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Trump administration backs total overturn of Obamacare, will support states challenging the law

The Trump administration on Monday told a federal appeals court that the whole Affordable Care Act must be abolished, setting for a clash between President Trump and 2020 Democratic candidates embracing “Medicare for All” system.

Justice Department attorneys filed a letter with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans asking to effectively strike down the ACA in its entirety, agreeing with the landmark ruling made by a federal judge in Texas last year.

NEW ‘MEDICARE-FOR-ALL’ BILL WOULD LARGELY OUTLAW PRIVATE INSURANCE

"The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed. Because the United States is not urging that any portion of the district court’s judgment be reversed, the government intends to file a brief on the appellees’ schedule," the filing read.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled last year that Obamacare is no longer constitutional because the tax reform – as enacted by Republicans –eliminated the health care law’s penalty for not having health insurance.

The administration initially insisted that only certain parts of the law should be invalidated, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions. But the latest filing moved on from the earlier position and embraces the total overturn of the law.

The filing noted that the government will file a brief in support of the Texas-led coalition of states that are trying to overturn the health care law, given that “the United States is not urging that any portion of the district court’s judgment be reversed,” the Washington Post reported.

“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s comprehensive opinion came to the correct conclusion and will support it on appeal,” Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, told the newspaper.

A victory for the government would mean that millions of people could potentially lose their health care and causing particular disruption within the industry as no replacement system would be put in place.

BERNIE SANDERS SAYS 'NO' TO AMERICANS WHO WANT TO KEEP PRIVATE INSURANCE UNDER 'MEDICARE-FOR-ALL'

Over 11 million reportedly signed up for Obamacare coverage this year, it was announced this week. That’s just slightly less than compared to 2018. At the same time, however, the number of new customers fell by more than 500,000, a worrying sign for the backers of the system.

The move to support efforts to strike down the ACA will undoubtedly pit Trump and Democratic presidential candidates, such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, who are increasingly embracing abolishing private insurers and support the creation of a single-payer system.

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At the same time, the latest effort to completely invalidate the law may prove Congressional Democrats right, who warned during the midterm election last year that Republicans are trying to repeal the law, including the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, while Republicans denied such plans.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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How did Bernie Sanders make his money? A look at his wealth and assets

As a self-described Democratic socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has been outspoken about economic inequality.

During his 2016 presidential campaign and beyond, he declared that wealth inequality is “the great moral issue of our time.”

Now that he’s running for president again, the 77-year-old continues to advocate for the poor and middle class, including appealing for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and tuition-free colleges and universities.

And yet, his own net worth is unknown.

Sanders will join Fox News Channel for a Town Hall co-anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on Monday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m. ET in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

BERNIE SANDERS FAST FACTS: 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE VERMONT SENATOR

Back in 2016, Sanders was allegedly the 19th-poorest U.S. senator, The Washington Post reported. However, he has since published four books, and that's said to have helped make him a millionaire.

"I wrote a best-selling book," Sanders told The New York Times. "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

According to estimates from Celebrity Net Worth, Sanders’ net worth is roughly $2 million, based on his book sales, royalties and speaking engagements.

As his presidential bid ramps up, Sanders has received pressure to release his tax returns -- which he promised to do by April 15 last week on “The Daily Show.” He said he plans to release 10 years' worth of returns.

“April 15 is coming,” Sanders told host Trevor Noah. “That will be the 10th year and we will make them all public very shortly.”

Until he releases his tax returns, here’s a look at what is already known about the senator’s income and assets.

Income as a senator

As a senator, Sanders makes $174,000 a year, according to the Congressional Research Service, which reported on Senate salaries last year.

Book royalties

Sanders made $880,091.14 in book royalties in 2017, according to the senator’s financial disclosure documents filed in May 2018.

Those royalties included a $505,000 advance on his book “Where We Go From Here,” which was published in 2018, Newsweek reported.

Sanders has three books published by Macmillan and one book, “Outside in the White House,” published by Verso Publications.

Album royalties

In 1987, Sanders recorded a politically focused folk album through Todd R. Lockwood Works called “We Shall Overcome.”

WHAT IS 'DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM'? BERNIE SANDERS' POLITICAL IDEOLOGY EXPLAINED

During his 2016 campaign, the album got some attention -- though not always positive, The Guardian reported.

However, he did make some royalties on the resurfaced music. In his 2016 financial disclosure documents, Sanders reported receiving $2,520.60, but in 2017 he only received $539.47.

Real estate

In 2015, Politico reported, Sanders owned at least two homes -- one in Vermont and one in Washington, D.C.

According to Forbes, Sanders and his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, bought a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house in Vermont in 2009 for $405,000. He also reportedly bought a one-bedroom town house in D.C. in 2007 for $488,999.

Sanders bought a third residence in 2016 -- a house on Lake Champlain in Vermont -- for $575,000, according to The Washington Post.

Pension and retirement savings

From 1981 to 1989, Sanders served as the mayor of Burlington, Vt. He receives an annual pension for that service and in 2017, he received $5,137, according to his financial disclosure documents.

According to estimates from Money, Sanders’ retirement savings total more than $1 million.

Other assets

All other assets on Sanders’ 2017 financial disclosure form, including stock and mutual fund accounts, were listed under his spouse, except for two joint accounts -- one with the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union valued at somewhere between $100,001 and $250,000, and one with the People's United Bank in Vermont -- its value is between $50,001 and $100,000.

Source: Fox News Politics

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The Latest: Suspect in shooting of Texas trooper arrested

The Latest on a standoff following the shooting of a Texas state trooper (all times local):

7:40 a.m.

Authorities say a person suspected of shooting and wounding a Texas state trooper has been taken into custody following a standoff at an apartment complex near Dallas.

Lonny Haschel, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman, said in an email that a SWAT team arrested 42-year-old Bryan M. Cahill, of Frisco, shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday after the nearly 15-hour standoff.

He says Cahill was taken to a hospital for treatment of serious injuries and that he'll eventually be charged with aggravated assault of a police officer.

Haschel says Cahill fired shots at officers multiple times during the standoff at the Frisco apartment complex.

He said earlier that a driver — later identified as Cahill — shot and wounded the trooper Friday afternoon during a traffic stop before fleeing to the apartment complex, and that trooper underwent surgery that doctors said "went well."

___

6:25 a.m.

Authorities say a Texas state trooper is recovering following surgery after being shot by a person who fled a traffic stop in a Dallas suburb.

The Texas Department of Public Safety says via Twitter that the shooter remains barricaded inside an apartment early Saturday, more than 16 hours after the shooting.

Authorities say the unidentified trooper had tried to pull over a car for a traffic violation at 2:15 p.m. Friday.

DPS spokesman Lonny Haschel says the driver fled north along a highway to a Frisco apartment complex.

Authorities say after the vehicle stopped, the trooper was shot. Haschel says the trooper underwent surgery and "physicians say it went well."

Frisco police say residents who live around the complex where the shooter is barricaded should remain indoors.

___

3:20 a.m.

Authorities say a Texas state trooper is recovering following surgery after being shot by a person who fled a traffic stop in a Dallas suburb.

The Texas Department of Public Safety says via Twitter that the shooter remains barricaded inside an apartment early Saturday, more than 12 hours after the shooting.

Authorities say the unidentified trooper had tried to pull over a car for a traffic violation at 2:15 p.m. Friday.

DPS spokesman Lonny Haschel says the driver fled north along a highway to a Frisco apartment complex.

Authorities say after the vehicle stopped, the trooper was shot. Haschel says the trooper underwent surgery and "physicians say it went well."

Frisco police say residents who live around the complex where the shooter is barricaded should remain indoors.

Source: Fox News National

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Trump budget to set stage for new wall battle; Bernie mum on Green New Deal at rally

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Developing now, Monday, March 11, 2019

NEW CONGRESSIONAL BATTLE AHEAD OVER TRUMP BUDGET - AND WALL FUNDING: A new showdown is brewing in Congress as President Trump will request a total of $8.6 billion in new border wall funding as part of the White House's upcoming budget proposal for the next fiscal year, to be released on Monday ... Trump will look to secure $5 billion from Congress for the Department of Homeland Security, plus $3.6 billion from the military construction budget. The request comes on top of the $8.1 billion Trump already has access to, which includes money he's trying to shift from military accounts after declaring a national emergency. The request faces all-but-certain rejection in Congress amid a growing crisis at the southern border, since Democrats control the House and spending bills in the GOP-led Senate need bipartisan support.

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VICTIMS ID'ED IN DEADLY ETHIOPIAN PLANE CRASH: Families from 35 countries are grieving as the victims in the deadly Ethiopian plane crash that left 157 dead are slowly being identified ... Three Austrian physicians. The co-founder of an international aid organization. A career ambassador. The wife and children of a Slovak legislator. A Nigerian-born Canadian college professor, author and satirist. They were all among the passengers who died Sunday morning when the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, Kenya. The airline has said eight Americans were killed; their names have not yet been released.

Rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019. A spokesman says Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as a safety precaution, following the crash of one of its planes in which 157 people were killed. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

Rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019. A spokesman says Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as a safety precaution, following the crash of one of its planes in which 157 people were killed. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

NEW HAMPSHIRE FEELS THE BERN, DOESN'T GO GREEN: Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday returned to New Hampshire, the state that launched him into political orbit in 2016, and repeatedly targeted President Trump in a nearly hour-long speech ... The 2020 presidential candidate pushed his progressive proposals, such as criminal justice reform, the “Medicare-for-all” single-payer health care plan and universal affordable childcare, and once again vowed “to make public colleges and universities tuition free.” However, Sanders made no mention of the Green New Deal, the sweeping proposal beloved by progressives but ridiculed by many Republicans that aims to transform the country’s economy to fight climate change.

THE TALE OF THE R. KELLY TAPE? - R. Kelly could face new trouble as attorney Gloria Allred said Sunday that a client had turned a tape over to law enforcement that appears to feature embattled singer sexually abusing underage girls ... Allred's client, Gary Dennis, said in a press conference on Sunday that he doesn't know personally R. Kelly and doesn't know from where the tape originated. He said that he found the video while cleaning out a collection he'd had for years. Dennis alleged that a man who appeared to be Kelly was on the video performing sexual acts with young girls. Kelly's attorney denied all the allegations in a statement to TMZ. He already faces 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse in connection to three girls and one woman.

THE SOUNDBITE

'FOX DERANGEMENT SYNDROME' -  "There is a disconnect here... There is a bit of Fox derangement syndrome with a section of the left. There are a lot of candidates and a lot of people in the Democratic Party who realize the power of the viewership and the power of the fairness of the news operation. But often they are drowned out by the loud voices on the left side of the party." – Bret Baier, on "Media Buzz," discussing the Democratic National Committee's decision to bar Fox News from hosting any of its primary presidential debates and hoping they will reconsider. WATCH

TODAY'S MUST-READS
Omar's comments threaten to divide district's Somali, Jewish residents: reports.
NYC Mayor de Blasio seen flapping to R. Kelly’s ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ amid child abuse claims.
2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg slams Pence, asks how he 'became a cheerleader for the porn star presidency.'
ICYMI: CNN to be sued for more than $250M over 'vicious' and 'direct attacks' on Covington Catholic student: lawyer

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS
Trish Regan: American capitalism is under attack.
Kudlow: No reason to 'obsess' about budget deficit.
Elizabeth Warren pushes Amazon breakup, backs away from socialism at SXSW.

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 now.

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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: Special guests include: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., blasts Reagan, capitalism and political moderates; reaction from Peggy Grande, former executive assistant to President Reagan. Meet the Marine Corps veteran who's doing his part in the recovery from the deadly Alabama tornadoes by saving American flags, one home at a time. Trump supporters create their own "Yelp" for MAGA-friendly restaurants.

Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: Joe Lieberman, former U.S. senator from Connecticut and Democratic VP nominee.

Fox News @ Night, 11 p.m. ET: An interview with Angela Yee, DJ Envy and Charlamagne tha God, co-hosts of the syndicated radio show, "The Breakfast Club."

On Fox Business:

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Special guests include: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News senior judicial analyst; U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas; comedian Joe Piscopo; Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China."

Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: Special guests include: Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party and member of the European Parliament.

Making Money with Charles Payne, 2 p.m. ET: Erin Gibbs, equity chief investment officer of S&P Investment Advisory Services.

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: "Mueller Report Released Soon" - Rumors are swirling that the Mueller investigation is coming to its conclusion fairly soon. Fox News' Garrett Tenney gives an update on the status of the Russia probe. Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean has a newly released tell-all book about her life and career called “Mostly Sunny.” She shares a sneak peek. Plus, commentary by Fox News medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel.

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: The battle over Trump's proposed budget and funding for his border wall and the latest in the 2020 presidential race will be the top topics of discussion with guests Mercedes Schlapp, the White House director of strategic communications; U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio. Michael Goodwin, New York Post columnist, on whether Democrats have finally gone too far.

#TheFlashback
2014: In an extraordinary public accusation, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., declares the CIA interfered with and then tried to intimidate a congressional investigation into the agency's possible use of torture in terror probes during the Bush administration.
1959: The Lorraine Hansberry drama "A Raisin in the Sun" opens at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater.
1954: The U.S. Army charges that Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and his subcommittee's chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. (The confrontation would culminate in the famous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings.)

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

Source: Fox News National

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Fox News Poll 3/27/19

Source: Fox News Politics

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Pompeo hopes North Korea’s Kim does ‘right thing’ on nuclear weapons in parliament speech

U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo speaks to the media during the NATO Foreign Minister's Meeting in Washington
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to the media during the NATO Foreign Minister's Meeting at the State Department in Washington, U.S., April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

April 5, 2019

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday he hoped North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would use a meeting of the country’s parliament next week to state publicly “it would be the right thing” for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly is due to hold its first meeting this year on Thursday and could feature the first public comments from Kim about a second summit between him and U.S. President Donald Trump Hanoi in February that collapsed.

“It’s something that’s an annual event where the leader of North Korea speaks to his people,” Pompeo told “CBS This Morning.” “We’ll watch very closely what he says.” 

“I don’t expect there’ll be great surprise,” Pompeo said, “but I do hope that he will share his sentiment, his sentiment that says: We – I believe, as the leader of North Korea, I believe the right thing to do is for us to engage with the United States to denuclearize our country.”

Pompeo said U.S.-North Korea diplomatic channels remained open and the two sides have “had conversations after Hanoi about how to move forward,” but he did not elaborate.

He said he was “confident” there would be a third summit between Trump and Kim but did not have a timetable although he hoped it would be soon.

Pompeo stressed though that economic sanctions would not be lifted until North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons.

Pompeo said on Monday he hoped the two leaders could meet again “in the coming months … in a way that we can achieve a substantive first step or a substantive big step along the path to denuclearization.”

The Hanoi summit, the second between Trump and Kim in less than a year, fell apart over a failure to reconcile North Korean demands for sanctions relief with U.S. demands for Kim to give up a nuclear weapons program that now threatens the United States.

North Korea has warned since that it is considering suspending talks and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests, in place since 2017, unless Washington makes concessions.

According to a document seen by Reuters last week, on the day their Hanoi talks collapsed, Trump handed Kim a piece of paper that included a blunt call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States. Analysts said the move was probably seen by the North Korean leader as insulting and provocative.

Next week’s North Korean parliament session will coincide with a visit to Washington by South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has pushed talks between the United States and North Korea in the past year and advocated sanctions relief.

Pompeo told CBS that the United States and South Korea had “worked closely together to enforce … sanctions.”

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: OANN

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Qatar sues Luxembourg, UAE, Saudi banks in FX manipulation case

FILE PHOTO: A man counts Qatari riyal notes at a money changer in Doha
FILE PHOTO: A man counts Qatari riyal notes at a money changer in Doha May 28, 2013. REUTERS/ Fadi Al-Assaad/File Photo

April 8, 2019

By Eric Knecht and Dmitry Zhdannikov

DOHA/LONDON (Reuters) – Qatar said on Monday it had filed lawsuits against three banks, accusing them of using what it called overseas currency manipulation to sabotage its economy in the wake of an Arab boycott against the country in 2017.

The cases, filed in London and New York, name Luxembourg-based Banque Havilland, the United Arab Emirates’ First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) and Saudi Arabia’s Samba Bank, a statement from Qatar’s government communications office said.

None of the banks had any immediate comment on the Qatari accusations.

Qatar said Banque Havilland tried to weaken the country’s riyal currency by submitting what the statement called fraudulent quotes to foreign-exchange platforms in New York, to disrupt indices and markets where significant Qatari assets and investors are located.

The statement did not go into detail about the accusations against FAB and Samba Bank, nor did it state the extent of the alleged damage or compensation being sought.

The lawsuits are the latest fallout in a protracted Gulf row that began in 2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt imposed an economic boycott on Qatar in 2017, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants and Iran.

Qatar, a small Gulf state but major gas exporter, denies the charges and says the boycott is an attempt to impinge on its sovereignty.

Its central bank began a probe into alleged foreign-exchange manipulation in late 2017 after it said unnamed banks were looking to attack the riyal by trading it between themselves offshore at artificially weak levels – to create an illusion Qatar’s economy was crumbling.

The riyal has been pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 3.64 for more than a decade, but in the initial months of the boycott it traded as low as 3.8950 offshore before returning to normal levels.

With more than $300 billion in central bank reserves and sovereign wealth fund assets, bankers say Qatar has sufficient financial firepower to block attacks on its currency.

(Reporting by Eric Knecht and Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dale Hudson)

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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