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Univision team deported from Venezuela after Maduro interview

Jorge Ramos, anchor of Spanish-language U.S. television network Univision, talks to the media, after he and his team were released, in Caracas
Jorge Ramos, anchor of Spanish-language U.S. television network Univision, shows a video of young Venezuelans eating from a garbage truck, while talking to the media, in Caracas, Venezuela February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

February 26, 2019

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela on Tuesday deported a team from U.S. television network Univision after anchor Jorge Ramos said authorities detained them at the presidential palace because President Nicolas Maduro was upset by their interview questions.

The six-person team was held for more than two hours and had their equipment confiscated, Ramos told reporters on Monday evening after arriving back at his Caracas hotel which was surrounded by intelligence agents.

Ramos left the hotel on Tuesday morning guarded by personnel from the U.S. and Mexican embassies while intelligence agents escorted them to Caracas’ Maiquetia airport. They left on a midday flight to Miami, according to Reuters witnesses.

“They didn’t give us a reason” for the deportation, Ramos told reporters as he arrived at the terminal. “They just said to us last night that we had been expelled from the country.”

Ramos, a veteran anchor born in Mexico, told Mexican broadcaster Televisa that Maduro became annoyed when they showed him a video of young Venezuelans eating from a garbage truck, a sign of widespread food shortages across the country.

Maduro faces his biggest political challenge since he replaced Hugo Chavez six years ago, with dozens of countries recognizing his rival Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate leader. At least seven foreign journalists who flew in to cover the turmoil were briefly detained in January.

Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday that the government had previously welcomed hundreds of journalists to the presidential palace, but it did not support “cheap shows” put on with the help of the U.S. Department of State.

(Reporting by Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Carlos Carrillo; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Source: OANN

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Source: InfoWars

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Gatherings against Anti-Semitism to take place in France

Marches and gatherings against anti-Semitism are taking place across France following a series of shocking anti-Semitic acts.

Answering a call from political parties, thousands of protesters and several government members are expected to take to the streets Tuesday.

The upsurge in anti-Semitism in France reached a climax last weekend with a torrent of hate speech directed at prominent philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during a march of yellow vest protesters.

The assault came days after the government reported a huge rise in incidents of anti-Semitism last year. In other incidents this month, swastika graffiti was found on street portraits of Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, the word "Juden" was painted on a bagel restaurant and trees planted at a memorial honoring a young Jewish man tortured to death in 2006 were vandalized.

Source: Fox News World

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Florida man in Easter bunny costume caught in viral brawl reveals who he is, why he hopped into action

A costumed stranger fighting for justice removed his mask Monday -- but it wasn't Bruce Wayne revealing he's Batman or Peter Parker confessing he's Spider-Man.

It turns out the person seen in an Easter bunny outfit brawling with two others this weekend in a viral video has a familiar identity: Florida man.

Antoine McDonald, still dressed in the holiday getup he purchased at Walmart, admitted to being the man behind the whiskers and wiggling nose during an interview Monday with FOX35 Orlando.

McDonald said he was out Easter Sunday with his cousin and friend heading to a club in downtown Orlando -- and dressed from floppy ear to thumper in the rabbit attire -- when the group saw a man spit on a woman, who then retaliated by punching the expectorator.

“I see this lady and this guy going back and forth, and I’m just looking at it and walking," McDonald told FOX35 Orlando. "Then I see him spit on her, and she starts hitting him, so I walk over there, I try to help."

FLORIDA PERSON IN EASTER BUNNY COSTUME CAPTURED BRAWLING ON VIDEO

At that point, the man and woman started tussling.

"I try to break up the fight at first," McDonald said. "I felt I had to do something to help get him off of her to make sure she got away from the fight safely and unharmed.”

Video taken by a club promoter, who goes by "workfth" on Instagram, showed a person in an Easter bunny costume appearing to try to pull two people apart before eventually throwing several punches himself.

Antoine McDonald identified himself as the person underneath the Easter bunny suit.

Antoine McDonald identified himself as the person underneath the Easter bunny suit. (FOX35/Instagram)

The fight continued for several seconds, with the costumed Easter bunny delivering vicious body blows (instead of the usual chocolate-filled baskets). Bystanders watched and shouted as the surreal scene before a police officer finally jumped in and broke up the bunny beatdown.

“Only in Florida. only in Orlando you see a bunny fighting. You’ve got to pull your phone out,” the promoter told FOX35.

11-FOOT ALLIGATOR CAPTURED IN FLORIDA AFTER RESCUE CREW MISTAKES IT FOR UNCONSCIOUS PERSON

The video was posted on Instagram on Sunday night and, quick as a rabbit, garnered more than 1 million views in a day.

No arrests were made Sunday night and McDonald said he and his friends departed the scene and continued with their festivities. He said he didn’t expect to receive so much attention from the bizarre incident.

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“I’m walking down the street going about my day in my bunny suit," McDonald said, "and people are like, 'Oh, did you just get in a fight? Was that you?' I’m like, 'Excuse me?'”

Source: Fox News National

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Popularity of Bolsonaro government plummets in Brazil: Ibope poll

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro takes part in wreath laying at the Tomb of Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro arrives during ceremonies to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery during his visit to Washington in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

March 20, 2019

BRASILIA (Reuters) – The government of Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has seen its popularity plummet since he took office in January, with just a third of those asked approving of its performance, according to a poll published on Wednesday.

Despite easily winning October’s election, Bolsonaro’s government has the worst approval rating of any administration at this early stage since Brazil returned to democracy three decades ago.

Pollster Ibope said 34 percent of those surveyed found the Bolsonaro government doing a “great/good” job, compared to 49 percent in mid-January. The government’s “bad/terrible” rating rose 13 percentage points to 24 percent, Ibope said.

Bolsonaro spent the week cosying up to U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, without receiving much in return, sparking frustration among trade officials.

Back home, criticism of Bolsonaro is growing just as he has put before Congress his fiscally crucial but highly unpopular plan to reform the pension system. Most economists agree the system must be overhauled to shore up public finances and foster growth.

Brazil’s Congress is typically not particularly responsive to public opinion, but if the pension reforms were to spark street protests, the pressure on lawmakers to balk at the bill could have an impact.

Those surveyed who said they trusted Bolsonaro in the role dropped 13 percentage points from January to 49 percent. Those who say they have no trust in him jumped 13 points to 44 percent.

Bolsonaro’s strongest approval ratings are among higher income Brazilians, while the lowest ratings were registered in large cities, and in the poorer Northeast region, Ibope said.

Evangelical Christians were the social group that most trust in Bolsonaro, the poll showed.

Ibope surveyed 2,002 people between March 16-19 across Brazil. The poll’s margin of error is 2 percentage points.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; editing by Brad Brooks and Rosalba O’Brien)

Source: OANN

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Turkey seeks life terms for 16 activists over 2013 protests

Turkey's state-run news agency says prosecutors have charged a prominent philanthropist businessman and 15 other people with seeking to overthrow the government by allegedly supporting anti-government protests in 2013.

Anadolu Agency reported Wednesday that the prosecutors are seeking life prison terms for the all of those indicted. They include businessman Osman Kavala, exiled journalist Can Dundar and actor Mehmet Ali Alabora, who took part in the demonstrations.

The Turkish government has accused Kavala of financing and organizing the protests. He has been in pre-trial detention for more than a year.

The protests started with an environmental cause, protecting Gezi Part in central Istanbul. They quickly broadened into opposing the government.

A court in Istanbul must accept the prosecutors' indictment against the suspects before a trial can begin.

Source: Fox News World

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Possible intel failures to be examined in Sri Lanka blasts

Police in Sri Lanka said Monday the investigation into the Easter Sunday bombings will examine reports that the intelligence community failed to detect or warn of possible suicide attacks before the violence.

The nine bombings of churches, luxury hotels and other sites was Sri Lanka's deadliest violence since a devastating civil war in the South Asian island nation ended a decade ago. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said Monday the death toll, which was 207 late Sunday, had risen overnight but the figure wasn't immediately released.

Two government ministers have alluded to intelligence failures. Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando tweeted, "Some intelligence officers were aware of this incidence. Therefore there was a delay in action. Serious action needs to be taken as to why this warning was ignored." He said his father had heard of the possibility of an attack as well and had warned him not to enter popular churches.

And Mano Ganeshan, the minister for national integration, said the security officers within his ministry had been warned by their division about the possibility two suicide bombers would target politicians.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said the Criminal Investigation Department investigating the blasts will look into the reports.

Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardena previously described the blasts as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said 13 suspects were arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Wijewardena said most of the bombings were believed to have been suicide attacks.

The explosions — mostly in or around Colombo, the capital — collapsed ceilings and blew out windows, killing worshippers and hotel guests in one scene after another of smoke, soot, blood, broken glass, screams and wailing alarms. Victims were carried out of blood-spattered pews.

"People were being dragged out," said Bhanuka Harischandra, of Colombo, a 24-year-old founder of a tech marketing company who was going to the Shangri-La Hotel for a meeting when it was bombed. "People didn't know what was going on. It was panic mode."

He added: "There was blood everywhere."

Most of those killed were Sri Lankans. But the three bombed hotels and one of the churches, St. Anthony's Shrine, are frequented by foreign tourists, and Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said the bodies of at least 27 foreigners from a variety of countries were recovered.

The U.S. said "several" Americans were among the dead, while Britain, India, China, Japan and Portugal said they, too, lost citizens.

The Sri Lankan government lifted a curfew that had been imposed during the night. But most social media remained blocked Monday after officials said they needed to curtail the spread of false information and ease tension in the country of about 21 million people.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could trigger instability in Sri Lanka, and he vowed to "vest all necessary powers with the defense forces" to take action against those responsible.

The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, called on Sri Lanka's government to "mercilessly" punish those responsible "because only animals can behave like that."

The scale of the bloodshed recalled the worst days of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, in which the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group from the ethnic Tamil minority, sought independence from the Buddhist-majority country. The Tamils are Hindu, Muslim and Christian.

Sri Lanka, off the southern tip of India, is about 70 percent Buddhist. Scattered incidents of anti-Christian harassment have occurred in recent years, but nothing on the scale of what happened Sunday.

There is also no history of violent Muslim militants in Sri Lanka. However, tensions have been running high more recently between hard-line Buddhist monks and Muslims.

Two Muslim groups in Sri Lanka condemned the church attacks, as did countries around the world, and Pope Francis expressed condolences at the end of his traditional Easter Sunday blessing in Rome.

"I want to express my loving closeness to the Christian community, targeted while they were gathered in prayer, and all the victims of such cruel violence," Francis said.

Six nearly simultaneous blasts took place in the morning at the shrine and the Cinnamon Grand, Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels in Colombo, as well as at two churches outside Colombo, according to a Sri Lankan military spokesman, Brig. Sumith Atapattu.

A few hours later, two more blasts occurred just outside Colombo, one of them at a guesthouse, where two people were killed, the other near an overpass, Atapattu said.

Also, three police officers were killed during a search at a suspected safe house on the outskirts of Colombo when its occupants apparently detonated explosives to prevent arrest, authorities said.

The Shangri-La's second-floor restaurant was gutted, with the ceiling and windows blown out. Loose wires hung down and tables were overturned in the blackened space. From outside the police cordon, three bodies could be seen covered in white sheets.

Sri Lankan forces defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, ending a civil war that took over 100,000 lives, with both sides accused of grave human rights violations.

Harischandra, who witnessed the attack at the Shangri-La Hotel, said there was "a lot of tension" after the bombings, but added: "We've been through these kinds of situations before."

He said Sri Lankans are "an amazing bunch" and noted that his social media feed was flooded with photos of people standing in long lines to give blood.

___

Associated Press writers Sheila Norman-Culp and Gregory Katz in London; Sarah DiLorenzo in New York; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow; Nicole Winfield at the Vatican; Adam Schreck in Bangkok; and Emily Schmall in New Delhi 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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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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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

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

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

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

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