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Brazil automaker CAOA signs agreement with Ford over plant purchase: source

The Ford logo is seen at the Ford oldest Brazil plant after company announced its closure in Sao Bernardo do Campo
The Ford logo is seen at the Ford oldest Brazil plant after company announced its closure in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

March 30, 2019

By Marcelo Rochabrun

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian automaker CAOA has signed a confidentiality agreement to negotiate a potential purchase of Ford Motor Co’s plant in the industrial city of Sao Bernardo do Campo, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Ford in February announced it would shut down the plant, its oldest one in the country, amid a global restructuring plan, costing 3,000 jobs.

The announcement triggered a campaign led by Sao Paulo governor Joao Doria to find a buyer for the space.

Reuters reported CAOA’s interest in the factory last month, but at the time there were up to three different companies interested in buying it up.

Ford declined to comment on the confidentiality agreement or whether CAOA had been the one to sign it. CAOA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Negotiations are not final, but it is a sign that the two companies are closer to reaching a deal, the source said.

Brazil has long been South America’s automaking hub and has led many brand name global carmakers to set up shop here. But CAOA is the rare company that is actually domestically owned. It currently produces cars for Hyundai and owns a 50 percent stake in China’s Chery operation in Brazil, which led to the rebranding of the cars as CAOA Chery.

It also has a close relationship with Ford as its single largest distributor in Brazil.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Source: OANN

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The Hill: ‘Electability’ Leads Dems’ Hopes Against Trump

Establishment Republicans could not do it, neither could Hillary Clinton, media resistance, nor special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Now, Democrats are desperately sorting out which primary candidate will be the best to beat President Donald Trump, The Hill reported, citing pollsters.

"[Democratic voters are] hungry for a candidate to take on President Donald Trump," Quinnipiac University pollster Tim Malloy said, per the report, explaining how former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and ex-Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, are the leading candidates atop the poll right now.

"[Biden's] advantage is he's rooted in experience, was vice president to [Barack] Obama, appeals to blue collar voters," pollster Celinda Lake told The Hill. "Voters will have it on their minds."

"Electability" (56%) almost doubled up "echoed beliefs" (33%) in their preferred trait of their Democratic candidate in a February Monmouth University poll.

It is electability that justifies Democrats leading with three white men in a diverse field of presidential candidates. Age, race, and gender "take a back seat" to electability, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

Polling is being "driven by this intense dislike of Trump," Lake told The Hill.

"Electability seems to be Democrats greatest concern, so even if many of those touting white male candidates have no problem themselves with voting for a woman, they are worried that their friends and neighbors do have such hesitations," Ohio University professor Katherine Jellison, a scholar of women's studies, told The Hill. "Under those circumstances, they see a white male candidate as the best bet to defeat Donald Trump."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Trump signed Bibles. Heresy? Many religious leaders say no

President Donald Trump was just doing what he could to raise spirits when he signed Bibles at an Alabama church for survivors of a deadly tornado outbreak, many religious leaders say, though some are offended and others say he could have handled it differently.

Hershael York, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary School of Theology in Louisville, Kentucky, said he didn't have a problem with Trump signing Bibles, like former presidents have, because he was asked and because it was important to the people who were asking.

"Though we don't have a national faith, there is faith in our nation, and so it's not at all surprising that people would have politicians sign their Bibles," he said. "Those Bibles are meaningful to them and apparently these politicians are, too."

But the Rev. Donnie Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, said she was offended by the way Trump scrawled his signature Friday as he autographed Bibles and other things, including hats, and posed for photos. She viewed it, she said, as a "calculated political move" by the Republican president to court his evangelical voting base.

Presidents have a long history of signing Bibles, though earlier presidents typically signed them as gifts to send with a spiritual message. President Ronald Reagan signed a Bible that was sent secretly to Iranian officials in 1986. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the family Bible his attorney general used to take the oath of office in 1939.

It would have been different, Anderson said, if Trump had signed a Bible out of the limelight for someone with whom he had a close connection.

"For me, the Bible is a very important part of my faith, and I don't think it should be used as a political ploy," she said. "I saw it being used just as something out there to symbolize his support for the evangelical community, and it shouldn't be used in that way. People should have more respect for Scripture."

York said that he, personally, would not ask a politician to sign a Bible, but that he has been asked to sign Bibles after he preaches. It feels awkward, he said, but he doesn't refuse.

"If it's meaningful to them to have signatures in their Bible, I'm willing to do that," he said.

Trump visited Alabama on Friday to survey the devastation and pay respects to tornado victims. The tornado carved a path of destruction nearly a mile wide, killing 23 people, including four children and a couple in their 80s, with 10 victims belonging to a single extended family.

At the Providence Baptist Church in Smiths Station, Alabama, the Rev. Rusty Sowell said, the president's visit was uplifting and will help bring attention to a community that will need a long time to recover.

Before leaving the church, Trump posed for a photograph with a fifth-grade volunteer and signed the child's Bible, said Ada Ingram, a local volunteer. The president also signed her sister's Bible, Ingram said. In photos from the visit, Trump is shown signing the cover of a Bible.

Trump should have at least signed inside in a less ostentatious way, said the Rev. Dr. Kevin Cassiday-Maloney.

"It just felt like hubris," said Cassiday-Maloney, pastor at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Fargo, North Dakota. "It almost felt like a desecration of the holy book to put his signature on the front writ large, literally."

He doesn't think politicians should sign Bibles, he said, because it could be seen as a blurring of church and state and an endorsement of Christianity over other religions.

It would have been out of line if Trump had brought Bibles and given them out, but that wasn't the case, said James Coffin, executive director of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida.

"Too much is being made out of something that doesn't deserve that kind of attention," he said.

Bill Leonard, the founding dean and professor of divinity emeritus at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, woke up to Facebook posts Saturday morning by former students who were upset about Trump signing the Bibles because they don't view him as an appropriate example of spiritual guidance.

But, Leonard said, it's important to remember that signing Bibles is an old tradition, particularly in southern churches.

Leonard said he would have viewed it as more problematic if the signings were done at a political rally. He doesn't see how Trump could have refused at the church.

"It would've been worse if he had said no because it would've seemed unkind, and this was at least one way he could show his concern along with his visit," he said. "In this setting, where tragedy has occurred and where he comes for this brief visit, we need to have some grace about that for these folks."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Dave Kolpack in Fargo, North Dakota; and Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida.

Source: Fox News National

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Russian manufacturing sector boosted by domestic demand in March: PMI

A view shows the interior of the Nokian Tyres factory in Vsevolozhsk
A view shows the interior of the Nokian Tyres factory in Vsevolozhsk, near St. Petersburg, Russia September 14, 2017. REUTERS/Jack Stubbs

April 1, 2019

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Russian manufacturing activity expanded March, boosted by higher output and new business growth as domestic demand substituted demand from abroad, the Markit purchasing managers’ index (PMI) showed on Monday.

The index’s headline reading rose to 52.8 from 50.1 in the previous month, above the 50.0 mark that separates expansion from contraction.

“Russian manufacturers signaled a significant uptick in domestic demand and production in March, indicating a solid end to the first quarter of 2019 following relatively lackluster growth in February,” said Sian Jones, an economist at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey.

The increase in new orders was the strongest since early 2017 despite a drop in foreign client demand for the third month in a row.

The degree of optimism among firms that took part in the survey reached the highest level since data collection began in 2012, while employment across the sector rose for the second consecutive month, the monthly PMI report showed.

Inflation in the sector kept on rising following an increase in value-added tax (VAT) to 20 percent from 18 percent.

“The ongoing impact of the recent hike in VAT and higher supplier costs continued to push input prices up. In response, firms raised factory gate charges sharply,” Jones said.

(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: OANN

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Smollett may still face new legal trouble; Obama connections suspected in dropping of hoax charges

Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.
 
Developing now, Wednesday, March 27, 2019

SMOLLETT MAY NOT BE IN THE CLEAR YET: Despite the hate crime hoax charges against him being dropped Tuesday, “Empire” star Jussie Smollett still may face new legal trouble ...  An investigation into a death-threat letter the actor supposedly received prior to an alleged Jan. 29 attack against him has been handed over to the FBI, Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told Fox News. Cook County, Ill. First Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Magats told reporters that prosecutors dropped the case because Smollett forfeited a $10,000 bond payment and did community service.

The decision to drop charges against Smollett stunned and outraged Chicago police and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who called the series of events "not on the level" and a "whitewash of justice." Some critics have wondered whether Smollett's high-powered connections led to the dropping of charges. Messages exchanged between Tina Tchen, an attorney and former chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama, and Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx are attracting increasing scrutiny.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP.

DOJ SETS TIMETABLE TO RELEASE OF MUELLER REPORT -  A version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will be available to Capitol Hill lawmakers in “weeks, not months,” Attorney General Bill Barr told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham during a Monday phone call, Fox News has learned ... According to a senior Department of Justice official, Barr did not tell Graham, R-S.C., that he intends to share the report with the White House in advance of the public release. Still, Graham told "Fox News @ Night" host Shannon Bream, Trump is fine with the DOJ releasing the report without having the White House review it first.

THE GREEN 'NO' DEAL: The Green New Deal, a sweeping Democratic proposal championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for dealing with climate change, fell at the first hurdle Tuesday as the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to begin debate on the non-binding resolution, with 42 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voting "present" ... No senator voted to begin debate on the legislation, while 57 lawmakers voted against breaking the filibuster. The vote had been teed up by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a bid to make Democratic senators -- including several 2020 presidential candidates -- go on the record about the measure, which he calls "a radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy." Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, called McConnell's move a "sham vote."

KEY LEGAL VICTORY IN THE OPIOID CRISIS: The state of Oklahoma has reached a $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, seen as pivotal in the opioid overdose crisis that has been blamed in part on misleading information the company provided to doctors about the potential for addiction ... Oklahoma sued Purdue Pharma, and its controlling Sackler family, and several other opioid manufacturers in 2017, accusing them of fraudulent marketing practices that led to thousands of overdoses and deaths. State officials have said that since 2009, more Oklahomans have died from opioids than in vehicle crashes.


THE SOUNDBITE

'UNSERIOUS' GREEN -  "The planet does not need us to 'think globally, and act locally' so much as it needs us to think family, and act personally. The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution, but the serious business of human flourishing – the solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married, and have some kids." – U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, ridiculing the "Green New Deal" on the Senate floor before the proposal failed in a test vote Tuesday. (Click the image above to watch the full video.)

TODAY'S MUST-READS
Brit Hume slams John Brennan, liberal media mea culpa on Mueller report: 'too little, too late.'
NBC News' Tom Brokaw says 'there's too much duplication' in media's politics coverage.
Geraldo Rivera: Jussie Smollett gets away with a double fraud.

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS
Boeing 'humbled and learning' after Ethiopian Airlines crash, CEO Muilenburg says.
Apple’s new credit card draws skepticism from partner Goldman Sachs
Howard Schultz rips Ocasio-Cortez's
Green New Deal as 'fantasy.'

STAY TUNED

On Fox Nation:

What Made America Great, Season 2
Brian Kilmeade travels to historic places and relives the biggest events that shaped our amazing country on "What Made America Great." Watch a preview of the show here.
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Fox Nation is a subscription streaming service offering daily shows and documentaries that you can’t watch anywhere else. Watch from your phone, computer and select TV devices.

On Fox News:

Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah; U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala.; Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren.

The Story with Martha MacCallum, 7 p.m. ET: Special guests include: U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas..

Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: Don't miss Sean Hannity's exclusive interview with President Trump!

On Fox Business

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga.

Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: Ronna McDaniel, RNC chair.

Kennedy, 9 p.m. ET: U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; John Delaney, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate; Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire.

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: "Mueller Report: Breakdown and Reaction" - As Democrats call for the release of the Mueller report in its entirety, the first person indicted in the investigation says that he is focusing on rebuilding his reputation. George Papadopoulos, former adviser to the Trump campaign, shares the story behind his new book, "Deep State Target: How  I Got Caught In the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump."

Want the Fox News Rundown sent straight to your mobile device? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher.

The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 a.m. ET: Jay Winik on his Wall Street Journal op-ed on whether abolitionists owe reparations. The Green New Deal, the Mueller report and Jussie Smollett case will be debated with the following guests: U.S. Sen. Tim Cotton, R-Ark.; former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla.; Michael Goodwin, New York Post columnist; Martha MacCallum, host of "The Story."

The Todd Starnes Show, Noon ET: Todd speaks with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee about the fallout from the Mueller investigation.

#TheFlashback
1977: In aviation's worst disaster, 583 people are killed when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off in heavy fog, crashes into a Pan Am 747 on an airport runway on the Canary Island of Tenerife.
1933: Japan officially withdraws from the League of Nations.
1513: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights present-day Florida.

Fox News First is compiled by Fox News' Bryan Robinson. Thank you for joining us! Have a good day! We'll see you in your inbox first thing Thursday morning.

Source: Fox News National

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2020 Dems take aim at filibuster, say Senate tradition should 'go the way of history'

Add Beto O’Rourke to a growing list of Democratic presidential candidates who are considering scrapping long-standing Senate procedure in hopes of passing a sweeping progressive agenda should they make it to the White House.

Under siege is the filibuster, the longstanding Senate tradition requiring 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to advance a bill, effectively allowing the minority party to block legislation.

WHAT IS A FILIBUSTER?

“I think that that’s something that we should seriously consider,” O’Rourke told reporters on the campaign trail in New Hampshire earlier this week.

“We have to look at some of these institutional reforms, whether it’s the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, the filibuster in the Senate, we’ve got to get democracy and our institutions working again,” explained the former three-term congressman from Texas.

On the same day that O’Rourke entertained the idea, a rival for the Democratic nomination also opened the door to the idea of dispatching with the filibuster.

“When you talk about changing the filibuster rule I understand that we are heading, right now, we are heading that way,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in an interview on "Pod Save America." “I’m going to tell you that for me that door is not closed.”

The comments mark an increasing appetite in the 2020 Democratic field for challenging longstanding political traditions and institutions -- everything from the voting age to the Electoral College to the Senate filibuster. And for Booker, his comments mark a backtrack from previous statements.

Last month, Booker told NPR that he didn’t favor eliminating the filibuster. And in an interview with Politico in January – before he formally declared his candidacy – he said “we should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster. It’s one of the distinguishing factors of this body. And I think it is good to have the power of the filibuster.”

The pro-Republican opposition research shop America Rising accused the senator of flip-flopping on the issue, saying in an email after the senator’s latest comments that “Booker has jumped on board with the latest liberal litmus test, abolishing the filibuster.”

TRUMP CALLS FOR SCRAPPING FILIBUSTER TO BUILD WALL

At the moment, the filibuster is actually helping the Democratic Party, enabling its members to slow or stall legislation that the GOP Senate majority and Trump White House might support. Trump himself has called for an end to the filibuster, only to be met with opposition from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But McConnell lowered the threshold to confirm Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority, and other federal judges and Cabinet nominees also are no longer subject to a 60-vote threshold. The filibuster on legislation is all that remains in terms of built-in brakes in the upper chamber that could slow the majority party.

And so Democrats hoping to pass a sweeping progressive agenda if they win back the White House are concerned their proposals could get bottlenecked in the Senate, where the Democrats have a shot at winning back control -- but have little chance of grabbing a 60-member, filibuster-proof majority.

“Everything stays on the table. You keep it all on the table. Don’t take anything off the table,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said when recently asked on the presidential campaign trail about scrapping the filibuster.

Candidates proposing major changes to deal with climate change also see the filibuster as a major impediment.

"I don't believe you can be serious about saying you can defeat climate change unless you realize we need to have the filibuster go the way of history because Mitch McConnell has weaponized the filibuster," Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee told reporters on Wednesday. "You can't be serious about having major decarbonization legislation in any near-term without removing the filibuster."

But not all of the White House contenders are on board.

“Great question…Let’s change the subject!” joked Sen. Kamala Harris of California, when asked by a voter in Iowa about her stance on the issue.

The Harris campaign tells Fox News that their candidate has “said she's genuinely conflicted on this issue but everything is on the table.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York told "Pod Save America" in January that “I think it’s useful to bring people together, and I don’t mind that you have to get 60 votes for cloture.”

“If you’re not able to get 60 votes on something, it just means you haven’t worked hard enough, talking to enough people and trying to listen to their concerns and then coming up with a solution that they can support. And so I’m not afraid of it one way or the other,” she added.

Sen. Bernie Sanders also opposes scrapping the filibuster.

"I'm not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster. I think the problem is, people often talk about the lack of comity and the anger. The real issue is that you have in Washington a system which is dominated in Washington by wealthy campaign contributors,” he said last month in an interview with CBS News.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Exclusive: United States sets sights on China in new electric vehicle push

FILE PHOTO: Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert
FILE PHOTO: Brine pools from a lithium mine, that belongs U.S.-based Albemarle Corp, is seen on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert, Chile, August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo

April 5, 2019

By Ernest Scheyder

(Reuters) – U.S. government officials plan to meet with executives from automakers and lithium miners in early May as part of a first-of-its-kind effort to launch a national electric vehicle supply chain strategy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

While Volkswagen AG, Tesla Inc and other electric-focused automakers and battery manufacturers are expanding in the United States and investing billions in the new technology, they are reliant on mineral imports without a major push to develop more domestic mines and processing facilities.

For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2Azl09N

China already dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – compared to 5 percent for the United States – and controls most of the world’s lithium processing facilities, according to data from Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, which tracks prices for lithium and other commodities and is organizing the Washington, D.C., event.

U.S. imports of lithium have nearly doubled since 2014 due in part to rising demand from Tesla, SK Innovation Co and others building battery plants in the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We need to find ways to more efficiently develop our nation’s domestic critical mineral supply because these resources are vital to both our national security and our economy,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement to Reuters when asked about the meeting.

Hoeven and Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s energy committee, have been invited to attend the meeting. Officials from the U.S. Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey plan to attend, according to two of the sources.

As part of the effort, Murkowski is expected to introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Some of those efforts were part of broader energy legislation in prior Congresses that failed, and Murkowski hopes that similar legislation will draw broader attention to the topic, according to the source.

Five companies, including Lithium Americas Corp, are developing U.S. lithium projects that plan to use new technologies to extract the metal from clays, bromine and even oilfield waste, processes not common elsewhere and considered game-changing by some analysts. But not all of them have secured financing.

For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2CXdGWN

If all five come online by 2022 as planned, the country would produce at least 77,900 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent each year, making the country one of the world’s largest lithium producers. Lithium development projects have historically faced numerous obstacles, so that production number is far from guaranteed.

“Creating a domestic electric vehicle supply chain is the perfect blueprint to make America great again,” said Jesse Edmondson, chief executive officer of U.S. Critical Minerals, a start-up firm buying lithium mineral rights in the U.S. Southeast.

Representatives from Tesla, Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co plan to attend the Washington meeting and discuss with federal officials potential policy changes that could encourage development of a domestic supply chain to mine, process and supply lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for battery manufacturers and automakers, according to the sources.

Tesla and GM did not respond to requests for comment.

A Ford spokesperson said that the company regularly engages with stakeholders on various supply chain topics.

Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, two U.S.-based companies that mine lithium in South America, also plan to attend, as do executives from the handful of lithium mines under development in the United States, according to the sources.

“We are looking forward to participating in a forum with policy makers and industry participants who are focused on ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in the development of the electric vehicle industry,” said Paul Graves, CEO of Livent, which has said it is eyeing expansion opportunities.

Albemarle, which operates the only existing lithium mine in the United States, declined to comment.

The one-day meeting will be divided into morning workshops focused on financing and permitting obstacles, with one-on-one afternoon meetings between regulators and industry executives, according to the sources.

“We’re trying to make sure policymakers have an understanding of this complex situation,” said James Calaway, chairman of ioneer Ltd, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada that also hold a large concentration of boron, used in a plethora of consumer goods.

In Arkansas, Standard Lithium Ltd is developing a pilot project to extract lithium from the bromine waste of a Lanxess AG chemical facility.

“We have an opportunity to take a huge step forward in lithium production, and we want to support that,” Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, told Reuters.

Hutchinson and some other U.S. officials want U.S. lithium projects to stand alone without financial support from the government, a potential impediment as financiers often look for even tacit government support before investing in new, unproven technologies.

“There’s a real opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain if the United States wakes up,” said Jonathan Evans, president of Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium project in Nevada expected to open by 2022.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; editing by Amran Abocar and Edward Tobin)

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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