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Before mosque attacks, New Zealand failed to record hate crimes for years

FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands guard outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch
FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands guard outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

March 30, 2019

By Charlotte Greenfield and Praveen Menon

CHRISTCHURCH/WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Weeks before a gunman killed 50 Muslims in Christchurch, a man had threatened to burn copies of the Koran outside New Zealand mosques, in what community leaders said was the latest in a long list of threatening behavior against religious minorities.

Police said they warned a 38-year-old man over the incident, which was unrelated to the Christchurch attack, but could not say if it was part of a pattern.

That’s because, unlike many Western countries including the United Kingdom and the United States, New Zealand’s government keeps no comprehensive record of hate crimes, failing to act on requests to do so from local and international agencies spanning more than a decade.

“For many years our view has consistently been that this needs to be prioritized and implemented urgently,” said Janet Anderson-Bidois, Chief Legal Adviser at the Human Rights Commission, the independent government agency tasked with protecting human rights.

“It is imperative that we have good data.”

A suspected white supremacist has been charged with murder over the Christchurch shootings and will appear in court again on April 5.

In the wake of New Zealand’s worst mass shooting, questions are being asked about what signs agencies missed and where resources should have been allocated to protect vulnerable communities.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has ordered a Royal Commission, a powerful form of inquiry, into the attack.

Anwar Ghani from the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, said anecdotal evidence suggested there had been a rise in anti-Muslim behavior in recent years.

“When there is a hot spot in global events and when Muslims are involved…we do see the pulse of hate crime coming from certain members of the community,” he said.

“NOT A PRIORITY”

Joris De Bres, New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner between 2002 and 2013, said he was alarmed at signs of an uptick in threats against Muslims when he took up the role soon after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

De Bres said he repeatedly asked the government and police to create a central system for recording details about crimes motivated by hatred and racism.

He raised the issue with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which in its 2007 review of New Zealand said the lack of records was a concern, and asked the government to collect data on complaints of racially motivated crimes.

“I listed it every year…I wrote at various points to government about it and it was simply said that it wasn’t necessary and it wasn’t a priority,” De Bres said.

In its latest report on New Zealand in 2017, the UN committee repeated its concerns and requests and asked the government to provide the data for its next report as a priority.

When current Justice and Intelligence Services Minister Andrew Little took office in late 2017, the Human Rights Commission said in their incoming briefing the country needed a central system for recording details about crimes motivated by hatred and racism and steps currently taken by police were insufficient.

“Understanding the scale, extent, and location of hate crimes is essential and is a prerequisite to ensuring adequate resources are available to address the issue,” the briefing said.

Little did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment but told local media on Saturday that current hate speech laws were inadequate and he would work with officials to review the legislation, including considering whether a separate hate crime offense should be created.

Police said they took hate crimes seriously and were continually looking to improve the way they worked.

“We are engaged in ongoing conversations with community leaders and representatives about a range of issues, including how police record allegations of hate crime and crimes of prejudice,” said a police spokesperson via email.

The National Party, in power from 2008 to 2017, said while in government, it introduced legislation to protect people from harmful communication online.

“There are hate speech laws in the Human Rights Act, but whether data should be collected is an operational matter for Police,” a spokeswoman said by email.

NO ONE WAS LISTENING

New Zealand has had no previous extremist mass attacks, unlike neighboring Australia, but civil society members say an underbelly of racism has always existed and may have been escalating.

Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand said the group had repeatedly alerted the government over the past five years about the rise of the extreme right and the growing threat Muslim women felt in New Zealand.

“Without the data, without the measurement it’s really hard to push for change…I feel like it wasn’t taken seriously because it wasn’t hard data because we didn’t have it,” she said, adding she felt “a resistance to creating that data.”

One in 10 New Zealand adults have experienced hate speech online according to a 2018 study by internet safety organization Netsafe, with people of Asian descent or who identified as ‘other’ ethnicity most affected.

Since 2002, a law has specified judges should take hostility toward a group of people with a “common characteristic”, such as race or religion, into account when sentencing.

A Reuters review of sentencing records found 22 such cases since 2002, most with a racial motive.

Those included the murder of a Korean student, the hurling of a pipe bomb at a Sikh Temple, and threats to politicians by a non-Muslim posing as an Islamic extremist, which the judge described as a “deliberate attempt to tap into public fear about radicalized Muslims”.

The likely number is far higher, say human rights experts, because accessible records encompass only cases that are appealed or the most severe charges that reach New Zealand’s highest courts, not the tens of thousands of cases dealt with in lower District Courts each year.

One of those was a 2016 case, first reported by the New Zealand Herald, in which a Christchurch man delivered a bloodied pig’s head to Al Noor mosque, which was attacked this month.

He was charged with “offensive behavior” and fined NZ$800 ($543), court records show.

In 2017, lawmakers asked police whether hate crime was increasing but were told it could not be measured because it was not recorded as a specific category, according to Parliamentary records.

The Human Rights Commission said it received 417 complaints relating to race in 2018, up from 350 in 2014. Those included 63 complaints of “racial disharmony”, which includes hate speech, a 26 percent jump from four years earlier.

Lawmaker Golriz Ghahraman, a former human rights lawyer who was born in Iran and came to New Zealand as a child refugee, said she had received death threats and xenophobia including being called a “terrorist” and “Jihadist” online.

Before the Christchurch attacks, most of the public had felt safe, she said.

“Minorities didn’t, but no one was listening to them.”

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Praveen Menon.; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Source: OANN

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China’s Xi says Belt and Road must be green, sustainable

Chinese President Xi speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Florence Lo

April 26, 2019

By Brenda Goh and Yilei Sun

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Belt and Road initiative must be green and sustainable, President Xi Jinping said at the opening of a summit on his grand plan on Friday, adding that the massive infrastructure and trade plan should result in “high quality” growth for everyone.

Xi’s plan to rebuild the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with huge spending on infrastructure, has become mired in controversy as some partner nations have bemoaned the high cost of projects.

China has repeatedly said it is not seeking to trap anyone with debt and only has good intentions, and has been looking to use this week’s summit in Beijing to recalibrate the policy and address those concerns.

Xi said in a keynote speech to the summit that environmental protection must underpin the scheme “to protect the common home we live in”.

“We must adhere to the concept of openness, greenness, and cleanliness,” he said.

“Operate in the sun and fight corruption together with zero tolerance,” Xi added.

“Building high-quality, sustainable, risk-resistant, reasonably priced, and inclusive infrastructure will help countries to fully utilize their resource endowments.”

Western governments have tended to view it as a means to spread Chinese influence abroad, saddling poor countries with unsustainable debt.

While most of the Belt and Road projects are continuing as planned, some have been caught up by changes in government in countries such as Malaysia and the Maldives.

Those that have been shelved for financial reasons include a power plant in Pakistan and an airport in Sierra Leone, and Beijing has in recent months had to rebuff critics by saying that not one country has been burdened with so-called “debt traps”.

Since 2017, the finance ministries of 28 countries have called on governments, financial institutions and companies from Belt and Road countries to work together to build a long-term, stable and sustainable financing system to manage risks, China’s finance ministry said in a report released on Thursday.

Debt sustainability has to be taken into account when mobilizing funds, the finance ministry said in the report, which outlined a framework for use in analyzing debt sustainability of low-income Belt and Road nations and managing debt risks.

The framework is based on the IMF/World Bank Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries while penciling in local conditions and development of partner nations, according to the report.

CHINESE PROMISES

The Belt and Road initiative will also open up development opportunities for China just as China itself is further opening up its markets to the world, Xi said.

“In accordance with the need for further opening up, (we’ll) improve laws and regulations, regulate government behavior at all levels in administrative licensing, market supervision and other areas, and clean up and abolish unreasonable regulations, subsidies and practices that impede fair competition and distort the market,” he said.

Xi promised to significantly shorten the negative list for foreign investments, and allow foreign companies to take a majority stake or set up wholly-owned companies in more sectors.

Tariffs will be lower and non-tariff barriers will be eliminated, Xi added.

China also aims to import more services and goods, and is willing to import competitive agricultural products and services to achieve trade balance.

“China will strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination with major economies in the world and strive to create positive spillover effects to promote a strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth for the world economy,” said Xi.

VISITING LEADERS

Visiting leaders include Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, a close China ally and among the biggest recipients of Belt and Road investment, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, which recently became the first G7 country to sign on to the initiative.

The United States, which has not joined the Belt and Road, is expected to send only lower-level officials, and nobody from Washington, citing concerns over opaque financing practices, poor governance, and disregard for internationally accepted norms.

“The United States is not sending high level officials from Washington to the Belt and Road Forum,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said.

“We continue to have serious concerns that China’s infrastructure diplomacy activities ignore or weaken international standards and best practices related to development, labor protections, and environmental protection.”

(Reporting by Brenda Goh and Yilei Sun; Additional reporting by Tony Munroe, Stella Qiu, Ryan Woo, Cate Cadell and Tom Daly; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Source: OANN

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Southwest Airlines first-quarter profit hit by 737 MAX grounding

FILE PHOTO: A number of grounded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are shown parked at Victorville Airport in Victorville, California
FILE PHOTO: A number of grounded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are shown parked at Victorville Airport in Victorville, California, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 25, 2019

(Reuters) – Southwest Airlines Co reported a 16 percent drop in quarterly profit on Thursday, saying a U.S. government shutdown, maintenance disruptions and the grounding of its Boeing 737 MAX jets knocked $150 million off its bottom line.

Dallas, Texas-based Southwest, the world’s largest MAX operator with 34 jets in its fleet and dozens more on order, said it lost more than $200 million in revenue during the quarter, above its previous estimate of $150 million.

The No.4 U.S. airline has canceled thousands of flights since the 737 MAX was grounded worldwide in March following two fatal crashes, in addition to cancellations due to bad weather and unscheduled maintenance disruptions as it worked out a new labor contract with its mechanics union.

The low-cost carrier has removed the fuel-efficient, longer-range MAX from its flying schedule through Aug. 5 as it waits for Boeing Co to submit a software fix and new training guidelines to global regulators for review.

“Flight cancellations are expected to drive unit cost pressure for the duration of the MAX groundings,” Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said.

On an adjusted basis, the company earned 70 cents per share in the first quarter, beating estimates of 61 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Total operating revenue at the airline, which launched a service to Hawaii from California last month, rose 4 percent to $5.15 billion.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Rachit Vats in Bangalore; Editing by Bill Rigby and Shounak Dasgupta)

Source: OANN

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Controversial Australian lawmaker ‘egged’ after comments on New Zealand mass shooting

Australian Senator Fraser Anning has an egg smashed on his head while talking to the media in Victoria
Australian Senator Fraser Anning has an egg smashed on his head while talking to the media in Victoria, Australia March 16, 2019 in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. THE UNSHACKLED/via REUTERS

March 17, 2019

By Will Ziebell

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australian police said they were investigating after a teenager smashed an egg on a controversial right-wing lawmaker who had blamed New Zealand’s mass mosque shootings on the country’s immigration program.

The footage, shared widely on social media, showed Senator Fraser Anning being approached from behind at a political event on Saturday, before having an egg cracked on the back of his head.

The footage showed Anning appearing to try to hit the person, before that person was dragged to the ground.

Victoria Police released a statement saying the incident was being investigated “in its entirety” and that it involved a 17-year-old boy.

Anning has received widespread condemnation following comments he made that saying cause of New Zealand’s worst peace time shooting was letting “Muslim fanatics” migrate to the country.

“(Anning’s) conflation of this horrendous terrorist attack with issues of immigration, in his attack on Islamic faith specifically, these comments are appalling and they’re ugly and they have no place in Australia,” Australia’s Prime Minister Morrison told journalists on Saturday.

Calls to Anning’s electoral and parliamentary offices went unanswered on Sunday.

A GoFundMe campaign had raised more than A$19,000 ($13,500) for the teenager to cover the cost of legal fees and so he could “buy more eggs” by Sunday and the hashtag #EggBoy was trending on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Australia’s immigration minister announced on Saturday that controversial conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos would not be allowed to enter Australia following Yiannopoulos describing Islam as a “barbaric” and “alien” religion.

“Mr Yiannopoulos’ comments on social media regarding the Christchurch terror attack are appalling and foment hatred and division,” immigration minister David Coleman said in a statement.

Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after 49 people were killed and dozens wounded in mass shootings at two New Zealand mosques.

(Reporting by Will Ziebell; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Source: OANN

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Officials: New Orleans police officer shot, wounded

Officials say a New Orleans police officer has been shot and wounded in the leg.

In a brief statement, police said an officer sustained a gunshot wound to the body and was taken to a nearby hospital.

Jonathan Fourcade of the New Orleans Emergency Medical Services told The New Orleans Advocate that the officer had a leg wound that was serious but not considered life-threatening.

The officer has not been identified, and no further details of how the shooting unfolded have been released.

A gas station in the area of the shooting was encircled in yellow police tape as patrol cars with lights flashing parked nearby.

Source: Fox News National

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Tencent-backed live-streaming firm DouYu files for $500 million U.S. IPO

FILE PHOTO: A girl broadcasts live from a phone as she holds a selfie stick with a sign of the live-streaming platform DouYu during an event celebrating the new year in Wuhan
FILE PHOTO: A girl broadcasts live from a phone as she holds a selfie stick with a sign of the live-streaming platform DouYu during an event celebrating the new year in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, December 31, 2018. Picture taken December 31, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

April 23, 2019

By Julia Fioretti

HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s largest live-streaming platform DouYu International Holdings Limited, backed by social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, has filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) of up to $500 million.

DouYu, which primarily focuses on the live-streaming of games, is one of several Chinese start-ups in the growing market for live-streaming in China, along with U.S.-listed rival Huya Inc and Huajiao.

The rapid growth of the live-streaming sector has seen China’s tech heavyweights – Tencent, Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu Inc – open their wallets to back a slew of firms in the hope it can boost existing services in e-commerce, social networking and gaming.

DouYu has exclusive streaming rights to 29 major tournaments in China, including League of Legends, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and DOTA2, according to the draft prospectus which was uploaded to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website overnight on Monday.

DouYu was the largest game-streaming platform by average total monthly active users (MAUs) on both mobile and PC during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the prospectus. The company had 159.2 million MAUs in the first quarter of 2019, representing year-on-year growth of 25.7 percent.

It set a placeholder sum of $500 million for the IPO, which is used to calculate registration fees. The final IPO size could be different, though sources have previously told Reuters DouYu was looking to raise around $500 million.

DouYu’s IPO could be one of the largest this year by a Chinese company in the United States, together with that of Starbucks challenger Luckin Coffee which also filed overnight.

Chinese companies have raised $271 million through U.S. IPOs so far this year, with the biggest deal being that of Ruhnn Holding Limited which raised $125 million, Refinitiv data showed.

LOSS MAKING

China is the world’s largest game streaming market, with approximately 4.9 times the monthly active users of the U.S. market in 2018, the prospectus said.

DouYu’s active users spent an average of 54 minutes per day on the platform in the fourth quarter of 2018.

DouYu is still loss-making and reported a net loss of $127.4 million in 2018, up from $91.33 million in 2017. Revenues jumped 94 percent to $531.5 million last year.

The company significantly increased its sales and marketing expenses – which jumped 73 percent in 2018 – as well as its research and development expenses which increased 55 percent.

Most of DouYu’s revenues come from live-streaming through the sale of virtual gifts, accounting for 86.1 percent of its revenues, with the rest coming from advertisements and some revenue sharing with game developers and publishers, the prospectus showed.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are the underwriters for DouYu’s IPO.

(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Source: OANN

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Syrian man caught trying to sneak into US at Mexico border

Border agents in California apprehended a Syrian national over the weekend, saying he'd attempted to enter the U.S. by hiding on a train.

Agents at the Calexico West Port of Entry were observing a commercial railcar as it passed across the border on Friday around 6:15 a.m. when officers observed something amiss on the lower side of the train using the port’s imaging system.

According to a press release from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), officers searched the train and discovered a 46-year-old man hidden in a compartment.

TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON THREAT TO CLOSE BORDER: ‘THIS IS A NATIONAL EMERGENCY’

“This apprehension highlights the fact that none of our inspections are routine, especially when people purposely attempt to avoid the process,” Port Director David Salazar said in a statement. “CBP puts a lot of effort in identifying, vetting and prosecuting people who just don’t want to abide by the legal process of entering our country.”

The man was interviewed and fingerprinted; the process revealed that he was a Syrian citizen with no paperwork to enter the U.S.

He was charged with improper entry by an alien and sent to Imperial County Jail, where he will wait to stand trial.

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This latest apprehension comes as President Trump doubles down on threats to close the border.

Immigration officials are grappling with historic numbers of border crossers, including families. Officials anticipated more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters last month, the highest in over a decade.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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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].”

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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.

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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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Joe Biden may have just stepped into the 2020 ring, but he’s wasted no time in throwing punches at President Trump.

Former Vice President Biden appeared on “The View” Friday in his first interview since officially announcing he is running for the White House on Thursday.

After batting away a softball opening question from host Joy Behar about why he took so long to enter the race, the ex-VP delivered what is likely to be his campaign’s major message.

Asked about the comment in his announcement that a battle is underway for “the soul of this nation,” Biden replied: “What I mean by that is we are not — this is not who we are the way we’re treating people. It’s not who we are as a nation when we’re talking about things like the reason for your problem is the other.

JOE BIDEN’S SENIOR ADVISER IN 2016: ‘WE DON’T NEED WHITE PEOPLE LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RIGHT NOW’

“It really is what I said and I really mean it and I wrote an article at the time in “The Atlantic” magazine when Charlottesville happened. This is not who we are. It’s about decency, honor, including everyone. The idea to compare these racists and not condemn them. Neo-Nazis — I don’t ever remember that happening in an administration in well over 100 years.

“I found myself thinking — by the way I travel around the world a lot as vice president and since then I have as well. The rest of the world — I mean, they look at us like my god — what happened to America?”

Behar then asked Biden how he plans to win over “blue-collar voters, a group that Trump won.”

“By making the case that we have to restore dignity to work. Think about this. The way we treat ordinary hard-working Americans who are middle class and working class people fighting to get in the middle class is we treat them like they’re a means to an end as opposed to an ends to themselves,” Biden said.

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

“Go out. When’s the last time we went out and thanked the guy who kept the sewer from overflowing into your basement. What about the woman up on a bucket reconnecting a connection?

“Think about what we don’t do guys. It’s all been about dividing. There’s a real opportunity, incredible opportunity if we just treat each other with more decency.

“My dad had an expression. He said, ‘Joey, a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, it’s about your place in the community, it’s about your place in society and your self-worth. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say it’s going to be okay and mean it.’

“Think about how many people can’t do that today. This president has done nothing to help that group.”

BIDEN VOWS THAT ‘AMERICA IS COMING BACK,’ SPARKING ‘MAGA’ COMPARISONS

Biden’s appearance came after President Trump took a swipe at him in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

“I think we are calling him ‘Sleepy Joe’ ’cause I’ve known him for a while. Is he a pretty sleepy guy? He won’t be able to deal with [Chinese] President Xi, I will tell you. That’s a different level of energy and, frankly, intelligence. So I sort refer to him as ‘Sleepy Joe.’ A lot of people wanted me to change the word ‘sleepy’ to something else that rhymes with it,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “I thought it was too nasty.

“He’s not going to be able to do the job.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Biden officially announced his candidacy in a video Thursday morning, going directly after Trump.

“If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen,” Biden said in the video.

Source: Fox News Politics

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A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

April 26, 2019

By Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s board has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to hunt for a new chief executive, ideally a woman who can tackle its regulatory and public perception issues, two people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo’s ambition to become the only major U.S. bank with a female CEO underscores the need to restore its image with a wide range of constituents, including customers, shareholders, regulators and politicians, after it became mired in a scandal in 2016 for opening potentially millions of unauthorized accounts.

Former CEO Tim Sloan left abruptly last month, becoming the second CEO to leave the bank in the scandal’s fallout.

The board plans to approach Citigroup Inc’s Latin America chief Jane Fraser, one of the sources said. During Fraser’s 15-year tenure at Citigroup, she has gained experience running consumer and commercial businesses as well as its private bank.

Fraser could not be immediately reached for comment.

The board also discussed approaching JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Marianne Lake, but after the bank named her to run JPMorgan’s consumer lending business last week, that option became less viable, the source added. The board wants someone who can convince regulators, employees, investors and customers that the bank has fixed problems underpinning the sales scandal, the sources said.

The bank’s board feels that choosing a woman might please lawmakers in Washington who have been critical not only of Wells Fargo’s misbehavior, but of the broader banking industry for a lack of diversity and gender equality, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It also believes that such a move could bolster Wells Fargo’s image with the households of customers where women play a leading role in managing finances, one of the sources added.

The new CEO will also have to resolve litigation and regulatory matters. There are 14 outstanding consent orders with government entities, as well as probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

To be sure, Spencer Stuart will approach and consider several male candidates for the CEO job as well, one of the sources said. The top priority is to find an external candidate who can navigate the bank’s regulatory issues, the source added.

Finding an outsider who meets all those qualifications and wants the job will be difficult, the sources said. There are few people with the necessary experience, even fewer of those who are women, and it is not clear if any of the obvious candidates would be open to taking the role.

The sources asked not to be identified because Wells Fargo’s board deliberations are confidential.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Spencer Stuart declined to comment.

Wells Fargo’s board has not made any public statements about its requirements for a new CEO, beyond Chair Betsy Duke saying the job should attract the “top talent in banking.”

The board wants to complete the search within the next three to six months, one of the sources said.

STALLED SHARES

After Sloan’s ouster, Wells Fargo’s board appointed Allen Parker, who had been general counsel, as interim CEO. The board has said it is looking for an external candidate as a permanent replacement. It is not clear whether Parker will stay at the bank.

Others whose names have been mentioned by analysts, recruiters and industry sources as perspective CEO candidates include Alphabet Inc finance chief Ruth Porat and Bank of America Corp’s chief technology officer Cathy Bessant.

Wells Fargo shares have stalled since Sloan’s departure on March 29th, while the KBW Bank index has rallied more than 7 percent.

Wells Fargo would be “the best stock on earth to buy” if it had the right CEO, said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Donaldson Capital Management in Indiana.

Donaldson held about 50,000 Wells Fargo shares, but sold the stake last year as problems mounted. The CEO change could convince him to re-invest, depending on who it is, he told Reuters.

“It would be very smart for them to get a woman,” he said.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Greg Roumeliotis and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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