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Detention center opened but migrants too frightened to leave as war reaches Tripoli

Migrants are seen at the Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tajora shelter center in Tripoli
Migrants are seen at the Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tajora shelter center in Tripoli, Libya April 24,2019. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

April 24, 2019

By Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan officials have opened the doors of a detention center for illegal migrants in Tripoli, but frightened Somalis and other sub-Saharan Africans told Reuters they had decided to stay for fear of getting caught up in fighting engulfing the capital.

“We don’t want to leave…we have no place to go,” said a 20-year old migrant who gave his name as Daoud, sitting on a mattress in a warehouse where 550 migrants have been held. His pregnant wife sits in a different room.

More than 3,600 jailed migrants have been trapped in the capital since forces from the east of the country started an advance to capture it, the United Nations says.

On Tuesday, some 12 migrants were wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on them in a detention center in a suburb fought over by both sides, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said. Details remain unclear. The injured migrants are being treated in a hospital. Amnesty International called for the incident to be investigated as a war crime.

In the quieter eastern Tajoura suburb, the manager opened the gate of his detention center housing migrants from sub-Saharan countries such as Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and some Arab countries. Everyone stayed, surviving on one meal of pasta a day. On good day they get two.

Large parts of Libya have been lawless since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and the country has become the main transit point for hundreds of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East attempting the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Officials have been accused in the past of mistreating detainees who are held by the thousands as part of European-backed efforts to curb smuggling.

At the Tajoura detention center, authorities have not supplied any food or water since before fighting started last week, said Nour Eldine Qarilti, the director.

“We have not received any assistance from all international organizations,” he told Reuters. “Some local NGOs still support us with simple needs but it’s not enough.”

Hundreds of migrants lay on mattresses. Others were using a kitchen to cook lunch for others for a small fee.

According the United Nations, Libya is now hosting more than 700,000 people who have fled their homelands, often trekking through desert in pursuit of their dream of crossing to a better life in Europe.

They then try find smugglers to put them on boats. But with Italy and France helping to beef up the Libyan Coast Guard, most now get caught before reaching Europe.

(Writing by Ahmed Elumami and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Peter Graff)

Source: OANN

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Women running the money? Rarely at hedge funds

Clare Flynn Levy, CEO of Essentia Analytics is seen in this undated handout photo
Clare Flynn Levy, CEO of Essentia Analytics is seen in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters March 28, 2019. Clare Flynn Levy/Handout via REUTERS

March 29, 2019

By Maiya Keidan and Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) – Generous salary and juicy bonus? Check. Client meetings at private members’ club? Check. Swanky Mayfair office? Check. Company maternity scheme? Maybe, we’ll get back to you.

In the competition for talent, the hedge fund industry still has an edge over many other areas of finance, except, it would seem, when it comes to employing women.

Just seven women were hired or promoted last year as investment executives at 20 of Britain’s top private hedge funds, the lowest level in at least a decade, according to a Reuters analysis of regulatory filings. They took on 82 men in that period.

Of all the places to work in hedge funds, the investment team is the most coveted. Portfolio managers or traders decide where to invest client money and are traditionally the highest-paid members of staff. Such roles are a launch pad for star managers to set up their own firms in the future, establishing the next generation of hedge funds.

In Britain, these roles are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under a category known as the ‘CF 30’ function, which also comprises senior marketing jobs.

A Reuters analysis of CF 30 filings for 76 financial firms showed hedge funds registered women at a fraction of the rate of other finance companies.

(For an interactive version of the graphic showing registration rates across financial firms in Britain, click here https://tmsnrt.rs/2HA0lb3)

Hedge funds say they struggle to find women to work as portfolio managers and point out that women are better represented in other areas, including compliance and legal counsel. These are middle-office or back-office positions, rarely involved in investment calls.

People who work for or in financial services say more female candidates would emerge for trading positions if hedge funds cast the net wider for potential candidates, and offered better maternity packages and mentorships.

“Hedge funds will all say they don’t get female applicants but are they even looking for them? Do they care? The data suggests no they don’t,” said Yasmine Chinwala of think tank New Financial.

Unlike the rest of the financial sector, where large, listed companies are now required to disclose pay gaps between men and women, and are under public pressure to have more women in senior roles, hedge funds can mostly operate below the radar.

Usually privately-owned and run by their founders, they are not the target of government drives to improve female representation in finance.

“Public scrutiny, and more specifically, mandated government-backed scrutiny … delivers results,” said Chinwala. “These sectors have shown they are not going to make significant changes themselves without a big, concerted, external push.”

INVESTING BY NUMBERS

Three of the 20 top British hedge funds covered in the Reuters analysis commented about their record of hiring women.

“We have women represented across all functional areas of the firm as well as in senior management positions which are not covered by CF 30 registrations, which represents a small proportion of our staff,” a spokeswoman for Marshall Wace said.

The firm has registered three women in the CF 30 category since 2009 compared with 40 men over the same period.

“Algebris continues to invest in women’s careers, developing talent and creating the next generation of female leaders in finance,” said a spokesman for the firm, which registered nine women and 24 men as a CF 30 since 2009.

Emso Asset Management said 35 percent of its employees were women and said it paid employees for the first 26 weeks of their 52 week maternity leave. It has registered nine women and 30 men as a CF 30 since 2009.

“Our diversity in employee base reflects the diversity of markets within which we make investments,” Chief Operating Officer Rory McGregor said in an emailed statement.

Emso was the only one of the 20 hedge funds to comment publicly on its maternity pay.

The 10 largest U.S. hedge funds with a UK office – including Citadel and Millennium Management – registered slightly more women than their British counterparts, at nearly 13 percent, in 2018, according to the Reuters analysis.

A spokesman for Millennium declined to comment. Citadel did not respond to requests for comment.

CF 30 is an imperfect measure of diversity because firms can have a different interpretation of the FCA guidelines as to who should be registered.

Some firms register investor relations staff as CF 30. Women tend to be well-represented in such jobs, meaning that the CF 30 category may exaggerate the actual number of women hired or promoted to be traders.

In the decade covered by the Reuters analysis, the ratio of women employed under the CF 30 designation by 20 of the top private British hedge funds never went above 23 percent and averaged 16 percent.

WHY TRY?

There are no comparable figures on hedge funds’ portfolio manager hires in the United States, but data on U.S. firms founded in the last few years show the industry remains dominated by men. Women-led firms managed only about 3 percent of the assets in new funds launched between 2013 and 2017, according to figures from Hedge Fund Intelligence.

Jane Buchan, who spent nearly 20 years allocating money as chief executive of PAAMCO, one of the world’s biggest investors in hedge funds, says female money managers have to work harder to get investors to trust them.

“Women need to outperform significantly in order to have the same asset levels as men who perform worse,” said Buchan, who now runs her own fund, Martlet Asset Management.

“With this sort of outcome, which can be shown in academic studies and what many women perceive from their own interactions with investors, why try?”

Man Group, one of the few listed hedge funds, is the only UK hedge fund firm to sign up to the British government’s Women in Finance Charter, which sets targets to increase female representation in the upper echelons of the City.

The London-headquartered firm is targeting 25 percent female representation in senior management roles by the end of 2020 from 22 percent last year and has introduced a number of measures to improve gender diversity, including a returners program for women who left the industry.

It offers 18 weeks paid leave globally for new parents, male or female.

Man Group registered five women as a CF 30 last year, but that represented a re-categorization to comply with European rules rather than new hires.

“We have concentrated on making sure internal people can meet their potential, introduced a lot of mentoring, ensured that we always consider a female candidate and looked at things that have historically slowed down hiring women,” said Man’s chief executive officer, Luke Ellis.

Women held 13 percent of investment management roles at Man Group globally in 2018, up from 11 percent in 2017 and 8 percent in 2013, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

THE SLEAZY BITS

Interviews with nine women who work or worked as portfolio managers in Britain and the United States, said hedge funds could be a tough sector for female investment managers. Some of them had experienced disparaging comments about their appearance or their investment abilities.

Male colleagues making unwelcome advances at female co-workers on nights-out was not an unusual occurrence, according to seven women who worked in a variety of different roles for hedge funds, including as traders.

One hedge fund reassigned the female toilet on the trading floor as a men’s toilet, meaning women on the investment team had to walk to another part of the building, two of the women said.

None of the women, who requested anonymity to avoid damaging their careers, worked at the hedge funds named in this story.

Clare Flynn Levy, a former hedge fund portfolio manager who now runs her own behavioral analytics company, said women might put up with a toxic work culture for a while but ultimately they tended to leave.

“In retrospect, I think I used a combination of working very hard, laughing off the sleazy bits and occasionally putting my foot down if I felt someone had crossed a line,” she said.

Valerie Kosenko at recruitment consultant Mondrian Alpha, said she has had a hard time convincing women to join hedge funds where they might be the first female on the trading floor.

But with investors increasingly considering diversity when deciding where to put their money, some hedge funds are looking to shake up their ranks. Last year, Kosenko had five meetings with hedge fund clients about hiring women. In the first few months of this year, she has had four.

“I think in general the big trend is let’s grow the talent and let’s go outside of what we are used to — white males from Goldman Sachs,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Svea Herbst in Boston and Carolyn Cohn and Kirstin Ridley in London. Editing by Carmel Crimmins)

Source: OANN

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Ancient West Bank site draws Christians, and controversy

Deep in the West Bank, Israeli settlers have transformed an archaeological site into a biblical tourist attraction that attracts tens of thousands of evangelical Christians each year.

Tel Shiloh is believed to have been the site of the biblical tabernacle, but not everyone is pleased at how the ruins are presented to visitors.

Like many Holy Land sites, Tel Shiloh sits at the confluence of competing narratives of archaeology, religion, and nationalism. Critics say the site promotes a narrow interpretation of history popular with Israeli settlers and their Christian supporters.

The hilltop mound, 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Jerusalem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has been excavated by several archaeological missions, starting in 1922, and has yielded remains spanning over 3,700 years.

For centuries, Jews, Muslims, and Christians have associated the site with the home of the biblical tabernacle, the portable shrine where the Israelites housed the Ark of the Covenant.

Because of its biblical significance, the archaeological ruins have become a pilgrimage site for evangelical Christians.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Tel Shiloh with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and settler leaders, calling it Israel's "first capital."

Huckabee, a television host with a strong evangelical following, tweeted that "Shiloh is proof from 3000 yrs ago this land was home to @Israel site of ancient Tabernacle."

In 2009, Tel Shiloh hosted 30,000 visitors, 60 percent of whom identified as evangelical Christians, according to the Israeli government. In 2012, the government allocated about $4.2 million for a plan to preserve and upgrade the site, inaugurating a new visitors' center the following year.

Since its completion, Tel Shiloh — rebranded as Ancient Shiloh: City of the Tabernacle — has seen tourism skyrocket to around 120,000 visitors in 2018, said site director Lilyan Zaitman. Over half were evangelical Christians.

Unlike other major sites in the West Bank, Tel Shiloh is managed by the local settler council and Mishkan Shiloh, a private nonprofit organization, rather than Israel's Nature and Parks Authority.

The site is inside the Jewish settlement of Shiloh, founded after Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war. The tourist attraction is built on private Palestinian land but Palestinians are barred from entering, according to a recent Amnesty International report.

The Palestinians have demanded the West Bank as part of their future state, and most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.

The Second Protocol of the Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property prohibits archaeological excavations in occupied territory "save where this is strictly required to safeguard, record or preserve cultural property." Israel is not one of the protocol's 82 signatories.

Zaitman said visitors should understand that "the roots of the Jewish people began here," calling it "the first capital city of the Jewish people before Jerusalem."

Despite Tel Shiloh's long and varied history, the site drives home its Jewish relevance, with little attention paid to other periods or peoples, whether Canaanite, Byzantine or Muslim. This has drawn criticism from archaeologists and activists.

Emek Shaveh and Yesh Din, Israeli NGOs, charged in a 2017 report on Israeli archaeology in the West Bank that Ancient Shiloh aims to "reinforce the connection between the biblical Shiloh and the modern settlement, in a manner not necessarily based on the archaeological discoveries at the site."

The goal, they argue, is to "create a broad consensus about its importance as an indivisible part of the state of Israel."

Among the ruins are three Byzantine-era churches and two mosques. One of the two historical mosques is located outside the archaeological park, while the second is unmarked and undeveloped for visitors. A Byzantine church has been reconstructed and serves as a venue for events.

A new three-dimensional "hologram" presentation entertains viewers with a representation of the tabernacle and a description of the rituals performed there, based on the Bible.

A small museum inside the visitors' center makes scant mention of nearly 1,400 years of Muslim rule, and a film depicting the site's history deals exclusively with the biblical account.

The archaeological record, however, is more complicated.

Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein led excavations at Tel Shiloh in the 1980s. He said there is evidence of continuous religious activity at the site for centuries leading up to the early Iron Age, the period associated with the emergence of the ancient Israelites.

"What exactly was the nature of the cult, whether there was a temple there, and also the exact location of this cult place at the site, is not very clear," Finkelstein said. As with any archaeological site, Finkelstein said "our responsibility is to give the facts, and then we can of course say that there is more than one way to interpret the finds."

No evidence of the tabernacle has been found, but archaeologists are looking. Excavations are being carried out by the Associates for Biblical Research, whose stated aim is "demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible through archaeological and biblical research."

Scott Stripling, head of the current excavation, is one of a handful of evangelical archaeologists currently excavating in the West Bank. Evangelicals are the only non-Israeli teams involved in West Bank digs. Except for Tel Shiloh, however, the others operate in conjunction with Israeli universities.

"We will likely be the largest excavation in Israel once again this summer," Stripling said. Despite broad academic stigma involved with excavating in the West Bank, Stripling said his organization "is completely apolitical, and we would be excavating the same region, regardless of political changes."

Rico Cortes, a tour guide from Orlando, Florida, who led a Spanish-speaking group through the site earlier this month, said Shiloh's connection to the state of Israel is unquestioned.

"I bring everyone to respect Israel, the people and the Book," he said. "The fact that the presence of God one time dwelled here is overwhelming."

Source: Fox News World

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Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, team detained, released in Venezuela, network says

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and members of his team were detained and later released, in Caracas, Venezuela by President Nicolas Maduro on Monday during an interview in which the embattled president "didn't like the questions" being asked, the network said on Twitter.

Daniel Coronell, the president of news for Univision in the U.S., tweeted just before 9 p.m. ET on Monday that Ramos and his team were released, but their technical equipment, along with interview material that Maduro disliked, were confiscated.

Univison said earlier Monday that Ramos and his crew were "arbitrarily detained at the Miraflores Palace" because Maduro "didn't like their questions" they were asking him.

The State Department confirmed on Twitter that Ramos and his team were "being held against their will at Miraflores Palace by Nicolas Maduro," and urged him to immediately release them.

Ramos, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was seemingly able to call Univision to explain what was happening "when the phone was taken from him & the call ended."

During a visit to the Colombia border city of Cucuta last week, Rubio warned Venezuelan soldiers that they would commit a "crime against humanity" if they blocked the entry of U.S. aid being channeled through rivals of Maduro.

"This is an arrogant regime that feels invulnerable & is now acting with total impunity," Rubio tweeted in response to Ramos and his team's detainment.

Maduro, who began his second term as president in January, is not recognized by the U.S. or dozens of other countries as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

The U.S. and other nations have demanded Maduro step down and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful leader. Venezuelans also have staged large protests to pressure Maduro to leave.

Vice President Mike Pence on Monday urged a 14-nation coalition of Latin American nations and Canada to freeze the assets of Venezuela's state-owned oil company in response to violent clashes between security forces and opposition members over blocked humanitarian aid.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Speaking in Colombia, Pence repeated President Trump’s threat that “all options are on the table” to push out Maduro.

"It's time to do more," the vice president said. "The day is coming soon when Venezuela's long nightmare will end, when Venezuela will once more be free, when her people will see a new birth of freedom, in a nation reborn to libertad."

This is a developing story; please check back for updates.

Source: Fox News World

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Farage’s New Brexit Party Gaining Traction

Nigel Farage has only just launched his new ‘Brexit’ Party, but it’s already becoming a force in UK politics, attracting some Tory defectors, including the sister of European Research Group leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the leading Brexiteers.

Prominent Conservative Party fundraiser Richard Tice has agreed to become the chairman of the party as it gears up for EU Parliamentary elections.

Farage officially launched the party during an event in Coventry on Friday that was well-attended.

During an interview before the event, Farage introduced the new party as a ‘mirror’ of UKIP on policies, but without what he described as the Islamophobic, far-right faction.

Farage, who has been credited as one of the godfathers of Brexit, left UKIP, the party that he helped create and build into a force on the right of British politics, claiming that the party had been taken over by racists and Islamophobes and that its brand was now ‘tarnished.’


Paul Joseph Watson explains the betrayal of Britain by the Prime Minister.

He promised the Brexit Party would be “deeply intolerant of all intolerance” and would represent a cross-section of society.

“In terms of policy, there’s no difference (to UKIP), but in terms of personnel there is a vast difference.”

“UKIP did struggle to get enough good people into it but unfortunately what it’s chosen to do is allow the far right to join it and take it over and I’m afraid the brand is now tarnished.”

With Parliament on recess until April 23, Farage apparently timed the party launch so as to grab maximum media coverage. When it came his turn to speak at the launch, Farage again called for a “Democratic revolution” to ensure that the outcome of the Brexit referendum is honored, and once again “start to put the fear of god into our MPs.” He also declared that the Brexit Party wouldn’t be taking donations from Aaron Banks, a millionaire mining mogul who helped to bankroll UKIP and was recently the target of an extensive investigative report published by the New Yorker that delved into suspicions that Banks helped launder foreign money – specifically, from Russia – into the Brexit campaign.

The Brexit party already has 70 candidates to stand in the European elections, which are expected to begin on May 23.

In response to UKIP leader Gerard Batten rebutted Farage’s claims about the Brexit Party being a mirror image of UKIP, arguing that UKIP has “a manifesto and policies” while the Brexit Party is just a “vehicle” for Farage. But if the party wins at least a few seats in the EU Parliament, it would likely join with the growing populist coalition being organized by Italy’s Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, helping to establish a powerful eurosceptic bloc in the legislature.


A masked criminal shot bleach at Michael Knowles while he delivered a speech called “Men Are Not Women”. Paul Jospeh Watson joins Alex to expose the increasing insanity on the left.

Source: InfoWars

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Estonia election winner downplays chance of becoming prime minister

Reform Party Chairwoman, Kaja Kallas, attendsÊthe opening session of newly elected Estonian Parliament in Tallinn
Reform Party Chairwoman, Kaja Kallas, attendsÊthe opening session of newly elected Estonian Parliament in Tallinn, Estonia April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

April 5, 2019

By Tarmo Virki

TALLINN (Reuters) – The leader of Estonia’s largest political party received a formal request from the president on Friday to form a government, but quickly she downplayed her prospects of becoming prime minister.

Kaja Kallas, head of the center-right Reform, pulled off a surprise win over the center-left government in a March 3 vote for parliament, but fell short of a majority.

While she won backing in coalition talks with the Social Democrats, she failed to also win support from the Fatherland party in Estonia’s fragmented 101-member assembly.

“I recognize I might not have enough support in parliament,” Kallas said in a statement.

Centre Party Prime Minister Juri Ratas on March 11 invited the far-right EKRE to coalition talks, reversing a promise to block the anti-immigration party from the cabinet, and is expected to announce his own three-party coalition this weekend.

Still, Kallas said Reform and the Social Democrats, which together have 44 seats in parliament, would seek support from individual members of the Centre and the Fatherland parties, some of whom oppose Ratas’ plan to tie up with the far right.

Kallas now has two weeks to present a plan for forming a cabinet. If she fails, President Kersti Kaljulaid can turn to Ratas who has worked for weeks on his alternative.

Populist parties have won ground across Europe ahead of elections in May to the European Parliament.

EKRE, whose fiercely anti-immigrant message lifted its support during the European migration crisis in 2015, got 19 seats in the March 3 vote, more than double the number from the previous election, winning broad support in rural areas.

Its leaders have promised street unrest if they were left out of the cabinet.

    Reform won 34 seats in the 101-seat parliament, while left-leaning Centre got 26 seats, the conservative Fatherland party got 12 seats and the Social Democrats 10.

(Editing by Terje Solsvik and Angus MacSwan)

Source: OANN

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U.S. new home sales rise to 11-month high in February

A real estate sign advertising a new home for sale is pictured in Vienna, Virginia
FILE PHOTO: A real estate sign advertising a new home for sale is pictured in Vienna, Virginia, outside of Washington, October 20, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo

March 29, 2019

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) – Sales of new U.S. single-family homes increased to an 11-month high in February and sales for January were revised higher, suggesting that lower mortgage rates were starting to lift the struggling housing market.

The Commerce Department said on Friday new home sales rose 4.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 667,000 units last month, the highest level since March 2018. January’s sales pace was revised up to 636,000 units from the previously reported 607,000 units.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for about 11 percent of housing market sales, increasing 1.3 percent to a pace of 620,000 units in February.

New home sales are drawn from permits and tend to be volatile on a month-to-month basis. They rose 0.6 percent from a year ago. New home sales tend to respond more quickly to changes in mortgage rates.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate tumbled to a more than one-year low of 4.06 percent last week from an average of 4.28 percent in the previous week, according to data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac.

Mortgage rates have been declining since the Federal Reserve signaled a long pause in interest rates increases this year. Lower borrowing costs, slowing house price inflation and rising wages have improved housing affordability.

But expensive lumber as well as land and labor shortages remain a challenge for builders. Investment in homebuilding contracted 0.3 percent in 2018, the biggest drop since 2010.

New home sales in the South, which accounts for the bulk of transactions, rose 1.8 percent in February to their highest level since July 2007. Sales surged 26.9 percent in the Northeast and jumped 28.3 percent in the Midwest. They were, however, unchanged in the West.

The median new house price fell 3.6 percent to $315,300 in February from a year ago. There were 340,000 new homes on the market last month, down 0.6 percent from January.

At February’s sales pace it would take 6.1 months to clear the supply of houses on the market, down from 6.5 months in January. Just under two-thirds of the houses sold last month were either under construction or yet to be built.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci) ((Lucia.Mutikani@thomsonreuters.com; 1 202 898 8315; Reuters Messaging: lucia.mutikani.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)

Source: OANN

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Alex Jones – Info Wars

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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)

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A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

April 26, 2019

By Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s board has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to hunt for a new chief executive, ideally a woman who can tackle its regulatory and public perception issues, two people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo’s ambition to become the only major U.S. bank with a female CEO underscores the need to restore its image with a wide range of constituents, including customers, shareholders, regulators and politicians, after it became mired in a scandal in 2016 for opening potentially millions of unauthorized accounts.

Former CEO Tim Sloan left abruptly last month, becoming the second CEO to leave the bank in the scandal’s fallout.

The board plans to approach Citigroup Inc’s Latin America chief Jane Fraser, one of the sources said. During Fraser’s 15-year tenure at Citigroup, she has gained experience running consumer and commercial businesses as well as its private bank.

Fraser could not be immediately reached for comment.

The board also discussed approaching JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Marianne Lake, but after the bank named her to run JPMorgan’s consumer lending business last week, that option became less viable, the source added. The board wants someone who can convince regulators, employees, investors and customers that the bank has fixed problems underpinning the sales scandal, the sources said.

The bank’s board feels that choosing a woman might please lawmakers in Washington who have been critical not only of Wells Fargo’s misbehavior, but of the broader banking industry for a lack of diversity and gender equality, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It also believes that such a move could bolster Wells Fargo’s image with the households of customers where women play a leading role in managing finances, one of the sources added.

The new CEO will also have to resolve litigation and regulatory matters. There are 14 outstanding consent orders with government entities, as well as probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

To be sure, Spencer Stuart will approach and consider several male candidates for the CEO job as well, one of the sources said. The top priority is to find an external candidate who can navigate the bank’s regulatory issues, the source added.

Finding an outsider who meets all those qualifications and wants the job will be difficult, the sources said. There are few people with the necessary experience, even fewer of those who are women, and it is not clear if any of the obvious candidates would be open to taking the role.

The sources asked not to be identified because Wells Fargo’s board deliberations are confidential.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Spencer Stuart declined to comment.

Wells Fargo’s board has not made any public statements about its requirements for a new CEO, beyond Chair Betsy Duke saying the job should attract the “top talent in banking.”

The board wants to complete the search within the next three to six months, one of the sources said.

STALLED SHARES

After Sloan’s ouster, Wells Fargo’s board appointed Allen Parker, who had been general counsel, as interim CEO. The board has said it is looking for an external candidate as a permanent replacement. It is not clear whether Parker will stay at the bank.

Others whose names have been mentioned by analysts, recruiters and industry sources as perspective CEO candidates include Alphabet Inc finance chief Ruth Porat and Bank of America Corp’s chief technology officer Cathy Bessant.

Wells Fargo shares have stalled since Sloan’s departure on March 29th, while the KBW Bank index has rallied more than 7 percent.

Wells Fargo would be “the best stock on earth to buy” if it had the right CEO, said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Donaldson Capital Management in Indiana.

Donaldson held about 50,000 Wells Fargo shares, but sold the stake last year as problems mounted. The CEO change could convince him to re-invest, depending on who it is, he told Reuters.

“It would be very smart for them to get a woman,” he said.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Greg Roumeliotis and Susan Thomas)

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

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