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Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, team detained, released in Venezuela, network says

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and members of his team were detained and later released, in Caracas, Venezuela by President Nicolas Maduro on Monday during an interview in which the embattled president "didn't like the questions" being asked, the network said on Twitter.

Daniel Coronell, the president of news for Univision in the U.S., tweeted just before 9 p.m. ET on Monday that Ramos and his team were released, but their technical equipment, along with interview material that Maduro disliked, were confiscated.

Univison said earlier Monday that Ramos and his crew were "arbitrarily detained at the Miraflores Palace" because Maduro "didn't like their questions" they were asking him.

The State Department confirmed on Twitter that Ramos and his team were "being held against their will at Miraflores Palace by Nicolas Maduro," and urged him to immediately release them.

Ramos, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was seemingly able to call Univision to explain what was happening "when the phone was taken from him & the call ended."

During a visit to the Colombia border city of Cucuta last week, Rubio warned Venezuelan soldiers that they would commit a "crime against humanity" if they blocked the entry of U.S. aid being channeled through rivals of Maduro.

"This is an arrogant regime that feels invulnerable & is now acting with total impunity," Rubio tweeted in response to Ramos and his team's detainment.

Maduro, who began his second term as president in January, is not recognized by the U.S. or dozens of other countries as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

The U.S. and other nations have demanded Maduro step down and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful leader. Venezuelans also have staged large protests to pressure Maduro to leave.

Vice President Mike Pence on Monday urged a 14-nation coalition of Latin American nations and Canada to freeze the assets of Venezuela's state-owned oil company in response to violent clashes between security forces and opposition members over blocked humanitarian aid.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Speaking in Colombia, Pence repeated President Trump’s threat that “all options are on the table” to push out Maduro.

"It's time to do more," the vice president said. "The day is coming soon when Venezuela's long nightmare will end, when Venezuela will once more be free, when her people will see a new birth of freedom, in a nation reborn to libertad."

This is a developing story; please check back for updates.

Source: Fox News World

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College student says he was hazed with spiked paddle

A report says a student at a now-suspended fraternity at Miami University in Ohio told university officials he was hazed by members who beat him with a spiked paddle, kicked him and forced him to drink large amounts of alcohol.

The Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News reported the specific allegations Monday, citing a university incident report. Miami earlier announced Delta Tau Delta fraternity was suspended pending investigation of what school President Gregory Crawford called allegations of "brutal and deplorable" hazing.

The report says the student complained of being blindfolded and abused during a March 16 "hazing ritual." He says he was taken to a hospital after saying he felt like he was "going to die."

The newspaper reports the head of the national Delta Tau Delta Fraternity has said the organization suspended the chapter following hazing reports.

___

Information from: MIDDLETOWN: Hamilton-Middletown Journal News , http://www.journal-news.com

Source: Fox News National

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Prosecutors rest case against fake German heiress

New York prosecutors have rested their case against the woman accused of passing herself off as a German heiress and swindling friends, banks and hotels.

Anna Sorokin told a judge Monday she will not testify in her grand larceny and theft of services trial in state court in Manhattan.

Her decision came after several weeks of testimony in a case that has drawn international attention.

Closing arguments are expected Tuesday, and jurors will begin deliberating the same day.

Prosecutors say Sorokin bilked people and businesses out of $275,000 while living a jet-setting lifestyle she couldn't afford.

They say she also peddled bogus bank statements in a quest for a $22 million loan.

Sorokin's lawyer says she never intended to commit a crime and planned to pay back the money.

Source: Fox News National

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Fox News Poll: Fewer voters feeling nervous about the economy

As economic worries wane, approval of President Trump’s job performance remains just two points shy of his record, according to the latest Fox News Poll. Still, a majority disapproves.

Forty-six percent approve of the job Trump is doing, while 51 percent disapprove. He received his best ratings, 48-47 percent, in February 2017, just after he took office.

CLICK TO READ COMPLETE POLL RESULTS

Almost all 2016 Trump voters (92 percent), Republicans (89 percent), and very conservatives (86 percent) approve of the president.

Plus, his approval hit high points among some groups that aren’t typically his biggest fans, such as women (43 percent), college graduates (46 percent), and suburban voters (46 percent).

A key number in the poll is the spread between those who are nervous about the economy and those who are confident. It was 31 percentage points in March 2016 when 61 percent felt nervous and 30 percent were confident.

The poll released Sunday finds more voters feel nervous (43 percent) than confident (37 percent) about the economy by just six points. A year ago, that gap was seven points. At the same time, those having “mixed” feelings about the economy went from 6 percent in 2016 to 11 percent last year to 17 percent today.

In addition, the 43 percent feeling nervous is a new low. The question was first asked in September 2010 and, at that time, 70 percent felt nervous.

President Trump receives his only net positive job rating on the economy, as 50 percent of voters approve, while 42 percent disapprove.

Outside the economy, the news isn’t as good.

Approval of how Trump is handling North Korea dropped four points to 42 percent after his recent Vietnam summit with Kim Jong Un, down from 46 percent in February. Forty-four percent disapprove.

By a narrow margin, voters think North Korea is farther (27 percent) from giving up its nuclear weapons program since Trump took office rather than closer (24 percent) to giving it up, with the largest number, 41 percent, feeling things are unchanged.

Support for the border wall ticked down a couple points, as 44 percent favor building it, while 51 percent oppose it. In February, it was 46-50.

Meanwhile, more than half disapprove (59 percent) of the president declaring a national emergency on the southern border as a way to bypass Congress and fund the wall, while 36 percent approve.

About 9 in 10 Democrats oppose the emergency declaration, while about 7 in 10 Republicans favor it. Republicans (86 percent) are more than 12 times as likely as Democrats (7 percent) to favor the wall.

A dozen Senate Republicans sided with Senate Democrats March 14 in voting for a resolution to end the president’s border-wall emergency declaration. Trump vetoed the bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a March 26 vote in the House to try to override the veto.

Forty-one percent of voters approve of how Trump is handling immigration, while 54 percent disapprove. That is mostly unchanged since January, when it was 42-54 percent.

Pollpourri

After news of the college bribery scandal, the poll shows twice as many voters see the admissions process as rigged as consider it fair: 49 percent rigged vs. 25 percent fair.

Those with a college degree and those without a degree are equally likely to call the process rigged (both 49 percent). Black voters (65 percent) are more likely than Hispanics (49 percent) and whites (47 percent) to feel that way.

In general, 56 percent feel things in the country are rigged to favor the wealthy, while 40 percent believe -- if they work hard -- they have a fair shot at getting ahead. The admissions scandal does not seem to be changing minds, as a Fox News poll last September found almost exactly the same results.

Republicans (70 percent) think people who work hard can get ahead, while Democrats (82 percent) and independents (62 percent) say things are rigged.

The Fox News Poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,002 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) (formerly named Anderson Robbins Research) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from March 17-20, 2019. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.

Source: Fox News Politics

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May expected to offer her job for Brexit deal as parliament tries multiple choice

British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street in London
British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street in London, Britain, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

March 27, 2019

By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew MacAskill

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected on Wednesday to indicate a date for quitting as the price for getting her twice-defeated Brexit deal ratified, while parliament tries to select its own alternative from a multiple-choice list of options.

As the United Kingdom’s three-year Brexit crisis spins towards its finale, it is still uncertain how, when or even if it will leave the European Union, though May hopes to bring her deal back to parliament later this week.

With British politics at fever pitch, lawmakers on Wednesday grab control to have so-called indicative votes on Brexit, with options ranging from a much closer post-exit alignment with the EU to leaving without a deal or revoking the divorce papers.

Just two days before the United Kingdom had been originally due to leave the EU on March 29, some of the most influential Brexit-supporting rebels, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, have now reluctantly fallen in behind May’s deal.

The price for May may be her job.

She is expected to indicate a date for her departure at a showdown with Conservative Party lawmakers at a meeting of the 1922 Committee in Westminster at around 1700 GMT.

Before that, lawmakers start a debate on what sort of EU divorce the world’s fifth largest economy should go for. They will vote at 1900 GMT on a ballot paper for as many proposals as they wish. Results will be announced after 2100 GMT.

“The prime minister might get a deal over the line on Thursday or Friday,” said Oliver Letwin, a Conservative former cabinet minister who has led parliament’s unusual power grab. “If she does, no one would be happier than I am.”

“If, however, that doesn’t happen and if we do go forward to Monday, and if on Monday one or more propositions get a majority backing in the House of Commons, then we will have to work with the government to get the government to implement them.”

The uncertainty around Brexit, the United Kingdom’s most significant political and economic move since World War Two, has left allies and investors aghast.

Opponents fear Brexit will divide the West as it grapples with both the unconventional U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and growing assertiveness from Russia and China.

BREXIT FINALE?

Supporters say while the divorce might bring some short-term instability, in the longer term it will allow the United Kingdom to thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in European unity.

May’s deal, an attempt to soothe the divide of the 2016 referendum by leaving the formal structures of the EU while preserving close economic and security ties, was defeated in parliament by 149 votes on March 12 and by 230 votes on Jan. 15.

It is unclear if parliament’s attempt to find an alternative will produce a majority. Options to be voted on also include a public vote on any deal or an enhanced Norway-style deal.

Brexit supporters fear the entire divorce is at risk. The government could try to ignore the votes, though if May’s deal fails then an election could be the only way to avoid parliament’s alternative proposal.

She still hopes to get her deal, struck with the EU in November after more than two years of negotiation, approved.

To succeed, May needs at least 75 lawmakers to come over – dozens of rebels in her Conservative Party, some opposition Labour Party lawmakers and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.

“I am now willing to support it if the Democratic Unionist Party does,” Rees-Mogg wrote in the Daily Mail. “The numbers in parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.”

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; additional reporting by William Schomberg, Elisabeth O’Leary and James Davey; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Source: OANN

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Guaido’s return to Venezuela to mark brazen defiance of Maduro

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido speaks to the media in the area of a warehouse where humanitarian aid for Venezuela has been collected in Cucuta
FILE PHOTO: Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country's rightful interim ruler speaks to the media in the area of a warehouse where humanitarian aid for Venezuela has been collected in Cucuta, Colombia, February 23, 2019. REUTERS/Marco Bello

February 27, 2019

By Brian Ellsworth and Sarah Marsh

CARACAS (Reuters) – First he declared a rival presidency. Then he made a play for Citgo. Last weekend he flouted a court travel ban. Now, Juan Guaido says he is headed back home to Venezuela in another challenge to President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido, recognized by most Western nations as the country’s legitimate leader, slipped into neighboring Colombia last week to lead an ultimately failed effort to bring humanitarian aid into the crisis-stricken country.

After meeting with regional leaders including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in Bogota, Guaido is expected to come back through the porous border in the coming days and resume his political activities in open defiance of a Supreme Court order.

“I’m going to return to Caracas this week,” Guaido said in an interview with NTN24 broadcast on Tuesday. “My role and my duty is to be in Caracas despite the risks.”

He traveled last week from Caracas across the country in a caravan and then slipped into Colombia via back roads along the 2,200 km (1,367 miles) border, according to Colombian local media. Guaido said he received help from members of Venezuela’s armed forces.

Representatives for Guaido declined to disclose a timetable for his return or whether he will return the same way. To return via an official route would pose an even more brazen challenge to Maduro’s authority.

Maduro has faced regional condemnation this week for violently driving back the opposition’s attempts to bring in humanitarian aid. He denies there is a crisis despite overseeing a hyperinflationary economic meltdown that has spawned widespread food and medicine shortages.

Guaido’s return will force Maduro to decide whether to risk even greater international outrage by attempting to arrest the 35-year old congress chief or to allow him to openly disregard state institutions linked to the ruling Socialist Party.

“Trying to manage the Guaido situation has become a real problem for the government because (Guaido) has grown so much politically,” said Luis Salamanca, a political scientist and constitutional law professor at Venezuela’s Central University.

Guaido invoked articles of the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, declaring Maduro a usurper following his 2018 re-election in a vote widely boycotted by the opposition.

State institutions including the chief prosecutor’s office, the Supreme Court, and the comptroller’s officer – all openly allied with Maduro – responded by opening investigations of Guaido.

But no state institution has sought his arrest or even formally accused him of a crime. So far authorities have only frozen his local bank accounts and prohibited foreign travel.

The ruling Socialist Party has in the past clipped the wings of opposition politicians, particularly charismatic challengers, by accusing them of irregularities in managing state funds.

Maduro said in an ABC News interview released on Tuesday that Guaido’s fate was up to the justice system: “He can’t just come and go. He will have to face justice, and justice prohibited him from leaving the country. I will respect the laws.”

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Guaido said his team had a strategy should he be detained, without giving details on what that was.

“A prisoner doesn’t do anyone any good but neither does an exiled president so we are in uncharted waters here,” he said.

KEEPING UP MOMENTUM

Many Venezuelans credit Guaido, a fresh face, with capturing the international community’s attention through his bold move to swear himself in as interim president, galvanizing a once-fractured and weary opposition.

Maduro, who has described his rival as a U.S.-backed puppet, now faces severe international pressure including U.S. sanctions meant to cripple the OPEC nation’s vital oil industry.

“I hope he returns because he has shown himself to be a politician with strength, who has given us hope,” said Martha Sanchez, 65, a receptionist who has lost a third of her weight due to hyperinflation that has left her struggling to buy food on a minimum wage equivalent to less than $10 per month.

Guaido’s attempt to bring humanitarian aid into the country had in particular fueled her hope as she has been unable to find hypertension pills for sale over the past two months.

“No other candidate called for humanitarian aid before,” she said.

To be sure, Guaido’s team also faces a conundrum after that effort failed, allowing Maduro to declare victory even as the images of troops firing tear gas on convoys carrying aid sparked anger around the world.

Guaido’s team has won control over crucial offshore assets including U.S.-based refiner Citgo, but still does not control the ports or central bank, or, most crucially, the armed forces.

“If he doesn’t keep up momentum, he will end up being another failed leader of the opposition,” said Jesus Barreto, a 21-year old student. “He needs to keep challenging the government.”

Maduro’s government has largely allowed him to carry out political activities including rallies and press conferences, and appears unwilling to imprison him – even now that he has openly flouted a legal restriction placed upon him.

“I think they will hold off because it is much more sustainable over time to make your opponent seem ineffective than making yourself appear more like a dictator, especially when there is so much focus on you,” said Raul Gallegos, an analyst with the consultancy Control Risks.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Sarah Marsh; Additional reporting by Corina Pons and Vivian Sequera; Editing by Christian Plumb and Phil Berlowitz)

Source: OANN

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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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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

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