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Facebook’s ads system leans on stereotypes for housing, job ads: study

FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration
FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 4, 2019

By Paresh Dave

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc directs advertising to audiences in ways that could promote racial and gender discrimination, a new study showed, adding to allegations that prompted the U.S. government to sue the world’s largest social media company last week.

Facebook’s algorithms, which match marketing messages with viewers, leans on stereotypes when it comes to housing and jobs, according to the study by researchers from Northeastern University, University of Southern California and advocacy group Upturn. The study was posted on arXiv, an online forum for research awaiting peer review, on Wednesday.

“Ad platforms themselves can shape access to information about important life opportunities in ways that might present a challenge to equal opportunity goals,” said the group, whose university researchers have done separate studies on online ad systems.

Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne responded in statement that the company recognizes it must do more, and said the findings would be included in ongoing discussions about changing its ads system.

“We’ve been looking at our ad delivery system and have engaged industry leaders, academics, and civil rights experts on this very topic – and we’re exploring more changes,” he said.

The researchers advertised lumber job ads on Facebook and found that the algorithms delivered the postings to mostly white men, while secretary positions mostly went to black women. That held true even when lumber ads pictured black people, and the secretarial jobs white people.

The Facebook study also found that ads about homes for sale in North Carolina reached a mostly white audience while rental ads went to a mostly black one.

Facebook does not provide race data, according to the researchers, but they inferred it by linking general audience details to voter registration data.

Though the pictures of people in the job ads did not appear to affect the audience makeup, the photos used did appear to be a factor for Facebook’s algorithm in other cases.

Showing a football or soldiers versus a flower or paint set led to a mostly male audience for an otherwise identical ad unrelated to jobs, the researchers found.

The Trump administration sued Facebook last Thursday, accusing it of selling targeted advertising that discriminated on the basis of race, in violation of the U.S. Fair Housing Act.

Facebook removed some targeting options in response to complaints from the government and civil rights groups.

Addressing racial and gender discrepancies in automated systems, including for facial recognition, has become a priority for Silicon Valley.

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Richard Chang)

Source: OANN

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Exclusive: Goldman’s China-backed fund bucks trade tensions to buy U.S. firm

The ticker symbol and logo for Goldman Sachs is displayed on a screen on the floor at the NYSE in New York
The ticker symbol and logo for Goldman Sachs is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

March 29, 2019

By Harry Brumpton, Echo Wang and Liana B. Baker

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc invested money from China’s sovereign wealth fund in a California-based industrial company and is looking for more U.S. deals, three sources familiar with the matter said, even after increased scrutiny from Washington all but stopped U.S.-China deals last year.

The Wall Street bank is managing a private equity fund called China-U.S. Industrial Cooperation Partnership LP, which it launched with state-owned China Investment Corp (CIC) in November 2017 on the sidelines of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.

The fund invested alongside Goldman to buy Boyd Corp, a Pleasanton, California-based manufacturer of rubber seals and gaskets, for $3 billion last September, the sources said.

Chinese efforts to invest in U.S. companies have been tripped up over the past year by Washington’s concerns the Chinese were gaining control of sensitive technology or companies that played key roles in the economy.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a U.S. government panel that scrutinizes deals for national security risks, asked the Chinese owner of the dating app Grindr to divest it, spurred on by data privacy concerns.

Goldman successfully argued to CFIUS, however, that its plan to buy Boyd should be allowed to proceed, the sources said.

CIC’s novel partnership with Goldman illustrates how China is adapting to U.S. curbs on its deal-making, which resulted in Chinese acquisitions of U.S. companies plunging by 88 percent year-on-year in 2018, according to financial data provider Refinitiv, as trade relations between the world’s two largest economies deteriorated.

(Graphic: Chinese acquisitions in the United States – https://tmsnrt.rs/2HzUTVE)

The Cooperation fund was set up expressly to help U.S. companies penetrate the Chinese market. And the fund is touting CIC’s involvement as a strategic advantage in accomplishing this goal.

In a confidential marketing document prepared for Goldman clients and seen by Reuters, the New York-based bank highlighted CIC’s “efficient sourcing of commercial partners and customers,” promising to “bring new pathways for growth via China.”

“The Cooperation fund is a U.S. fund run by a U.S. manager, and is managed to be in compliance with all laws and regulations, including CFIUS,” a Goldman spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which chairs CFIUS, said the panel does not comment publicly on individual cases.

CIC did not respond to requests for comment. The sovereign fund said last summer that it planned to press ahead with the Cooperation fund despite U.S.-China trade tensions, but details of its first deal have not been previously reported. The sources asked not to be identified because the Cooperation fund’s details are confidential.

RIVAL CHINESE BIDDER BALKED

Even though Goldman received CFIUS clearance for the Boyd deal, it did not disclose publicly the Cooperation fund’s involvement in the acquisition and most of Boyd’s 4,200 employees were not told about the Chinese money, the sources said.

A Moody’s Investors Service Inc credit rating note listed Boyd’s acquirer as Goldman’s flagship private equity fund West Street Capital Partners VII. After the deal, that fund transferred a minority stake in Boyd to the Cooperation fund, the sources said.

A Goldman spokeswoman declined to comment on why Goldman’s Boyd-related announcements did not mention the Cooperation fund.

One Chinese company that sought to acquire Boyd outright had balked at the regulatory hurdles.

Kangde Xin Composite Material Group Co Ltd, a Chinese laminates manufacturer, said in regulatory announcements that it abandoned a bid for Boyd because it thought the “China-U.S trade friction” would make regulatory approval of the deal difficult.

Kangde Xin did not respond to a request for comment. Investment bankers said the company’s failure to buy Boyd showed CIC would not have been able to do the deal without the structure offered by the Goldman fund.

“This is a really innovative structure, one which could go a long way to enable them to undertake transactions that would be hard for them to do otherwise,” said Euan Rellie, co-founder of BDA Partners, an investment bank that specializes in cross-border deals, referring to the Goldman fund and CIC.

ANCHOR INVESTOR

CIC, whose assets under management are approaching $1 trillion, also has investments in other private equity funds. But CIC does not typically help companies acquired by private equity funds it invests in grow in China.

CIC also calls itself an “anchor investor” in the Cooperation fund, and the sources said it holds a sizeable minority stake that is larger than its typical private equity fund investments.

“CIC is not involved in the investment management of the fund nor the operation of the fund’s portfolio companies. CIC’s role is to help Goldman Sachs, as the investment manager, identify and pursue opportunities for portfolio companies to do more business in China,” the Goldman spokeswoman said.

The Cooperation fund, which targets $5 billion in investment capital, plans to execute between one and three deals a year on average, adding up to as many as 12 over the duration of the fund, two of the sources said.

The fund is the most advanced in a series of similar investments by CIC. In an interview with Chinese state-owned newspaper Securities Times earlier this month, CIC’s president, Tu Guangshao, said bilateral cooperation funds were a strategy to “achieve a more favorable foreign investment regulatory environment” and “remove some barriers in cross-border investment.”

Tu said CIC has inked a letter of intent for a Britain-China fund, signed a contract for a Japan-China Industrial Cooperation Fund and is “in preparation for” China cooperation funds with Italy and France.

“When you get a couple more cases like this that look successful, other sovereign wealth funds and foreign investors will adopt this model,” said James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

(Reporting by Harry Brumpton, Echo Wang and Liana B. Baker in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Meredith Mazzilli)

Source: OANN

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Boca beats Lanus in landmark Argentine women's soccer match

Argentina's Boca Juniors women's soccer team hammered Lanus 5-0 in La Bombonera Saturday in a landmark game that was the first time an official women's tournament match was played in the legendary stadium.

The game, held prior to a Boca Juniors-Lanus men's match, was highly anticipated coming a day after International Women's Day and amid the rising force of Argentina's feminist movement.

Women's soccer in Argentina is still played by amateur athletes and one player recently took legal action against her club and the Argentine soccer federation to gain professional status.

On Saturday, when the teams took the field, a handful of Boca Juniors fans received the players with the same song they would sing to the men: "Boca, my good friend, we will be with you this campaign again."

Source: Fox News World

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Lufthansa reports loss as high fuel cost, overcapacity weigh

FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa AIrbus A321 airplane takes off from the airport in Palma de Mallorca
FILE PHOTO: A Lufthansa Airbus A321-100 airplane takes off from the airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, July 29, 2018. REUTERS/Paul Hanna

April 16, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s biggest airline Lufthansa posted a loss for first three months of the year, hurt by rising fuel cost and overcapacity in Europe.

The company said in a statement on Monday evening that adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) fell to -336 million euros (-$380 million), compared to 52 million euros a year earlier.

Earnings were hit by a 202-million euro rise in fuel costs, as well as a strong comparison to the previous year when the airline benefited from the loss of capacity due to Air Berlin’s insolvency, Lufthansa said.

The airline said it expected unit revenues at constant currency to increase year-on-year in the second quarter, helped by favorable booking levels and a clear slowing of the market-wide capacity growth.

For 2019, Lufthansa said it still expected to report an adjusted operating profit margin of 6.5-8.0 percent.

Shares of the airline were indicated to open 5.5 percent lower in premarket trade on Tuesday morning at 0535 GMT.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Uttaresh.V)

Source: OANN

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Vineeta Deepak to lead AP’s coverage of South Asia region

The Associated Press on Wednesday named Vineeta Deepak, an experienced video journalist and bedrock member of its Indian staff, as its South Asia news director to lead coverage of a region stretching from the heights of the Himalayas to the tropics of the Indian Ocean.

From her base in the Indian capital, New Delhi, she will drive AP's multiformat reporting on the world's largest democracy as it exerts its influence abroad while grappling with rising nationalism and growing inequality despite an economic boom at home.

She will lead a large team of videojournalists, photographers and reporters stationed across India and in AP bureaus in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. She will also oversee AP's coverage of Bhutan and the atoll archipelago of the Maldives.

"Vineeta has covered the biggest stories in South Asia for more than two decades, and knows the region inside and out," said Asia-Pacific News Director Adam Schreck. "She is an ambitious journalist who knows how to connect with people and tell stories in fresh, creative ways."

The 56-year-old has led AP's South Asia video operations as senior producer since 2002, editing and coordinating coverage of major stories including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar and the ongoing conflict in the disputed region of Kashmir.

She began her journalism career in New Delhi in 1988 and helped launch AP Television News video operations in New Delhi in 1995. She briefly held other positions in the broadcast industry before returning to AP as a video producer in 1998. She was a member of AP's Future Leaders program in 2013 and routinely helps coordinate cross-format planning efforts for the wider Asia-Pacific region.

She holds a bachelor's degree in economics from St. Stephen's College in the Indian capital and a master's degree in the subject from the Delhi School of Economics. She has received training at the Film and Television Institute of India.

"Our journalists in India and across South Asia are talented, committed to AP's mission and innovative in their storytelling, and we are thrilled that Vineeta will work collaboratively with her colleagues to raise our journalism to new heights," said AP's executive editor, Sally Buzbee.

Source: Fox News World

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France to Ban Yellow Vests Protests

The French prime minister has promised to appoint a new head of the Paris police after the city was rocked by violent protesters, who ransacked, looted and set several prominent establishments in the center of the French capital on fire amid ongoing Yellow Vests protests.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that authorities will shut down Yellow Vests protests in Paris or any other French city if they determine that violent groups, intending to foment mayhem, are taking part in them.

“From next Saturday, we will ban ‘yellow vest’ protests in neighborhoods that have been the worst hit as soon as we see sign of the presence of radical groups and their intent to cause damage,” he said.

At the same time, France’s prime minister announced that Paris chief of police Michel Delpuech, who has been in office since April 2017, will be replaced in light of the destruction that the Yellow Vest protesters committed on 16 March. Didier Lallement, the top police official from Nouvelle-Aquitaine, will be appointed new police chief on 20 March.


Paul Joseph Watson exposes the hypocrisy of those that claim heckling politicians is a “hate crime.”

Edouard Philippe also added that police on the ground will be granted more freedom to make decisions on the spot and given additional equipment, such as drones.

French President Emmanuel Macron is considering banning all Yellow Vest protests from the Champs Elysees after protesters vandalized the famous restaurant Fouquet and several other establishments last weekend, an anonymous official from the president’s office told Reuters earlier.

(Photo by Neil Willsey, Flickr)

Macron called a meeting with the interior and justice ministers on 18 March in wake of acts of mass vandalism committed by some of the protesters on 16 March at the Champs Elysees. He promised to take “strong measures” in order to avoid similar acts next weekend.

“What happened today at the Champs-Élysées is no longer a demonstration. These people want to destroy the Republic. Everyone who was there is complicit in what happened,” Macron said in a tweet.

France has been rocked by Yellow Vest protests for 18 weeks in a row after they began in November 2018 to fight the government’s decision to raise fuel taxes. Although the government has since abandoned its plans and attempted to engage in dialogue with protesters, the Yellow Vests have expanded their list of demands, including Macron’s resignation, among other things.


Who are the ‘Yellow Vests’, and what are they protesting? Jake Lloyd sheds light on the infamous protesters forcing Macron to compromise.

Source: InfoWars

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5 compound suspects plead not guilty to terror charges

Five people arrested at a ramshackle New Mexico compound where one of the suspect's sons was found dead pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal terrorism-related charges and other counts that their attorneys say the group would not be facing if they weren't Muslims.

The two men and three women have been charged of conspiring to support planned attacks on U.S. law enforcement officers, military members and government employees while living on the outskirts of Amalia, just south of the Colorado border.

They have been in federal custody since last August on firearms charges that accuse them of conspiring to provide weapons and ammunition to Jany Leveille, one of the five and a leader of the group who is from Haiti and had been living in the country illegally.

The group had travelled in late 2017 from Georgia to New Mexico, where they built their compound in an area dotted with some of the region's signature "earthship" self-built homes.

"This case is about freedom of religion, freedom of association and the right to bear arms," said Billy Blackburn, an attorney for Subhanah Wahhaj. He and other defense attorneys said their clients are innocent of the charges.

The group's makeshift settlement had consisted of a camping trailer wedged into the desert and surrounded by stacked tires before authorities raided it and found 11 hungry children, guns and ammunition, a firing range. They also found the remains of 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, who had suffered from severe medical disabilities that caused seizures.

The boy had been reported missing in Georgia in late 2017 and died at the compound after he was denied medication because Leveille believed it suppressed Muslim beliefs, authorities said.

She and the boy's father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, had held hours-long prayer rituals over the boy in the days leading to his death.

The results of an autopsy for the boy are still pending.

Others charged in the case include two sisters and a brother-in-law of Wahhaj.

All, except Wahhaj, are charged in the kidnapping of his son.

Federal statutes generally only allow for charging parents with abducting their own children in international cases.

Authorities also have accused Wahhaj and others of transporting weapons across state lines, and training children at a firing range on the property to carry out shootings and other attacks that never occurred.

Source: Fox News National

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FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

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The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

CLICK HERE FOF THE FOX NEWS APP

After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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