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Japan-U.S. trade talks likely to be held April 15-16: source

Japan's Minister of Economic Revitalization Toshimitsu Motegi speaks during the signing agreement ceremony for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, in Santiago
Japan's Minister of Economic Revitalization Toshimitsu Motegi speaks during the signing agreement ceremony for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, in Santiago, Chile March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido

April 2, 2019

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan and the United States are likely to hold their first round of trade talks in Washington on April 15-16, a Japanese government source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters earlier on Tuesday he would travel to the United States as early as this month to start negotiations with his counterpart U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he is unhappy with Japan’s $69 billion trade surplus with the United States – nearly two-thirds of it from auto exports – and wants a two-way agreement to address it.

Trade frictions between Tokyo and Washington have been present since Trump took office in 2017 with a pledge to renegotiate trade deals he considers unfair to U.S. companies and workers.

The Trump administration is also engaged in ongoing trade talks with both the European Union and China as part of the Republican president’s “America First” agenda.

Japanese government officials are increasingly worried that Trump will demand a reduction in the number of Japanese auto imports to lower the trade deficit.

They are also concerned that Trump could impose steep import tariffs on autos and auto parts, which would deal a big blow to the export-reliant economy.

Abe may meet President Donald Trump in the United States in late April for talks on North Korea and Japan-U.S. trade.

Trump is expected to make a decision some time in May about whether to unleash steep tariffs on imported cars and auto parts after he commissioned a report from the U.S. Commerce Department to determine the effects of imports on national security.

(Reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Writing by Stanley White; Editing by Sam Holmes)

Source: OANN

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Trump: Ivanka Would ‘Be Very, Very Hard to Beat’ in WH Race

President Donald Trump propped up his daughter Ivanka in a new interview and said she would be a favorite to win a presidential election if she ever runs.

The Atlantic published a lengthy profile of Ivanka Trump and her role in the White House, where she works as a senior adviser. Her father told the media outlet that Ivanka has a "great calmness."

"If she ever wanted to run for president, I think she'd be very, very hard to beat," Trump said. "She went into the whole helping-people-with-jobs, and I wasn't sure that was going to be the best use of her time, but I didn't know how successful she'd be. She's created millions of jobs, and I had no idea she'd be that successful."

Trump later added, "She's got a great calmness … I've seen her under tremendous stress and pressure. She reacts very well — that's usually a genetic thing, but it's one of those things, nevertheless."

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner work in the West Wing and live in the Kalorama section of Washington, D.C., about two miles from the White House.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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The Latest: LA police: Bicycle-riding face slasher arrested

The Latest on a man on a bicyclist (all times local):

4:30 p.m.

Los Angeles police have arrested a suspect they say rode around on a bicycle and slashed the faces of at least six people.

Officer Norma Eisenman on Wednesday confirmed the arrest, but she did not immediately have additional details.

The slasher is believed to have struck six times since last month.

Police said earlier that a man standing near a bus stop was attacked on Monday, and a woman was slashed about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

They were hospitalized with severe injuries and are expected to survive.

Similar attacks happened in the same area of South Los Angeles on March 20 and in the neighboring cities of South Gate and Lynwood on March 27.

Police say the assailant rode a mountain bike and wielded an unknown type of "edged weapon."

___

1:50 p.m.

Los Angeles police say they are trying to find a bicyclist who rides close to people and slashes their faces. He is believed to have struck six times since last month.

Police in a statement said that a man standing near a bus stop was attacked on Monday and a woman was slashed about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

They were hospitalized with severe injuries and are expected to survive.

Similar attacks happened in the same area of South Los Angeles on March 20 and in the neighboring cities of South Gate and Lynwood on March 27.

Police say the assailant has used an unknown type of "edged weapon" and was last seen on a black and green mountain bike.

Source: Fox News National

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The Universe’s First Type of Molecule Is Found at Last

The first type of molecule that ever formed in the universe has been detected in space for the first time, after decades of searching.

Scientists discovered its signature in our own galaxy using the world’s largest airborne observatory, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, as the aircraft flew high above the Earth’s surface and pointed its sensitive instruments out into the cosmos.

When the universe was still very young, only a few kinds of atoms existed. Scientists believe that around 100,000 years after the big bang, helium and hydrogen combined to make a molecule called helium hydride for the first time. Helium hydride should be present in some parts of the modern universe, but it has never been detected in space — until now.

SOFIA found modern helium hydride in a planetary nebula, a remnant of what was once a Sun-like star. Located 3,000 light-years away near the constellation Cygnus, this planetary nebula, called NGC 7027, has conditions that allow this mystery molecule to form. The discovery serves as proof that helium hydride can, in fact, exist in space. This confirms a key part of our basic understanding of the chemistry of the early universe and how it evolved over billions of years into the complex chemistry of today. The results are published in this week’s issue of Nature.

“This molecule was lurking out there, but we needed the right instruments making observations in the right position — and SOFIA was able to do that perfectly,” said Harold Yorke, director of the SOFIA Science Center, in California’s Silicon Valley.

Today, the universe is filled with large, complex structures such as planets, stars and galaxies. But more than 13 billion years ago, following the big bang, the early universe was hot, and all that existed were a few types of atoms, mostly helium and hydrogen. As atoms combined to form the first molecules, the universe was finally able to cool and began to take shape. Scientists have inferred that helium hydride was this first, primordial molecule.

Once cooling began, hydrogen atoms could interact with helium hydride, leading to the creation of molecular hydrogen — the molecule primarily responsible for the formation of the first stars. Stars went on to forge all the elements that make up our rich, chemical cosmos of today. The problem, though, is that scientists could not find helium hydride in space. This first step in the birth of chemistry was unproven, until now.

“The lack of evidence of the very existence of helium hydride in interstellar space was a dilemma for astronomy for decades,” said Rolf Guesten of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, in Bonn, Germany, and lead author of the paper.

Helium hydride is a finicky molecule. Helium itself is a noble gas making it very unlikely to combine with any other kind of atom. But in 1925, scientists were able to create the molecule in a laboratory by coaxing the helium to share one of its electrons with a hydrogen ion.

Then, in the late 1970s, scientists studying the planetary nebula called NGC 7027 thought that this environment might be just right to form helium hydride. Ultraviolet radiation and heat from the aging star create conditions suitable for helium hydride to form. But their observations were inconclusive. Subsequent efforts hinted it could be there, but the mystery molecule continued to elude detection. The space telescopes used did not have the specific technology to pick out the signal of helium hydride from the medley of other molecules in the nebula.

In 2016, scientists turned to SOFIA for help. Flying up to 45,000 feet, SOFIA makes observations above the interfering layers of Earth’s atmosphere. But it has a benefit space telescopes don’t— it returns after every flight.

“We’re able to change instruments and install the latest technology,” said Naseem Rangwala SOFIA deputy project scientist. “This flexibility allows us to improve observations and respond to the most pressing questions that scientists want answered.”

A recent upgrade to one of SOFIA’s instruments called the German Receiver at Terahertz Frequencies, or GREAT, added the specific channel for helium hydride that previous telescopes did not have. The instrument works like a radio receiver. Scientists tune to the frequency of the molecule they’re searching for, similar to tuning an FM radio to the right station. When SOFIA took to the night skies, eager scientists were onboard reading the data from the instrument in real time. Helium hydride’s signal finally came through loud and clear.

“It was so exciting to be there, seeing helium hydride for the first time in the data,” said Guesten. “This brings a long search to a happy ending and eliminates doubts about our understanding of the underlying chemistry of the early universe.

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 106-inch diameter telescope. It is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California.



Alex Jones presents a video of Lou Dobbs during his Fox program where he warns his viewers that the French investigation into what exactly started the Notre Dame fire may be covering up the very realistic possibility of arson for what he calls “political reasons.”

Source: InfoWars

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Trump announces news conference at U.S.-Mexico border within three weeks

U.S. President Trump departs for Alabama from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs to visit storm-hit areas of Alabama from the White House in Washington, U.S., March 8, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

March 13, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his administration would have a news conference at the southern U.S. border with Mexico in the next three weeks, as he continues to seek congressional backing for a wall there.

“We’re going to have a news conference at the border over the next three weeks,” Trump told reporters at a briefing at the White House on drug trafficking.

The U.S. Congress is on the verge of issuing a sharp rebuke to Trump over his declaration of an emergency at the border.

Already approved by the House of Representatives, the resolution to terminate the declaration has sufficient support in the Senate to be passed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week.

Trump said “we’ll see” whether he has to veto the congressional resolution ending his emergency declaration.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by James Dalgleish, Lisa Shumaker and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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BI Poll: Americans Don't Know What Kushner, Ivanka Do

Sixty-seven percent of Americans are clueless about what Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner do for the Trump administration, according to a Business Insider poll published Tuesday.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they "definitely could not" describe their responsibilities, while 28 percent said they "probably could not" do so. Nineteen percent said they could "probably" or "definitely" not name their duties.

Ivanka Trump and Kushner are both unpaid advisers for President Donald Trump. Kushner leads the administration's initiative on a Middle East peace plan, while Ivanka Trump focuses on economic policy and issues affecting women and families.

Kushner has also helped in tackling the country's opioid epidemic.

Both helped Trump win his presidential campaign in 2016.

Kushner has been the target of intense criticism following The New York Times report that said the president ordered then-chief-of-staff John Kelly to grant his son-in-law a top security clearance despite concerns from senior administration officials.

Kushner's clearance was rejected twice by White House security analysts due to concerns about potential foreign influence.

Source: NewsMax America

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How Not to Fuel Anti-Semitism When Discussing Israel

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House Democrats last week managed to unite around a resolution condemning all forms of bigotry, but debate on the left is still raging about whether Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent comments, insinuating that supporters of Israel “push for allegiance to a foreign country,” amounted to anti-Semitism.

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait charged Omar with “directly invoking the hoary myth of dual loyalty, in which the Americanness of Jews is inherently suspect,” while Jacobin’s Seth Ackerman exculpated that the comment “didn’t mention Jews. The words referred to a set of individuals and organizations that insist on unconditional allegiance to Israel and its policies.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, inelegantly, split the difference, describing Omar’s words as having anti-Semitic impact but not questioning Omar’s intent: “I don't think our colleague is anti-Semitic. I think she has a different experience in the use of words—doesn't understand that some of them are fraught with meaning that she didn't realize—but nonetheless, [words] that we had to address.”

Why is this debate so hard for the left to adjudicate? Why is the line separating legitimate criticism of Israeli government politics from illegitimate anti-Semitism so hard to draw?

The reason can be found in what Omar said at the Progressive Issues Town Hall immediately after her controversial comment, which was made in response to a question about how to criticize Israel without suffering charges of anti-Semitism. Here is the relevant passage:

I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. And I want to ask, why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy?

In Omar’s telling, she is not treating pro-Israel lobby groups any differently than she treats other lobby groups. She is criticizing them all for pressuring politicians to put the special interest ahead of the public interest.

The narrative that well-financed donors and special interest lobbies are what thwart the public will is deeply embedded in our discourse. Just as the left blames Big Oil for our lack of action on climate change, so does the right blame Big Labor for resistance to reform of public schools and government bureaucracies.

We often repeat these sorts of accusations casually, as if they are undisputed fact, not overly simplistic demagoguery. (Even if it is demagoguery, it’s a relatively harmless strain, often based on more than a grain of truth.) However, when we crudely apply the special interest frame to anything related to Judaism, as the recent evidence shows, we play with fire.

Robert Bowers, the man who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue last October, railed against “ZOGs,” Zionist Operated Governments, on his social media account. During the 2018 midterm campaign, the National Rifle Association accused George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer – all billionaire donors who are Jewish or have Jewish ancestry – of trying to buy the election, take our guns and usher in “European socialism.” (Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy posted on Twitter a similar swipe at the three men shortly before Election Day, but deleted it after being accused of anti-Semitism.) By the end of the campaign, Soros became a pipe bomb target of the so-called “MAGA Bomber,” Cesar Sayoc.

Of course, Jews are not the only group vulnerable to violence due to dehumanizing bigotry. In 2017, America suffered the biggest jump in hate crimes since the 9/11 terrorist attacks sparked a violent backlash against Arabs and Muslims. African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, members of the LGBT community as well as Jews have all suffered. We need not treat one group as more victimized than another to recognize the dangers associated with feeding bigoted conspiracy theories.

Should critics of special interest groups and donors be held responsible for the violent actions of a few militant extremists? Not directly. But because loose rhetoric can so easily fuel the insidious conspiracy theories that lead to violence, it is incumbent upon responsible participants in our national discourse to criticize with extreme care and rigorously researched facts. Blithely asserting that a politician’s posture towards Israel is primarily based on weak patriotism, lobbyist pressure and money falls far short of that standard.

What Omar and her defenders chafe at, in Omar’s words, is accusations of anti-Semitism that are “designed to end the debate.” But it is not hard to construct arguments critical of Israeli government policies that do not go near anti-Semitic tropes; there’s nothing bigoted about criticizing the Israeli government’s settlement policies or its efforts to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. The rhetoric only gets uncomfortably conspiratorial when discussing pro-Israel lobbyist influence, and assuming the underlying motives of those lobbyists.

The way to avoid crossing the line into anti-Semitism is to first conduct a thorough assessment of whether unethical lobbyist influence really is distorting the behavior of our government. Then, if so proven, lay out a carefully crafted case that can hold up to scrutiny. If a robust and productive debate about Israeli policies is the objective, then consider whether that objective will be achieved with cheap shots about foreign “allegiance” and clap-back tweets about “the Benjamins,” or with hard facts.

Both the left and the right have a tendency to scapegoat special interest influence as a useful foil for which to galvanize support, and as an excuse to rationalize any difficulty in earning sufficient support. But the obstacles to reform are often more complicated than our preferred pat narratives would suggest, and understanding the complexity is necessary to develop successful strategies. Just because we are comfortable being simplistic when discussing most political issues, that’s no reason to do so on a subject where simplicity is oxygen for hate.

Bill Scher is a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show “The DMZ,” and host of the podcast “New Books in Politics.” He can be reached at contact@liberaloasis.com or follow him on Twitter @BillScher.

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

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

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

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

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

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

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

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

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

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

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

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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