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Judge plans to reject new trial in death of Jordan's father

A North Carolina judge says he won't allow a man convicted of murdering Michael Jordan's father in 1993 to proceed with an effort to prove his innocence.

Court documents show that Judge Winston Gilchrist informed lawyers Wednesday that he would deny Daniel Green's request for an evidentiary hearing that could lead to a new trial. Gilchrist told the lawyers his written order was forthcoming.

An attorney for Green, Chris Mumma, says she has filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider so new testimony from Green's co-defendant can be heard. She says if that's not allowed, she'll file an appeal.

Green is serving a life sentence as one of two men convicted of killing James Jordan. Green was convicted of first-degree murder, and two state courts upheld the conviction.

Source: Fox News National

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Gymnastics: Athletic Assistance Fund ready to help abused gymnasts

FILE PHOTO: Larry Nassar, a former team USA Gymnastics doctor who pleaded guilty in November 2017 to sexual assault charges, stands in court during his sentencing hearing in the Eaton County Court in Charlotte
FILE PHOTO: Larry Nassar, a former team USA Gymnastics doctor who pleaded guilty in November 2017 to sexual assault charges, stands in court during his sentencing hearing in the Eaton County Court in Charlotte, Michigan, U.S., February 5, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

March 20, 2019

By Steve Keating

(Reuters) – Being told by a close friend that she had been one of disgraced doctor Larry Nassar’s abuse victims has spurred former United States gymnast Alicia Sacramone Quinn to begin working with the Athletes Assistance Fund (AAF).

Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics doctor, was sentenced to 300 years in prison after more than 350 women, including Olympic champions Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber, testified in court about being abused by him.

Sacramone, who won 10 world championship medals and an Olympic silver in her career, did not have any contact with Nassar during her career, but decided after talking to a friend who had been abused by him that she wanted to help the victims.

“One of the victims told me, she is not involved in any of the lawsuits or anything, but she told me it had happened to her and she did not want it to be public,” Sacramone told Reuters. “She confided in me. It had happened to her and she was trying to pick herself up and move on from it.

“That was heartbreaking for me because I have known her since she was little and for her to come to me it spoke a lot about our friendship and the trust she had in me.”

Sacramone now serves as a representative on the board of the directors of the AAF, which has partnered with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to provide financial assistance and counseling for any gymnast who has been sexually abused.

Sacramone acknowledged she was not a qualified counsellor but was more than willing to listen and offer support.

“If they are not ready to talk to a medical provider just yet hopefully if they talk to me I could point them in the direction to finding help using our fund to get them the medical advice and attention they need,” said Sacramone.

“I felt this was a good spot to help athletes who have been victims.”

The Nassar scandal, however, could just be the tip of the iceberg with many victims of sexual abuse by coaches and doctors remaining silent, according to AAF board chair Tina Ferriola.

“I believe there are far more out there,” said Ferriola, who is unable to divulge how many athletes they work with for confidentiality reasons.

“The mission of the Athletes Assistance Fund is to connect any survivors that suffered sexual assault within the sport of gymnastics with qualified healthcare providers.”

The AAF is providing a service that Sacramone said was not available when she was competing.

“During my athletic career I don’t believe any of this was available to athletes,” said Sacramone.

“We just want them to know this is not something they need to shoulder alone.

“If we can eliminate the cost they don’t have to worry about that and that is one inch helping them move forward.”

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

Source: OANN

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Watch Live: Feds Investigating Whether Dems/Fox Directed Smollett

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Source: InfoWars

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Elizabeth Warren: Wait for Mueller Before Deciding on Impeachment

Democrats should wait and see how special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation wraps up before they decide if they should push for President Donald Trump's impeachment, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Wednesday.

"We are about to get the Mueller report," Sen. Warren, a 2020 presidential candidate, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday. "We have a lot of other information. Let's wait until we get the Mueller report. Combine it with everything else we've seen . . . when it comes, we will know what to do."

Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told The Washington Post she does not favor seeking impeachment because she is concerned the move would be decisive and she does not think Trump is "worth it."

"I'm not sure where Nancy is," Warren said. "That's not the point."

Meanwhile, the senator said she is "not afraid of anyone, and particularly not Donald Trump," when asked how she would face him on a debate stage or in a presidential race.

"People have told me, for most of my life, what's too hard to get done," Warren said, noting her fight against the nation's banks.

"My response was, I got in the fight. I got in the fight and stayed in the fight," said Warren, adding she is "not even a little bit" afraid to get in Trump's face if she needs to.

She also said she does not believe Vice President Mike Pence to be an "honorable" man, because "anyone who engages in the kind of homophobia and attacks on people who are different from himself is not an honorable person. That's not what honorable people do."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Cory Booker raises more than $5 million for U.S. presidential run

U.S. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Cory Booker at a Amherst House Party in Amherst New Hampshire
U.S. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Cory Booker campaigns at a Amherst House Party in Amherst, New Hampshire, U.S., April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Mary Schwalm

April 7, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New Jersey Senator Cory Booker raised more than $5 million for his presidential election campaign in February and March, and has more than $6.1 million in cash on hand, his campaign said on Sunday.

That is considerably less than others among the more than 15 Democrats who have announced they are running for the party’s nomination.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California raised $12 million in the first three months of 2019 while Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who recently saw a bump in opinion polls but is still considered a long-shot, announced Monday that he had raised $7 million.

Beto O’Rourke, a former U.S congressman from Texas, raised $9.4 million in the first 18 days of his bid for the presidency, his campaign said. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders raised $5.9 million in the first day after announcing his candidacy, and later disclosed he had raised $10 million in a week.

Fundraising has become an early way to prove to donors and potential supporters that a candidate is viable.

Donations to Booker averaged about $34, with 82 percent of the donors new supporters of the candidate, spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on Twitter.

Candidates are required by law to report all campaign donations, and cannot accept more than $2,800 from a single donor during the primary race.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has said that her campaign would not hold any formal fundraising events and instead rely solely on “small-dollar” donations, or contributions collected online.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Source: OANN

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Lebanon PM Hariri has heart procedure in Paris

FILE PHOTO: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-HarirI is seen during the meeting to discuss a draft policy statement at the governmental palace in Beirut
FILE PHOTO: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-HarirI is seen during the meeting to discuss a draft policy statement at the governmental palace in Beirut, Lebanon February 6, 2019. REUTERS/Aziz Taher

March 25, 2019

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has undergone a “precautionary” heart procedure in Paris, his office said on Monday.

“Hariri this morning underwent a cardiac catheterization and stent insertion procedure at the American Hospital in Paris,” the statement said.

Quoting his doctor, the statement said Hariri, 48, was “in good health” and would be returning to his home in Paris in the evening.

(Writing by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Source: OANN

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Angela Merkel’s Legacy Is Chaos

“Germany has plunged into unprecedented political chaos,” a headline dramatically proclaimed in the prestigious international Foreign Policy magazine in the wake of the German elections in fall 2017.

As different parties negotiated for months to find a majority to govern, the writer of the piece, Paul Hockenos from Berlin, felt that the bad results for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) showed that “Merkel’s train wreck raises the question of her ability to lead the party and the nation.”

It is a question that even after the CDU agreed to a renewed coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) – another “Grand Coalition” between the two grand old parties of the country, was asked again and again. An unstable government with historically low popularity numbers drifted from one crisis to another, almost collapsing seemingly every other month – like in June 2018, when the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, the CSU, threatened to end the coalition over the governments’ refugee policy. At times, Germany, of all countries, having always been immune in years past to political chaos, seemed close to getting the politics that states like Italy, Greece, or France, have had to bear with for a long time. Indeed, German society was as polarized as ever, as parties on both the far-right as well as the far-left (or, the “far-Green”) were gaining steam.

And so Merkel stepped down. After taking major beatings in state elections in Bavaria and Hesse earlier last fall, the 13-year-chancellor of Europe’s largest economy announced that she would leave her position of CDU party leader in December and would sooner than later retire as head of government as well. But as her successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, or most often called simply “AKK,” was crowned at the party congress, one thing became ever clearer: with AKK, who is also known as “Merkel 2.0,” little would change. Instead, Germany looks into an uncertain future, which possibly has even more chaos, political disruption, and societal discord in store.

How did we get here? After all, just a few years ago, everything seemed just fine for Merkel and her left-wing conservatism that AKK wants to adopt, too. In contrast to most other European countries, Germany escaped the economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent euro crisis of 2012 relatively unscathed, instead scoring solid economic growth and decreasing unemployment numbers ever since. On the world stage, Germany became a voice again that others listened to, both economically – as the home of industry and as export champion, as well as socially, being open to outsiders, and politically, as a defender of the liberal democratic order. No one has forgotten when Merkel proclaimed in 2015 that “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”), as refugees from the Arab world were rushing in in (hundreds of) thousands. No one will either forget when in the wake of the U.S. Presidential elections in 2016, some dubbed the chancellor as the new leader of the free world.

Much was deceiving, though. Economically, for instance, it is tough to praise Merkel for Germany’s success, considering it was the important reforms of her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder, which put the country back on the path of success. Schröder – not Merkel, received the “Ludwig Erhard Prize” in 2016 for the pro-market policies he implemented, like his tax cuts both on corporate as well as income taxes, reductions in unemployment benefits as well as a decrease in pension benefits. When Merkel succeeded him in 2005, Germany was finally competitive again in Europe when it comes to labor costs.

Merkel, meanwhile, did very little for the German economy – except making it tougher to do business as well as find a job. Instead of lowering taxes even further like she promised, the German government introduced a minimum wage (and has increased it several times since), even decreased the pension age despite the system being in trouble already and the redistribution from the young to old having been in earnest for way too long, and conducted a costly energy transition – deciding to slowly pull out of nuclear energy production for massive subsidies in renewable energies. Electricity prices for households doubled from 2000 to 2017, and in total, the “Energiewende” could cost the country up to 1.1 trillion euros until 2050. And, perhaps most significantly, Merkel was the conductor of the drama which saw Germany bail out Greece at the height of the euro crisis, regardless of how much the population rebelled.

One can say then that Angela Merkel has become Germany’s economically most left-wing chancellor in post-war history. And as the now 64-year-old pursued this path, she alienated the business community and a big chunk of her supposedly conservative party with every day. In the battle of who would replace her, Friedrich Merz eventually came in second after AKK, only closely losing by 52 to 48 percent. The success of Merz, a strong pro-market voice who has been active in the financial industry for over a decade and even co-founded a think tank promoting the market economy, showed the split that is going through the CDU on where the biggest party of the country should head.

While the economy is one of the main reasons why the CDU is split, there is little doubt that cultural issues are the decisive factor in the increasing polarization in German society. Here also Merkel’s decisions are mainly responsible. It is, after all, her refugee policy which has caused so much dismay among voters and the rise of the first solidly right-wing party since World War II. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which at this point is most often polling above 15 percent (sometimes closing in on twenty), has overtaken the Social Democrats and is battling with the Greens for the second spot behind the weakened CDU.

While the AfD was originally founded as a party rebuking Merkel’s economic policy and the euro as a currency in principle, it has shifted farther to the right continuously since the refugee crisis began in 2015. Germans, of course, are also enraged about the economic consequences of the refugee crisis, which will cost, as some estimates put it, $86 billion only from 2016 to 2020. Not only that, though, as the incentives for incoming refugees are particularly macabre, as they are forbidden to work until their refugee request is approved, which can take years in extreme cases. Instead, they have to spend day-in, day-out in refugee centers in boredom, meanwhile taking in large amounts of money from German taxpayers.

There is little doubt, however, that the main issue German voters see in the refugee crisis is a cultural one. With more than one million Arabs and North Africans entering the country in 2015 alone (and many more, though less quick, ever since), the cultural change has been as disruptive and rapid as ever before. Far-right voices from the AfD to the anti-immigrant Pegida, a group which has been protesting the refugee policy especially in the Eastern German city Dresden ever since the crisis commenced, often focus on the phenomenon of the so-called “Rapefugees,” i.e. higher crime rates and especially rapes by refugees. It is a phenomenon which seems to be more of a populist invention than reality outside of the shocking incident in Cologne, when mass sexual assaults by Arabs occurred on New Year’s Eve 2015.

In general, the anger of many Germans seems to stem more from the deep cultural change Germany has experienced in a matter of less than five years, with (much) more to come (refugees in general have more children than German citizens). Some call it “Islamization,” which is exaggerated, and headline producing cases like the small village of Sumte, which had one hundred inhabitants until 700 refugees where moved there, are extreme and rare. Nonetheless, there are new challenges Germans have to deal with. People who have lived in their community for decades are suddenly confronted with many newcomers whom they do not know, whose culture they have never been in contact with and which they often see as dangerous, all the while those very newcomers are not very well integrated yet.

But the debate goes deeper than that: it is a debate on the very core of both liberalism as well as the nation that is called Germany itself. It is a debate on how open or closed the country should be. What is more important? Having a cosmopolitan society or finding one’s identity? And finding one’s identity it truly is in the German case, as today’s Germans never had the same sense of national identity as almost any other nation on this planet. Rather, Germans, due to the country’s dark past, have had to deal with what went down as “German guilt,” and were never allowed to develop their own national identity and culture, in fear that the ghosts of the 1930s would come back to haunt them. In this sense, today’s debate goes to the heart of what it means to be German.

Merkel’s policy then has brought a discussion to the forefront which was brewing underneath the surface ever since the great wars of the last century. But by ignoring – or sometimes even ridiculing, and more often bedeviling, one side of the debate, the chancellor might have created exactly what she was so determined to prevent: the revival of the far-right. This might be Merkel’s biggest contribution in the end. The “leader of the free world,” who has been horrific on economics, who bailed out other countries on the back of her own, who led a monumentally expensive energy transition, and who failed to follow her predecessor in liberating the German economy, was close to fall many times over the years – and for those very reasons.

What would ultimately lead to her downfall, however, was that she – as almost everyone else in the political establishment – did not give a fair hearing to those that those that did not necessarily wanted everything to stay the same it had been, but those who simply did not want their entire surrounding to change from one day to another by the government’s hand. And to those who, regardless of whether rightfully or not, were alienated by the multiculturalism and political correctness that dominated German society – a society in which, for instance, flying a German flag outside your house could easily lead to you being deemed a fascist.

Her successor, Kramp-Karrenbauer, will in all likelihood find no solution to this. She, who is called “Mini-Merkel,” will provide more of the same. More of the same is the least anyone wants right now. And so Germany is looking into a future in which two visions – “open” versus “closed,” multiculturalists versus localists, “anywheres” vs “somewheres,” are pitted against each other, one side accusing the other of bigoted nationalism, and the other side accusing the one of cultural suicide. The only thing that is sure about this future is that it will be one of uncertainty, of chaos, and ever greater polarization.



Carpe Donktum was recently retweeted by President Trump, however that tweet was banned due to a musical copyright violation. Carpe Donktum joins Owen to discuss making meme magic about America in 2019.

Source: InfoWars

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FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier is taken to North Korea's top court in Pyongyang North Korea
FILE PHOTO – Otto Frederick Warmbier (C), a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea since early January, is taken to North Korea’s top court in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo March 16, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States did not pay any money to North Korea as it sought the release of comatose American student Otto Warmbier.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump had approved payment of a $2 million bill from North Korea to cover its care of the college student, who died shortly after he was returned to the United States after 17 months in a North Korean prison.

(Reporting by Makini Brice and Susan Heavey)

Source: OANN

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Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London
Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London, Britain, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Gerhard Mey

April 26, 2019

By Hanna Rantala

LONDON (Reuters) – Irish rockers The Cranberries are saying goodbye with their final album released on Friday, a poignant tribute to lead singer Dolores O’Riordan who died last year.

“In the End” is the eighth studio album from the band that rose to fame in the early 1990s with hits likes “Zombie” and “Linger”, and includes the final recordings by O’Riordan, who drowned in a London hotel bath in January 2018 due to alcohol intoxication.

Work on the album began during a 2017 tour and by that winter, O’Riordan and guitarist Neil Hogan had penned and demoed 11 tracks.

With O’Riordan’s vocals recorded, Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler completed the album in tribute to her.

“When we realized how strong the songs were, that was the deciding factor really… There was no point… trying to ruin the legacy of the band,” Noel Hogan said in an interview.

“It was obvious that Dolores wanted this album done because when you hear the album, you hear the songs and how strong they are, and she was very, very excited to get in and record this.”

The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with another singer. O’Riordan replaced him a year later and the group went on to become Ireland’s best-selling rock band after U2, selling more than 40 million records.

O’Riordan, known for her strong distinctive voice singing about relationships or political violence, was 46 when she died.

“She was actually in quite a good place mentally. She was feeling quite content and strong and looking forward to a new phase of her life,” Lawler said.

“A lot of the lyrics in this album are about things ending… people might read into it differently but it was a phase of her personal life that she was talking about.”

The group previously announced their intention to split after the release of “In The End”.

“We are absolutely gutted we can’t play (the songs) live because that’s something that’s been a massive part of this band from day one,” Noel Hogan said.

“A few people have said to us about maybe even doing a one off where you have different vocalists… as kind of guests of ours. A year ago that’s definitely something we weren’t going to entertain but I don’t know, I think it’s something we need to go away and take time off for the summer and have a think about.”

Critics have generally given positive reviews of the album; NME described it as “(seeing) the band’s career go full-circle” while the Irish Times called it “an unexpected late career high and a remarkable swan song for O’Riordan”.

Their early songs still play on the radio. This week, “Dreams” was performed at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead in Londonderry last week as she watched Irish nationalist youths attack police following a raid.

“We wrote them as kids, as a hobby and 30 years later they are on radio and on TV, like all the time… That’s far more than any of us ever thought we would have,” Noel Hogan said.

“That would make Dolores really happy because she was very precious about those songs. Her babies, she called them and to have that hopefully long after we’re gone… that’s all any band can wish for.”

(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; additoinal reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

April 26, 2019

By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.

The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.

(View Warren’s military housing bill here. https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dy5aht)

(Read Reuters’ Ambushed at Home series on military housing here. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-military)

The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.

The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.

The measure would also require private landlords to cover moving costs for at-risk families, and healthcare costs for people with medical conditions resulting from unsafe base housing, ensuring they receive continuing coverage even after they leave the homes or the military.

“This bill will eliminate the kind of corner-cutting and neglect the Defense Department should never have let these private housing partners get away with in the first place,” Warren said in a statement Friday.

The proposed legislation comes after February Senate hearings where Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, slammed private real estate firms for endangering service families, and sought answers about why military branches weren’t providing more oversight.

Her legislation would direct the Defense Department to allow local housing code enforcers onto federal bases, following concerns they were sometimes denied access. Warren’s office said a companion bill in the House of Representatives would be introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico.

In response to the housing crisis, military branches are developing a tenant bill of rights and hiring hundreds of new housing staff. The branches recently dispatched commanders to survey base housing worldwide for safety hazards, resulting in thousands of work orders and hundreds of tenants being moved. The Defense Department has pledged to renegotiate its 50-year contracts with private real estate firms.

Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar

(Reuters) – Deloitte quit as Ferrexpo’s auditor on Friday, knocking its shares by more than 20 percent, days after saying it was unable to conclude whether the iron ore miner’s CEO controlled a charity being investigated over its use of company donations.

Blooming Land, which coordinates Ferrexpo’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, came under scrutiny after auditors found holes in the charity’s statements.

Ferrexpo on Tuesday said findings of an ongoing independent investigation launched in February indicated some Blooming Land funds could have been “misappropriated”. It did not provide any details or publish its findings.

Shares in Ferrexpo, the third largest exporter of pellets to the global steel industry, were 23.4 percent lower at 206.1 pence at 1022 GMT following news of Deloitte’s resignation.

“Ferrexpo’s shares are deeply discounted vs peers … following the resignation of Deloitte, we expect downside risks to dominate Ferrexpo’s shares near term.” JP Morgan analyst Dominic O’Kane said in a note on Friday.

Swiss-headquartered Ferrexpo did not provide a reason for the resignation of Deloitte, which declined to comment, while Blooming Land did not respond to a request for comment.

Funding for Blooming Land’s CSR activities is provided by one of Ferrexpo’s units in Ukraine and Khimreaktiv LLC, an entity ultimately controlled by Ferrexpo’s CEO and majority owner Kostyantin Zhevago, Ferrexpo said on Tuesday.

Ferrexpo’s board has found that Zhevago did not have significant influence or control over the charity, but Deloitte said it was unable reach a conclusion on this.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact Zhevago.

In a qualified opinion, a statement addressing an incomplete audit, Deloitte said it had been unable to conclude whether $33.5 million of CSR donations to Blooming Land between 2017 and 2018 was used for “legitimate business payments for charitable purposes”.

Deloitte said on Tuesday that total CSR payments made to Blooming Land by Ferrexpo since 2013 total about $110 million.

Ferrexpo, whose major mines are in Ukraine, has said that the investigation was ongoing and new evidence pointed to potential discrepancies.

Zhevago, 45, who ranked 1,511 on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires for 2019 with a net worth of $1.4 billion, owns the FC Vorskla soccer club and has been a member of Ukraine’s parliament since 1998.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev; editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Bernard Orr)

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Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba, Mozambique April 26, 2019 in this still image obtained from social media. SolidarMed via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

April 26, 2019

By Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer

JOHANNESBURG/LUANDA (Reuters) – Cyclone Kenneth killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.

The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280 km per hour (174 mph) when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.

It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swathe of southern Africa.

The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600 millimeters of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice that brought by Cyclone Idai.

One woman in the port town of Pemba died after being hit by a falling tree, the Emergency Operations Committee for Cabo Delgado (COE) said in a statement, while another person was injured.

In rural areas outside Pemba, many homes are made of mud. In the main town on the island of Ibo, 90 percent of the houses were destroyed, officials said. Around 15,000 people were out in the open or in “overcrowded” shelters and there was a need for tents, food and water, they said.

There were also reports of a large number of homes and some infrastructure destroyed in Macomia district, a mainland district adjacent to Ibo.

A local group, the Friends of Pemba Association, had earlier reported that they could not reach people in Muidumbe, a district further inland.

Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the storm could require another major humanitarian operation in Mozambique.

“Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the government’s limited resources,” he said in a statement.

FLOOD WARNINGS

Shaquila Alberto, owner of the beach-front Messano Flower Lodge in Macomia, said there were many fallen trees there, and in rural areas people’s homes had been damaged. Some areas of nearby Pemba had no power.

“Even my workers, they said the roof and all the things fell down,” she said by phone.

Further south, in Pemba, Elton Ernesto, a receptionist at Raphael’s Hotel, said there were fallen trees but not too much damage. The hotel had power and water, he said, while phones rang in the background. “The rain has stopped,” he added.

However Michael Charles, an official for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said heavy rains over the next few days were likely to bring a “second wave of destruction” in the form of flooding.

“The houses are not all solid, and the topography is very sandy,” Charles said.

In the days after Cyclone Idai, heavy inland rains prompted rivers to burst their banks, submerging entire villages, cutting areas off from aid and ruining crops. There were concerns the same could happen again in northern Mozambique.

Before Kenneth hit, the government and aid workers moved around 30,000 people to safer buildings such as schools, however authorities said that around 680,000 people were in the path of the storm.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alexandra Zavis)

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