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Ocasio-Cortez accuses stunned Wells Fargo CEO of financing the 'caging' of children

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan fired back at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a contentious hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, after the freshman legislator accused the bank of "financing the caging of children" and suggested it should bear financial liability for everything from oil spills to climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez's inquiries come as activists increasingly seek to "deplatform" political opponents by cutting off their funding from banks and other financial services providers -- a concerted effort that conservatives and libertarians have said threatens free speech.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., brought Sloan before the panel Tuesday as part of a broad, four-hour inquiry into widely reported fraudulent misconduct in recent years by Wells Fargo employees. But in questioning Sloan, who faced bipartisan criticism during the hearing, Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described Democratic socialist, quickly went much further.

"Why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children to begin with?" Ocasio-Cortez asked at one point, in an apparent reference to the Trump administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy, which resulted in increased separations of parents suspected of criminal activity from the minors who accompanied them.

The White House has insisted that images widely circulated on social media showing migrant children in large, fenced-off detention rooms were taken during the Obama administration.

Sloan responded simply, "I don't know how to answer that question, because we weren't."

"You were financing, involved in debt financing in CoreCivic and GEO Group, correct?" Ocasio-Cortez pressed, referring to two companies that manage private detention and rehabilitation facilities.

GREENPEACE CO-FOUNDER SAYS AOC'S GREEN NEW DEAL WOULD LEAD TO 'END OF CIVILIZATION' ; CALLS FRESHMAN DEM 'POMPOUS LITTLE TWIT'

"For a period of time, we were involved in financing one of the firms, we are not anymore. I'm not familiar with the specific assertion you are making. We were not involved in that," Sloan said.

Ocasio-Cortez went on to ask whether the bank was "responsible for the damages incurred by climate change" because of its financing of fossil fuel companies, such as reinvestment costs.

"I don't know how you'd calculate that," Sloan retorted.

The progressive firebrand from New York, pressing on, raised the prospect that Wells Fargo could face liability from any environmental disaster involving the Dakota Access pipeline, which runs 1,200 miles through the Dakotas, Iowa and Illinois.

Wells Fargo was one of more than a dozen financial institutions to contribute financing to the project, which has been attacked by its critics as environmentally unsafe and an encroachment upon Native American lands. Conservatives have maintained that the project has significant economic benefits.

"Hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access pipeline, why shouldn't Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup of it, since they paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?" Ocasio-Cortez asked. (In 2017, the Dakota Access pipeline and a feeder line leaked more than 100 gallons of oil in North Dakota in separate incidents in March as crews prepared the disputed $3.8 billion pipeline for operation.)

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"Because we don't operate the pipeline," Sloan responded, apparently surprised by the question. "We provide financing to the company that's operating the pipeline. "Our responsibility is to ensure that at the time that we make that loan, that that customer -- we have a group of people in Wells Fargo, including an environmental oversight group."

Ocasio-Cortez interrupted to ask why Wells Fargo would consider lending money to a project criticized widely on environmental grounds.

"Again, the reason that we were one of the 17 or 19 banks that financed that, was because our team reviewed the environmental impact," Sloan said. "And we concluded it was a risk we were willing to take."

Democrats have called on Wells Fargo to be broken up amid a slew of scandals.

Democrats have called on Wells Fargo to be broken up amid a slew of scandals. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Concluding the hearing, Waters suggested that Wells Fargo should be broken up. Waters also asked Sloan if the bank had become "too big to manage."

“This hearing has revealed Wells Fargo has failed to clean up its act, it’s too big to manage and the steps regulators have taken to date are wholly inadequate,” Waters said.

Republicans, too, laid into Sloan, although they did not go as far as Waters or Ocasio-Cortez.

“Each time a new scandal breaks, Wells Fargo promises to get to the bottom of it. It promises to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but then a few months later, we hear about another case of dishonest sales practices or gross mismanagement,” said North Carolina Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, a Republican.

“Every single member of this committee has constituents in their state who were impacted by Wells Fargo,” he added. “Our constituents should be able to trust their own bank.”

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Greenpeace Co-Founder Moore: Climate Crisis 'Fake,' AOC 'Twit'

Dr. Patrick Moore, whose claims of being a Greenpeace co-founder are again being denied by the organization, insisted Tuesday that claims of a climate crisis are "fake news," and ridiculed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's, D-N.Y., "Green New Deal" as unworkable while explaining why he had called her a "pompous little twit" earlier this month.

"It's a silly plan," Moore told Fox News' "Fox & Friends." "That's why I suggested that she was a pompous little twit, twit meaning silly in the British lexicon and pompous meaning arrogant. She really rubbed me the wrong way when she said she's the boss. Because she can make up a proposal that's completely ridiculous and no one else did."

Moore said Tuesday "of course climate change is real," but the "whole climate crisis, as they call it, is not only fake news, it's fake science . . . a little bit of warming would not be a bad thing for myself, being a Canadian. And the people in Russia wouldn't mind a little couple of degrees warmer either."

President Donald Trump tweeted Moore's quote on the climate crisis, adding a "wow!" at the end of his comment, but Greenpeace spoke out about Moore and his comments.

Greenpeace, however, has long denied Moore was a co-founder, even though he had been listed as one on its websites until around 2007, reports The Daily Caller. The organization tweeted Tuesday it does not agree with his statements.

"Patrick Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace," Greenpeace USA tweeted. "He does not represent Greenpeace. He is a paid lobbyist, not an independent source. His statements about @AOC & the #GreenNewDeal have nothing to do with our positions."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Long Thai crisis morphed coup leader's career into politics

Prayuth Chan-ocha became prime minister in a very Thai way: He led a military coup.

Now after five years of running Thailand with absolute power, he's seeking to hold on to the top job through the ballot box. The military's thinly veiled proxy party has put forward Prayuth as its nominee for prime minister after Sunday's election.

"He knows he can't be a dictator like this forever," said Prajak Kongkirati, a political science lecturer at Bangkok's Thammasat University. "He wants to gain more legitimacy and that's why he's holding the elections. He wants to return as a prime minister under normal politics."

After toppling the elected government in May 2014 with a pledge to "return happiness to the people," Prayuth outlawed criticism of his regime and vowed the country would not have elections as long as there was dissent. He promised elections and then delayed them every year he was in power.

That's given Prayuth time to smooth out some rough edges. He's shed some awkward military stiffness, while keeping a general's swagger. He's worn increasingly well-tailored suits — for which his wife takes credit — and, as pressure for an election mounted, largely transformed himself into the Thai equivalent of your typical baby-kissing politician.

He can boast some accomplishments during his time at the helm, most notably cleaning up the aviation, fishing and wildlife industries — which had put Thailand at peril of foreign economic sanctions — along with stepping up the fight against human trafficking, which also risked trade retaliation.

Running the show has been fairly smooth though thanks to his government's clampdown on opponents, the rubberstamp legislature he hand-picked and the law he enacted making all of his actions legal.

Should he remain prime minister after the election, he will be without what he refers to as his "special powers" and his patience could be tested as he has to deal with actual elected lawmakers who may be unwilling to dance to his tune.

"He has a strong personality, vigorous, and direct. If he tries to become a politician, he could try to change but he would never really be able to change 100 percent," said Supparuek Tongchairith, a veteran military beat reporter for Thai Rath, the country's largest-circulation newspaper. "Because his boiling point is low, if anyone pokes at him, he will explode. And for him to sit in the parliament, I guarantee, he will run into troubles."

Prayuth's situation is inextricably tied to Thailand's last 13 years of political tumult.

In one respect he has been the instrument of the conservative forces in Thai society. They could not accept the rise of billionaire politician Thaksin Shinawatra, whose populist policies after being elected prime minister in 2001 threatened to unravel the country's long-established power structure: Bangkok-oriented, devoted to the monarchy and safeguarded by the military.

Prayuth, 65, was born and raised in an army family at a military camp in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima. He attended a military preparatory school and graduated from Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy, Thailand's West Point.

Prayuth was already a senior figure in the army when it staged a 2006 coup against Thaksin, justifying its action with allegations against him of abuse of power, self-enrichment and corruption that had triggered large protests. Some suggested that Thaksin sought to usurp the monarchy's place in Thai society.

Instead of easing tensions, the coup set off a bitter and often violent struggle for power between Thaksin's supporters and his opponents. Thaksin had his fortune and newly empowered poor and rural followers on his side; arrayed against him were the courts and the military, deeply loyal to the monarchy, which traditionally has been the country's most influential institution.

It was in this period that Prayuth climbed the ladder to the top of the military hierarchy. As commander of the First Army Region, he helped lead the bloody suppression of pro-Thaksin demonstrators in central Bangkok in 2010. In October that year, he became the army commander-in-chief.

After abandoning a sham effort to mediate between the Thaksin-backed government and its opponents who had been staging violent protests against it, Prayuth and the leaders of the other armed forces announced they were seizing power on May 22, 2014.

Prayuth and his junta spelled out their major tasks, including brokering national reconciliation and enacting reforms across Thai society to save the nation from what is said was the inherent corruption of politicians.

The leaders of the 2006 coup restored electoral democracy after about a year in power only to see Thaksin's allies bounce back.

It quickly became evident that this junta had no intention of allowing any Thaksin-allied party from coming to power again and that any attempts at reconciliation were going to be one-sided.

Under Prayuth's junta, called the National Council for Peace and Order, many civil liberties were curbed and military courts judged civilian political offenders. Government critics were summoned, or sometimes snatched off the streets, for "attitude adjustment" at army camps, a week or so in detention at an army base with a stern lecture to elicit a promise not to do it again. Longer term measures, such as a new constitution and election laws fashioned to handicap Thaksin's political machine, were also enacted.

Prayuth, who was unanimously elected prime minister by his appointed legislature, has a famously quick temper and can bristle at anyone who questions him. Couple that with a sometimes off-color sense of humor and it can lead to verbal attacks, gaffes or just plain bizarre moments.

He's jokingly told reporters he would have them executed, quipped that he might behead a soap opera star who called for elections, flung a banana peel at a cameraman and given an entire news conference in which he fondled the ear of a nearby sound technician.

Since the coup, the general has also drawn attention for his songwriting, penning a number of sappy ballads with nationalistic lyrics.

Prayuth — who has twin daughters, now grown, who for a time were in a pop band called Badz — has at times taken on the role of tough-love dad, especially during his weekly primetime television broadcast aired on all major Thai stations, "Returning Happiness to the People." The monologues can last an hour and half and touch on everything from the moral responsibility of youth to tips on cultivating orchids.

Yet allegations of nepotism against Prayuth's own relatives have led to uncomfortable accusations of hypocrisy. After the coup, a company owned by one of Prayuth's nephews that had no track record of projects was awarded lucrative army construction contracts. Prayuth's brother, also a former high-ranking army man, drew criticism when it was revealed that he made another son who had no military experience to an army officer.

Of course the most glaring contradiction may be Prayuth's own transformation.

As it became more likely he would seek to stay on as prime minister, he began allying with the very politicians he initially declared were the targets of junta reforms and launched government handouts that were nearly carbon copies of Thaksin's populist policies.

Early last year he made it clear, telling reporters: "I am no longer a soldier. Understood? I'm just a politician who used to be a soldier."

___

Associated Press journalists Tassanee Vejpongsa and Kaweewit Kaewjinda contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Netanyahu strikes election deal with far-right parties

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a preliminary election deal with two fringe religious-nationalist parties in a bid to unify his hard-line bloc ahead of April elections.

Netanyahu's Likud party announced Wednesday it would reserve the 28th spot on its parliamentary list for the Jewish Home party and grant it two Cabinet ministries in a future government if it merges with the Jewish Power party.

Jewish Power is comprised of hard-line religious nationalists who have cast themselves as successors to the banned Kahanist movement, which advocated forced removal of Palestinians from Israel.

Recent polls project Likud winning about 30 of parliament's 120 seats, while Jewish Home and Jewish Power may not have enough support to enter parliament on their own.

Source: Fox News World

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BMW applies for funds for battery cell research: spokesman

Paris Auto Show
FILE PHOTO: The BMW logo is seen on the second press day of the Paris auto show, in Paris, France, October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

March 15, 2019

HAMBURG (Reuters) – German luxury carmaker BMW has applied for state funding of research and development in the field of battery cells, a spokesman said on Friday, adding this does not mean the company aims to produce them itself.

Germany has earmarked 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) to support a consortium looking to produce electric car battery cells and plans to fund a research facility to develop next-generation solid-state batteries.

The BMW spokesman said that the funding application would not necessarily lead to the carmaker participating in a consortium.

(Reporting by Jan Schwartz; writing by Thomas Seythal; editing by Christoph Steitz)

Source: OANN

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Impoverished Pine Ridge reservation braces for more flooding

The impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota is bracing for another major winter storm and renewed flooding that is forecast for a wide swath of the Plains and Midwest.

The National Weather Service says the storm moving east out of the northern Rockies Wednesday and Thursday will pack heavy snow and strong winds. It could be similar to last month's "bomb cyclone" — an unusual weather phenomenon marked by a rapid drop in air pressure.

The storm brings the specter of renewed flooding to areas where massive flooding over the past month has caused billions of dollars in damage.

But weather service officials say rivers aren't likely to rise as much as last month, when there was still snow on the frozen ground and ice on the waterways.

Source: Fox News National

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San Francisco, Los Angeles And Seattle: 3 Formerly Beautiful West Coast Cities Have Literally Been Transformed Into Hellholes

Once upon a time, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle were three of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet. 

I know that this is hard to imagine today, but there was a time when millions of people eagerly moved out to the west coast for a better quality of life.  Sadly, the reverse is true today.  Millions of people are moving away from our major cities on the west coast because of the hellholes that they have become.  A former Seattle police officer that was recently interviewed by a reporter from KOMO News  was very honest about the fact that he would never want to raise a family in Seattle because of the hellhole that it has become.  Every night he saw the worst of Seattle firsthand, and he finally felt forced to quit because city officials would not allow him to effectively do his job.  An explosion of homelessness in our major west coast cities has fueled a wave of crime, drugs and human degradation unlike anything we have seen before, and in many cases our law enforcement officials have their hands tied and are literally being prevented from cleaning up the streets.

Right now, more than half a million people are homeless in the United States.  As the economy gets worse, that number will continue to rise.

Many homeless Americans are law-abiding citizens that have just had a tough break. Everyone gets knocked down in life at some point, and we need to do all that we can to help those law-abiding citizens get back on their feet.

But because of their ultra-liberal policies, some of the major cities on the west coast have become magnets for drug addicts, serial criminals, sex offenders, illegal immigrants and people that have simply heard about all of the “free benefits” that are being offered.  As a result, the streets of those cities have become a showcase for the social decay that is sweeping across our nation.

Let’s start with San Francisco.  According to one report, it is home to more than 28,000 homeless people, and that would make San Francisco the city with the third largest homeless population in the United States.


Gerald Celente hosts and gives his expert analysis on the current trends in the economy as well as actions Trump is taking to keep the economy strong and win 2020.

Others feel like that number is way too low, and the truth is that it is exceedingly difficult to count the homeless.

After all, how are you supposed to accurately count people that don’t want to be counted?

What we do know is that San Francisco is a huge magnet for drug addicts.  The city handed out 5.8 million free syringes in 2018, and that number would seem to suggest a homeless population far in excess of 28,000.

And as all those drug addicts aimlessly wander through the streets, many of them use those streets as their own personal toilets.  Over the past 8 years, more than 118,000 reports of human feces in the streets have been filed with city authorities

Since 2011, there have been at least 118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city streets.

New mayor, London Breed, won election by promising to clean things up. However, conditions are the same or worse. Last year, the number of reports spiked to an all-time high at 28,084. In first quarter 2019, the pace continued with 6,676 instances of human waste in the public way.

In addition to endless piles of poop, the drug addicts are also endlessly committing property crimes in order to pay for their drug habits.

Each year, there are more than 6,000 property crimes per 100,000 residents in San Francisco.  That is about four times the rate of property crime that New York City has reported.

Mayor Breed would like to get a lot of these homeless people off of the streets, but finding a place to put them has been problematic.  Residents of one wealthy liberal neighborhood are currently fighting like mad to keep a proposed homeless shelter away from their gated mansions…

A wealthy liberal neighborhood in San Francisco whose residents cast the most votes for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election is fighting against a proposal to build a new homeless shelter near their gated mansions.

Mayor London Breed has sponsored legislation to fast track a homeless shelter that would house 200 people. However, wealthy liberals living in the affected area have set up a GoFundMe to stop the project which has already hit $80,000 of its $100,000 target.

Things are certainly not any better in Los Angeles.

According to the same report mentioned above, L.A. has nearly twice as many homeless people as San Francisco

Los Angeles has the second largest population of people exploring homelessness, according to a new report.

The LA area contains 55,200 homeless people, according to data released by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

The homeless population in L.A. has surged 75 percent in six years, and this has happened during a time when the economy has been relatively stable.

So how bad are things going to become when the economy starts getting really bad?

When I was running for Congress, one of the people that came to help the campaign had spent a lot of time in some of the worst parts of Los Angeles.  He told me about the public drug use, the constant crime and the human degradation that is seemingly everywhere.  This greatly saddened me, because Los Angeles was once a magnificent city.  In fact, at one point in my life I wanted to live there.

But not anymore.  Today, millions of people are leaving California and never looking back because of the utter hellhole the entire state has become.

Further up the coast, the city of Seattle is experiencing similar issues.  Not too long ago, a veteran Seattle reporter named Eric Johnson produced an hour-long documentary entitled “Seattle Is Dying”, and if you have not seen it yet I would strongly recommend taking the time to watch it.

Since it was first released, it has been viewed almost 2 million times on YouTube

In the past two weeks, Seattle Is Dying has garnered 38,000 shares on Facebook and nearly 2 million views on YouTube. The report has clearly resonated with anxious, fearful, and increasingly angry Seattle residents. Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.”

One of the moments in the documentary that really touched me was when a concerned resident described how drug addicts have been leaving needles and human waste in the graveyard near his home.  The homeless have erected tents all around the graveyard, and he can clearly smell urine whenever he walks down the streets.

He would like to fix things, and he is fed up enough that he has decided to run for city council.  But he is facing an uphill battle, because Seattle has been entirely taken over by socialists.  The following comes from Mac Slavo

The entire video is about an hour long, but it is pretty easy to see where Seattle continues to go wrong. A heavy tax burden, regulations that push out businesses, and a power-hungry group of totalitarian sociopaths have been slowly eroding the city. The decay of Western civilization can be seen up and down the entirety of the West coast. Some say it’s by design, others disagree. But the commonality is that all of the cities are being pushed into poverty by illusions and lies of socialists. Calling Seattle anything other than a leftist’s paradise would be inaccurate. The city has all of the laws the socialists want, yet it’s killing itself because of it.

In life, the decisions that we make have consequences, and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle are now experiencing the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.

But of course they are far from alone.  All across the country there are thousands of communities where social decay is exceedingly evident, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

If we want to change the trajectory of our future, we have got to start doing things differently.

Because if we keep doing the same things, we are going to keep getting the same results, and our country is going to continue falling apart right in front of our eyes.

Source: InfoWars

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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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