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Australia’s opposition Labor on track to win election: polls

FILE PHOTO: Australian Labor Party opposition leader Shorten arrives at his election night party with his wife Chloe in Melbourne
FILE PHOTO: Australian Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten arrives at his election night party with his wife Chloe in Melbourne, July 2, 2016 on Australia's federal election day. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

April 7, 2019

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia’s opposition Labor is the favorite to win a national election expected in May, two polls showed on Monday, but its lead has narrowed over the conservative coalition government which announced income tax cuts in its budget last week.

A closely watched Newspoll done for The Australian newspaper showed Labor ahead of the Coalition 52-48 on a two-party preferred basis, but that was down from 54-46 in the last poll in March.

A separate Ipsos poll, published by the Sydney Morning Herald, showed Labor ahead 53-47.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is expected to call an election this week, most likely for May 11 or May 18.

“The election will be called in April and the election will be held in May. We’re not doing this with any haste and we’re not doing it with any delay,” Morrison told reporters on Sunday, amid speculation he was delaying to give the government more time to promote its budget.

“I noticed Bill Shorten’s frustration yesterday, but you know, that impatience is born of arrogance,” Morrison said.

Despite Labor’s consistent lead in the polls over the past year, Morrison remains the preferred prime minister over Labor leader Shorten.

Newspoll surveyed 1,799 voters across the country from April 4 to 6, following the release of the government’s budget on April 2 and Labor’s reply two days later.

The Ipsos poll surveyed 1,200 voters from April 3 to 6, and has a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Sonya Hepisntall)

Source: OANN

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Indonesian former general fires up masses in second run at presidency

FILE PHOTO: Indonesia's presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto speaks during a campaign rally with his running mate Sandiaga Uno at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta
FILE PHOTO: Indonesia's presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto speaks during a campaign rally with his running mate Sandiaga Uno at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo

April 14, 2019

By Kanupriya Kapoor

JAKARTA (Reuters) – At a recent election rally, former Indonesian general Prabowo Subianto repeatedly banged his hand on a podium while urging the boisterous crowd to defend the country against foreign interests.

Such fiery rhetoric, a strongman image, and strong ties with hardline Islamist groups have bolstered support for Prabowo, 67, who is taking on incumbent President Joko Widodo in a battle on Wednesday to lead the world’s third-largest democracy.

Most opinion polls show Widodo has a double-digit lead but some recent surveys have shown Prabowo catching up.

Critics say Prabowo’s campaign message, much like U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, played up potential threats to Indonesia. In speeches, he often says the country is on the verge of fragmentation, at the mercy of unspecified foreign powers.

“The Indonesian motherland is being raped,” Prabowo told another massive rally in a stadium in central Jakarta, as tens of thousands of supporters, many dressed in white Islamic clothes, chanted his name.

A former special forces commander in the military, Prabowo comes from an elite political family. His father was one of Indonesia’s most prominent economists, serving in the cabinets of both presidents Sukarno and Suharto.Election officials say Prabowo declared personal wealth of 1.9 trillion rupiah ($135 million) in August, versus Widodo’s 50 billion ($3.6 million), according to news website Detik.

Prabowo has long harbored ambitions for the top job, but a lack of support meant he sat out the 2004 election and ran as vice president on a losing ticket in 2009.

It was only by 2014 that, as head of the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) party, he gained enough support to run and came within six percentage points of beating Widodo.

This time, Prabowo has consolidated support from hardline Islamist groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and religious parties, fuelling concern about the influence of conservative Islam on future policy-making should he win.

“In the scenario of a Prabowo presidency, he will have to reward his supporters and the political Islam side will take credit for his victory,” said Achmad Sukarsono, a political analyst at Control Risks.

“Having said that, he understands the concerns of the influence of Islam and will try to balance that with his own and his Christian family’s opinions.”

Prabowo is likely to offer opportunities for supporters in the country’s budding sharia economy, he added, such as curbing businesses that offend Islamic sentiments, like alcohol or sensitive publications.

Prabowo has denied accusations of wanting to turn Indonesia into a caliphate, and says the diversity of religion in his own family is proof that he will uphold the official secular state ideology.

Prabowo was accused of human rights abuses during his military career, chiefly over unrest that brought down his former father-in-law and long-serving autocratic leader Suharto in 1998 and led to his discharge.

He has repeatedly denied the allegations or said he was following orders.

Just days ahead of the vote, Prabowo and his campaign team have cast doubt on the credibility of voter lists and the integrity of election machinery, vowing to contest the results and even mobilize street protests if they discern any cheating.

In 2014, Prabowo refused to concede defeat for two weeks, even though early results showed Widodo had won. He contested the official results in the Constitutional Court, which confirmed Widodo’s victory.

The campaign has also said internal and external poll numbers give Prabowo a clear lead, but has declined to explain its methodology.

(Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Source: OANN

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Asian shares dip; euro weighed by sagging German business morale

A man looks at an electronic board showing the Nikkei stock index outside a brokerage in Tokyo
FILE PHOTO: A man looks at an electronic board showing the Nikkei stock index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

April 25, 2019

By Tomo Uetake

TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian shares slipped on Thursday as a surprise deterioration in German business morale rekindled fears of slowing global growth, while oil prices pulled back slightly after a sharp run-up earlier in the week.

The euro slumped to a 22-month low against the U.S. dollar overnight after the drop in German business confidence highlighted the divergence between data in the euro zone and the United States.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.2 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei average edged up 0.3 percent to 22,264.81 points.

Overnight, Wall Street shrugged off some earnings misses but drifted lower at the end of the session, after the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite registered record closing highs on Tuesday.

Chotaro Morita, chief rates strategist at SMBC Nikko, noted

hopes that the Chinese economy is bottoming out have contributed to recent rallies in global equities.

“Corporate earnings that have been released so far suggests the worst period for the Chinese economy was over. While that is supportive of share prices, that alone is not enough to keep the rally going for more than a month,” he said.

In the currency market, the dollar index, which measures the greenback versus a basket of six major rivals, rose to as high as 98.189 overnight, its highest level since May 2017. The index was last quoted at 98.133.

The euro sat at $1.1150, having suffered its biggest one-day loss against the dollar since early March.

The deteriorating reading on German business morale, in a survey by the IFO economic institute, bucked expectations for a small improvement.

The pound held at a two-month low, weighed down by a broad-based rally in the dollar and fading hopes of a breakthrough in Brexit talks between the British government and the opposition.

U.S. Treasury yields fell across maturities on Wednesday as investors piled into the safe-haven asset after a slew of weak international economic data.

A sharp slowdown in Australian inflation also lifted bond prices, while Premier Li Keqiang in China said authorities should not underestimate the difficulties in the Chinese economy, adding to concerns about global demand.

However, the U.S. yield curve steepened to its widest level since November at one time on Wednesday, in an expression of bullish sentiment.

Oil prices hovered below six-month highs after data showed U.S. crude stockpiles surged to their highest levels since October 2017, countering fears of tight supply resulting from OPEC output cuts and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and Iran.

Brent crude futures fell 0.4 percent to $74.29 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped 0.5 percent to $65.57 a barrel. Both benchmarks hit 5-1/2-month highs on Tuesday.

The Bank of Japan is expected to keep monetary policy steady later on Thursday and predict that inflation will fall short of its 2 percent target for three more years, signaling that its massive stimulus will stay in place for the foreseeable future.

Investors are also awaiting the release of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) data for the first quarter, due on Friday.

(Graphic: Asian stock markets: https://tmsnrt.rs/2zpUAr4).

(Reporting by Tomo Uetake; Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Source: OANN

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Homeland Sec. Nielsen: 'Fear for Our Democracy' With Congress

Members of Congress who criticize how the Department of Homeland Security does its job should change immigration laws if they don't want to see them enforced, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

"I really fear for our democracy when the body who creates the law is telling the body who enforces the law, just don't enforce the law," Nielsen told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."

"The men and women at the Department of Homeland Security have sworn an oath to protect communities to secure the homeland and to enforce the law that Congress passed.”

Nielson's interview aired just hours before the Senate was expected to pass a resolution rejecting President Donald Trump's emergency declaration for the border, and as the DHS has been criticized for implementing many of the president's policies at the border.

She said Trump was within his constitutional authority to declare an emergency, and that many members of Congress are criticizing Customs and Border Patrol for enforcing policies such as on family separations that have been in effect for decades but are "suddenly now political and partisan."

Meanwhile, apprehensions at the border are going up, and Nielsen said that is happening because criminals are finding ways to take advantage of loopholes.

Then, Congress also fails to act, she said.

"This is not a partisan issue," said Nielsen. "It is not partisan to want to protect communities and not partisan to want to secure our border or homeland. And, yet, in this environment, Congress refuses to act.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Xerox – yes, Xerox – leads 2019 gains in S&P tech index

The company logo for Xerox is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
The company logo for Xerox is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

March 12, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – ** Xerox Corp is leading the S&P 500 information technology index so far in 2019, boasting a gain of 57.4 pct as the printer maker plans to restructure

** Programmable chipmaker Xilinx is up 43.6 pct YTD, the second-best performer in the S&P tech index, which itself is up 15.5 pct YTD, leading the other 10 S&P sectors

** 112-year old XRX said on Mar 7 that it would become a wholly owned unit of a new holding company, with the new company trading under its current XRX ticker

** In the last two quarters, XRX topped profit estimates and undertook initiatives to streamline its business under the new management

** XRX on Tuesday was down 0.3 pct, and it is up 4.6 pct over the past 12 months. It is trading at 8.2x expected earnings, vs its 5-year average of 7.3x, according to Refinitiv

(Reporting by Noel Randewich)

Source: OANN

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Bombing aboard train kills 3 in southwest Pakistan

Police in Pakistan say a bomb explosion aboard a moving train has killed at least three passengers and wounded seven others in the country's volatile southwest.

Officer Abdullah Jamali says the bomb went off in one of the cars of a Quetta-bound train early Sunday, damaging five cars. He says two men and a woman were killed, and that women and children were among the wounded.

No one claimed responsibility, but ethnic Baluch separatists have attacked trains in the past.

The southwestern Baluchistan province has been the scene of a low-level separatist insurgency for well over a decade. The separatists accuse the central government of unfairly exploiting the region's gas and mineral wealth.

Source: Fox News World

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Malinvestment: Have We Learned Anything Since the Last Recession?

A growing number of economists are predicting the current economic boom will turn to bust in 2019.

When recession does come, will economists simply call for more of the same — namely endless government spending?

After all, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, most economists told us the problem was the private sector was not spending and investing enough. So, we were told, government must step in and make up the difference with deficit spending to get “idle resources” — like capital goods and labor — back to work.

But what should the government be spending on? Apparently, anything.

This is not an exaggeration. For example, noted Cal-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong insisted in 2009 “At this point, anything that boosts the government’s deficit over the next two years passes the benefit-cost test — anything at all.”

Such thinking reveals one of fatal flaws of mainstream economics: the idea that all the economy is one big homogeneous blob. As Friedrich Hayek put it, “Mr. Keynes’ aggregates conceal the most fundamental mechanisms of change.”

The Problem of Malinvestment

During the 2002-2007 housing boom, significant amounts of capital and labor were organized in very specific locations, combinations and uses at multiple stages of production to produce more houses to satisfy consumer demands. This meant more construction workers employed building homes in growing communities, and more mortgage brokers and investment bankers to finance the boom. It also meant more inputs such as wood, nails, concrete and glass directed toward homebuilding; which in turn required more lumber processing, steel production, and so on.

When the housing bubble burst, millions of these workers became unemployed, and significant portions of the structures of production that were expanded to support the bubble became idle as well. The bursting of the bubble then sent a ripple effect permeating through other sectors of the economy, creating yet more unemployed resources.

For the economy to recover, a major reallocation of these idle workers and resources needed to occur. Idle workers and capital goods needed to be reshuffled to those entrepreneurs ready and willing to employ them in an attempt to meet changing consumer demands.

But this process is not short nor easy. The unemployed workers have specific skills and experience, and many may need training to acquire new skills to meet the changing labor market. Some may be unwilling to move to take new opportunities. How is a laid off bricklayer supposed to find work in a market demanding graphic designers and coders?

The capital goods no longer being utilized likewise have specific uses, and often need specific complementary goods to fulfill their role in the production process. Some of them may end up being liquidated because no entrepreneurs have a need for them. There simply may be too many bulldozers and cement mixers needed given the now smaller, post-bubble construction industry.

Recession: A Process of Re-allocating Malinvested Resources

This process of reshuffling explains the strength and duration of the recession.

Keynesian-inspired economists and politicians, unfortunately, view the idle capital and labor only in the aggregate. Their grand “stimulus” plans involve nothing more nuanced than coaxing consumer spending and business investment into spending more money on anything, anytime, anywhere.

As economic historian Robert Higgs described , “If someone, whatever his skills, preferences, or location, is unemployed, then, in this framework of thought, we may expect to put him back to work by increasing aggregate demand, regardless of what we happen to spend the money for, whether it be cosmetics or computers.”

Simply force-feeding new money into the economy will be ineffective because it takes no account of the true reason why the resources are idle in the first place.

The billions of dollars worth of public works projects, for instance, will mostly draw from labor and capital actively engaged in the private sector and fail to employ idle resources. Say, for instance, Chicago receives millions to build a new road. Can anyone honestly say for certain that the road construction will only employ workers and other inputs sitting idle in the Chicago area due to the housing bust?

Unemployed bankers and carpenters won’t be of much help laying pavement. Rather, the road project will undoubtedly divert labor and machinery actively engaged in private sector projects in the region. In the end, fewer resources will be available for productive, private sector use because they are tied up in government stimulus projects.

Meanwhile, the majority of idle workers and equipment will continue to sit idle.

Moreover, billions of available funds in the capital investment markets will be tied up by government projects; further drying up private investment opportunities.

Government stimulus spending may also artificially inflate the prices of resources, pricing them out of reach for entrepreneurs needing low-priced inputs to attract their investment during uncertain recessionary conditions. The very resources needed to generate recovery will be unavailable, having been diverted to government projects.

The best policy is for government to get out of the way and allow the reallocation of resources to occur unhampered. Government spending can only distort and prolong this process, most likely producing harmful inflationary pressure on prices along the way.

Will next time be any different?



Top political cartoonist in the world, Ben Garrison, has been attacked by the left for being so effective in his support for liberty, capitalism and President Trump.

Source: InfoWars

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FILE PHOTO: Naqvi Founder and Group Chief Executive of Abraaj Group attends the annual meeting of the WEF in Davos
FILE PHOTO: Arif Naqvi, Founder and Group Chief Executive of Abraaj Group attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Arnold

LONDON (Reuters) – A London court case to extradite Arif Naqvi, founder of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj Group, to the United States on fraud charges was adjourned until May 24, a court official said on Friday.

Naqvi was remanded in custody until that date, the official said. A former managing partner of Dubai-based Abraaj, Sev Vettivetpillai, was released on conditional bail to appear again at Westminster Magistrates Court on June 12, the official said.

Under the U.S. charges, both men are accused of defrauding U.S. investors by inflating positions held by Abraaj in order to attract greater funds from them, causing them financial loss, the official said.

Vettivetpillai could not be reached for a comment.

Naqvi, in a statement released through a PR firm, has pleaded innocent.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Naqvi and his firm raised money for the Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund, collecting more than $100 million over three years from U.S.-based charitable organizations and other U.S. investors.

Naqvi and Vettivetpillai were arrested in Britain earlier this month. Another executive, Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court on April 11.

Abdel-Wadood appeared at the Manhattan hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges.

(Editing by Jane Merriman)

Source: OANN

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Former Vice President Joe Biden announces his 2020 candidacy
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in this still image taken from a video released April 25, 2019. BIDEN CAMPAIGN HANDOUT via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

April 26, 2019

By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in his first interview as a Democratic presidential candidate, said on Friday that he does not believe he treated law professor Anita Hill badly during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Biden had joined the burgeoning 2020 Democratic field a day earlier.

Biden’s conduct during those hearings, when he was chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, became a renewed subject of controversy after the New York Times reported that Biden had called Hill earlier this month in the run-up to his presidential bid and that Hill was dissatisfied with Biden’s expression of regret.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” Biden largely defended his actions as a senator almost 30 years ago, saying he believed Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment levied at Thomas and tried to derail his confirmation.

Activists have long been unhappy that Hill was questioned in graphic detail by the all-white, all-male committee chaired by Biden.

“I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated,” Biden said, but later, he asserted, “I don’t think I treated her badly. … How do you stop people from asking inflammatory questions?”

“There were a lot of mistakes made across the board and for those I apologize,” he said.

Biden praised Hill as “remarkable” and said she is “one of the reasons we have the #MeToo movement.”

Asked why he had not reached out to Hill earlier, Biden said he had previously publicly stated he had regrets about her treatment and that he “didn’t want to quote invade her space.”

That seemed to be a reference to another controversy that looms over Biden’s presidential run: allegations by several women that he made them uncomfortable by touching them at political events.

Biden also addressed that criticism, saying he was now more “cognizant” about a woman’s “private space.” But he maintained that he had been “trying to bring solace.”

He suggested he was still trying to sort out the guidelines for his conduct going forward.

“I should be able to read better,” he said. “I have to be more careful.”

Pressed by the show’s panel for an apology to his accusers, Biden would not entirely capitulate.

“So, I invaded your space,” he replied. “I mean, I’m sorry this happened. But I’m not sorry in a sense that I think I did anything that was intentionally designed to do anything wrong or be inappropriate.”

Biden, 76, served as former President Barack Obama’s vice president for two terms. He is competing with 19 others for the Democratic presidential nomination and the chance to likely face President Donald Trump next year in the general election.

His first public event as a presidential candidate is scheduled for Monday in Pittsburgh.

(Reporting by James Oliphant; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Tesla Inc’s stock slumped over 4% on Friday to its lowest price in two years, rounding out a rough week that included worse-than-expected quarterly results and a pitch by Chief Executive Elon Musk on autonomous cars that failed to win over investors.

With investors betting Tesla will soon raise capital, the stock has fallen 13% for the week to its lowest level since January 2017, before the launch of the Model 3 sedan aimed at making the electric car maker profitable.

One positive development for Tesla: a U.S. District Court judge on Friday granted a request by Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission for a second extension to resolve a dispute over Musk’s use of Twitter.

On Wednesday, Tesla posted a worse-than-expected loss of $702 million for the March quarter. Musk said Tesla would return to profit in the third quarter and that there was “some merit” to raising capital.

Musk is still battling to convince investors that demand for the Model 3, the company’s first car aimed at the mass consumer market, is “insanely” high, and that it can be delivered efficiently to customers around the world.

Tesla ended its first quarter with $2.2 billion, down from $3.7 billion in the prior quarter, and the company is planning expansions including a Shanghai factory, an upcoming Model Y SUV, and other projects.

(GRAPHIC: Tesla’s cash – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DyJjX6)

On Monday, Musk hosted a self-driving event, where he predicted Tesla would have over a million autonomous vehicles by next year. Some analysts perceived the presentation as a way to deflect attention from questions about demand, margin pressure, increasing competition and even Musk’s ongoing battle with U.S. regulators.

Tesla’s stock has now fallen 29 percent in 2019 and the company’s market capitalization has declined to $41 billion from $63 billion in mid-December.

(GRAPHIC: Tesla’s declining market cap – https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dwd62r)

Analysts now expect Tesla’s revenue to expand 19% in 2019, compared with 83% growth in 2018 and 68% growth in 2017, according to Refinitiv.

Following Tesla’s quarterly report, 12 analysts recommend selling the stock, while 11 recommend buying and eight are neutral. The median analyst price target is $275, up 16% from the stock’s current price of $236. Berenberg analyst Alexander Haissl has the most optimistic price target, at $500, while Cowen and Company’s Jeffrey Osborne has the lowest, at $160, according to Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Friday that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s rare public criticism of the Obama administration was a “soft” way of accusing the previous administration of covering up Russia’s attempts at hacking the 2016 presidential election.

While speaking Thursday in New York at the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar Association, Rosenstein said that the Obama administration “chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls and how they relate to Russia’s broader strategy to undermine America.”

During an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” Friday morning, Huckabee called the comments an “unusually candid moment for Rosenstein.”

“I thought it was a soft way of him saying there was a cover-up,” Huckabee said. “They knew the Russians were attempting to influence the election and attempting to hack the election but they didn’t fully disclose that to the American people and certainly didn’t disclose it to the Trump campaign.

SWALWELL NOT CERTAIN TRUMP ISN’T A ‘RUSSIAN ASSET’

“Instead they tried to set a trap for them. It failed. The Trump team did not take the bait. And that’s the one conclusion that we can certainly come away with from the $35 million worth of investigation,” Huckabee continued.

Next week, Attorney General William Barr will testify before Congress and is expected to answer questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump, which found that there was not adequate evidence to conclude that President Trump and his administration colluded with Russia, though the president could not be exonerated in terms of the possibility that he obstructed justice.

Barr will testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next Wednesday and to the House Judiciary Committee the following day.

TRUMP ASSESSES 2020 DEMS; TAKES SWIPES AT BIDEN, SANDERS; DISMISSES HARRIS, O’ROURKE; SAYS HE’S ROOTING FOR BUTTIGIEG 

“It is going to be a theater, an absolute show,” Huckabee said of the hearings. “Just like the Kavanaugh hearings were and like everything else is in Congress. We ought to close the curtain on them and can’t come back until after the election. They aren’t doing their job anyway. We aren’t paying them because they’re doing a wonderful service to the country and spare us the hypocrisy of thinking they’re interested in getting to the bottom of the facts,” he continued.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Ultimately, Huckabee argued, if Americans “took their partisan hats off,” they would see that President Trump was exonerated by the investigation.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Sri Lanka's former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa greets his supporters after his return from the United States, in Katunayake
Sri Lanka’s former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa greets his supporters after his return from the United States, in Katunayake, Sri Lanka April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

April 26, 2019

By Sanjeev Miglani and Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens.

Gotabaya, as he is popularly known, is the younger brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the two led the country to a crushing defeat of separatist Tamil rebels a decade ago after a 26-year civil war.

More than 250 people were killed in bomb attacks on hotels and churches on Easter Sunday that the government has blamed on Islamist militants and that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for.

Gotabaya said the attacks could have been prevented if the island’s current government had not dismantled the intelligence network and extensive surveillance capabilities that he built up during the war and later on.

“Because the government was not prepared, that’s why you see a panic situation,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

Gotabaya said he would be a candidate “100 percent”, firming up months of speculation that he plans to run in the elections, which are due by December.

He was critical of the government’s response to the bombings. Since the attacks, the government has struggled to provide clear information about how they were staged, who was behind them and how serious the threat is from Islamic State to the country.

“Various people are blaming various people, not giving exactly the details as to what happened, even people expect the names, what organization did this, and how they came up to this level, that explanation was not given,” he said.

On Friday, President Maithripala Sirisena said the government led by premier Ranil Wickremesinghe should take responsibility for the attacks and that prior information warning of attacks was not shared with him.

Wickremesinghe said earlier he was not advised about warnings that came from India’s spy service either, presenting a picture of a government still in disarray since the two leaders fell out last October.

Gotabaya is facing lawsuits in the United States, where he is a dual citizen, over his role in the war and afterwards.

The South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, in partnership with U.S. law firm Hausfeld, filed a civil case in California this month against Gotabaya on behalf of a Tamil torture survivor.

In a separate case, Ahimsa Wickrematunga, the daughter of murdered investigative editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, filed a complaint for damages in the same U.S. District Court in California for allegedly instigating and authorizing the extrajudicial killing of her father.

Gotabaya said the cases were baseless and only a “little distraction” as he prepared for the election campaign. He said he had asked U.S. authorities to renounce his citizenship and that process was nearly done, clearing the way for his candidature.

‘DISMANTLE THE NETWORKS’

He said that if he won, his immediate focus would to be tackle the threat from radical Islam and to rebuild the security set-up.

“It’s a serious problem, you have to go deep into the groups, dismantle the networks,” he said, adding he would give the military a mandate to collect intelligence from the ground and to mount surveillance of groups turning to extremism.

Gotabaya said that a military intelligence cell he had set up in 2011 of 5,000 people, some of them with Arabic language skills and that was tracking the bent towards extremist ideology some of the Islamist groups were taking in eastern Sri Lanka was disbanded by the current government.

“They did not give priority to national security, there was a mix-up. They were talking about ethnic reconciliation, then they were talking about human rights issues, they were talking about individual freedoms,” he said.

President Sirisena’s government sought to forge reconciliation with minority Tamils and close the wounds of the war and launched investigations into allegations of rights abuse and torture against military officers.

Officials said many of these secret intelligence cells were disbanded because they faced allegations of abuse, including torture and extra judicial killings.

Muslims make up nearly 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million, which is predominantly Buddhist.

(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Source: OANN

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