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CDC: '19 Flu Season 'Relatively Long'

The flu has not been as severe as in recent years, but it is extending into spring at historical highs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The rate of medical visits due to the flu is double the baseline 2.2 percent, recording a 4.4 percent for the week ending March 16, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports. It is the highest mark this late in the year since the CDC began recording the data 20 years ago.

"The CDC expects flu activity to remain elevated for a number of weeks, suggesting this season is likely to be relatively long," according to the report, per USA Today. ". . . Flu activity is expected to remain elevated nationally through April."

The flu season generally runs from October to May, and 44 states have widespread flu reports, while 26 are reporting high activity.

"Influenza-like-illness levels have been at or above baseline for 17 weeks this season," CDC reported. "By this measure, the last five seasons have averaged 16 weeks, with a range of 11 to 20 weeks."

Flu symptoms include: stuffy nose, fever, cough, muscle or body aches, headaches, and tiredness.

There have been 76 flu-related pediatric deaths nationwide, according to the report.

Source: NewsMax America

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New Jersey skydiving accident leaves ‘very experienced’ jumper dead

A skydiver, who was described as "very experienced," fell to his death in southern New Jersey on Sunday, officials said.

The incident happened around 5:25 p.m. in Williamstown, as the 54-year-old skydiver was making a jump at Skydive Cross Keys.

Witnesses on the ground reported the man's parachute was not open when he landed, FOX29 reported.

LIMO OPERATOR INDICTED ON MANSLAUGHTER, NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE IN CRASH THAT KILLED 20

"I heard a thud, we thought a car hit somebody then I saw this white thing lying there," resident Rosemary Ilgenfritz told WPVI-TV.

Neighbors said the man was surrounded by a parachute, but authorities at the scene said that appeared to be a backup chute.

EXPERIENCED SKYDIVING INSTRUCTOR DIES OF SUICIDE BY RELEASING HARNESS MIDAIR, POLICE SAY

The man, who has yet to be identified, landed in a neighborhood not far from the Cross Keys Airport, which is a popular location for skydivers.

"The jumper was very experienced having over 1000 jumps to his credit," Skydive Cross Keys told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "The skydiver's parachute was deployed upon exiting the airplane."

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

The Gloucester County Prosecutors Office is investigating the accident. Further details will be released pending the outcome of the investigation.

Source: Fox News National

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Athletics: Haile Gebrselassie slams IAAF move to cut Diamond League disciplines

FILE PHOTO: Great CityGames Manchester 2015
FILE PHOTO: Athletics - Great CityGames Manchester 2015 - Manchester - 10/5/15 Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie waves as he approaches the finish line at the end of the Morrisons Great Manchester Run, during an interview afterwards he announced his retirement Action Images via Reuters / Andrew Boyers Livepic/File Photo

March 12, 2019

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – The IAAF’s decision to limit the longest event in the Diamond League circuit to 3,000 meters will “disproportionately affect” Ethiopia and Kenya, two powerhouses of middle and long-distance events, running great Haile Gebrselassie has said.

After a meeting in Doha, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Council said on Monday the circuit will have a trimmer look and fewer meetings as the one-day competitions aim for a more consistent and fast-moving format.

Meetings will be reduced from 14 to 12 competitions, while the number of disciplines will be cut from 32 to 24 with 12 each for men and women.

But Ethiopian Haile, considered by many as the greatest distance athlete of all-time and who – alongside compatriot and rival Kenenisa Bekele – went chasing records to extraordinary effect in the 5,000m and 10,000m, said the move was “unfair” to countries that traditionally excelled in those races.

“It is a sad decision that will disproportionately affect Ethiopia and Kenya, as well as East Africa as a whole,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“Some Asian countries have also been making strides in middle- and long-distance. At a time when the (governing) body needed to exert its maximum effort to boost athletics worldwide, it has taken a decision that is tragic and unfair.”

The Diamond League, the IAAF’s top competition outside the Olympics and world championships, at present has two end-of-season finals, with Zurich hosting one-half of the disciplines and Brussels the other.

The circuit, which celebrates its 10th season beginning in May, currently features nine races for men and women, including the 3,000m steeplechase and 5,000m, and seven field events – high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump, shot put, discus and javelin.

Haile said the Diamond League, alongside other events, has long been a competition where Ethiopia and Kenya have tussled for east African track dominance.

“Its (Diamond League) prestige will also be affected. Middle- and long-distance competitions were among the main draws at the time myself, Kenenisa and others competed. It will deprive fans of the chance to watch some of the world’s best athletes.”

(Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by Ken Ferris)

Source: OANN

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Japan tells U.S. can’t link monetary policy to trade, finance minister Aso says: Jiji

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso holds a news conference after the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' meeting at the IMF and World Bank's 2019 Annual Spring Meetings
FILE PHOTO: Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso holds a news conference after the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' meeting at the IMF and World Bank's 2019 Annual Spring Meetings, in Washington, April 12, 2019. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

April 25, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Thursday he told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Tokyo cannot accept discussions that link monetary policy to trade issues, Jiji news agency reported.

Aso also said the two sides agreed that exchange-rate matters would be discussed between financial authorities, and that Tokyo and Washington should not talk about currency issues in the context of the trade debate, according to Jiji.

Aso and Mnuchin held a bilateral meeting in Washington ahead of a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump later this week.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Jason Lange in Washington, Leika Kihara in Tokyo; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Judge Napolitano: FISA has a 'corrupting effect'

Judge Andrew Napolitano believes that a probe by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. , will re-evaluate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and its “potential for abuse,” eventually leading to major changes on the heels of the Mueller report.

“Senator Graham, who is a lawyer and military judge as well as a senator, is aware that FISA poses the potential for abuse,” Napolitano, Fox News' senior judicial analyst, said Monday on “America’s Newsroom.”

BULK OF MUELLER CASES AGAINST TRUMP ASSOCIATES BASED ON FALSE STATEMENTS

“Some of us have been arguing… for 41 years, that’s the time that FISA has been in existence, that it has a corrupting effect on the FBI. That it is too easy to start an intelligence operation with FISA rules by presenting shaky evidence to FISA judges and getting a search warrant on innocent people and then morph that into a criminal investigation.”

Graham said Monday that he will probe alleged abuses of FISA at the start of the Russia investigation.

“He’s going to look into how did all this start.  Did it start because there were bad actors in the FBI?  Yes, there probably were.  Did it start because there were defective procedures in place? Yes, like FISA,” Napolitano told co-host Sandra Smith.

“And I think he’s not going to be surprised by what he finds. But he’s going to have a treasure trove of potential corrections by way of legislation that the Congress can make.”

GRAHAM SENDS OMINOUS TWEET TO COMEY: SEE YOU SOON

“I’d like to find somebody, like a Mr. Mueller, that can look into what happened with the FISA warrants, the counterintelligence investigation. Am I right to be concerned? It seems pretty bad on its face—but there are some people that are never going to accept the Mueller report, but by any reasonable standard, Mueller thoroughly investigated the Trump campaign. You cannot say that about the other side of the story,” Graham told reporters Monday.

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Bottas wins Australian Grand Prix for Mercedes

Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas drives through turn two during the Formula One F1 Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne
Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas drives through turn two during the Formula One F1 Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit in Melbourne, Australia, March 17, 2019. AAP/Julian Smith/via REUTERS

March 17, 2019

By Ian Ransom

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Valtteri Bottas capitalized on a late pitstop to upset his world champion team mate Lewis Hamilton and clinch the season-opening Australian Formula One Grand Prix for Mercedes on Sunday.

Starting second behind pole-sitter Hamilton, Bottas got the jump on the Briton during a typically messy start at Albert Park and ended up cruising to his fourth win by some 20.80 seconds after delaying a tyre-change.

Runner-up Hamilton, who switched to the medium compound tyres seven laps earlier than Bottas, had to battle to hold off third-placed Max Verstappen and was fortunate the Red Bull driver took a skid in the grass late on to lose vital seconds.

Bottas, who claimed his first race win since Abu Dhabi in 2017, added icing to the cake by clinching a bonus point for the fastest lap at the lakeside circuit in one minute 25.580 seconds.

“I don’t know what just happened. The start was really good, it was definitely my best race ever,” said the Finn.

“I just felt so good and everything was under control. The car was so good today so truly enjoyable, I need to enjoy today.

“I’m just so happy and can’t wait for the next race.”

While Hamilton was forced to sweat, the Silver Arrows will have been thrilled that their raw pace was enough to blitz the chasing pack.

“It was a good weekend for the team,” said Hamilton. “Valtteri drove an incredible race today so he deserved it.”

For Ferrari, however, it was a sobering day as fourth-placed Vettel and fifth-placed new boy Charles Leclerc were reduced to fighting each other for a minor position.

In the midfield battle, Kevin Magnussen was sixth for Haas ahead of Renault’s seventh-placed Nico Hulkenberg.

It was a disastrous Renault debut for home hope Daniel Ricciardo as he rolled wide into the grass straight out of the grid and destroyed his front wing over a bump.

He was forced to pit immediately to replace it and ended up retiring midway through the race.

McLaren driver Carlos Sainz also retired after easing into pit lane on the 11th lap with his car on fire.

Haas, who lost both cars due to botched tyre changes in last year’s race, showed they were not free of their pit-stop gremlins, as a poor stop caused Romain Grosjean to lose two places.

Grosjean later was forced to retire with a reliability problem.

Prior to the start, drivers and officials stood for a minute’s silence at the grid in tribute to the late F1 racing director Charlie Whiting and in remembrance of victims of a mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand on Friday.

(Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Nick Mulvenney)

Source: OANN

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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].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

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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