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Congress faces long road ahead in fight over Mueller documents

U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia
U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

March 25, 2019

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – Lawmakers seeking Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report are likely to face a protracted legal battle that will turn on President Donald Trump’s right to keep communications with his advisers private, legal and political experts said.

On Sunday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr sent a summary to lawmakers saying the Mueller investigation found Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign did not conspire with Russia. But the probe left unresolved the question of whether Trump engaged in obstruction of justice, setting out “evidence on both sides of the question.”

Barr concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring an obstruction case against Trump, prompting Democratic lawmakers to call for the release of the full report and the underlying evidence Mueller relied on.

House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, said on CNN on Sunday he would “try to negotiate” with the Justice Department to obtain the full report, but that the committee would issue subpoenas and litigate if needed. Other Democrats, including candidates vying for the 2020 presidential nomination, have called for release of the full report.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will release Mueller’s full report, but Barr has said he will be as transparent as possible.

Ross Garber, a lawyer in Washington focusing on political investigations, said Congress would have a difficult time persuading judges to release materials marked as classified or privileged by the executive branch, and that even a successful challenge could take years.

“Congress faces substantial legal and procedural hurdles in any effort to get these materials,” Garber said.

Barr is required by law to keep secret information obtained from grand jury proceedings. This would not apply to information obtained from Trump advisers and other witnesses who agreed to sit down voluntarily with Mueller.

Barr could also keep parts of the report under wraps by invoking a Justice Department policy against disparaging individuals who have not been charged with crimes.

The most contentious fight will likely be over any materials the White House tries to shield from public view by claiming executive privilege, a legal doctrine generally used to keep conversations between the president and advisers private. The doctrine is rooted in the idea that the president should be able to receive candid advice on policy matters.

If Barr withholds information based on executive privilege or Justice Department policy, Democrats could bring a lawsuit seeking to force disclosure.

But it could be months before the Democrat-led House is even in a position to sue, legal experts said.

Lawmakers would first need to make a formal demand for the report by invoking their subpoena power.

If Barr refused to release it, Democrats would then vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, experts said.

Congress would then sue to enforce its contempt finding.

Legal experts said that, while executive privilege has been recognized by the Supreme Court, it must be narrowly asserted and balanced against Congress’ need for information to fulfill its duty of oversight over the executive branch.

Garber said an executive privilege claim would be particularly strong if it were invoked to keep private the nature of Trump’s private conversations with close advisers, like former White House lawyer Don McGahn, who sat for interviews with Mueller’s team.

Those sorts of communications are exactly what the privilege is intended to keep private, Garber said.

But Mitchel Sollenberger, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said courts would be sympathetic to arguments by lawmakers that they need more information about the Mueller investigation to do their job.

In 2012, Republican lawmakers sued Democratic President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, to obtain documents over a federal law enforcement operation targeting gun traffickers, code-named Fast and Furious. The litigation dragged on for six years before ending in a settlement that called for the production of documents after Obama and Holder had already left office.

John Marston, a former federal prosecutor in Washington now at law firm Foley Hoag, said it would be in the best interests of both Democratic lawmakers and the public to compromise with Barr and avoid a protracted court fight.

“I’m sure there are many ways to structure access to a significant amount of this information,” Marston said. “Negotiating and finding a common agreement on access to the materials would help us all move past this.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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“Not a good situation”: Trump Denounces TSA Child Grope Video

President Trump on Tuesday condemned the TSA after a viral video resurfaced showing a young boy being subjected to an invasive pat-down at a US airport.

“Not a good situation,” the president commented, retweeting a video shared by comedian Larry the Cable Guy and actor James Woods which was originally shared by @DeepStateExpose.

The president’s eldest son Don Jr. also chimed in, saying, “This is sickening.”

“I’m sure this young man could have been deemed to not be a threat in a matter of seconds. Wtf!” Don Jr. tweeted.

The video, which first appeared in 2017, shows a boy at Dallas’ JFK airport undergoing a full pat-down which lasted approximately two minutes.

At the time the boy’s mother, Jennifer Williamson, who filmed the encounter, also mentioned her son suffered from a sensory processing disorder, compounding the incident’s absurdity.

As the video went viral, the TSA went into damage control mode, penning a blog post titled, “TSA Mythbuster: The Rest of the DFW Pat-down Story,” which attempted to explain why the over-the-top search was required.

While Trump intended to highlight the perverse nature of the search, The Washington Post focused on the origin of the person who the president retweeted, who they described as a “follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory.”

Trump’s retweet of @DeepStateExpose, who was identified as conspiracy-minded Twitter user Jeremy Stone, will likely “raise new questions about where a president fond of spreading conspiracy theories gets his information,” The Post writes.


Source: InfoWars

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Indonesian woman's village celebrates her newfound freedom

Relatives and neighbors of the Indonesian woman accused of killing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's half brother in Malaysia are preparing an emotional welcome home party after charges against her were unexpectedly dropped.

Preparing Siti Aisyah's favorite spicy beef dish, her aunt Siti Sudarmi said, "We were sure sooner or later she would be freed because she is innocent."

Malaysia on Monday freed Aisyah from two years of detention following concerted lobbying by the Indonesian government.

It was a stunning twist in a bizarre tale. Prosecutors alleged Aisyah and a Vietnamese woman smeared VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam's face at a Malaysian airport in 2017, causing his death.

The two women said they thought they were carrying out a prank for a reality TV show.

Source: Fox News World

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Golf: ‘Mad Scientist’ DeChambeau seeks Masters solution

PGA: WGC - Dell Technologies Match Play - First Round
FILE PHOTO: Mar 27, 2019; Austin, TX, USA; Bryson DeChambeau plays his shot from the second tee during the first round of the WGC - Dell Technologies Match Play golf tournament at Austin Country Club. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Spillman-USA TODAY Sports

April 8, 2019

By Frank Pingue

AUGUSTA Ga. (Reuters) – Bryson DeChambeau has earned the “mad scientist” nickname for his calculated approach to golf and may need to spend some extra time in his quirky laboratory to find a winning formula at this week’s Masters.

DeChambeau, a physics major who previously used a since-banned compass to help read greens, has five wins on the PGA Tour but taming Augusta National will prove the toughest test yet for the American world number six.

The year’s first major does not provide players with green-reading books, and that could put DeChambeau well out of his comfort zone given the highly-contoured greens at Augusta National that can frustrate the game’s best putters.

“I have to work a little harder to get some insight into some things than other places, but that’s fine,” DeChambeau told reporters on Monday.

“I mean, that’s a part of the process, and I think the person who digs it out of the dirt the most should have a little bit of an advantage and I think that’s where it’s actually a positive thing.”

DeChambeau, who finished as the low amateur at the Masters in 2016 before joining the PGA Tour the following year, already has a win this season but knows he faces a difficult challenge going into Thursday’s opening round.

Unlike many of his competitors, DeChambeau will not be able to rely on the detailed notes they have modified over the years after logging countless practice and tournament rounds at Augusta National.

DeChambeau made no secrets when asked about what impact the lack of green-reading books could have on him this week.

“Now I practiced trying to understand what one percent is, what two percent is, based on my eyes,” said DeChambeau. “Is it as precise as the greens books? Absolutely not. We still have to feel and sense with our eyes what it’s going to do.

“That’s really all I can do and I have to practice a lot more hitting breaking putts, because I can’t just bring out my compass and go, oh, it’s 3 percent and here it is. I have to look at and walk around and go, okay, I’m acclimated to 3 percent.”

(Reporting by Frank Pingue, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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66-Million-Year-Old Deathbed Linked to Dinosaur-Killing Meteor

The beginning of the end started with violent shaking that raised giant waves in the waters of an inland sea in what is now North Dakota.

Then, tiny glass beads began to fall like birdshot from the heavens. The rain of glass was so heavy it may have set fire to much of the vegetation on land. In the water, fish struggled to breathe as the beads clogged their gills.

The heaving sea turned into a 30-foot wall of water when it reached the mouth of a river, tossing hundreds, if not thousands, of fresh-water fish—sturgeon and paddlefish—onto a sand bar and temporarily reversing the flow of the river. Stranded by the receding water, the fish were pelted by glass beads up to 5 millimeters in diameter, some burying themselves inches deep in the mud. The torrent of rocks, like fine sand, and small glass beads continued for another 10 to 20 minutes before a second large wave inundated the shore and covered the fish with gravel, sand and fine sediment, sealing them from the world for 66 million years.

This unique, fossilized graveyard—fish stacked one atop another and mixed in with burned tree trunks, conifer branches, dead mammals, mosasaur bones, insects, the partial carcass of a Triceratops, marine microorganisms called dinoflagellates and snail-like marine cephalopods called ammonites—was unearthed by paleontologist Robert DePalma over the past six years in the Hell Creek Formation, not far from Bowman, North Dakota. The evidence confirms a suspicion that nagged at DePalma in his first digging season during the summer of 2013—that this was a killing field laid down soon after the asteroid impact that eventually led to the extinction of all ground-dwelling dinosaurs. The impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the so-called K-T boundary, exterminated 75 percent of life on Earth.

“This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary,” said DePalma, curator of paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida and a doctoral student at the University of Kansas. “At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day.”

In a paper to appear next week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and his American and European colleagues, including two University of California, Berkeley, geologists, describe the site, dubbed Tanis, and the evidence connecting it with the asteroid or comet strike off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. That impact created a huge crater, called Chicxulub, in the ocean floor and sent vaporized rock and cubic miles of asteroid dust into the atmosphere. The cloud eventually enveloped Earth, setting the stage for Earth’s last mass extinction.

“It’s like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick,” said Mark Richards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of earth and planetary science who is now provost and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington.

Richards and Walter Alvarez, a UC Berkeley Professor of the Graduate School who 40 years ago first hypothesized that a comet or asteroid impact caused the mass extinction, were called in by DePalma and Dutch scientist Jan Smit to consult on the rain of glass beads and the tsunami-like waves that buried and preserved the fish. The beads, called tektites, formed in the atmosphere from rock melted by the impact.


Alex Jones reveals what globalists are actively fighting to deny from humanity.

Tsunami vs. Seiche

Richards and Alvarez determined that the fish could not have been stranded and then buried by a typical tsunami, a single wave that would have reached this previously unknown arm of the Western Interior Seaway no less than 10 to 12 hours after the impact 3,000 kilometers away, if it didn’t peter out before then. Their reasoning: The tektites would have rained down within 45 minutes to an hour of the impact, unable to create mudholes if the seabed had not already been exposed.

Instead, they argue, seismic waves likely arrived within 10 minutes of the impact from what would have been the equivalent of a magnitude 10 or 11 earthquake, creating a seiche (pronounced saysh), a standing wave, in the inland sea that is similar to water sloshing in a bathtub during an earthquake. Though large earthquakes often generate seiches in enclosed bodies of water, they’re seldom noticed, Richards said. The 2011 Tohoku quake in Japan, a magnitude 9.0, created six-foot-high seiches 30 minutes later in a Norwegian fjord 8,000 kilometers away.

“The seismic waves start arising within nine to 10 minutes of the impact, so they had a chance to get the water sloshing before all the spherules (small spheres) had fallen out of the sky,” Richards said. “These spherules coming in cratered the surface, making funnels—you can see the deformed layers in what used to be soft mud—and then rubble covered the spherules. No one has seen these funnels before.”

The tektites would have come in on a ballistic trajectory from space, reaching terminal velocities of between 100 and 200 miles per hour, according to Alvarez, who estimated their travel time decades ago.

“You can imagine standing there being pelted by these glass spherules. They could have killed you,” Richards said. Many believe that the rain of debris was so intense that the energy ignited wildfires over the entire American continent, if not around the world.

“Tsunamis from the Chicxulub impact are certainly well-documented, but no one knew how far something like that would go into an inland sea,” DePalma said. “When Mark came aboard, he discovered a remarkable artifact—that the incoming seismic waves from the impact site would have arrived at just about the same time as the atmospheric travel time of the ejecta. That was our big breakthrough.”

At least two huge seiches inundated the land, perhaps 20 minutes apart, leaving six feet of deposits covering the fossils. Overlaying this is a layer of clay rich in iridium, a metal rare on Earth, but common in asteroids and comets. This layer is known as the K-T, or K-Pg boundary, marking the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Tertiary Period, or Paleogene.

Iridium

In 1979, Alvarez and his father, Nobelist Luis Alvarez of UC Berkeley, were the first to recognize the significance of iridium that is found in 66 million-year-old rock layers around the world. They proposed that a comet or asteroid impact was responsible for both the iridium at the K-T boundary and the mass extinction.

The impact would have melted the bedrock under the seafloor and pulverized the asteroid, sending dust and melted rock into the stratosphere, where winds would have carried them around the planet and blotted out the sun for months, if not years. Debris would have rained down from the sky: not only tektites, but also rock debris from the continental crust, including shocked quartz, whose crystal structure was deformed by the impact.

The iridium-rich dust from the pulverized meteor would have been the last to fall out of the atmosphere after the impact, capping off the Cretaceous.

“When we proposed the impact hypothesis to explain the great extinction, it was based just on finding an anomalous concentration of iridium—the fingerprint of an asteroid or comet,” said Alvarez. “Since then, the evidence has gradually built up. But it never crossed my mind that we would find a deathbed like this.”

Key confirmation of the meteor hypothesis was the discovery of a buried impact crater, Chicxulub, in the Caribbean and off the coast of the Yucatan in Mexico, that was dated to exactly the age of the extinction. Shocked quartz and glass spherules were also found in K-Pg layers worldwide. The new discovery at Tanis is the first time the debris produced in the impact was found along with animals killed in the immediate aftermath of the impact.

“And now we have this magnificent and completely unexpected site that Robert DePalma is excavating in North Dakota, which is so rich in detailed information about what happened as a result of the impact,” Alvarez said. “For me, it is very exciting and gratifying!”

(Photo by Hubble ESA, Flickr)

Tektites

Jan Smit, a retired professor of sedimentary geology from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in The Netherlands who is considered the world expert on tektites from the impact, joined DePalma to analyze and date the tektites from the Tanis site. Many were found in near perfect condition embedded in amber, which at the time was pliable pine pitch.

“I went to the site in 2015 and, in front of my eyes, he (DePalma) uncovered a charred log or tree trunk about four meters long which was covered in amber, which acted as sort of an aerogel and caught the tektites when they were coming down,” Smit said. “It was a major discovery, because the resin, the amber, covered the tektites completely, and they are the most unaltered tektites I have seen so far, not 1 percent of alteration. We dated them, and they came out to be exactly from the K-T boundary.”

The tektites in the fishes’ gills are also a first.

“Paddlefish swim through the water with their mouths open, gaping, and in this net, they catch tiny particles, food particles, in their gill rakers, and then they swallow, like a whale shark or a baleen whale,” Smit said. “They also caught tektites. That by itself is an amazing fact. That means that the first direct victims of the impact are these accumulations of fishes.”

Smit also noted that the buried body of a Triceratops and a duck-billed hadrosaur proves beyond a doubt that dinosaurs were still alive at the time of the impact.

“We have an amazing array of discoveries which will prove in the future to be even more valuable,” Smit said. “We have fantastic deposits that need to be studied from all different viewpoints. And I think we can unravel the sequence of incoming ejecta from the Chicxulub impact in great detail, which we would never have been able to do with all the other deposits around the Gulf of Mexico.”

“So far, we have gone 40 years before something like this turned up that may very well be unique,” Smit said. “So, we have to be very careful with that place, how we dig it up and learn from it. This is a great gift at the end of my career. Walter sees it as the same.”


Big Tech has gained power by absorbing personal data from its users. Brad Shear joins Alex to discuss the agenda of Big Tech and solutions for the future.

Source: InfoWars

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Easter marred by Sri Lanka bombs, pope says in condemning blasts

Pope Francis leads the Easter Mass at St. Peter's Square
Pope Francis is seen after reading his "Urbi et Orbi" ("To the City and the World") message from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

April 21, 2019

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis, in his Easter Sunday address, condemned as “such cruel violence” the bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 100 people and were timed to coincide with the most important day in the Christian liturgical calendar.

Francis, speaking to a crowd of about 70,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, also urged politicians to shun a new arms race that was budding and to welcome refugees fleeing hunger and human rights violations.

The blasts in Sri Lanka, which hospital and police officials said killed at least 138 people and wounded more than 400 people, followed a lull in major attacks since the end of the civil war 10 years ago.

“I learned with sadness and pain of the news of the grave attacks, that precisely today, Easter, brought mourning and pain to churches and other places where people were gathered in Sri Lanka,” Francis said in his traditional Easter Sunday “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message.

“I wish to express my affectionate closeness to the Christian community, hit while it was gathered in prayer, and to all the victims of such cruel violence,” the pope, who visited Sri Lanka in 2015, said.

Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, he appealed for peace in conflict areas.

“Before the many sufferings of our time, may the Lord of life not find us cold and indifferent,” he said, speaking in Italian after celebrating a Mass in the square.

“May he make us builders of bridges, not walls. May the One who gives us his peace end the roar of arms, both in areas of conflict and in our cities, and inspire the leaders of nations to work for an end to the arms race and the troubling spread of weaponry, especially in the economically more advanced countries,” he said.

Francis has made defense of migrants a key feature of his pontificate and has clashed over the immigration with politicians such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini who leads the anti-immigrant League party and has closed Italy’s ports to rescue ships operated by charities.

Easter commemorates the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead.

“May the Risen Christ, who flung open the doors of the tomb, open our hearts to the needs of the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, the poor, the unemployed, the marginalized, and all those who knock at our door in search of bread, refuge, and the recognition of their dignity,” Francis said.

He called for a solution to the conflict in Syria that responds to “people’s legitimate hopes for freedom, peace and justice” and favors the return of refugees.

Francis urged dialogue in order to end fighting in Libya, appealing to both sides to “choose dialogue over force and to avoid reopening wounds left by a decade of conflicts and political instability”.

He called for politicians in Venezuela “to end social injustices, abuses and acts of violence, and take the concrete

steps needed to heal divisions and offer the population the help they need”.

Francis encouraged the fragile peace process in mostly Christian South Sudan, whose leaders attended an unprecedented spiritual retreat earlier this month at the Vatican where he begged them to avoid returning to a civil war.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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‘Gangnam style’ sex crime: K-pop scandals uncover dark side of Seoul’s flashiest district

FILE PHOTO: South Korean singer Jung Joon-young arrives for questioning on accusations of illicitly taping and sharing sex videos on social media, at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency in Seoul
FILE PHOTO: South Korean singer Jung Joon-young arrives for questioning on accusations of illicitly taping and sharing sex videos on social media, at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency in Seoul, South Korea, March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo

April 14, 2019

By Joyce Lee and Joori Roh

SEOUL (Reuters) – On a recent weekend night, the dance floor at one of the hottest clubs in Seoul’s swanky Gangnam district held only a few dozen people surrounded by mostly empty tables.

A few months ago, the nightclub would have been packed with hundreds of gyrating men and women, and full tables, many costing 650,000 won ($570) or more for a night of drinking and dancing.

The world was introduced to Gangnam by the 2012 K-pop hit “Gangnam Style,” a parody of the South Korean highlife with a viral tune and amusing dancing that became the first video to reach a billion views on YouTube.

But a wave of sex crimes and other illegal activity has revealed a dark underbelly in the district, driving club-goers and celebrities away.

According to police investigators, a network of pop stars, businessmen and cops are alleged to have colluded and enabled tax evasion, bribery, and prostitution at some of Gangnam’s glitziest clubs.

Most seriously, some are being investigated over the use of date rape drugs to incapacitate women and assault them, sometimes filmed by hidden cameras.

“There aren’t many people coming to Gangnam (clubs) right now,” a worker told Reuters at a club that was relatively quiet, despite not being implicated in any of the allegations. “There’s an investigation on.”

The scandals have already led to the resignation of four K-pop stars, the closure of one of Gangnam’s most lucrative club, and investigations into at least six police officers suspected of colluding with club operators.

President Moon Jae-in called for a thorough investigation, saying the Gangnam club cases suggest possible collusion between police, tax authorities and a new privileged class including celebrities to engage in illegal operations.

More than 500 people have been investigated for drug use and sexual assault and more than 200 arrested in a nationwide roundup since Feb. 25.

Tax authorities have launched investigations into 21 clubs and host bars for possible evasion.

“If we don’t set this right, we cannot call this a just society,” Moon said.

SEX CRIME CONCERNS

The investigations, revolving around two Gangnam clubs, Burning Sun and Arena, began late last year when 29-year-old film art director Kim Sang-kyo says he tried to stop an incident of sexual harassment and was attacked by Burning Sun staff, and then abused by police who instead arrested him.

A government commission concluded that police in Gangnam violated Kim’s rights during his arrest, but Kim is still being investigated for sexual harassment and defamation. He denies any wrongdoing.

Calls to Burning Sun, which closed down after the scandal broke, were not answered, while a man who answered the number listed for Arena hung up when asked for comment. Arena has also been closed since early March for what it said were renovations. Gangnam police declined to comment.

Kim said once he shared his story he began to receive messages from other people who said they had been victimized in Gangnam clubs, and he realized the scope of the problem.

“When people saw me raising questions, they said ‘why you? Why now?'” Kim said. “‘This has been going on for 10 years, 15 years, and you can’t touch it. You can’t win.’ I’ve heard a lot of people say this, and I think it’s really scary.”

The string of scandals gained wider attention when several K-pop stars who had ties to some of the clubs were implicated in crimes unrelated to Kim’s arrest.

Singer Lee Seung-hyun, 28, better known by the stage name Seungri, is under investigation for paying for prostitutes in return for favors from foreign businessmen at Arena.

He is also accused of embezzlement at another club he was involved with until last year.

Lee has denied all wrong doing, but resigned from his position as a member of the boy band BIGBANG. Lee’s lawyer told Reuters this week his client maintains his innocence.

At least three other K-pop stars resigned after they were accused by police of sharing illicitly filmed sex tapes. It is not yet clear whether any of the shared videos and photos were taken at either nightclub.

One singer, Jung Joon-young admitted to having shared videos he took secretly while having sex with women.

“I am truly sorry. I committed a crime that cannot be forgiven,” Jung read from a handwritten statement on March 21.

WEB OF CONNECTIONS

Besides Seungri, who was an internal director at Burning Sun and previously helped run the club, police are investigating two of the club’s co-presidents and an operating director for various crimes including distributing drugs, assaulting a customer, and bribing police.

Investigators have also questioned 15 people and arrested four people with links to Burning Sun on drug charges. At least one club promoter was arrested for distributing illegal sex videos.

A man identified as the de facto owner of Arena, surnamed Kang, was arrested in late March, a Seoul Central District Court spokesman said.

Kang and other Arena executives are accused of tax evasion by avoiding paying 16.2 billion won ($14.31 million) in taxes between 2014-2017. Kang refused to answer questions on March 25 as he emerged from court. He could not be reached for comment.

Authorities are also investigating allegations that club officials provided bribes to police officers.

Six officers are now under investigation for possible collusion with the clubs, including a senior superintendent, lawmakers briefed by Police Commissioner General Min Gab-ryong said.

The superintendent, surnamed Yoon, admitted playing golf and sharing meals with a man known to be Seungri’s business partner, but denies all allegations of corruption.

He is accused of leaking confidential information and accepting bribes, including K-pop concert tickets from singer Seungri, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.

In Gangnam, former patrons and workers lament the impact the scandals have had on the clubs and the broader entertainment industry, a key identity and export for South Korea.

Kim Se-rim, 27, said she no longer goes to clubs.

“People are like, why would you go when you know there are so much drugs, GHB, rape going on?,” she said, referring to a known date-rape drug. “And they have a point.”

($1 = 1,134.5200 won)

(Additional reporting and writing by Josh Smith.; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Source: OANN

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Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of
Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of “Avengers: Endgame” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marvel Studios superhero spectacle “Avengers: Endgame” hauled in a record $60 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices during its Thursday night debut, distributor Walt Disney Co said.

Global ticket sales for the film about Iron Man, Hulk and other popular characters reached $305 million for the first two days, Disney said.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Funeral of journalist Lyra McKee in Belfast
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends the funeral service for murdered journalist Lyra McKee at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland April 24, 2019. Brian Lawless/Pool via REUTERS

April 26, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said on Friday he had turned down an invitation to a state dinner which will be part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Britain in June.

“Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honor a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric,” Corbyn said in a statement.

He said maintaining the relationship with the United States did not require “the pomp and ceremony of a state visit” and he said he would welcome a meeting with Trump “to discuss all matters of interest.”

(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg)

Source: OANN

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Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli
Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara

April 26, 2019

By Ulf Laessing

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s U.N.-recognized government has budgeted up to 2 billion dinars ($1.43 billion) to cover costs of a three-week-old war for control of the capital, such as treatment for the wounded, to be funded without new borrowing, the economy minister said.

Ali Abdulaziz Issawi suggested the government hoped for business to continue more or less as usual despite the assault on Tripoli, in the country’s northwest, by forces tied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Once Africa’s third largest producer of oil, Libya has been riven by factional conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Khalifa Haftar and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

Still, with Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces unable so far to pierce defenses in Tripoli’s southern suburbs, normal life and business activities continue in much of the capital and western coastal towns.

Issawi, in an interview with Reuters in his Tripoli office, also said Libya’s commercial ports and wheat imports were still functioning normally, although some roads have been blocked.

He said the Serraj government estimates it will spend up to 2 billion dinars extra on medical treatment for wounded, aid for displaced people and other “emergency” war costs.

He said this was not military spending but analysts believe that the sum will also cover expenditures such as pay for allied armed groups or food for fighters.

“We could actually spend less,” he added, in comments that gave the first insight into the economic impact of the fighting.

Issawi said the Tripoli government, which controls little territory beyond the greater capital region, would not incur new debt to fund the war costs, sticking to a plan to post a 2019 budget without a deficit.

Tripoli derives revenue largely from oil and natural gas production, interest-free loans from local banks to the central bank, and a 183 percent surcharge on foreign exchange transactions conducted at official rates.

But with centralized tax collection greatly diminished, public debt has piled up – to 68 billion dinars in the west, including unpaid state obligations such as social insurance.

Some analysts expect Serraj’s government will be forced to raise new debt if the war for control of Tripoli drags on.

With much of Libya dominated by armed factions that also act as security forces, the public wage bill for both the western and eastern administrations has soared as fighters have been made public employees in efforts to buy their loyalty.

The east has sold bonds worth 35 billion dinars outside the official financial system as the Tripoli central bank does not fund the parallel government apart from some wages.

Despite its limited reach, the Tripoli government still runs an annual budget of around 46.8 billion dinars, mainly for public salaries and fuel subsidies.

“This year we cannot finance via debt…we will not borrow (by agreement with the central bank),” Issawi said.

According to International Monetary Fund data, Libya’s central government debt-to-GDP ratio is 143 percent, making it one of the most heavily indebted in the world on that measure.

Issawi declined to say what parts of the budget would be trimmed to support the extra outlay for war costs.

However, with some 70 percent of the budget allocated to public wages, fuel subsidies and other welfare benefits, a portion devoted to infrastructure is most likely to be axed.

Widespread lawlessness has meant there have been no major infrastructural projects since 2011, when a NATO-backed uprising overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving schools, hospitals and roads in acute need of restoration.

FOREX SURCHARGE

Issawi said the government planned to raise as much as 30 billion dinars by the end of 2019 from hard currency deals after imposing in September a 183 percent surcharge on commercial and private transactions done on the official rate of 1.4 to the U.S. dollar. That fee has effectively devalued the official rate to 3.9, much closer to the black market equivalent.

Some 17 billion dinars have been raised since then, with hard currency allocated for import credit letters now issued without delays, Issawi said. The forex fee has helped the government forecast a budget in the black for 2019.

Despite the narrowing spread between the two rates, the black market continues to thrive. Dozens of traders remained at their favorite spot behind the central bank headquarters in Tripoli when Reuters reporters visited it last week.

But traders said it could take time for the Serraj government to register the extra forex receipts as official banking channels were taking up to six months to approve import financing, keeping the black market in play for dealers.

Issawi said authorities planned to lower the forex fee from 183 percent, without saying when. The black market rate has dropped from 6 to around 4.1 since September but it has hardly moved of late as demand for black market cash remains high.

The Tripoli government has stopped subsidizing food and bread, which used to be cheaper than drinking water in Libya. Wheat imports are now being arranged by private traders and there are surplus stocks of flour at the moment, Issawi said.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Tripoli with additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., threatened possible jail time for White House officials refusing to comply with subpoenas to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

Connolly, a member of the House panel, made his comments during an interview on CNN on Thursday. He said that “if a subpoena is issued and you’re told you must testify, we will back that up.”

He added: “And we will use any and all power in our command to make sure it’s backed up — whether that’s a contempt citation, whether that’s going to court and getting that citation enforced, whether it’s fines, whether it’s possible incarceration.”

“We will go to the max to enforce the constitutional role of the legislative branch of government.”

His comments came after three officials have refused to comply with congressional requests to testify, CNN noted.

Trump told The Washington Post that his staff should not testify on Capitol Hill, explaining that the White House cooperated fully with special counsel Robert Mueller and “there is no reason to go any further, especially in Congress where it’s very partisan.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.

Migrant families face no consequences if apprehended trying to cross the border illegally under present law, Border Patrol chief of Operations Brian Hastings claimed during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“We need a change in the current outdated laws that we’re dealing with for this current demographic and this crisis that we have,” he said.

Hastings said as of Thursday there have been 440,000 apprehensions along the southwest border. There were 396,000 apprehensions all of last year.

SOUTHERN BORDER AT ‘BREAKING POINT’ AFTER MORE THAN 76,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TRIED CROSSING IN FEBRUARY, OFFICIALS SAY

And those numbers continue to rise, he said.

Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.

Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.

“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow.”

The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.

FLORIDA SHERIFF ON BORDER CRISIS AFTER MAJOR DRUG BUST: ‘IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY CRAZY’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says that has forced immigration officials to release entire families because “you don’t want to separate families.”

Recently, he said he is drafting legislation that would allow children to be detained for more than 20 days.

Hastings said agents are frustrated with the situation but are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

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“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”

Source: Fox News National

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