Now that the Mueller investigation is over and his report has shown that there was absolutely no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the focus is rapidly turning to those that endlessly propagated extremely damaging conspiracy theories about the president of the United States.
For 675 days, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC engaged in a fake news binge unlike anything that we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history. They relentlessly pushed out news story after news story touting that we would soon have “evidence” that Trump had colluded with the Russians when there was no evidence at all. They kept telling us that “indictments are coming”, that “the noose is tightening” and that “the walls are closing in on this administration” when none of that was ever true. The entire Russian collusion narrative was a piece of fiction created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign team to explain her shocking election loss, but once it was embraced by the mainstream media and pro-Clinton members of federal law enforcement agencies it quickly snowballed out of control. Now the time has come for the mainstream media to be held accountable for lying to the American people on a massive scale, and later in this article I will explain how this can be done.
And I am certainly not the only one calling for the mainstream media to be held accountable. Other prominent conservative voices are also calling for accountability…
Donald Trump Jr lamented “more than two years of non-stop conspiracy theories from CNN, MSNBC, BuzzFeed and the rest of the mainstream media” and added: “It’s my hope that honest journalists within the media have the courage to hold these now fully debunked truthers accountable and treat them with the scorn and ridicule that they so deserve.”
Sean Hannity, a Fox News host in frequent contact with the president, was quick to assist. He issued a series of ominous warnings, variously concerning conspiracy theories, lies and attempts to rig elections.
“CNN, MSNBC, and the mainstream media have lied to the the [sic] American [sic] for [two] plus years,” Hannity said in a tweet. “Now they will be held accountable.” Another post took a cavalier approach to punctuation: “MSNBC CONSPIRACY NETWORK LIARS FAKE NEWS CNN LIARS NY TIMES WAPO LIARS.”
We are talking about a mountain of lies that is absolutely colossal. According to Axios, more than half a million articles were pumped out by the mainstream media over the course of the Mueller investigation…
Since May 2017, 533,074 web articles have been published about Russia and Trump/Mueller, generating 245 million interactions — including likes, comments and shares — on Twitter and Facebook, according to data from social-media analytics company NewsWhip.
The reason why tens of millions of Americans expected President Trump to be impeached was because it had been pounded into their heads day after day after day.
But it was a complete and utter lie the entire time.
Anyone with half a brain could see very early in the investigation that there was nothing there. When I ran for Congress, I told the entire state of Idaho during a televised debate that the Mueller investigation was nothing more than a witch hunt and that it should be immediately shut down. But of course that didn’t happen, and Robert Mueller spent 675 days turning over every rock that he possibly could, and after all that time he never found any evidence of collusion with Russia.
Sadly, the lack of evidence didn’t stop the mainstream news networks from relentlessly pounding on this story night after night…
From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (the last night before special counsel Robert Mueller sent his report to the Attorney General), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage, most of it (1,909 minutes) following Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017.
That’s an average of roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days — a level of coverage normally associated only with a major war or a presidential election. In fact, TV reporters devoted more airtime to the Russia investigation than any of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives — immigration, tax reform, trade, North Korea, ISIS, the economy, veterans’ affairs, the opioid epidemic, to name but a few. Since his presidency began, nearly one-fifth (18.8%) of all of Trump’s evening news coverage has been about this one investigation.
Clearly the mainstream media has greatly wronged the American people.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump, a Republican, wrote in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.
In this day and age when everyone is so concerned about “fake news”, why can’t we challenge the broadcast licenses of all the big mainstream news networks?
After all, they all willingly participated in propagating the biggest fake news hoax in all of U.S. history even after it became exceedingly clear that it was a giant sham.
Even former members of the mainstream media are declaring that it is time for some serious accountability. For example, in his latest Reality Check Ben Swann absolutely ripped his former colleagues in the mainstream media to shreds.
As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.
We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don’t turn things around, this story will destroy it.
The mainstream media certainly deserves to collapse, and nobody should mourn them when they are gone.
Once upon a time in America, the news media consisted of highly trained journalists that tried really hard to stick to the facts.
But now it is filled with political hacks that don’t even try to hide their hatred for President Trump and Republicans.
A “media revolution” is just one of the areas we need to tackle if we are to have any hope of ever turning this country around. If we want to be a nation of integrity, those that have greatly violated our trust must be held accountable.
One of the things that I greatly appreciate about President Trump is that he is the first president in modern American history to stand up and call the mainstream media a bunch of liars.
Because that is precisely what they are, and America would be a much better place if all of the big media companies were to go out of business.
On today’s War Room Roger Stone and Owen Shroyer respond to the State Of The Union Address and play all the explosive highlights. We also take calls in response to the State Of The Union. Leo Zagami joins us to talk about the latest news out of the Vatican and the John Of God story.
A 5-year-old boy is showing “real signs of recovery” after being thrown off the third-floor balcony at the Mall of America near Minneapolis on April 12.
“We have good news to share with you on this Good Friday,” attorney Stephen Tillitt said, CBS News reported. “Our miracle child is showing real signs of recovery. New test results have been positive, though he remains in intensive care with a long road ahead.”
Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, 24, was arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide after allegedly throwing the child.
A criminal complaint said Aranda was “looking for someone to kill” and wanted to go after an adult before choosing the child.
The 5-year-old suffered broken bones and a head trauma after falling nearly 40 feet, CBS Minnesota reported.
Bloomington, Minnesota, police said the child was treated for life threatening injuries April 12.
Aranda’s bond was set at $2 million, according to CBS. He was previously convicted for assault at the mall twice in 2015.
A judge asked Aranda whether he had any questions during a Tuesday court appearance.
“Not at all,” Aranda responded, CBS reported.
The state silences those that disagree with the “official narrative” because this allows them to control the population. Mike Adams hosts to discuss why being curious is so important to liberty in society.
FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, file photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, shows flames from a back firing operation underway rise behind a home off Ladera Ln near Bella Vista Drive in Santa Barbara, Calif. An investigation has determined that one of the largest and most destructive fires in California history was sparked by power lines coming into contact during high winds. The Ventura County Fire Department says Wednesday that the contact ignited dry brush on December 4, 2017 and eventually blackened more than 440 square miles (1,139 square kilometers). The Thomas fire destroyed more than a thousand structures in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and resulted in the deaths of two people. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP,File)
LOS ANGELES – One of the largest fires in California history was sparked by Southern California Edison power lines that came into contact during high winds, investigators said Wednesday.
The resulting arc ignited dry brush on Dec. 4, 2017, starting the blaze in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties that resulted in two deaths and blackened more than 440 square miles (1,139 square kilometers), according to the investigation headed by the Ventura County Fire Department.
The arc "deposited hot, burning or molten material onto the ground, in a receptive fuel bed, causing the fire," said a statement accompanying the investigative report.
Southern California Edison didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
The fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures before it was contained 40 days after it began near the city of Santa Paula. A firefighter and a civilian were killed.
A month after the blaze started, a downpour on the burn scar unleashed a massive debris flow that killed 21 people and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes in the seaside community of Montecito. Two people have not been found.
The investigation was conducted by fire officials in both counties along with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Investigators said the Thomas fire first began as two separate blazes that joined together. They determined the utility was responsible for both ignitions.
Edison previously acknowledged its equipment likely started one of the two fires.
Victims claimed in lawsuits that losses from the blaze and flooding were due to negligence by Edison, which has said it will work with insurance companies to handle the claims. The utility is protected from going bankrupt over the disasters, thanks to a law signed last year that passes excess liability costs on to utility customers.
In Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. filed for bankruptcy in the face of billions of dollars in potential liability from huge wildfires in that part of the state over the past two years. A blaze in November killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.
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This story has been corrected to state that 85, not 86, people were killed in the Northern California wildfire.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Navy safety swimmers stand on the deck of the Virginia class submarine USS New Hampshire after it surfaced through thin ice during exercises underneath ice in the Arctic Ocean north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska March 19, 2011. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
March 15, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to attend the May 6-7 Arctic Council meeting in Finland in a show of Washington’s commitment to the region amid growing U.S. concern about China’s interests there, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States are members of the Council, which coordinates Arctic policy and is gaining clout as sea ice thaws to open up new trade routes and intensify competition for its oil, gas and mineral resources.
Asked if Pompeo was expected to attend the May gathering in Rovaniemi, Finland, the senior Trump administration official said: “We do … unless he gets pulled off to one of his many other issues.”
“We want to show that we are committed to being an Arctic nation, an Arctic power,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a small group of reporters. “Chinese action has really focused everyone’s minds, including the Russians.”
China became an observer member of the Arctic Council in 2013 and last year it outlined its ambitions to extend President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative to the Arctic by developing shipping lanes opened up by global warming.
Asked if Pompeo would attend the meeting, a State Department spokesman said he had no travel to announce.
(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Tom Brown)
Supporters react to polling results at the United Conservative Party (UCP) provincial election night headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, Canada April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie
April 17, 2019
By Nia Williams
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – A right-of-center party that champions the energy industry swept to power in Canada’s main oil-producing province of Alberta on Tuesday, setting up a fight with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over climate change just months ahead of a federal election.
Television networks predicted the United Conservative Party of Jason Kenney had as expected easily defeated the left-leaning New Democratic Party government of Rachel Notley amid frustration over the economy and a beleaguered energy industry.
In an often belligerent campaign, Kenney promised to stand up for Albertans against Trudeau and other politicians he said were taking the province and its oil and gas for granted.
Notley’s government introduced a carbon tax to help cut emissions of greenhouse gases, a measure Kenney promised to scrap. Trudeau says he will impose a price on carbon on any province without a plan to fight climate change.
Kenney, a 50-year-old former federal Cabinet minister, vowed to take more decisive action on jobs and the economy. Both Kenney and Notley blame Trudeau for a lack of progress on new oil export pipelines.
The NDP ended decades of conservative rule in Alberta when it swept to power in the 2015 election, but inherited an economy hammered by a global crude price crash.
(Writing by Nia Williams and David Ljunggren; Editing by Steve Scherer and Peter Cooney)
A deadly Easter attack left 11 dead and 30 wounded after a disgruntled police officer drove his truck into a group of children in yet another Easter tragedy, this time in Gombe, Nigeria.
Earlier this month, Islamist militants massacred 17 Christians and injured eight in an attack on a church in Nasarawa state. The attack occurred during an infant dedication when armed militants opened fire in the church, killing the baby’s mother and several children.
These tragic events come just as the terrorist attack in Sri Lanka highlights the dangers that remain from asymmetric terrorism and violence against Christians in ethnically and religiously divided societies.
“There are some similarities between violence in Sri Lanka and Nigeria,” Professor Max Abrahms, a terrorism expert at Northeastern University, told Fox News. “Both have experienced substantial political violence which has traditionally been nationalist but has increasingly been infused with more narrowly religious-motivated extremist attacks."
Nigeria, often overlooked by U.S. policymakers usually more concerned with the Middle East, Russia and Europe, is home to one of the world’s most deadly Islamic terror groups.
The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million people are internally displaced from Boko Haram’s insurgency and the group has killed more than 15,200 people since 2011, according to some estimates. (YouTube)
Boko Haram is looking to transform Nigeria into an Islamic state based on Sharia law. The group also declared its allegiance to ISIS in 2015 with one branch called the Islamic State West African Province. U.S. intelligence estimates that Boko Haram commands between 4,000 and 6,000 dedicated militants who have attacked schools, burned down entire villages, and abducted hundreds of people in their brutal campaign of terror across Nigeria.
The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million people are internally displaced from Boko Haram’s insurgency and the group has killed more than 15,200 people since 2011, according to some estimates.
Although Nigerian security forces have made inroads in stemming the violence from Boko Haram, the insurgency remains a threat to Nigerians.
“The group, which has now split into two factions (one of which is recognized as a branch of the Islamic State) has been gaining momentum against Nigerian security forces -- which have been hampered by corruption and low morale -- and conducting increasingly deadly attacks in Northeastern states,” Thomas Abi Hanna, Global Security Analyst at Stratfor told Fox News.
Violence in Nigeria, and against Christians, has risen in recent months, with at least 280 people from Christian communities killed by Fulani militants throughout Nigeria between February and March 2019. It's not clear to what extent the deadly violence is due to religious affiliations, but the uptick does highlight the growing concern within Nigeria's Christian communities.
"Religion is not necessarily the primary driver of attacks on Christians though, as there are also ethnic, political, territorial disputes and other factors which contribute to these tensions," Hanna explained. "Attacks related to any of these issues can feed into one another and exacerbate ongoing tensions across the board."
Nigeria is divided between a Muslim majority north and a Christian majority south. Because of this religiously-based geographic separation, the country’s political parties formed an unwritten power-sharing agreement during the transition to democracy in 1999 that major offices, most notably the president and vice president, should rotate between the north and the south.
Abubakar Shekau, from a November 2018 propaganda video; he is understood to control one of the two factions of Boko Haram that split in 2016.
However, this arrangement can lead to heightened tensions as it did in 2009, when then-President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northern Muslim, died, allowing his southern Christian Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to become president. The north’s opportunity in power was cut short and the swap led to mass electoral violence with the death of 800 people once Jonathan was re-elected in 2011.
Nigeria is also one of Africa’s poorest countries, despite its vast natural resource wealth, making it ripe for terrorist and other insurgent groups to fill the vacuum left by a government that fails to meet the needs of its people.
Not only is Islamist terror a major concern for Nigerians, violence between herders and farmers has eclipsed the threat posed by Boko Haram and has killed more people than the Islamist insurgency while also increasing the north-south religious divide.
“Christians have been targeted in attacks related to both of these ongoing conflicts which have killed and injured thousands, displaced hundreds of thousands, and become a major political issue,” Hanna said.
The conflict is intertwined with Nigeria’s underlying ethnic, religious, political and territorial disputes, as the herders are nomadic and from the Muslim north while the farmers are mainly Christians.
Deadly clashes over land and resources killed more than 2,000 people in 2018, according to a report by Amnesty International. A massive population boom in Nigeria along with the effects of climate change dried up grazing land, forcing herders and farmers into extremely close quarters with tensions rising due to resource scarcity.
The ongoing farmer-herdsman crisis has sharpened ethnic and religious tensions and increased political polarization in Nigeria. The Nigerian government and security forces have struggled to solve political disputes over land while the security forces have been unable to contain extremist violence.
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News: "In public and private messaging, we have urged the Nigerian government, and community and religious leaders, to work together for an immediate end to violence, the swift and voluntary return of members of displaced communities, and for perpetrators to be brought to justice.
"U.S. Mission staff, including Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, have traveled to the affected states to engage with government officials, religious and traditional leaders, and civil society."
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)
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)
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)
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)
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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