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Compromise? Time ticking down for Britain to come to Brexit agreement

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at church near High Wycombe
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at church, as Brexit turmoil continues, near High Wycombe, Britain April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson

April 7, 2019

By Elizabeth Piper

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s government held out the possibility of compromise on Sunday with the opposition Labour Party to try to win support in parliament for leaving the European Union with a deal, just days before the latest Brexit date.

Prime Minister Theresa May, weaker than ever after her Brexit deal was rejected by parliament three times, has been forced to turn to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after giving up on winning over eurosceptics in her Conservative Party, whose opposition has hardened.

With Britain’s departure now set for April 12, May’s government is running out of time to get a deal through Britain’s divided parliament, and must come up with a new plan to secure a new delay from EU leaders at a summit on Wednesday.

Britain’s biggest shift in foreign and trade policy in more than 40 years is mired in uncertainty, with ministers saying Brexit may never happen, businesses worried the country could leave without a deal, and others just wanting to reverse it.

In a last-ditch bid to get her deal through parliament, May opened talks with Corbyn last week to try to strike a deal on Britain’s future ties with the EU in exchange for his support for her divorce deal, the Withdrawal Agreement.

So far those talks have failed to yield any kind of accord, with Labour policy chiefs saying the government has yet to move from its “red lines”, above all over a customs union, which sets tariffs for goods imported into the EU.

“Specifically provided we are leaving the European Union then it is important that we compromise, that’s what this is about and it is through gritted teeth,” said Andrea Leadsom, the Brexit-supporting leader of the House of Commons (lower house of parliament).

“But nevertheless the most important thing is to actually leave the EU,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, adding that May’s proposal for a customs arrangement after Brexit was not too far from Labour’s desire for a customs union.

But, while describing the talks so far as positive, Labour’s business policy chief Rebecca Long-Bailey said there had as yet been no “real changes” to the deal.

“I think both sides are committed to working quite rigorously to compromise as much as possible so that we can provide that compromise Brexit deal that I think parliament desperately needs at the moment,” she told the BBC.

Shami Chakrabarti, Labour’s legal policy chief, was more blunt. “It’s hard to imagine that we are going to make real progress now without either a general election or a second referendum on any deal she can get over the line in parliament,” she told Sky News.

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Britain voted by 52 to 48 percent in 2016 to leave the EU, and parliament, May’s cabinet and the country at large remain deeply polarized over the terms of Brexit and even whether to depart at all.

Despite the lack of convergence between the two major parties over a deal, there was one thing they did agree on – time is running out for Brexit to be secured.

May, who has been verbally mauled by members of her own party for turning to Labour, herself warned Brexit-supporting lawmakers that “the longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all”.

In an attempt to avoid falling out of the EU without a deal, she again heads to Brussels this week to ask for a further delay until June 30 – something EU leaders have said requires her setting out an alternative path to getting her deal approved.

Any extension would require unanimous approval from the other EU countries, all weary of Britain’s Brexit indecision, and could come with conditions. EU summit chair Donald Tusk plans to propose an extension of a year, which could be shortened if Britain’s parliament eventually ratifies the deal.

But even the threat of losing Brexit has so far failed to change the minds of hardline eurosceptic Conservative lawmakers, and some are now suggesting that Britain make the EU’s life a misery if Britain is forced to accept a long delay.

“If we are forced to remain in we must be the most difficult member possible,” Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group, a Conservative eurosceptic group, told Sky News.

“When the multi-annual financial framework comes forward, if we’re still in, this is our one in seven year opportunity to veto the budget and to be really very difficult.”

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Raissa Kasolowsky; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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U.S. Navy, Coast Guard ships pass through strategic Taiwan Strait

The U.S. Coast Guard Legend-class maritime security cutter USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750) pulls into Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam
The U.S. Coast Guard Legend-class maritime security cutter USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750) pulls into Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawii, U.S. to support the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2012 exercise in this June 29, 2012 handout photo. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jon Dasbach/U.S. Navy/Handout via REUTERS

March 25, 2019

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States sent Navy and Coast Guard ships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, the military said, as the United States increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.

The voyage risks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from Washington amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.

The two ships were identified as the Navy Curtis Wilbur destroyer and the Coast Guard Bertholf cutter, a U.S. military statement said.

“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.

“The U.S. will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” it added.

Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom of navigation patrols.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help defend the island nation and is its main source of arms. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.

China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it considers a wayward province of “one China” and sacred Chinese territory.

China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills in the past few years and worked to isolate the island internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report earlier this year describing Taiwan as the “primary driver” for China’s military modernization, which it said had made major advances in recent years.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said trade negotiations with China were progressing and a final agreement “will probably happen,” adding that his call for tariffs to remain on Chinese imported goods for some time did not mean talks were in trouble.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: OANN

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Garuda Indonesia seeks to cancel order for 49 Boeing Max 8s

Indonesia's flag carrier is seeking the cancellation of a multibillion dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 Max 8 jets, citing a loss of confidence after two crashes in the past six months.

It is the first announcement of a cancellation since Boeing's new model aircraft were grounded following fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

PT Garuda Indonesia's spokesman Ikhsan Rosan said Friday that the airline, which ordered 50 Max 8 jets in 2014 and so far has received just one, sent a letter to Boeing last week asking to cancel the order worth $4.9 billion.

He said the carrier made the decision out of fear its business would be damaged due to customer alarm over the crashes.

Rosan said Garuda plans to meet with Boeing representatives next week in Jakarta.

Source: Fox News World

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Nissan governance panel sees no need to overhaul alliance agreement -source

FILE PHOTO: The logos of car manufacturers Renault and Nissan are seen in front of a common dealership of the companies in Saint-Avold
FILE PHOTO: The logos of car manufacturers Renault and Nissan are seen in front of a common dealership of the companies in Saint-Avold, France, Jan. 15, 2019. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/File Photo

March 18, 2019

TOKYO (Reuters) – The external committee tasked with improving governance at Nissan Motor Co believes the firm can deepen ties with Renault SA without overhauling the broader alliance agreed nearly two decades ago, a person familiar with the matter said.

At the committee’s latest meeting held late last week, members were at a “near consensus” to recommend stronger roles for outside directors and establishing committees for board member nominations, auditing and determining executive pay, the person who has direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The person was speaking on condition of anonymity given that final recommendations have yet to be announced. A spokeswoman for the committee declined to comment on the discussions.

The two automakers are retooling their partnership to create a more equal footing and avoid the all-encompassing power wielded by ousted chairman Carlos Ghosn before his November arrest in Japan on financial misconduct charges.

Last week, Nissan <7201.T>, Renault <RENA.PA> and junior partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp <7211.T> established a new joint board comprising separate executives of all three automakers to oversee operations and governance, dismantling the previous structure which in practice had placed control of the alliance with Ghosn.

Executives at all three automakers said the new structure was not intended to replace or change their master agreement, which was drawn up in 2002 and gives biggest stakeholder Renault the right to appoint Nissan executives and directors.

The external committee tasked by Nissan to propose ways to bolster the firm’s corporate governance said on Sunday it would announce its final recommendations on March 27.

(Reporting by Maki Shiraki; Writing by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Source: OANN

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Italy’s Salvini dismisses talk of government collapse, snap poll

FILE PHOTO: Matteo Salvini, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the far-right League Party, speaks as he launches campaigning for the European elections
FILE PHOTO: Matteo Salvini, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the far-right League Party, speaks as he launches campaigning for the European elections, in Milan, Italy April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo/File Photo

April 24, 2019

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini sought on Wednesday to douse speculation of a government collapse and early general elections, saying he wanted to govern for a full term.

The two ruling parties, Salvini’s right-wing League and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, are feuding as they compete for votes ahead of European Parliament elections on May 26, stoking investor fears that the government could fall.

(Reporting by Angelo Amante; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

Source: OANN

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Malnourished Venezuelans hope urgently needed aid arrives soon

The Wider Image: Malnourished Venezuelans hope urgently needed aid arrives soon
Yaneidi Guzman, 38, poses for a picture at her home in Caracas, Venezuela, February 17, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

February 22, 2019

By Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Shaylim Valderrama

CARACAS (Reuters) – Yaneidi Guzman has lost a third of her weight over the past three years as Venezuela’s economic collapse made food unaffordable and she now hopes the opposition will succeed in bringing urgently needed foreign aid to the South American country.

Guzman’s clothes hang limply off her gaunt frame. The 38-year-old is one of many Venezuelans suffering from malnutrition as the once-prosperous, oil-rich OPEC nation has seen its economy halve in size over the last five years under President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuelans’ diets have become ever more deficient in vitamins and protein, as currency controls restrict food imports and salaries fail to keep apace with inflation that is now above 2 million percent annually.

Growing malnutrition is one of the reasons Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido has moved ahead with his plans to bring supplies of food and medicine into Venezuela by land and sea on Saturday, despite resistance from Maduro.

Maduro, who denies there is a humanitarian crisis, has said it is a “show” to undermine him.

On Thursday, crowds cheered as Guaido led a convoy of opposition lawmakers out of Caracas on a 800-km (500 mile) trip to the Colombian border where they hope to receive food and medicine. Guaido has not provided details on how they would bring in the aid.

In response, Maduro denounced the aid, saying in televised comments that he was considering closing the border with Colombia and would close the border with Brazil.

Aid has become a proxy war in a battle for control of Venezuela, after Guaido in January invoked a constitutional provision to assume an interim presidency, saying Maduro’s re-election last year was fraudulent.

“I hope they let the aid in,” said Guzman, who despite holding down two jobs cannot make enough money for the tests, supplements or protein-rich diet that doctors have prescribed her. She and her husband make less than $30 per month and prioritize feeding their three young children.

While there is a vacuum of government information, almost two-thirds of Venezuelans surveyed in a university study called, “Survey on life conditions,” and published last year, said they had lost on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight in 2017.

On the wall of Guzman’s home in the poor hillside district of Petare in the capital Caracas, hangs a wooden plaque with the psalm “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

Yet her fridge is empty except for a few bags of beans.

Sometimes she wakes up not knowing what she will feed her family that day. Mostly they eat rice, lentils and cassava.

While Guzman says she would welcome the aid, she is concerned the one-off shipment would be a drop in an ocean given Venezuelans’ needs. “You don’t only eat once,” she said.

Some political analysts say Saturday’s showdown is less about solving Venezuela’s needs and more about testing the military’s loyalty towards Maduro, by daring it to turn the aid away.

LENTILS AND PLANTAIN

Some aid agencies like Catholic relief agency Caritas are already on the ground providing what help they can.

In San Francisco de Yare, a town 70 km (45 miles) south of Caracas, Maria Guitia’s one-year-old baby’s belly is distended and his arms thin. The pair live with Guitia’s five siblings and parents in a one-room tin shed with a dirt floor and no running water.

Work is scarce and they live off payments for odd jobs and a monthly government handout of heavily-subsidized basic food supplies. They have taken to inventing meals with what little they have like lentils with plantain from the trees in their backyard.

Guitia, 21, said her son had lost weight over the past five months until Caritas gave them some nutritional supplements.

The United Nations and Red Cross have cautioned against the politicization of aid.

The United States, which is pushing Maduro to step down, sent aid for Venezuela to a collection point in neighboring Colombia in military aircraft, in a show of force.

Guzman dreams of living once more not off foreign aid or government handouts but her own work.

“It’s not that I want to be rich, or a millionaire,” she said. “But I do want to give my children a good future, to make sure I can take them to the doctors when they get ill … and that they eat well.”

For photo essay, please click on: https://reut.rs/2IrSEVr

(Reporting by Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Shaylim Valderrama in Caracas; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Diane Craft)

Source: OANN

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False Trump Accusers Harmed Us All. Hold Them Accountable.

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“Our government,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

Would that Brandeis could rise from the dead to oversee the investigation and likely prosecution of those whose determination to oppose Donald J. Trump was so fierce that they conspired to create a narrative of treason that has now been revealed to be a charade.

Let the reckoning begin.

I’m not talking about settling scores with the dozens of mainstream media figures who spent the last two years “informing” their viewers/listeners/readers that President Trump and his campaign had broken the law to conspire with the Russian government to fix the 2016 election. They were wrong, and they now have been proven wrong, by the very man in whom they placed their deep and abiding faith.

If, as we were reminded repeatedly during the last presidential administration, the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, those charlatans will lose their audiences, their sponsors, and, eventually, their livelihoods.

I’m talking instead about the reckoning for the current and former government officials – holders of a public trust – who deliberately abused that trust to lead their fellow citizens on what they knew from the beginning was a wild goose chase. They knew it was a wild goose chase because they were the ones who created it in the first place.

I’m talking specifically about former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, among others.

These are the people who, together, spun a fable about corruption and treason and international intrigue that led to horrific damage – damage to individuals caught in the cross-hairs of the “investigation” they launched, damage to their government, damage to their country.

Example: As I sat to write this, it occurred to me that President Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday was the first meeting Trump had had with a foreign leader who didn’t have just cause to wonder if and when Trump would be leaving office early as a result of the investigation.

That is, for more than two years now – in fact, for the entire duration of his presidency – President Trump has been handicapped in his conduct of foreign policy by the inevitable doubts among foreign leaders who couldn’t help but wonder about the value (and duration) of a deal struck with Trump, or a threat made by Trump.

That handicapping of our president doesn’t just hurt him, it hurts our entire nation.

It must not be allowed to happen again. To that end, a reckoning must ensue – not for reasons of revenge, but because punishing criminals for their criminal behavior is the best way to head off future criminal behavior, both by them and by others encouraged to behave criminally after seeing earlier criminal behavior go unpunished.

Congressional Democrats now insist that the entire Mueller report be handed over to them and made public, even though they know there are parts of it that must be redacted. Fine. I agree. Scrub the document and remove the national security information and any information that would violate grand jury secrecy, and let us see the rest of it.

But while we’re releasing the Mueller report, let’s also release the FISA warrant applications. Let’s release the testimony from the secret hearings. Let’s release the memoranda memorializing the opening of the investigation, and the “scope” memorandum Rosenstein issued in August 2017, months after he appointed Mueller (when he failed to cite a crime to be investigated by Mueller, as Justice Department guidelines require).

Let’s appoint a new special counsel to investigate those former FBI and Justice Department officials – along with Brennan and Clapper – who created this entire narrative. Have them interrogated by FBI officials. Let them hand over their new-found post-government cable TV pundit earnings to white-collar defense attorneys to help them maintain their innocence.

Wrote one of them recently, “The rule of law depends upon fair administration of justice, which is rooted in complete and unbiased investigation. We are best served when an investigation finds all relevant facts and illuminates the fullest possible view of the truth.”

I agree. I would add that we are best served when those upon whom we rely for the administration of justice actually do their jobs without fear or favor, and follow the law as written without regard to the last name of the subject of their investigation.

Just FYI, that quote was from Comey, writing last week in The New York Times. Like the blind squirrel, even he can find an acorn every now and then.

Jenny Beth Martin is chairman of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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