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Motive Revealed In Smollett Case: Actor Concocted Hate Crime After Racist Letter Failed To Impress

Actor Jussie Smollett appears to have concocted a hate-crime hoax because he was upset that a racist letter sent to the Empire studio didn’t get a “bigger reaction,” reports CBS 2 Chicago. As a result, Smollett allegedly paid two men $3,500 each to rehearse and then attack him a week later in an attempt to frame Trump supporters as violent racists. 

When the letter didn’t get enough attention, he concocted the staged attack,” a source told CBS 2 Investigator Brad Edwards. Other sources corroborated that information.

The blockbuster revelation into at least part of Smollett’s potential motive comes two days after CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar reported Smollett and two brothers — Ola and Abel Osundairo — staged the attack on Jan. 29 in Streeterville. –CBS 2 Chicago

CBS 2 reporter Charlie De Mar spoke on the phone with the Osundario brothers Monday afternoon, who said in a joint statement: “We are not racist. We are not homophobic, and we are not anti-Trump. We were born and raised in Chicago and are American citizens.

Smollett received a letter containing a “white substance” at Empire‘s Chicago Cinespace Studios where the show is filmed, prompting a HAZMAT response that failed to gain much traction. The “white substance” was later found to be aspirin.

The note was crafted with letters apparently cut out from magazines to form words. The pieced-together message contained racial and homophobic threats directed at Smollett. A magazine is one of the pieces of evidence retrieved from the brother’s home last week during a search conducted by CPD. Investigators also recovered a book of stamps. 

The brothers are acquaintances of Smollett.

When asked about the letter in a televised interview last week, Smollett said, “On the letter, it had a stick figure hanging from a tree with a gun pointing toward it.” It also had “MAGA” — reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan Make America Great Again – written as the return address.

In due course all the facts will reveal themselves and at the end of the day my clients are honest and credible” the brothers’ attorney Gloria Schmidt said.

CBS 2 Chicago

Smollett appeared in a play with a similar “assault”

The Daily Mail reported on Monday that Smollett “landed in Chicago shortly after midnight” one day after he was in New York City for a reading of the play “Take Me Out,” which features a gay character who is attacked using “the same racial slurs Smollett told police his attackers screamed at him, including ‘f****t’ and ‘n****r.'”

On Monday, Smollett’s new crisis management rep Anne Kavanaugh reported “There are no plans for Jussie to meet with Chicago police today. Any news reports suggesting otherwise are inaccurate. Smollett’s attorneys will keep dialogue going with Chicago police on his behalf.”

Smollett picked the wrong camera

After the alleged “attack” on January 29 in which Smollett alleged that two attackers recognized him, shouted racist and homophobic slurs at him (from the reading he had just flown back from), beat him up, poured a bleach-like liquid on him, wrapped a noose around his neck, and warned him “This is MAGA country!” – Smollett made sure to tell Good Morning America last week that he spotted a surveillance camera that caught the entire incident.

Alas, as Breitbart‘s John Nolte notes, Smollett then admitted his disappointment that the camera was facing the wrong way.

And one can imagine, had there been surveillance footage of the attack, the investigation would have proceeded very, very differently.

Once police had the footage, it would leak. Once cable and network news had the footage, it would loop endlessly. The fact that the two brothers are black wouldn’t matter. CBS Chicago reports that a black face mask was found in their apartment. Smollett told police the attackers wore face masks. With those face masks, the organized left (the media, Democrats, celebrities) were allowed to assume his racist attackers were white. Breitbart

Just another hate crime hoax in America (allegedly, of course).


Source: InfoWars

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Trump: Migrants Will Go to ‘Sanctuary Cities’

President Donald Trump said Monday that his proposal to send migrants to so-called sanctuary cities is taking effect.

Trump tweeted:

"Those Illegal Immigrants who can no longer be legally held (Congress must fix the laws and loopholes) will be, subject to Homeland Security, given to Sanctuary Cities and States!"

It was unclear, however, whether the Department of Homeland Security is taking any steps to implement the contentious plan. Lawyers there had previously told the White House that the idea was unfeasible and a misuse of funds. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already strapped for cash.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Samsung Electronics expects first-quarter earnings to miss market forecasts

FILE PHOTO - Attendees at Samsung Electronics Co LtdÕs Unpacked event test out the company's new devices in in San Francisco
FILE PHOTO - Attendees at Samsung Electronics Co LtdÕs Unpacked event test out the company's new devices in in San Francisco, California, U.S., February 20, 2019 REUTERS/Stephen Nellis

March 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that it expects its first quarter earnings to fall short of market expectations as declines in its memory chip prices have widened.

Samsung in a regulatory filing pointed to weak chip demand and slowing demand from its display panels customers.

The South Korean tech giant is expected to post its guidance for first quarter earnings early next month.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Source: OANN

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Cops arrest 16 suspects in $35M pot bust in Atlanta

Atlanta police reportedly arrested 16 people as part of a large-scale marijuana bust that resulted from a five-month operation and netted 22 guns, six cars and $676,000 in cash.

ATLANTA MCDONALD'S EMPLOYEE WITH DOWN SYNDROME HONORED FOR 27 YEARS ON THE JOB

Police said they raided five large “grow houses” in Clayton, Gwinnett and Henry counties. Each house had between 340 and 1,500 pot plants inside that were tended to with sophisticated equipment used to manufacture high-grade marijuana, according to authorities.

(Gwinnett County Police Department)

SMOKING STRONG POT DAILY COULD RAISE PSYCHOSIS RISK, STUDY FINDS 

In all, 3,147 plants were seized in addition to THC candies, THC oil, cocaine and psychedelic mushrooms, officials said. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive component in the cannabis plant.

The 16 suspects rounded up in the sting belong to two large drug trafficking organizations that operate across the southeast, authorities said. The suspects range in age from 26 to 54 and were “embedded” in the community.

“To those passing by, no one would have suspected that these five marijuana grow houses were harboring criminal activity,” Gwinnett County Police said in a statement.

(Gwinnett County Police)

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Last month, officials in Forsyth County said they intercepted more than $1 million worth of marijuana and THC oil.

It is against the law in Georgia to grow recreational or medical marijuana. It’s also illegal to buy it, sell it or bring it into the state.

Source: Fox News National

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Comedian in front as curtain rises on Ukrainian presidential election

Volodymyr Zelenskiy hosts a comedy show at a concert hall in Brovary
FILE PHOTO: Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukrainian comedian and candidate in the upcoming presidential election, hosts a comedy show at a concert hall in Brovary, Ukraine March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

March 31, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainians will cast their ballots in a presidential election on Sunday in which a comedian with no political experience and who plays a fictional president in a popular TV series is tipped to win the first round.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 41, who is appealing to voters fed up with entrenched corruption, has consistently led opinion polls in a three-horse race against incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

At stake is the leadership of a country on the front line of the West’s standoff with Russia after the 2014 Maidan street protests ejected Poroshenko’s Kremlin-friendly predecessor and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Investors are watching to see if the next president will push reforms required to keep the country in an International Monetary Fund bailout program that has supported Ukraine through war, sharp recession and a currency plunge.

No candidate is expected to receive more than half the votes, meaning the election would go to a run-off on April 21. Out of a crowded field of 39 candidates, none of the likely winners wants to move Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit.

(GRAPHIC: Ukraine presidential election – https://tmsnrt.rs/2EEQ22R)

Poroshenko has fought to integrate the country with the European Union and NATO, while strengthening the military which is fighting Kremlin-backed separatists in the east of the country.

Pushing the use of the Ukrainian language and instrumental in establishing a new independent Orthodox church, the 53-year-old confectionary magnate casts himself as the man to prevent Ukraine again becoming a Russian vassal state.

But reforms crucial to keep foreign aid flowing have been patchy. Conflict in the eastern Donbass region has killed 13,000 people in five years and rumbles on despite Poroshenko’s promise to end it within weeks. Frustration over low living standards and pervasive corruption has left the door open for Zelenskiy.

ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT

Just 9 percent of Ukrainians have confidence in their national government, the lowest of any electorate in the world, a Gallup poll published in March showed.

Zelenskiy has tapped into the anti-establishment mood, though his inexperience makes Western officials and foreign investors wary and skeptics question his fitness to be a wartime commander-in-chief.

Inviting comparisons with U.S. President Donald Trump and Italy’s Five-Star movement, his campaign has relied heavily on social media and comedy gigs of jokes, sketches and song-and-dance routines that poke fun at his political rivals.

“He embodies the perceived need for ‘new faces’ in politics and could sway the young, pro-reform electorate to his side,” said Economist Intelligence Unit analyst Agnese Ortolani.

Zelenskiy’s campaign has blurred the line between reality and the TV series in which he plays a scrupulously honest history teacher who accidentally becomes president.

In series three, which began airing in March, his character is flung into prison and the country falls under the control of oligarchs, populists and ultranationalists, and eventually gets broken up into 28 states. Thinly-disguised characters resembling Poroshenko and Tymoshenko come to power.

The election has been marred by allegations of fraud and vote-buying, meaning one or more of the candidates could contest the result. Ultranationalists acting as election observers have also caused concern about the prospect of violence.

Accused of cheating by Tymoshenko, Poroshenko attended a public prayer on the banks of the Dnieper river in Kiev on Saturday to pray for the elections to be free and fair and, in his words, for “the wisdom of the people who tomorrow will determine the future of Ukraine.”

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk; Editing by David Holmes)

Source: OANN

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Rhetoric vs. reality: Kamala Harris’ progressive platform undercut by prosecutor past

Kamala Harris began her 2020 presidential campaign with a sweeping anti-Trump speech on Jan. 27 that took pains to mollify progressive critics arguing that, when Harris was a prosecutor and California's attorney general, she shunned some of the same proposals she now claims are critical to stem racial injustice in the court system.

In the weeks since that address to supporters at Oakland City Hall, though, concerns from prominent progressives and members of the legal community back in California have only grown louder -- as has pressure on Harris to prove that her newfound commitment to these issues is genuine.

CALIFORNIA REDUCES CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR THEFT -- YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NUMBER OF THEFTS

A scathing op-ed published in January in The New York Times, written by a law professor who directed the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles, kickstarted renewed scrutiny on Harris.

The law professor, Lara Bazelon, charged in the piece that Harris previously "fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors."

Bazelon further suggested that Harris should "apologize to the wrongfully convicted people she has fought to keep in prison and to do what she can to make sure they get justice," or otherwise make clear she has "radically broken from her past."

Sen. Kamala Harris talking to a crowd at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, N.H.

Sen. Kamala Harris talking to a crowd at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, N.H. (Fox News)

Asked by Fox News this week whether she thought Harris has since taken the necessary steps to atone for her previous positions, Bazelon responded, "The short answer is no, I don’t."

"I am disappointed in Kamala Harris," Bazelon continued. "Her tenure as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general was riven by the failures to embrace bold necessary change--or even change that wasn’t so bold but merely consistent with her prosecutorial mission--for example, conceding error on wrongful conviction cases rather than weaponize technicalities to keep people locked up."

Harris' "after-the-fact claim to have been a 'progressive prosecutor,'" Bazelon added, "rings hollow for the reasons I said in my [New York Times] piece." She cited shifting comments on marijuana and cash bail, adding: "What progressives like me want to see -- and have not -- is Harris reckon honestly with her record. ... I think voters are hungry for authenticity. It isn’t authentic to claim to be something you were not."

Other progressive advocates had a similar assessment. Just months after she joined the Senate in 2017, Harris touted her bipartisan bail reform package on Facebook, telling her thousands of followers that she wanted states to move away from cash bail entirely, and for judges to set bail amounts based only on the risks posed by defendants -- not the "money they’ve got in their bank account."

The goal, Harris said, was to reduce the effects of the bail system on impoverished minority communities. But her choice surprised some bail reform advocates back in California. In her seven years as a district attorney from 2004 to 2011, and then six as attorney general, Harris was absent on the issue, they say.

In fact, less than a year earlier, her office defended the cash bail system in a pair of federal court cases, shifting course only weeks before she entered the Senate.

"For her entire career, she used some of the highest money bail amounts in the country to keep people in jail cells and saddle poor families with financial debt," Alec Karakatsanis, an attorney who has brought several legal challenges to California's bail system, told The Associated Press. "And as soon as she had no influence on that issue practically, she announces she has a different view on it."

Harris' campaign did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.

JUST HOW MUCH MONEY HAS HARRIS RAISED SO FAR, COMPARED TO OTHER TOP DEM 2020 CONTENDERS?

Now a presidential candidate, Harris is casting herself as a progressive who consistently leveraged her power in the justice system to further civil rights causes and advocate for the disadvantaged. She has pledged a wholesale overhaul of the country's fractured criminal justice system, arguing for marijuana legalization, bail reform and a moratorium on the death penalty. But when she had a chance to take a bold stand on these issues as a top law enforcement officer, Harris often opted for a careful approach or defended the status quo.

In this Friday, March 8, 2019, photo, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, speaks at a town hall gathering in Hemingway, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

In this Friday, March 8, 2019, photo, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, speaks at a town hall gathering in Hemingway, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

"I never had a sense she was forward thinking or reforming," said John Raphling, a bail reform advocate and senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who faced off against Harris's state Justice Department as a criminal defense attorney. "Bail reform is a trendy issue, and a lot of politicians are jumping on it and saying this is unfair. I don't have any evidence that Harris was seeing that unfairness back when she was attorney general — but to her credit, we evolve, we learn, we see things."

Harris' supporters say as a prosecutor she was tasked with upholding the law and, as attorney general, defending the state, not making policy. She had limited ability to effect change within the rigid structure of the courts, they argue.

Argued Lateefah Simon, a civil rights activist who worked for Harris in San Francisco: "Everyone who has experienced the criminal justice system knows it's broken. She would say, 'we're confined by the rules of the law, and in the areas where we have discretion, we are going to work to try to move justice.'"

"I deeply know her convictions about what could be possible and what we needed to do, but also what the boundaries and limitations were," Simon said.

Senate Judiciary Committee members Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., left, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., arrive at the chamber for the final vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, at the Capitol in Washington.

Senate Judiciary Committee members Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., left, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., arrive at the chamber for the final vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, at the Capitol in Washington. (Associated Press)

Simon wrote a response to Bazelon's op-ed, which praised Harris for enacting "the first statewide implicit bias and procedural justice training in the country" and making "officers wear body cameras," as well as for starting "pattern and practice investigations into discriminatory actions" and demanding "that data on in-custody deaths and police shootings be made public to ensure accountability."

Simon also said Harris worked to hire more minority prosecutors. In her first year as San Francisco district attorney, she launched a re-entry program designed to keep low-level drug offenders from returning to prison. That same year she refused to seek the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, infuriating the Bay Area political establishment and creating friction with the law enforcement community.

But in many cases throughout her career, Harris embraced the traditional role of prosecutor.

"I am disappointed in Kamala Harris."

— Law professor Lara Bazelon

She refused to take a position on a pair of sentencing reform ballot measures, arguing she must remain neutral because her office was responsible for preparing ballot text. She defended the death penalty in court, setting aside her personal opposition to capital punishment.

In response to critics who've pushed her to use her power in the courts to usher in change, she told The New York Times in 2016, "I have a client, I don't get to choose my client."

Harris now says she would call for a federal moratorium on the death penalty if elected president.

Harris' law enforcement approach has at times put her out of step with California's activist community. When she pushed a controversial policy that criminalized truancy, threatening to jail parents of children who missed too much school, even Harris' staff "winced at the plan," she wrote in her first book released just in time for her campaign for attorney general in 2010.

The program has since become a source of tension with criminal justice advocates, who see it as a sign of Harris' outdated approach to dealing with problems that stem from poverty. The Huffington Post recently spotlighted the case of a woman who was arrested under the program over her daughter's inconsistent school attendance -- though much of that was due to medical issues.

In a recent NPR interview, Harris said her truancy initiative was not designed to punish vulnerable families, but "put a spotlight" on the problem and direct resources to needy families. Her campaign hails the effort as a success, and supporters have lauded Harris for prioritizing a child's education.

"As a result of our initiative, which never resulted in any parent going to jail — never — because that was never the goal," Harris said.

But Harris' legacy remains on the state's books: She pushed a state-wide truancy law modeled after her San Francisco program. It has resulted in hundreds of parents in often less affluent and less politically liberal California counties being prosecuted.

Harris' approach at the time was considered smart politics for a politician seeking to run statewide. Throughout her career, Harris worked to win over powerful police unions. She refused to support a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving law enforcement officers. In 2015, she declined to back statewide standards for body cameras, arguing that individual departments should decide how to use the technology.

It is true, Bazelon conceded in her op-ed, that "politicians must make concessions to get the support of key interest groups," and that the "fierce, collective opposition of law enforcement and local district attorney associations can be hard to overcome at the ballot box." But, Bazelon charged, Harris "did not barter or trade to get the support of more conservative law-and-order types; she gave it all away."

As Harris transitioned from law enforcement to legislating, the politics of criminal justice issues were changing fast. The deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in 2014 and 2015 prompted outcry and spawned the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement. Democrats began rethinking their tough-on-crime strategies, focusing more on inequality and abuse in the system. Prosecutors and police came under increasing scrutiny for their roles.

Harris' views appear to have been changing, too.

In 2014, she was opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana, and when she ran against a Republican challenger for re-election as attorney general she took the more conservative view: He wanted to legalize. Harris laughed at the idea in a local television interview.

HARRIS SAID SHE LISTENED TO TUPAC WHILE SHE WAS HIGH IN COLLEGE, BEFORE HE EVEN MADE MUSIC

But Harris's public tone changed as speculation grew about her running for president in 2020. Last year, Harris endorsed Democratic Sen. Cory Booker's bill for federal legalization of marijuana. She argued on Twitter that "making marijuana legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do and it's the right thing to do." She released a video declaring that "marijuana laws are not applied and enforced in the same way for all people."

Last month, she went as far as acknowledging to a pair of morning radio hosts that she's used recreational marijuana: "I have, and I did inhale; that was a long time ago."

Some see a similar pattern when it comes to the call for bail reform. Shortly after announcing her presidential bid in January, Harris declared on Twitter: "It's long past time to address bail reform across the country."

"This is a serious injustice," she wrote.

Three years earlier, Harris's office was defending cash bail in a federal case. "Neither the bail law nor the bail schedule discriminate on the basis of wealth, poverty, or economic status of any kind," Harris wrote. In response to the notion that money bail schemes unfairly punish low-income defendants, Harris shot back, "the state is not constitutionally required to remove obstacles not of its own creation."

Harris appeared to have shifted her stance 10 months later. In December of 2016, Harris filed a motion in a case challenging the application of California's money bail laws saying the system is deserving "of intense scrutiny." She pledged not to defend any bail scheme that fails to take into account a defendant's ability to pay. Three weeks later she was sworn in to the Senate.

Still, she asked the judge to toss the case, arguing that the laws were constitutional even if the way some counties implemented those laws was not. "The bail system at issue here does not categorically deny bail to any group of individuals," she wrote.

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The move perplexed bail reform advocates who say she could have used her position of power to do more as the top law enforcement official in the state, overseeing thousands of prosecutors who each day requested cash bail for those they charged with crimes.

"I'm glad she's come to the right position now, but it's too late for tens of thousands of Californians, real human beings who have been detained in jail every day in California throughout the whole state, that the attorney general could have stopped," Phil Telfeyan, one of the plaintiff's attorneys in the bail cases, told the AP.

Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Guatemala to open probe into ex-prosecutor turned candidate

Prosecutors in Guatemala say they have opened a corruption investigation into a former chief prosecutor who is soon to be named a candidate in the June 16 presidential elections.

The Seed Movement party is planning to name Thelma Aldana as its candidate this weekend. Polls show Aldana would probably run second in the race.

Prosecution spokeswoman Julia Barrera would not say Friday what charges the investigation involves, but said it was related to a case of irregular hiring of personnel.

If Aldana is arrested or charged, it could effectively prevent her from running.

The 63-year-old Aldana was Guatemala's top prosecutor from 2014 to 2018. Her biggest successes were the jailing of former President Otto Perez Molina and most of his Cabinet on corruption charges. Perez Molina resigned in 2015.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport in Washington
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States over safety issues in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – American Airlines Group Inc cut its 2019 profit forecast on Friday, saying it expected to take a $350 million hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes after cancelling 1,200 flights in the first quarter.

The company said it now expects its 2019 adjusted profit to be between $4.00 per share and $6.00 per share.

Analysts on average had expected 2019 earnings of $5.63 per share, according to Refinitiv data.

The No. 1 U.S. airline by passenger traffic said net income rose to $185 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $159 million, or 34 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total operating revenue rose 2 percent to $10.58 billion.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

April 26, 2019

By James Oliphant

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – Four years ago, Donald Trump campaigned in small towns like Marshalltown, Iowa, vowing to restore economic prosperity to the U.S. heartland.

In his bid to replace Trump in the White House, Pete Buttigieg is taking a similar tack. The difference, he says, is that he can point to a model of success: South Bend, Indiana, the revitalized city where he has been mayor since 2012.

The Democratic presidential contender has vaulted to the congested field’s top tier in recent weeks, drawing media and donor attention for his youth, history-making status as the first openly gay major presidential candidate and a resume that includes military service in Afghanistan.

But Buttigieg’s main argument for his candidacy is that he is a turnaround artist in the mold of Trump, although the Democrat does not expressly invoke the comparison with the Republican president.

“I’m not going around saying we’ve fixed every problem we’ve got,” Buttigieg, 37, said after a house party with voters in Marshalltown. “But I’m proud of what we have done together, and I think it’s a very powerful story.”

Critics argue improving the fortunes of a Midwestern city of 100,000 people does not qualify Buttigieg, who has never held national office, for the presidency of a country of 330 million. Others say South Bend still has pockets of despair and that minorities, in particular, have failed to benefit from its growth.

Buttigieg has told crowds in Iowa and elsewhere that his experience in reviving a struggling Rust Belt community allows him to make a case to voters that other Democratic candidates cannot. That may give him the means to win back some of the disaffected Democratic voters who turned their backs on Hillary Clinton in 2016 to vote for Trump.

Watching Buttigieg at a union hall in Des Moines last week, Rick Ryan, 45, a member of the United Steelworkers, lamented how many of his fellow union workers voted for Trump. The president turned in the best performance by a Republican among union households since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Ryan said he hoped someone like Buttigieg could return them to the Democratic fold.

“He’s aware of the decline in the labor force in America, not just in Indiana or Des Moines or anywhere else,” Ryan said. “Jobs are going overseas. We need a find to way to bring that back.”

Randy Tucker, 56, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Trump appealed to union members “desperate for somebody to reach out to them, to help them, to listen to their voice.”

Buttigieg could do the same, he said. “In my heart right now, he’s No. 1.”

PAST VS. FUTURE

Buttigieg stresses a key difference in his and Trump’s approaches.

Trump, he tells crowds, is mired in the past, promising to rebuild the 20th century industrial economy. Buttigieg argues the pledge is misleading and unrealistic.

Buttigieg says his focus is on the future, and he often talks about what the country might look like decades from now.

“The only way that we can cultivate what makes America great is to look to the future and not be afraid of it,” Buttigieg said in Marshalltown.

Buttigieg knows his sexual preference may be a barrier to winning some blue-collar voters. But he notes that after he came out as gay in 2015, he won a second term as mayor with 80 percent of the vote in conservative Indiana.

Earlier this month, he announced his presidential bid at the hulking plant in South Bend that stopped making Studebaker autos more than 50 years ago. After lying dormant for decades, the building is being transformed into a high-tech hub after Buttigieg and other city leaders realized it would never again attract a large-scale industrial company.

“That building sat as a powerful reminder. We hoped we would get back that major employer that would fix our economy,” said Jeff Rea, president of the regional Chamber of Commerce.

Buttigieg is praised locally for spurring more than $100 million in downtown investment. During his two terms, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent from 11.8 percent.

But a study released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Prosperity Now said not all of the city’s residents had shared in its rebound. The median income for African-Americans remained half that of whites, while the unemployment rate for blacks was double.

Regina Williams-Preston, a city councilor running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, credits him for the revitalized downtown. But she said he had a “blind spot” when it came to focusing on troubled neighborhoods like the one she represents and only grew more engaged after community pressure.

“He understands it now,” she said. “The next step is figuring out how to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.”

‘ONE OF US’

Trump touts the fact that the United States added almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs last year as evidence he made good on his promise to restore the industrial sector. But that growth still left the country with fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2008.

The robust U.S. economy is likely the president’s greatest asset in his re-election bid, particularly in states he carried in 2016 such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Buttigieg’s home state by 19 points over Clinton in 2016.

Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Buttigieg would be well positioned to compete with Trump in the Midwest.

“People love the fact that he’s a mayor,” said Bagniewski, who has not endorsed a candidate in the nominating contest. “If you can talk about a positive future, and if you actually have experience that can do it, that’s a compelling vision in Iowa.”

Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, which faces many of the same challenges as South Bend, agreed.

“He’s one of us,” Whaley said. “That helps.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

April 26, 2019

MONTREAL/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Rising waters were prompting further evacuations in central Canada on Thursday, with the mayor of the country’s capital, Ottawa, declaring a state of emergency and Quebec authorities warning that a hydroelectric dam was at risk of breaking.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared the emergency in response to rising water levels along the Ottawa River and weather forecasts that called for significant rainfall on Friday.

In a statement on Twitter, Watson asked for help from the Ontario provincial government and the country’s military.

He warned that “flood levels are currently forecasted to exceed the levels that caused significant damage to numerous properties in the city of Ottawa in 2017.”

Spring flooding had killed one person and forced more than 900 people from their homes in Canada’s Quebec province as of 1 p.m. on Thursday, according to a government website.

Ottawa has received 80 requests for service related to potential flooding such as sandbagging, a city spokeswoman said.

The prospect of more rain over the next 24 to 48 hours triggered concerns on Thursday that the hydroelectric dam at Bell Falls in the western part of Quebec could be at risk of failing because of rising water levels.

Quebec’s provincial police said 250 people were protectively removed from homes in the area as of late afternoon in case the dam on the Rouge River breaks.

The dam is now at its full flow capacity of 980 cubic meters per second of water, said Francis Labbé, a spokesman for the province’s state-owned utility, Hydro Quebec. He said Hydro Quebec expected the flow could rise to 1,200 cubic meters per second of water over the next two days.

“We have to take the worst-case scenario into consideration, since we`re already at the maximum capacity,” Labbé said by phone.

The dam is part of a power station that no longer produces electricity, but is regularly inspected by Hydro Quebec, he said.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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