre-Brexit stockpiling.

(Reporting by William Schomberg and Andy Bruce)

Source: OANN

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Source: InfoWars

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Daimler to launch electric compact SUV in 2021: CEO

Mercedes logos are seen ahead of the Shanghai Auto Show, in Shanghai
Mercedes logos are seen ahead of the Shanghai Auto Show, in Shanghai, China April 15, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song

April 16, 2019

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Daimler plans to launch an electric compact sport utility vehicle in 2021 which will be called the Mercedes EQB, the German carmaker’s CEO said on Tuesday.

Dieter Zetsche made the comments at a press conference on the sidelines of the Shanghai Autoshow.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Source: OANN

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Six killed in Chinese pesticide plant explosion

Rescue workers are seen near smoke following an explosion at a chemical industrial park in Xiangshui
Rescue workers are seen near smoke following an explosion at a chemical industrial park in Xiangshui county, Yancheng, Jiangsu province, China March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer

March 21, 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) – An explosion at an industrial park in eastern China killed six people on Thursday and seriously injured 30, authorities and state media said.

Rescue efforts were going on, authorities in the city of Yancheng, in Jiangsu province, said in a statement. State media said authorities were investigating the cause of the blast.

Video footage and images on state media showed a fire and shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Among the injured were children at a kindergarten near the industrial park, state media said.

Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents ranging from mining disasters to factory fires that have marred three decades of swift economic growth.

(Reporting by Se Young Lee and Min Zhang; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: OANN

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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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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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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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