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Exclusive: Grab targets another $2 billion funding this year: CEO

A Grab motorbike helmet is displayed during Grab's fifth anniversary news conference in Singapore
A Grab motorbike helmet is displayed during Grab's fifth anniversary news conference in Singapore June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su

April 8, 2019

By Aradhana Aravindan and Anshuman Daga

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Grab expects to raise another $2 billion from strategic investors this year, the CEO of Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing firm said, just weeks after it announced funding of over $4.5 billion in the region’s largest private financing round.

“We expect to raise $6.5 billion of total capital this year,” Anthony Tan told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

The funding will be a mix of debt and equity, the co-founder said, adding that Grab is looking to rapidly expand its business in financial services and food delivery.

Grab is also looking to make at least six investments or acquisitions this year, said Tan, adding that the Singapore-headquartered company had no need for a stock market listing.

Grab’s massive financing round started shortly after it bought Uber’s Southeast Asian operations in March 2018 and, in return, Uber acquired a 27.5 percent stake in Grab’s business.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and Anshuman Daga)

Source: OANN

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Pavlich on Kamala Harris’ gun control push: ‘She’s going after the Second Amendment rights of everyday Americans’

Katie Pavlich has weighed in on Sen. Kamala Harris’ pledge that, if elected president, she will sign a series of executive orders on gun control if Congress fails to pass comprehensive legislation in her first 100 days in the Oval Office.

On “Fox & Friends” Wednesday, Pavlich said Harris should be more concerned with fixing the problems "that are already in the system of government not doing its job," not with going after legal gun owners who are obeying the law.

During a town hall hosted by CNN Monday night, Harris, D-Calif, said that if a bill from Congress did not make it to her desk, she would unilaterally mandate background checks for customers purchasing a firearm from any dealer who sells more than five guns a year.

KAMALA HARRIS PLEDGES EXECUTIVE ORDER ON GUN CONTROL IF CONGRESS DOESN'T ACT IN HER FIRST 100 DAYS

Dealers who violate the law, she said, would have their licenses revoked. The other executive orders would prohibit fugitives from purchasing a firearm or weapon, as well as close the loophole that allows some domestic abusers to purchase a firearm if their victim is an unwedded partner.

“As we’ve seen in the past with Democrats and a number of other Democrats on the campaign trail now, when they say ‘common sense’ or ‘reasonable gun safety laws,’ they're actually talking about gun bans,” Pavlich said.

“It was interesting to me to watch Kamala Harris speak more harshly of Second Amendment rights than she did about the Boston bomber voting and about felons who are in prison now. She was more willing to convict gun owners in saying ‘you don't have the courage to actually pass gun safety laws,’ when the fact is, that it’s actually pro-gun groups and regular everyday Americans who have been at the forefront of making sure that felons don't have guns, putting safety into their communities through education in different programs, training programs for children, to make sure that they're not around guns.”

Pavlich added: “So when she’s proposing universal background checks, what she’s really doing is saying, that if you're a father who wants to pass down a gun to your son you can't do that unless you go through some kind of bureaucratic process or get a license to do so from the federal government."

KAMALA HARRIS ADMITS 'UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES' IN ANTI-TRUANCY LAW WHILE SHE WAS CALIFORNIA AG

"And when she talks about gun safety laws, she’s really talking about a ban on assault weapons, which, if you look at the data, according to the Clinton Justice Department, that didn't actually have an effect on crime, and the majority of crimes in this country that are committed with guns are committed with handguns. And so when it comes to actually addressing the issue of violent crime and firearms, she’s going after the Second Amendment rights of regular, everyday Americans. She’s not actually addressing the issue.”

Pavlich said she doesn’t think Harris’ pledge would be popular in several states.

“Gun confiscation, gun control by executive fiat, taking away the Second Amendment rights of Americans through tyrannical executive orders without any kind of due process. That doesn't play well in places like Ohio and Michigan, even Wisconsin,” she said.

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“The reason why we're talking about gun control in a political sense is because we have seen these mass shootings which are absolutely horrific and awful but if you actually look at the facts of these cases, it is the federal government and the local government failing and they’re using Second Amendment rights and law-abiding Americans as a scapegoat for it,” said Pavlich.

“Parkland is the perfect example of that. Government failed at every single level, the local school district level, the local sheriff level, and the federal government level. When you saw the church shooting in South Carolina, Dylann Roof, he wasn’t supposed to be able to pass a background check and yet he did, he slipped through the cracks in the FBI background check system.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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On federal logorrhea


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On the roster: On federal logorrhea - I’ll Tell You What: Shut up, they explained - House Dems huddle; Pelosi wants Mueller messaging - Biden will hit Va., Pa. on announcement day - ‘The fluffy vigilante’ 

ON FEDERAL LOGORRHEA
When the Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday on whether the Trump administration can include a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census, most of the debate will center on whether doing so would skew the results by discouraging immigrants from participating.

(The discussion will also no doubt include the ways in which Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the cabinet member in charge, has screwed things up.)  

But what really matters here isn’t just the latest in the ongoing antagonism between the Trump administration and blue states but rather the larger trend: An increasing number of Americans from all ethnicities and origins don’t trust their government enough to reply to its questions.

Here’s the WSJ: “Survey-response rates have been falling over recent decades. In 1990, when Americans were asked to participate in the Labor Department’s population survey, which is used to calculate the monthly unemployment rate, 4% declined. As of 2018, the nonresponse rate nearly quadrupled, to 15.2%. Another survey, used to calculate inflation, asks Americans to track spending on goods and services. In 1985, 86% agreed to help. Today, 61% do.”

Fewer responses mean less reliable data and less reliable data means less- or wrongly-informed decision making.

Some of it may just be sloth and some of it may be a general aversion to surveys, a trend that afflicted private-sector pollsters, too. But given the corresponding drop in Americans’ overall trust and confidence in government institutions, it’s hard to believe it’s not a significant factor.     

We can blame the distrust of citizens for the government on a lot of things, existing as it does within the general public paranoia of the information age. But we can also blame it on the fact that the government has often been unworthy of our trust.  

The government did not truly, systematically start domestic propaganda until the First World War.

For as long as we have been a nation, controversy has surrounded the use of government resources to tell partial or sometimes even entirely untrue stories to the same citizens on whom the government is supposed to be dependent.

In fact, there are none who would say it is a wholly good thing. There are many, though, who say it is at least sometimes needful.

And in that claim they have been right many times. Our back-to-back-to-back victories in the major global conflicts of the 20th century will stand in history long past the end of this millennium. They would not have been possible with a government that was entirely servile and transparent.

They wrote the Constitution in secret for a reason, people.

Sometimes effective and reasonable governance, especially during periods of national threat or dire uncertainty, requires the government to operate at some distance from the citizens who elected it. Abraham Lincoln still has his critics, but there are precious few outside the ranks of honest-to-goodness Confederate sympathizers who wish he had been even more restrained in his defense of the republic.

But Woodrow Wilson has a different story to tell.

He created the first ever organization inside the United States government that had the sole purpose of misleading the American people. If our enemies in the Great War could use mass media to direct the thoughts and ambitions of their citizens, would we rather lose the fight by self-restraint? If “the world must be made safe for democracy,” then maybe you have to fiddle with the democratic process just enough to make sure we the people don’t make bad choices?

The creation of the Committee of Public Information in 1917 is a watershed that does not get enough attention in our view of modern history – a true departure from the first 128 years of our history.

Does the government have a role to play in reinforcing the attitude and outlook reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? You bet. Does the military have the need to encourage able, sound recruits or motivate conscripts? We should hope so.

This is a government designed to serve the people of this particular nation. The government we elect gets to pick our flag, our symbols, our currency and our even our name.

Moreover, there is an unwritten, yet tradition-bound role of our national political leaders in the major and minor civic sacrosanctities. Somebody has to throw out the first pitch, why not the guy who has George Washington’s job?

But anything beyond that, especially that which is funded by taxes paid by the same citizens whom the government is trying to manipulate, are found objectionable by many — especially if the political party opposite of theirs is the one doing the manipulation.

Most of the object of the American system is on making sure that the government is responsive to the direction and needs of the populace. But the object of the Bill of Rights is substantially about what the government can tell the people. The government cannot people what to say. The government cannot tell the people with whom they will associate. The government cannot tell the people what and where to worship.

But on seemingly every issue not circumscribed by the Constitution, the government tells and tells and tells us. Happy Asian-Pacific American Heritage/Celebrate Diversity/Distracted Driving Awareness/Donate Life Awareness/Jazz Appreciation Month to all who celebrate…

And when the executive branch changes hands between parties, the priorities and spin can turn on a dime. One day it’s all about energy efficiency, the next day it’s all about energy production. And nearly all of it, even the stuff that isn’t obvious cant, has a political motivation within it.

Just image when the Founders would have said about the resources of a $4-trillion-a-year federal government being used to employ an army of flacks and spin-meisters the very purpose of which is to shape the way Americans think, act and feel – including about the government itself. The Constitution did not contemplate the communications director.

No matter. The howitzers pounding out this pap will blaze on undiminished. And few will likely consider the fact that if the government wanted to hear more from citizens on surveys and elsewhere, it might be wise to listen instead of talk once in a while.

THE RULEBOOK: BUT OTHER THAN THAT, IT’S GREAT  
“To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.” – Alexander HamiltonFederalist No. 6

TIME OUT: SCOOT
Smithsonian: “The Online Bike Museum explains that the Autoped, the first mass-produced motorized scooter ride in the U.S., was ‘[e]ssentially an enlarged child’s scooter with an engine mounted over the front wheel.’ Though some reports claimed it could reach speeds of 35 miles per hour, the steering column operated the clutch and brake, which the museum noted made the ride ‘unsteady’ when it pushed 20 mph. Later, a battery-operated version of the Autoped was made available when the Everready Battery Company bought the outfit. The concept of the scooter stretches back at least a century before to 1817 and Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun of Germany. After he debuted his early two-wheeled, human-powered ride, the velocipede concept was quickly spun off into bicycles, tricycles and kick scooters. … Come the turn of the 19th century, battery-powered machines were also entering into the fold; Ogden Bolton Jr. was issued a U.S. patent for his battery-powered bicycle in 1895.”

Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions.

SCOREBOARD
Trump job performance 
Average approval:
 42.8 percent
Average disapproval: 52 percent
Net Score: -9.2 points
Change from one week ago: down 0.8 points 
[Average includes: Fox News: 45% approve - 51% disapprove; Monmouth University: 40% approve - 54% disapprove; Gallup: 45% approve - 51% disapprove; GU Politics/Battleground: 43% approve - 52% disapprove; IBD: 41% approve - 52% disapprove.]

I’LL TELL YOU WHAT: SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED 
On Friday, Dana Perino and Chris Stirewalt discussed the findings of the Mueller report, what will happen to Democrats once Joe Biden enters the 2020 race, and Dana shares a musical hit from when The Five were in Nashville. Plus, Dana asks Chris mailbag questions and fires off some trivia questions. LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE HERE

HOUSE DEMS HUDDLE; PELOSI WANTS MUELLER MESSAGING
Politico: “Now that the dust has started to settle after last week’s release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report, Democrats will try to figure out how to move forward. House Democrats, who are in the middle of a two-week recess, will hold a conference call later today so the caucus can start to plot their next steps and sharpen their strategy in a post-Mueller world. Per a Dem aide, the call is expected to focus on the ‘need to see the full report and need to hear from Mueller ASAP.’ Democrats have already made some strategic moves, formally issuing a subpoena on Friday for the full report and all its underlying materials — an immediate top priority for the caucus. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also rejected an offer from the DOJ to view a less-redacted version of the report, arguing that every lawmaker has a right to view the entire report…”

Schiff hedges on impeachment - WaPo: ‘House Democrats will hold a meeting to discuss whether to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a key lawmaker said Sunday. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that the House Democratic caucus will meet in the coming weeks to discuss the matter. ‘That’s going to be a very consequential decision and one that I’m going to reserve judgment on until we’ve had a chance to fully deliberate on it,’ Schiff said. In an appearance on ABC News’s ‘This Week,’ Schiff said that although the findings of the Mueller report are ‘serious and damning,’ he does not believe the Senate would convict Trump if the House were to impeach him. ‘Now, it may be that we undertake an impeachment nonetheless. I think what we are going to have to decide as a caucus is: What is the best thing for the country?’ he said.”

Trump sues to block probe of his business practices - WaPo: “President Trump and his business sued House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) in a bid to block a congressional subpoena of his financial records on Monday. The lawsuit seeks a court order to prevent Trump’s accounting firm from complying with what his lawyers say is an improper use of subpoena power by congressional Democrats. … Last week, Cummings subpoenaed Mazars USA, an accounting firm long used by Trump. For more than a decade, Mazars and a predecessor firm signed off on financial statements for Trump that he used when seeking loans. Some of the statements include frequent exaggerations or inaccuracies and were accompanied by a note from the firm saying it was not responsible for the accuracy of the information.”

BIDEN WILL HIT VA., PA. ON ANNOUNCEMENT DAY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Two sources familiar with Biden’s preliminary plans said the former vice president will announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president on Wednesday in Charlottesville, Va., the site of a clash in August 2017 between white supremacists and counterprotesters that claimed one life. Biden then will fly to Pittsburgh for a rally in the afternoon and then come to Philadelphia, where he will hold a rally at the Art Museum, though the sources said the plans have been shifting in recent days and could change again. David L. Cohen, a Comcast senior executive vice president and an influential Democratic figure, is planning a fund-raiser for Biden at his Philadelphia home Thursday, one sign of the support the former vice president can expect from much of the party establishment, particularly in Pennsylvania. Former Gov. Ed Rendell said he would support Biden, making him one of the most prominent figures in a host of Keystone State insiders expected to do the same.”

Buttigieg likens Bernie backers to Trump fans - Fox News: “Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Friday said that President Trump’s supporters were similar to Bernie Sanders’ supporters because they both feel marginalized and want to tear down the system. The comments came during a campaign stop in downtown Nashua, N.H. before a crowd of mostly high school students, according to The Washington Examiner. The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind. said that a sense of ‘anger and disaffection’ grows from neighborhoods and families who are struggling to get by despite reports of a healthy economy. ‘It just kind of turns you against the system in general and then you’re more likely to want to vote to blow up the system, which could lead you to somebody like Bernie and it could lead you to somebody like Trump. That’s how we got where we are,’ Buttigieg said. Buttigieg drew a distinction between himself and the 77-year-old Vermont Senator…”

Can Buttigieg turn buzz into ballots? - AP: “There are no policy positions on his website. He has virtually no paid presence in the states that matter most. And his campaign manager is a high school friend with no experience in presidential politics. Welcome to the campaign of Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Indiana mayor who has suddenly become one of the hottest names in the Democrats’ presidential primary season. Yet there is an increasing urgency, inside and outside of the campaign, that his moment may pass if he doesn’t take swift action to build a national organization capable of harnessing the energy he’ll need to sustain his surge in the nine months or so before the first votes are cast. … Aware of the daunting road ahead, Buttigieg’s team is plowing forward with an ambitious push to expand his operation, attract new campaign cash and pound the airwaves with virtually every media opportunity available.”

A struggling Warren grabs impeachment issue - NYT: “Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has worked for months to find traction in a crowded Democratic presidential primary, stepped forward on Friday with a call to arms: President Trump must be impeached. What followed, generally, was conspicuous silence – and not just from her colleagues in Congress. After sidestepping the explosive issue of impeachment for months by citing the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, most of the other 17 Democratic presidential candidates have responded to the special counsel’s report with tentative remarks about impeaching Mr. Trump, demands for the unredacted Mueller findings, calls for further hearings or attempts to simply change the subject. Anything, that is, to avoid clearly answering the question of whether lawmakers should remove the president from office. … But some strategists and lawmakers say that a failed effort would only strengthen Mr. Trump’s re-election chances, allowing him to claim further vindication.”

Moulton becomes the fourth House member to join 2020 field - Politico: “Rep. Seth Moulton announced Monday that he is running for president, vowing to engage young people and military veterans and becoming the third Massachusetts politician to throw a hat into the 2020 ring. An Iraq veteran who led an unsuccessful effort to oust Nancy Pelosi from the House leadership last year, the 40-year-old Moulton has said he plans to run a campaign focused on national security and defense issues, which his campaign argues will make him a foil to President Donald Trump. Moulton was elected to Congress in 2014, after he upset former Democratic Rep. John Tierney in a primary fight. The Salem lawmaker is serving his third term. … Moulton's 2020 website went live on Monday morning, highlighting Moulton's positions on foreign policy and national security, jobs, health care, climate change and leadership. The website also has a store with T-shirts, hats and tote bags.”

THE SWAMP HEARTS TRUMP 2020
Politico: “Deep-pocketed Republicans who snubbed Donald Trump in 2016 are going all in for him in 2020, throwing their weight behind a newly created fundraising drive that’s expected to dump tens of millions into his reelection coffers. The effort involves scores of high-powered businessmen, lobbyists and former ambassadors who raised big money for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney – and who are now preparing to tap their expansive networks for Trump after rebuffing his first presidential bid. The project, which is closely modeled after the famed Pioneers network that helped to fuel Bush’s 2000 campaign, is slated to be formally unveiled on May 7, when well-connected Republican fundraisers from around the country descend on Washington for a closed-door event with Trump 2020 aides. … Party officials have been reaching out to top fundraisers in recent weeks and wooing them with the prospect of joining ‘raiser clubs,’ with names like 45 Club, Trump Train and Builders Club.”

Trump bashes Bernie in public, praises in private - Daily Beast: “To his rally-goers, Donald Trump openly craves a 2020 showdown with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), salivating at the prospect of getting to run against an elderly, self-declared democratic socialist. But in private, his view of a potential run against the senator is a lot more complex and less swaggeringly self-assured. Those around the president say he’s been of two minds when the topic of facing Sanders in 2020 comes up. While he sees the senator as a vulnerable opponent, he also has offered begrudging respect for his political acumen. Trump will—sometimes unprompted—bring up Sanders’s own working-class support, and acknowledge that there is, in fact, potential for the senator to win over Trump voters with his populist appeal, three sources who’ve discussed this with the president tell The Daily Beast. The president has been impressed with Sanders’ ability to ignite his base and draw a large crowd, though not, in his words, as ‘good as Trump.’”

PLAY-BY-PLAY
Herman Cain withdraws from consideration for Federal Reserve seat - WaPo

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., announces successful surgery to treat prostate cancer - Politico

NRCC names first eight members to benefit from Patriot Program ahead of 2020 - Roll Call

Meet the 2020 spouses: The high-powered men and women behind the candidates - Fox News

AUDIBLE: LIKE, ARE WE TALKING ABOUT REAL PRIMO STUFF? 
“It depends on the stolen material.” – Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to President Trump, when asked by NBC News whether it is “okay for political campaigns to work with material stolen by foreign adversaries.”

FROM THE BLEACHERS
“Senators running for president who miss voting due to campaigning should have a pay cut for each missed vote!” – Michael Carter, Kenton County, Ky.

[Ed. note: I have never understood the desire some Americans have about getting members of Congress to work more days. I might even consider a bonus program that would give them bonus cash for every day spent outside of the capital! (I kid… mostly.) The problems with our legislative branch won’t be solved by having them spending more time in Washington. I’d instead say there’s probably a great deal to be said for members being with normal Americans. And I promise that for every vote in which they would be more than just padding, all five of the senators running would be there.]   

Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.

‘THE FLUFFY VIGILANTE’ 
Orlando Weekly: “In what is probably downtown Orlando's weirdest fight yet, someone dressed as the Easter Bunny ran into an ongoing brawl and beat up a man on Orange Avenue Sunday. An Orlando promoter who goes by Workkk caught the whole thing on video and told Orlando Weekly the fight started when a man bumped into a woman with dreads. The two were already punching each other when the fluffy vigilante suddenly jumped in and started swinging. … ‘As you can see the Easter rabbit been taking boxing classes,’ the promoter says. … The video shows the fight was quickly broken up by a bystander and a bike cop from Orlando Police. Orlando Weekly reached out to OPD for more information but did not receive an immediate comment.”

AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…
“In Trump World, the better angels are not in evidence.” – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the National Review on July 28, 2017.

Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Brianna McClelland contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Montenegrin authorities seize drugs on navy training ship

Montenegrin naval training ship
FILE PHOTO: Montenegrin naval training ship "Jadran" in Perast, Montenegro May 6, 2006. REUTERS/Stevo Vasiljevic

April 19, 2019

PODGORICA (Reuters) – Montenegrin military police have seized around 50 kilograms of drugs on board a naval training ship, hours before it was scheduled to take students on a training cruise, the defence ministry and local media said on Friday.

In a pre-dawn raid prompted by a tip-off, the military police found “tens of kilograms of matter that appears to be a psychoactive substance” inside Jadran, a sailing ship which was moored in the Adriatic port of Tivat, the ministry said.

Montenegrin navy divers have also searched the hull of the ship, it said in a statement.

The Podgorica-based daily Vijesti said authorities had seized as much as 50 kilograms of cocaine on board the vessel but that no arrests had been made.

Teachers and students of Montenegro’s Naval Faculty were not on board the vessel during the raid, the ministry said. They were expected to board the ship later and depart on a training cruise.

“Operatives of the police department and the military police … are taking steps to uncover the culprits,” the ministry said in a statement.

Jadran, once the main training ship of the now-defunct Yugoslav Naval Academy, was taken over by Montenegro’s navy after the country declared independence from Belgrade in 2006. It is used solely for training purposes.

Montenegro, a member of NATO, also aspires to join the European Union but it must first do more to tackle organized crime and corruption and to improve the rule of law.

(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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Midwest bracing for more 'unprecedented' flooding that has shattered record-high river levels

Residents in Kansas and Missouri were steeling themselves Monday for the deadly and “unprecedented” flooding that's already saturated large portions of the Midwest, mangling hundreds of homes and raising the Missouri River above record water levels in many areas.

In Atchison, Kansas, a city with a population of more than 10,000, businesses are reported to be piling up sandbags as the National Weather Service is forecasting river levels to reach 30 feet there later this week – something likely to prompt major flooding.

“It’s not looking good at all,” Sara Tull, a local resident, told KCTV. “I think it’s [going to] get us this time and I hate to say that.”

Gabe Schmidt, owner of Liquid Trucking, back right, travels by air boat with Glenn Wyles, top left, Mitch Snyder, bottom right, and Juan Jacobo, bottom left, as they survey damage from the flood waters of the Platte River, in Plattsmouth, Neb., on Sunday.

Gabe Schmidt, owner of Liquid Trucking, back right, travels by air boat with Glenn Wyles, top left, Mitch Snyder, bottom right, and Juan Jacobo, bottom left, as they survey damage from the flood waters of the Platte River, in Plattsmouth, Neb., on Sunday.

NEBRASKA FARMER WHO DIED TRYING TO RESCUE A STRANGER FROM FLOODWATERS IS HAILED AS A HERO

Some of the city’s residents have already left for higher ground. Other communities in states like Nebraska are still reeling Monday from floods that swept through the region in recent days. And serious flooding is expected to continue there over the next few days, despite river depths leveling off in some parts, the Associated Press is reporting.

"This area's had flooding before but not of this magnitude," said Greg London of the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office, where 500 homes are estimated to be damaged. "This is unprecedented."

The damage in Sarpy County followed breaches of levees along the Platte River on Thursday and Saturday, and a Missouri River levee break on Thursday. The two rivers converge there.

In Iowa, the Missouri River reached 30.2 feet Sunday in Fremont County in the state's far southwestern corner, two feet above the record set in 2011. Around 250 people in the towns of Bartlett and Thurman were being evacuated as levees were breached and overtopped.

County Emergency Management Director Mike Crecelius said it wasn't just the amount of the water, it was the swiftness of the current that created a danger.

"This wasn't a gradual rise," Crecelius said. "It's flowing fast and it's open country — there's nothing there to slow it down."

EXTREME FLOODING HINDERS RESCUES ACROSS MIDWEST

Lucinda Parker of Iowa Homeland Security & Emergency Management told the Associated Press that nearly 2,000 people overall have been evacuated at eight Iowa locations since flooding began late last week.

The floods were prompted by a late-season “bomb cyclone” that brought heavy rains and eventual snowmelt to the Midwest.

Hundreds of people also remain out of their homes in Nebraska, where floodwaters reached record levels at 17 locations.

The Missouri River has flooded Offutt Air Force Base, with about one-third of it underwater on Sunday. Spokeswoman Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake told the Omaha World-Herald that 60 buildings, mostly on the south end of the base, have been damaged, including about 30 completely inundated with as much as 8 feet of water.

At least two Nebraskans have died in the floodwaters while nearly 300 more have been rescued.

Aleido Rojas Galan, 52, of Norfolk, was swept away Friday night in southwestern Iowa, when the vehicle he was in went around a barricade. Two others in the vehicle survived — one by clinging to a tree. On Thursday, Nebraska farmer James Wilke, 50, died when a bridge collapsed as he used a tractor to try and reach stranded motorists.

Two men remained missing Monday. A Norfolk man was seen on top of his flooded car late Thursday before being swept away. Water also swept away a man after a dam collapse.

Downstream in St. Joseph, Missouri, home to 76,000 people, volunteers are helping to fill sandbags to help secure a levee protecting an industrial area. Calls were out for even more volunteers in hopes of filling 150,000 sandbags by Tuesday, when the Missouri River is expected to climb to 27 feet — 10 feet above technical flood stage.

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The rising Mississippi River also was creating concern. The Mississippi was already at major flood level along the Iowa-Illinois border, closing roads and highways and swamping thousands of acres of farmland. Moderate Mississippi River flooding was expected at several Missouri cities, including St. Louis.

Flooding has also been reported in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, officials said residents who evacuated their homes could return now that floodwaters have receded there.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Authorities: Death toll rises to 30 in Colombia landslide

The death toll in a devastating landslide that flowed over homes in a small community in southwestern Colombia has risen to 30.

National disaster response agency director Eduardo Gonzalez says workers initially recovered the bodies of 17 people following the slide early Sunday in Las Rosas, a town about 400 miles (630 kilometers) from Bogota.

Rescue workers have since found the lifeless remains of another 13 more.

Heavy rains have been pounding much of Colombia, swelling rivers, ruining crops and triggering mudslides destroying homes.

Authorities say a total of 47 people have been killed, including those in Las Rosas.

More than 150 rescue workers from the Red Cross and other agencies have been digging through the debris in search of survivors.

Source: Fox News World

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Turkish man holding umbrella lifted almost 13 feet in air by blustering winds, shocking video shows

A man in southern Turkey was taken on a wild ride after strong winds lifted him — and the umbrella he was holding onto — almost 13 feet in the air.

Security footage released Wednesday shows Sadik Kocadalli and two other men in a market in the province of Osmaniye rushing to prevent a patio umbrella on wheels from blowing away as heavy gusts of wind hit.

MODERATE EARTHQUAKE HITS TURKEY; NO CASUALTIES REPORTED

Kocadalli, a vegetable market worker, told Turkish news agency DHA that he had been working when he noticed the umbrella swaying.

“When the wind got stronger I noticed the umbrella moving so I tried to save it from flying away by stepping on it. And when I stepped on it, it lifted,” he told DHA.

He can be seen in the video stepping onto the platform of the umbrella, using his full body weight to keep it down — to no avail. Instead, the wind picked up the umbrella with Kocadalli still on it.

TURKEY: 3 WOMEN, 1 INFANT DIE AS MIGRANT BOAT SINKS

He said he flew almost 13 feet before he jumped down. Thankfully, Kocadalli wasn’t injured.

“It went up three, four meters [between 9-13 feet] and I thought, 'this won't work' so I jumped down,” Kocadalli said. “Thankfully, I am okay. The umbrella hit a pole and fell back down.”

However, the umbrella landed on another man who was knocked unconscious, according to The Independent. The landing umbrella broke Mehmet Ali Bicakci's foot and ribs, the news outlet reported.

The DHA reported the strong winds were a result of a 10-minute tornado that hit the area.

Source: Fox News World

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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

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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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