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UK parliament will have to look at other options if May pursues her Brexit deal: Labour

British PM May walks outside Downing Street in London
British Prime Minister Theresa May walks outside Downing Street, as she faces a vote on Brexit, in London, Britain March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

March 13, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – If Prime Minister Theresa May presses on with her Brexit deal after lawmakers vote to delay Britain’s exit, parliament will have to look at other options, the opposition Labour Party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said on Wednesday.

Lawmakers are expected to be given a vote on Thursday on whether they want to seek an extension to the Article 50 negotiation period. The EU have said any extension would need a purpose.

“She will have to make decision of whether that is the point at which she drops her red lines and her blinkers and opens up the debate to other options,” Starmer told parliament.

“If she presses on with her own deal I think we still have to go on and look at other options and get a common purpose.”

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Writing by Kylie MacLellan; editing by William James)

Source: OANN

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In Halting Calif. Rail Funds, Trump Sends Multiple Messages

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Fiscal conservatives and the fossil-fuel industry are cheering President Trump’s decision to publicly whack California and slash nearly $1 billion in federal funds from what opponents long ago sarcastically dubbed the Golden State’s “high-speed train to nowhere.”

Politically, Trump has hit a 2020 messaging trifecta with the move. First, he escalated his ongoing war of words with lefty California, which launched a 16-state lawsuit challenging the president’s national-emergency declaration for the border wall. Second, he used the state’s admitted failure on the $77 billion rail project against new Democratic governor – and harsh Trump critic -- Gavin Newsom. To round out his ticket, Trump has cast Green New Dealers as fringy socialist spendthrifts whose most vaunted pet projects are so unrealistic and costly they can never get off the ground.

So much for Trump’s State of the Union call to swear off political retribution. With Bernie Sanders’ return to the race for the White House, the 2020 campaign is already shaping up as a prize fight between socialism and nationalism – a contest Trump supporters believe he can win  and the sort of pugilistic fray his allies love.

“The [administration] is absolutely right in ending already scheduled cash flows and seeking taxpayer reimbursement for the funds squandered on the ill-conceived California high-speed rail projects,” said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government.

The American Energy Alliance, a free-market organization representing oil and gas industry interests, was downright gleeful.

“The Trump administration and [Department of Transportation] Secretary Elaine Chao are right to stop federal funding for the green boondoggle that was the California High Speed Rail project,” said Thomas Pyle, the group’s president. “Not one additional red cent of federal taxpayer money should go towards this liberal pipedream.”

“If the greens can’t get high-speed rail off the ground in liberal California, it is folly to think the Green New Dealers can make it work anywhere else,” Pyle added, referring to the mammoth undertaking as “green pork.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who, as the top California Republican, has lambasted the state’s “bullet-train boondoggle” for years, was equally ecstatic with the announcement, praising the “prudent decision protecting hardworking American taxpayers.”

“At every turn, the California High Speed Rail Authority has mismanaged and misled Californians on the viability of the project. Its budget has ballooned by the billions, projected ridership numbers have proved exaggerated, and the private investment that was promised never materialized,” McCarthy said in a statement. “And throughout it all, the authority has gone to great lengths to keep these facts from California and American taxpayers. … It is time to move on from the broken high-speed rail project and redirect our efforts to infrastructure projects that work for Californians.”

In one fell swoop, the Trump administration move rescinds nearly $929 million in federal grant funds, terminating a 2011 agreement signed by President Obama to provide the money for the system that state Democratic officials envisioned would connect San Diego to San Francisco.

Additionally, the Transportation Department announced that it is also actively exploring “every available legal option” to seek the return of $2.5 billion in funds the federal government previously granted to California for the project.

Particularly troubling for Newsom, who is believed to harbor future presidential ambitions, is Trump’s capitalizing on the newly minted governor’s admission that the eight-year-old train project, with its tens of billions of dollars in cost overruns and endless environmental lawsuits and red tape, had long ago gone off the rails.

The move comes in the wake of Newsom’s announcement in his Feb. 12 State of the State address that the initiative is abusing taxpayer dollars and will not be constructed as planned.

“But let’s be real,” Newsom said in his speech to the mostly Democratic-controlled legislature. “The current project, as planned, would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. There has been too little oversight and not enough transparency. … Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”

Instead of getting behind the full rail line, a pet project of his predecessor Jerry Brown, the governor decided to build only a single segment from Bakersfield to Merced in the Central Valley. In doing so, he transformed the plan into one the Trump administration could easily cast as a having a radically different purpose from the original, federally funded award. Moreover, it’s not exactly what liberals who supported the project had in mind. Bakersfield and Merced, noted the New York magazine puckishly, are “two small cities that, it’s fair to say, most coastal metropolitan Californians happily visit rarely or never.”

Rank-and-file Democrats in the state immediately decried Newsom’s high-profile admission, attacking it on Twitter as a disappointing politically expedient move. The Los Angeles Times editorialized that abandoning the project entirely would be a "tragic mistake."

Former Rep. Jeff Denham, a Central Valley California Republican who lost a hard-fought contest to Rep. Josh Harder in November, had chaired the House rail subcommittee that for years tried to find a way to quash the bullet-train project. He ultimately determined it couldn’t be done through an act of Congress.

But with just a few words from the governor, the Trump administration had its opening. The afternoon of Newsom’s remarks, Trump called on the state to return $3.5 billion in funds as the media fueled a narrative that Newsom was completely abandoning the project – a charge his team repeatedly tried to knock down.

Late Tuesday, Ronald Batory, the Trump-appointed chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, the agency that issued the grants in 2009 and 2010, announced that California is not meeting its requirements and deadlines for progress on the project and failed to take corrective actions after regulators raised concerns in 2017 and 2018.

In a letter to California High-Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Brian Kelly, Batory said the state “has materially failed to comply with the terms of the agreement and has failed to make reasonable progress on the project.”

Newsom vowed late Tuesday to go to federal court to try to halt the administration’s move, arguing that Trump was taking action as retribution for Monday’s announcement that California is leading a 16-state legal battle against the president’s national-emergency declaration to authorize funding of his border wall.

“It’s no coincidence that the administration’s threat comes 24 hours after California led 16 states in challenging the president’s farcical ‘national emergency,’” Newsom said in a written statement. “The president even tied the two issues together in a tweet this morning. This is political retribution by President Trump, and we won’t sit idly by. This is California’s money, and we are going to fight for it.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump made no bones about framing the debate as a failed green project vs. law-and-order-boosting border barrier. “The failed Fast Train project in California, where the costs overruns are become world record-setting, is hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!” he tweeted.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close friend of Donald Trump Jr., quickly applauded and distilled the multi-layered issued to an us-vs.-them clash over immigration — “them” being radical liberals in California:

“As long as California thinks they can continue to defy federal immigration law and harbor sanctuary cities we shouldn’t fund their stupid, wasteful and horrific high-speed rail project, which is billions over budget and way behind,” Kirk tweeted. “Cancel the funding, bravo @realDonaldTrump!”

Some 8,500 like-minded conservatives nodded in agreement, liking the tweet.

Susan Crabtree is a veteran Washington reporter who has spent two decades covering the White House and Congress.

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Child, 2 adults dead after Arkansas fire; homicide suspected

Arkansas authorities say the deaths of a child, the child's mother and a man found inside a burning home are being investigated as homicides.

Crittenden County Sheriff's Chief Todd Grooms said firefighters discovered the bodies shortly before 1 a.m. Monday in the home in Earle, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of Little Rock.

Grooms declined to say how they died or release their names and ages. He described the child as "young" and said the man and woman are not believed to be related. He didn't say whether a suspect is in custody.

Grooms said the bodies were sent to the state medical examiner's office to determine the causes of death. The state fire marshal's office will determine the cause of the fire.

Source: Fox News National

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Mueller Report Is Litmus Test for a Divided Society

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The conclusion of the Mueller investigation has created an interesting litmus test that reveals the underlying political biases of the American public.


As with a normal litmus test, let’s say the results will either turn red or blue, but in this case those colors do not signify acid or base, nor do they even signify Republican or Democrat as convention would have it, nor even truth and falsehood as distinguished by the color of the pills in "The Matrix."


What the litmus test of the Mueller report reveals is whether or not we as individuals, as political parties and as Americans have faith in our government.


According to a recent poll, 84 percent of Americans want the entire report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller released to the public. They aren't satisfied just knowing that the investigation into President Trump's alleged collusion with Russia is over after two years. They aren't satisfied with the attorney general, a distinguished public servant, explaining the results of the investigation as he is mandated to do by law. No, they want to see the report for themselves ... they want to go over it with the proverbial fine-tooth comb and hunt down every inconsistency, every missing comma, every hidden clue that what they already know to be true is indeed true — that they can't trust the government, that the wool is being pulled over our eyes, that the system serves some ulterior purpose and works on behalf of someone or some group that is not us.


That is a horrid condition for the body politic to find itself in. It suggests a complete lack of confidence in our leaders, in our institutions, even in our Constitution. But it is even worse news for the Democrats who are leading the charge to see the "full" report because for them it also reveals a deep underlying hypocrisy.
Democrats, after all, are the party of big government. The basis of their entire theory of human liberty and advancement is that we can count on the government for anything, that it is the answer to all our problems.


What the demand for transparency means at its core, however, is that we don't trust government. There are good reasons why that is true, starting with (for many of us) the JFK assassination, but in fact there is no such thing as 100 percent transparency. You cannot look into the soul of the attorney general or the president and certainly not the soul of the soulless bureaucracy that ultimately runs our government.


So when the Democratic leaders of Congress say they don’t trust Attorney General William Barr to tell the truth about a report that he is about to make public, they not only defy logic; they defy the very philosophy of the Democratic Party.

It makes sense for Republicans to distrust government. That distrust is in their DNA. Ronald Reagan famously quipped (long before he became president) that the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

But Democrats take the opposite tack. They believe as a matter of faith that we the people should put our entire faith in the government, and therefore the party’s full-court press against the Trump administration by definition undermines their own philosophy. They are in fact teaching people to distrust government even more than they already do.

Thus, when Nancy Pelosi said last week that she doesn’t trust the attorney general, she is ultimately weakening the Democratic case for turning health care, student loan debt, education or anything else over to the feds. If our chief law enforcement officer can’t be trusted, who can be?

Barr got Pelosi’s goat Wednesday morning when he testified before a Senate committee that he believes “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign in 2016 by elements of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. To those of us who fall on the red side of the Mueller litmus test, that is an obvious conclusion — as obvious as that it’s laurel, not yanny, in the famous internet audio clip. But to Pelosi, hearing Barr state plainly that he thinks Obama-era spooks were haunting the Trump campaign is automatically translated into the equivalent of “yanny” — namely, that Barr is either an agent of Russia or that he is obstructing justice on behalf of his puppet master Donald J. Trump.

If it weren’t so fascinating as a real-life experiment in human psychology, it would be laughable. Pelosi was seething as she spit out the following:

“I’m very concerned about the statements made by Attorney General Barr. I think that they undermine our Constitution. They undermine the role of the attorney general. He is not the attorney general of Donald Trump. He is the attorney general of the United States. I don’t trust Barr. I trust Mueller.”

No, what undermines our Constitution and our government is people like Nancy Pelosi questioning the motives and honor of good people who have chosen public service as a higher calling while at the same time she tirelessly defends James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper, who appear to have used their plenary powers to intervene in 2016 and either prevent or subvert the election of Donald Trump.

Barr has said he will get to the bottom of what happened — that he will launch an investigation into how the government decided to spy on Trump’s campaign. As Barr said, “spying on a political campaign is a big deal.” That should not be a partisan issue, but based on the liberal heads exploding Wednesday afternoon, it sadly is. You say yanny, but I say laurel. If it’s fair for Speaker Pelosi to question the motives of Attorney General Barr, then it’s certainly fair for me to question the motives of former FBI Director Comey and his cohorts at the bureau and in the Justice Department.

The only way we can make the litmus test for trust in government the same for all Americans is if we test that trust through fair investigation. Don’t just tell us that Mueller can be trusted, but Barr can’t. Subject both of them — and all of our public servants — to the same rigorous examination. Find out where the truth leads. We’ve had two years of investigation of President Trump based on salacious allegations funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now let’s apply the same level of scrutiny to the Democrats who have assured us without evidence for two years that the president colluded with Russia.

We already know we can’t trust our government, so let’s do the next best thing. Let’s find out who lied to us — when, why and about what. Nancy Pelosi should not be able to stop that. No one should.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book — “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” — is available at Amazon. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter @HeartlandDiary.

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TWITTER URGED TO SUSPEND DONALD TRUMP AFTER PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF ‘SHARING PROPAGANDA VIDEOS #MAGAFirstNews with @PeterBoykin

TWITTER URGED TO SUSPEND DONALD TRUMP AFTER PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF ‘SHARING PROPAGANDA VIDEOS TRAFFICKING IN HATE SPEECH’ OVER OMAR ATTACK #MAGAFirstNews with @PeterBoykin U.S. TWITTER URGED TO SUSPEND DONALD TRUMP AFTER PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF ‘SHARING PROPAGANDA VIDEOS TRAFFICKING IN HATE SPEECH’ OVER OMAR ATTACK By Christina Zhao On 4/14/19 at 6:05 PM EDT US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on 5G deployment in the United States on April 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. The Women's March ... See More launched a petition on Saturday to get Twitter to suspend President Donald Trump's account after the president posted a video attacking Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar.PHOTO: TOM BRENNER/GETTY IMAGES The Women’s March—a women-led rights advocacy group—urged Twitter to suspend President Donald Trump’s account for posting a video showing Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar intercut with footage of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump on Friday — and then again on Saturday — shared a clip of Omar speaking at a banquet in California hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) last month, with the caption “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” In the footage, Omar can be seen saying "CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something,” edited alongside footage of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Omar’s out-of-context words were taken from a speech where she said: "Far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen, and frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it…CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." CAIR was actually founded in 1994, but did grow significantly in prominence in the years after the 2001 attack. “@realDonaldTrump is sharing propaganda videos trafficking in hate speech and inciting real violence against @IlhanMN. We’re calling on @jack to suspend him from @Twitter. Seriously. Add your name here:” the Women’s March tweeted, alongside a link to a petition to “suspend Trump from Facebook and Twitter.” “Trump has launched a despicable and irresponsible attack on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, sharing a propaganda video questioning the Congresswoman's loyalty to the United States,” the petition’s description read. “This is as dangerous as it is unprecedented. Representative Omar is receiving countless death threats as the president of the United States is inciting violence against a Black Muslim sitting member of congress, putting her life at risk.” The petition, which urges Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to “take down Trump’s hateful video and permanently suspend his account,” has gathered over 9,000 signatures since it was launched on Saturday evening. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, were among several Democrats who have condemned the president’s controversial video. “Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today.@IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Saturday evening. “We must speak out. ‘First they came…’” Pelosi issued a statement on Sunday demanding Trump remove the “dangerous” post and announcing that she has taken measures to ensure Omar’s safety. “Following the President’s tweet, I spoke with the Sergeant-at-Arms to ensure that Capitol Police are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman Omar, her family and her staff. They will continue to monitor and address the threats she faces,” Pelosi said. “The President’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger. President Trump must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video," she added. Trump, who pinned the video to the top of his Twitter feed on Saturday, re-tweeted his post a day later but appears to have removed the pin by Sunday evening The original video remains on his Twitter feed as of Sunday afternoon. The White House did not immediately respond to Newsweek’s request for comment. Despite repeated calls and petitions accusing Trump of violating Twitter policies, the social media platform has resisted taking any action against his account. In a January 2018 blog post, the company explained — without naming Trump — why it does not hold world leaders to the same standards it holds private citizens. "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate," wrote the company. "It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions." In an August 2018 interview with Buzzfeed, Dorsey made basically this same argument, though he did seem to indicate that the president could cross a line of accceptability if he attacked a private citizen. "I do believe private citizens versus public figures deserve more of our protection, but it has to be done in the context of how we’re actually seeing our global leaders," said the CEO.  In that same interview, Twitter’s Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde was not as forgiving about things a world leader could say on Twitter.  RELATED STORIES Nancy Pelosi Orders More Omar Security Over Trump Tweet How Pete Buttigieg Plans to Reach Rural Voters Trump Congratulates Tiger Woods On Masters Win Rick Scott: Trump 'Sanctuary City' Threat is Trolling "I think that if you asked me very directly, like, 'is everything the president says, part of public interest?' I would say no, but if you asked me what’s not, I think that it’s going to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis using the criteria we set forth," Gadde clarified to Buzzfeed. "I agree that it is subjective and nuanced and I would like to build more framework around that so we have a more consistent way to enforce going forward."

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AOC to Bank Execs: Should More Have Gone to Jail for Financial Crisis?

Firebrand freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., grilled banking bigwigs Wednesday on whether more industry chieftains should have gone to jail for the 2007 financial crisis.

In a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Ocasio-Cortez expressed "concerns about how much things have really changed" since the recession, The Hill reported.

The progressive lawmaker pointed to fines and penalties like Bank of America's $16.5 billion settlement in 2014 over misconduct related to mortgage-backed securities, as well as a $20 million and another $720 million in consumer relief.

She questioned whether they were viewed merely as "the cost of doing business," The Hill reported.

"I represent kids that go to jail for jumping a turnstile because they can't afford a MetroCard," Ocasio-Cortez told Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. "Do you think that more folks should have gone to jail for their role in a financial crisis that led to 7.8 million foreclosures in the 10 years between 2007 and 2016?"

Dimon demurred, saying it was a question for "legal experts," while asserting no one should be imprisoned for jumping a turnstile, The Hill reported.

The committee summoned CEOs of the nation's largest banks as a group for the first time since 2009 for the hearing — all claiming their companies have become safer and more responsible since they were bailed out during the crisis, The Hill reported.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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California attorney allegedly uses shoe camera to look up girl’s dress at Apple store

A 66-year-old licensed Bay Area lawyer was arrested Sunday after he allegedly taped a camera to his shoe and then “moved his shoe so that the camera was under a female juvenile’s dress” at an Apple Store in Walnut Creek, Calif., police said.

WISCONSIN BROTHERS ACCUSED OF YEARS-LONG SEXUAL ABUSE OF SIBLINGS; FATHER BLAMED ‘RAGING HORMONES’

Jacques Bloxham, who is a personal injury attorney, was reportedly confronted by the girl’s father and fled the store. Officers said they found various cameras and recording devices in the suspect’s car in addition to the one attached to his shoe.

Bloxham was arrested around 3 p.m. and booked into Contra Costa County Jail on suspicion of using a camera to secretly record the undergarments of another person, along with annoying or molesting a child under 18, San Francisco Chronicle reported. He later posted bail.

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Police are investigating whether Bloxham recorded others and urge anyone with information to call the Walnut Creek Police Department.

Bloxham was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1986. He founded the Injury Law Center "in response to the public's need for a personal injury attorney with honesty, integrity and a new understanding of the needs of injured clients," according to his Yelp business profile.

Source: Fox News National

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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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.

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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