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Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen to testify before House oversight panel next week

Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, arrives for sentencing at the United States Courthouse in New York
FILE PHOTO: Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, arrives with his daughter Samantha for sentencing at the United States Courthouse in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., December 12, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

February 21, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen will testify in a public hearing before a U.S. congressional committee on Feb. 27 and the panel’s chairman said Trump’s business practices would be a focus of the testimony.

Cohen had originally been scheduled to testify on Feb. 7 but his adviser Lanny Davis said he canceled because of threats against his family from Trump.

“I am pleased to announce that Michael Cohen’s public testimony before the Oversight Committee is back on, despite efforts by some to intimidate his family members and prevent him from appearing,” House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said in a statement.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations during Trump’s 2016 election campaign and has cooperated with investigators.

Trump called Cohen a “rat” in a tweet in December for cooperating with prosecutors. Cohen had been Trump’s self-described longtime “fixer” and once said he would take a bullet for the New York real estate developer.

The Oversight Committee said in a memo to its members that Cohen would be questioned about Trump’s “debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election,” Trump’s compliance with tax and campaign finance laws, and Trump’s business practices, among other topics.

Davis confirmed in a tweet that Cohen would appear before the Oversight Committee and said Cohen “will speak about his decade long experiences working for Mr. Trump.”

Cohen will report to federal prison on May 6 after a judge granted him a two-month delay to allow him to recover from a surgical procedure and to prepare for his congressional testimony, according to a court filing on Wednesday.

Cohen is also scheduled to testify at a closed hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 28.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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Israelis go to polls in referendum on Netanyahu’s record reign

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks next to Likud party candidate, Nir Barkat as they visit Mahane Yehuda Market a day ahead of Israeli national elections, in Jerusale
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks next to Likud party candidate, Nir Barkat as they visit Mahane Yehuda Market a day ahead of Israeli national elections, in Jerusalem April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

April 9, 2019

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israelis vote in an election on Tuesday that could hand conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a record fifth term or see him dethroned by an ex-general who has pledged clean government and social cohesion.

Dubbed “King Bibi” by both Time and Economist magazines, Netanyahu has rallied a rightist camp hardened against the Palestinians and played up Israeli foreign policy boons that are the fruit of his ties with the Trump administration.

But the 69-year-old Likud party leader’s hope of overtaking Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, as longest-serving premier in July has been dented by a looming graft indictment. He denies any wrongdoing.

Critics warn of “Bibi fatigue” and argue that the parliamentary election should bring fresh faces to high office.

Stalking Netanyahu in the opinion polls has been Benny Gantz, a former chief of the armed forces and centrist political novice. Buttressed by two other former generals at the top of his Blue and White party, Gantz, 59, has sought to push back against Netanyahu’s self-styled image as unrivalled in national security.

“This is a choice between a strong right-wing government under Netanyahu or a weak leftist government under Gantz,” Likud said in a statement.

Gantz told Reuters in response: “Netanyahu is not the messiah, nor an irreplaceable legend. The people of Israel long for something else.”

With little policy daylight separating the two candidates on Iran and the Palestinians, or on Israel’s humming economy, much of the voting will by guided by the question of their character.

In vitriolic campaigns waged largely over social media rather than in town squares or street corners, they have exchanged escalating allegations of corruption, of fostering bigotry and even of conspiring with Israel’s adversaries.

Netanyahu casts himself as the victim of media bias and judicial overreach. Gantz casts himself as a salve for Israel’s religiously and ethnically riven society and its relations with liberal Jews abroad.

“This election is about one thing – whether or not Netanyahu should remain in office. It’s the only thing that really defines 12 out of the 13 parties which will be in the next Knesset,” said Anshel Pfeffer, author of the biography “Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu”.

Which man wins is unlikely to be decided when the polling stations close at 10 p.m. (1900 GMT). No party has ever won an outright majority in the 120-seat parliament, meaning days or even weeks of coalition negotiations will lie ahead.

Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, will consult with the leaders of every party represented in the Knesset and choose whoever he believes has the best chance of forming a government.

Although both Netanyahu and Gantz have publicly ruled out a future alliance in a “national unity” coalition, some analysts predict a rethink – especially if the candidates agree to tackle together a widely expected U.S. plan for Middle East peace.

That plan’s sponsor, President Donald Trump, offered an unusually clement observation on the election, telling his Republican Jewish supporters on Saturday: “I think it’s going to be close … Two good people.”

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Alison Williams and Diane Craft)

Source: OANN

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Mick Mulvaney defends Trump after New Zealand massacre, says president 'not a white supremacist'

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that President Trump was not a white supremacist and it was unfair to characterize the New Zealand gunman who slaughtered 50 people in a terrorist attack at two mosques as a supporter of Trump.

Mulvaney comments came during a discussion on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace about the New Zealand rampage and the killer’s rambling 74-page manifesto in which he describes himself as a supporter of Trump “as a symbol of renewed identity and common purpose.”

“I'm a little disappointed, you didn't put up the next sentence because I looked at it last night, was what about his policies and he's a leader, and he said, ‘dear god no,’” Mulvaney said.

A TRUMP SPEECH CONDEMNING ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY WOULD BE 'WELCOME GESTURE': JOSH KRAUSHAAR

“I don't think it's fair to cast this person as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his -- sort of his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto that align him with (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi or Ms. (Alexandria) Ocasio-Cortez,” he added, referring to the New York congresswoman.

Mulvaney called the gunman responsible for Friday’s Christchurch mosque shootings as a “disturbed individual, an evil person.”

WORLD LEADERS INCLUDING TRUMP ANGERED BY NEW ZEALAND VIOLENCE

Mulvaney also was asked if Trump has considered delivering a speech condemning white supremacy and anti-Muslim bigotry given that they were issues in the U.S.

“You've seen the president stand up for religious liberty, individual liberty,” Mulvaney said. “The president is not a white supremacist. I'm not sure how many times we have to say that. And, to simply ask the question, every time something like this happens overseas, or even domestically, to say, oh, my goodness, it must somehow be the president's fault speaks to a politicization of everything that I think is undermining sort of the institutions that we have in the country today."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Mulvaney added, “Let's take what happened in New Zealand yesterday for what it is. A terrible evil, tragic act and figure out why those things are becoming more prevalent in the world. Is it Donald Trump? Absolutely not.”

After being pressed on the matter, Mulvaney replied: "You may say you want to give him a national speech to address the nation, that's fine. Maybe we do that, maybe we don't but I think you could jump to the basic issue, the president is doing everything that we can to prevent this type of thing from happening here. The president is doing everything that we can to make it clear, look, this has to stop."

Fox News' Chris Wallace contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Sowing divisions, Franco exhumation plan looms over Spanish election

FILE PHOTO: General view of the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen), the mausoleum holding the remains of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, on the 43rd anniversary of his death in San Lorenzo de El Escorial
FILE PHOTO: General view of the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen), the mausoleum holding the remains of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, on the 43rd anniversary of his death in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, outside Madrid, Spain, November 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo

April 10, 2019

By Axel Bugge and Catherine MacDonald

SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL, Spain (Reuters) – The Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid seems peaceful enough on a sunny spring day but, with national elections just around the corner, its distinction as the burial place of Francisco Franco has turned it into a political battleground.

The outgoing Socialist government passed legislation to exhume Spain’s former dictator and turn the site into a memorial to the victims of the brutal 1936-39 Civil War that marked the start of his fascist regime.

But newcomer Vox, which the April 28 ballot will usher in as the first far-right party to sit in parliament since the 1970s, has challenged that decision.

Forty-four years after his death, Franco’s legacy remains a source of deep divisions in Spanish society.

It has also become an element of Vox’s election campaign as the party seeks to grab votes from the traditional center-right PP, adding a further complication to what promises to be one of Spain’s most unpredictable and bitterly fought elections in decades.

“Well, I thought to myself, over my dead body,” said Pilar Gutierrez – whose father was a minister under Franco – in reference to the exhumation.

She heads a group campaigning to keep his body where it is and she has no doubt who she’ll be voting for.

“Vox is the only party that can stop it (the exhumation),” she said, speaking next to the mausoleum, hewn into the rock of the pine-forested valley and dominated by a 152-metre (500-foot) cross.

“They have principles. Conventional parties don’t have principles.”

Franco’s regime killed or imprisoned tens of thousands to stamp out dissent, and up to 500,000 combatants and civilians died in the war between his forces and leftist Republicans.

On the other side of the political divide sits Francisco Mendieta, who exhumed his grandfather Timoteo from a mass Franco-era grave in 2017 to give him a proper burial.

“He (Franco) is a man who has no reason to be there (in the Valley of the Fallen),” Mendieta said. “(He) was a dictator who signed off on death sentences. In a democracy I see it as an aberration,”

Franco never showed any mercy, so if his exhumation upsets anybody “then they deserve it,” he added.

While mostly focusing on specific Spanish issues Vox has, like similar parties in neighboring countries, also benefited from a public reaction against immigration that has seeped into European politics.

In a major poll published on Tuesday, it was seen winning up to 37 seats on April 28.

The same poll also showed that the Socialists and their far-left allies Podemos could win a majority. But that was a best-case scenario and several other coalitions, either left- or right-led, are also possible.

APPEALING TO THE LEFT

The Socialists have also leveraged Franco to appeal to their voter base.

They set the date for his exhumation last month after the election was announced, with Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo saying that “only the mortal remains of people who died as a result of the Spanish Civil War” would lie in the Valley of the Fallen.

Franco’s descendents have also challenged the exhumation, approved by parliament in September, but the government has said his remains will be dug up on June 10 unless the Supreme Court blocks it.

Both the PP and the centrist Ciudadanos abstained from the parliamentary vote, arguing the exhumation was not an urgent issue.

In public at least, Vox leader Santiago Abascal is still confident it will not take place. “I am taking it for granted that it won’t happen, it is just government propaganda,” he has said.

Vox says it does not endorse Franco politically, though its election candidates include four former generals, two of whom signed a pro-Franco petition last year.

Antonio Barroso, managing director of political consultancy Teneo, said that, while Vox’s position on Spanish “cultural” issues like Franco and separatism – which it opposes – was clear, little was known about its stance on broader policy matters.

“It is impossible to know,” how much support Vox will get in the election, said Barroso. “One thing we do know is that right-wing voters are more undecided. And they (Vox) are a new disruptive element.”

(Writing by Axel Bugge; Additional reporting by Belen Carreno; Editing by Ingrid Melander and John Stonestreet)

Source: OANN

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Ubben’s socially conscious ValueAct Spring Fund bets on workplace wonk

Jeffrey Ubben, Founder & CEO at ValueAct Capital, poses for a portrait before speaking on the Reuters Newsmaker event'
Jeffrey Ubben, Founder & CEO at ValueAct Capital, poses for a portrait before speaking on the Reuters Newsmaker event' "The Future of Shareholder Activism" panel in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 22, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

February 27, 2019

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Spring Fund, which invests in companies aiming to address environmental and social problems, is making a bet on an academic-turned-hedge-fund-manager who picks stocks based on how effective companies are as employers.

The Spring Fund is buying a stake in Irrational Capital, a hedge fund launched three years ago by Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his business partner David van Adelsberg. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

It is an unusual move for a hedge fund to back a smaller rival. But ValueAct, the $15 billion fund that last year launched the $350 million Spring Fund, is familiar with such an arrangement. It sold a stake in itself to Affiliated Managers Group more than a decade ago.

So far Spring Fund has mainly bought stakes in publicly listed companies, including power utility Hawaii Electric Industries Inc and gene-editing company Horizon Discovery Group Plc.

“Dan (Ariely’s) work makes the case for connecting positive workforce culture to performance,” Ubben said in an interview. He met the economist seven years ago through a connection at Duke University, where Ubben earned his undergraduate degree.

Ariely and Van Adelsberg have come up with a system to measure employee engagement, pride in their work and sense of purpose across the corporate world. Their data is funneled into a computer that churns out rankings of companies that Irrational Capital then invests in.

Irrational Capital has so far gathered information on over 1,000 companies through “any type of data we can get our hands on,” Ariely said, adding this includes 350 companies with market capitalizations of more then $1 billion. Ariely declined to name the companies, and Ubben said he doesn’t need to know Ariely’s picks.

“We don’t intervene in what the data show by saying something like this company scores highly but we don’t like the CEO. We are true to the data,” Ariely said in an interview.

Ariely, a 51-year old professor, researcher and author, views himself as an expert in understanding human behavior. He spent time in the hospital as a teenager recovering from burns received when a flare exploded during a celebration and said the opportunity to observe nurses at work built his skill.

Meanwhile, Ubben, 57, is fast becoming one of Wall Street’s biggest critics of corporate America’s short-termism. He is now trying to convince investors that positive workplace culture can drive above-average returns.

OPERATIONAL CHANGES

For nearly two decades, Ubben has staked a claim to bringing a long-term approach to activist investing. His playbook does not usually call for a fast return of capital to shareholders or a quick flip of a company to a seller.

Instead, ValueAct prefers to push for operational changes at companies such as Microsoft Corp and Citigroup Inc from behind the scenes. Two years ago, Ubben handed the chief investment officer role at ValueAct to Mason Morfit, but he remains the firm’s CEO and runs the Spring Fund.

Over ValueAct’s lifetime, the main fund has returned an average of nearly 15 percent a year, an investor said. Ubben declined to say how the new fund has done, citing regulations.

Pushing back against corporate greed has galvanized public opinion and politicians alike, and Ubben wants to convince mainstream investors that committing resources to employees’ well-being will not short-change shareholders.

“These hedge fund managers write letters and dictate what should be done by management and then they get their buddies to buy the stock and help hijack the company,” Ubben said of some of his competitors, declining to name them.

Ubben said he was particularly irked when Aramark Inc, the food services and facilities company he recently invested in, was punished by analysts for doing good. Management returned the roughly $100 million windfall the company received through the tax system overhaul to employees in the form of higher wages and by boosting the match to their retirement savings, Ubben said. But Goldman Sachs Group Inc downgraded its rating to neutral from buy, citing growing labor pressures in the sector.

Aramark did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Data from Gallup Inc, known for its public opinion polls, also showed that organizations that are best in engaging their employees deliver earnings per share growth that is more than four times that of their competitors.

“This is the last mile and this is the hardest thing,” Ubben said of Irrational Capital. “We want to spread the word and introduce the concept and grow it so that a lot of people will invest in it.”

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: OANN

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Government seeks life term for Canadian in US airport attack

U.S. prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for a Canadian man who was convicted of terrorism for nearly killing a Michigan airport police officer.

Amor Ftouhi (ah-MOOR' fuh-TOO'-ee) is returning to federal court on Thursday. He drove 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from Montreal in 2017 and arrived at the airport in Flint, Michigan, where he yelled "God is great" in Arabic and repeatedly stabbed Lt. Jeff Neville.

Federal investigators say Ftouhi wanted to get Neville's gun and shoot people at the airport. But his lawyer says he wasn't attempting to create mass casualties. Joan Morgan says Ftouhi wanted to be killed so his family could collect life insurance and he could become a martyr.

Ftouhi is a native of Tunisia who moved to Canada in 2007.

Source: Fox News National

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Tennessee’s Williams testing NBA draft process

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-South Regional-Purdue vs Tennessee
FILE PHOTO: Mar 28, 2019; Louisville, KY, United States; Tennessee Volunteers forward Grant Williams (2) dunks as Purdue Boilermakers center Matt Haarms (32) and forward Grady Eifert (24) defend during the second half in the semifinals of the south regional of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at KFC Yum Center. Mandatory Credit: Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports

April 9, 2019

Two-time SEC Player of the Year Grant Williams announced Tuesday that he is entering the NBA draft but will remain open to returning to school for his senior season.

The 6-foot-7 Williams said he will go through the process and make a decision at a later date about whether to stay in the draft. He has until May 29 to make up his mind.

“My whole thing is I want to go into the process with an open mind and understand what I need to improve on and what I need to get better at, while also understanding I have to make the most informed decision possible,” Williams said during a press conference. “If it is the right time, then it is the right time. It is just a matter of going into it with the mindset that I’m going into it to improve myself.”

Williams averaged 18.8 points and 7.5 rebounds this season while earning first-team All-American honors.

The Volunteers (31-6) matched the school record for victories and reached the Sweet 16 before losing to Purdue. Williams allows that there is unfinished business.

“No doubt. There’s always that (thought) process of there’s more that we can do, more that we can accomplish,” Williams said. “That’s something that is always going to be in your mind throughout the process no matter what is going on. You have to understand that it’s a win-win.

“If you come back, there’s a lot more you can do as a team and individually in the future it can be a win in that aspect as well.”

Williams’ decision to test the NBA waters comes one day after coach Rick Barnes decided to turn down overtures from UCLA to remain at Tennessee.

“I talked to him three or four times,” Williams said of Barnes. “I reached out to him and he reached out to me. I let him know I trusted him because he is a guy who had never been about himself, it has never been about money. It has never been about anything of that sort. It has been about how he can impact people’s lives.

“I know that Coach Barnes, his goal is he wants a championship. In order to make that happen, he knows he can do it here. He knew he could do it wherever he went. I think being here at the University of Tennessee is something that helps him be comfortable.”

Tennessee point guard Jordan Bone also recently entered the draft. He also is open to returning to the Volunteers.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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