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Thai Election Commission says junta party won popular vote

Thailand's Election Commission says it has counted 100 percent of the votes from the recent general election and a party allied with the ruling junta has won the most votes, though the results are not yet official.

In a news conference Thursday, the commission did not say how many seats that would translate into. The commission said earlier that the main anti-junta party had won the most constituency seats in Sunday's vote, the first since a 2014 military coup.

Both parties say those results mean they have a mandate to form the next government.

The election was for 500 seats in the lower house. Of those 350 seats are determined by who won each constituency, while another 150 are divided between parties based on a proportion of the overall vote.

Source: Fox News World

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‘Two is enough,’ Egypt tells poor families as population booms

A doctor examines a pregnant woman at a hospital in the province of Fayoum
A doctor examines a pregnant woman at a hospital in the province of Fayoum, southwest of Cairo, Egypt February 19, 2019. Picture taken February 19, 2019. REUTERS/Hayam Adel

February 20, 2019

By Lena Masri

SOHAG, Egypt (Reuters) – Nesma Ghanem is hoping for a fourth child even though her doctor says her body can’t handle a pregnancy at the moment. She has three daughters and would like them to have a brother.

“In the future he could support his father and the girls,” said Ghanem, 27, who lives in a village in Sohag, an area with one of Egypt’s highest fertility rates.

The family depends on her husband’s income from a local cafe. “If I have a son people, here in the village can say that he will carry on his father’s name,” she said.

As Egypt’s population heads towards 100 million, the government is trying to change the minds of people like Ghanem. “Two Is Enough” is the government’s first family-planning campaign aiming to challenge traditions of large families in rural Egypt. But Ghanem’s wish to have a son shows how hard that could be.

“The main challenge is that we’re trying to change a way of thinking,” said Randa Fares, coordinator of the campaign at the Social Solidarity Ministry. “To change a way of thinking is difficult.”

Egypt’s population is growing by 2.6 million a year, a high rate for a country where water and jobs are scarce and schools and hospitals overcrowded. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says the two biggest threats to Egypt are terrorism and population growth.

“We are faced with scarcity in water resources … scarcity in jobs, job creation, and we need to really control this population growth so that people can feel the benefits of development,” Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali told Reuters.

Decades ago, Egypt had a family-planning program, supported by the United States. The fertility rate fell from 5.6 children per woman in 1976 to 3.0 in 2008 while the use of contraceptives went up from 18.8 percent to 60.3 percent. Large amounts of contraceptives were made available and advertisements increased demand for birth control.

Support for family planning from the Egyptian government and large sums from donors helped make the program successful, said Duff Gillespie, who directed USAID’s population office from 1986 to 1993.

But Egypt was relying on donor support and when that assistance went away, family planning was neglected. By 2014 the fertility rate had gone up to 3.5. The United States is supporting family planning in Egypt again, providing more than $19 million for a five-year project ending in 2022 and $4 million for a smaller private sector project ending in 2020.

Those amounts are significantly lower than the $371 million the United States spent on family planning in Egypt between 1976 and 2008.

“Two Is Enough” is mainly financed by Egyptian money, with the Social Solidarity Ministry spending 75 million Egyptian pounds ($4.27 million) and the U.N. providing 10 million pounds, according to the ministry.

The two-year campaign targets more than 1.1 million poor families with up to three children. The Social Solidarity Ministry, with local NGOs, has trained volunteers to make home visits and encourage people to have fewer children.

Mothers are invited to seminars with preachers who say that Islam allows family planning, and doctors who answer questions. Billboards and TV ads promote smaller families. The government aims to reduce the current fertility rate of 3.5 to 2.4 by 2030.

At a session teaching volunteers how to speak to mothers and fathers about family planning in a village in Giza, Asmaa Mohammad, a 25-year-old volunteer, told Reuters she would rather have three children than two.

“Since I was a child I knew I wanted three children,” said Mohammad who is unmarried and doesn’t have children yet.

Deeply rooted traditions and lack of education explain why many Egyptians have big families. Al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim authority, endorses family planning, but not all Egyptians agree.

Some view children as a future source of support. Others who only have girls keep having more until they get a boy who can carry on the family name.

During a visit from a campaign volunteer, Ghanem said her wish to have a boy was not the main reason she wasn’t using contraceptives. She stopped using an IUD after suffering from bleeding.

About one in three Egyptian women stop using contraceptives within a year, often due to misinformation about the side effects or lack of information about alternatives, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

Nearly 13 percent of married women of reproductive age in Egypt want to use contraceptives but are unable to, according to official data from 2014.

Now the government has renovated clinics, added staff and provided more free contraceptives. Under “Two is Enough” the goal is to have 70 new clinics up and running in March.

But when Reuters visited a clinic in Sohag last month, there were no contraceptives left. Nema Mahmoud, who had traveled from her village, was told to come back the next day.

Sohag, one of Egypt’s poorest governorates, also has one of the highest fertility rates at 4.3. The National Population Council said contraceptive use in Sohag is the lowest among six governorates surveyed.

For years Mahmoud, 33, didn’t use contraceptives consistently even though she wanted a small family. Her mother-in-law kept her from traveling to the city to get contraceptives when the local clinic was out, she said.

It was only after her mother-in-law died that she started using contraceptives properly. By then Mahmoud had three children and three miscarriages.

Since January, the government has limited cash assistance to poor families to two children instead of three in an attempt to push them to have fewer kids. Mahmoud will receive less cash every month. Her husband works only a few days a month, making 45 Egyptian pounds ($2.60) a day, she said.

Mahmoud and her neighbor Sanaa Mohammad, a 38-year-old mother of three, said the change should apply to new families, not women like them who already benefit from the program and have more than two children.

“It’s not fair to give someone something and then take it away,” said Mohammad.

The government sees the population boom as a threat to its economic reform plans. Every year, 800,000 young Egyptians enter the labor market, where unemployment is officially 10 percent.

In Egypt, population growth is around half the economic growth rate, but it should be no more than a third – otherwise it will be difficult to invest in social programs and improve living standards, said Magued Osman, chief executive of Baseera, the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research.

Analysts say Egypt should target people before they have children and sex education should be available in schools.

“Two Is Enough is good, but by itself it will not do the job,” said Abla Abdel Latif, executive director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies.

Wafaa Mohammad Amin, 36, a mother of four who works on “Two Is Enough”, got married at 17 and had her first child a year later. Two of her children were malnourished because she didn’t know how to breastfeed properly. She had to postpone her education and couldn’t work for years.

“There are many things I know now that I wish I had known back then,” she said. “I don’t want others to go through what I went through.”

(Reporting and writing by Lena Masri; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: OANN

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Instagram Suppresses Pro-Life Comic As Leftists Call To Censor Artist

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Second defendant sentenced in case that led to motorcycle cop's death

A Texas man was sentenced to 25 years in prison Friday for the death of a Houston-area motorcycle police officer who died while chasing shoplifting suspects in 2016, according to reports.

Dante Moore, 30, of Houston, had been convicted earlier of evading arrest on July 12, 2016, and causing the death of Bellaire police officer Marco Antonio Zarate.

“I have to be thankful for the jurors, that they found him guilty,” said Maria Cecilia Zarate, the officer’s widow. “But I am disappointed, extremely disappointed. One of the reasons is because of my girls … He can have the possibility of being free in a few years, and that’s not fair for them. That’s not fair for my family.”

PROSECUTORS TO SEEK DEATH PENALTY FOR ACCUSED COP KILLER IN OHIO

"He can have the possibility of being free in a few years. ... That’s not fair for my family."

— Maria Cecilia Zarate, widow of a police officer who was killed in a 2016 crash
Bellaire police Officer Anthony Marco Zarate

Bellaire police Officer Anthony Marco Zarate (Bellaire Police Department)

The chase began when Zarate, 52, heard there where shoplifters at a Target store and went after Moore, the Houston Chronicle reported. The officer crashed his motorcycle into a parked trailer and was taken to a hospital where he died.

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Moore's twin brother, Dominique Moore, is serving eight years for tampering with evidence in the case, FOX affiliate KRIV-TV reported.

Source: Fox News National

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South Korea’s burned out millennials chose YouTube over Samsung

Yoon Chang-hyun works on his Youtube clip in Seongnam
Yoon Chang-hyun works on his Youtube clip in Seongnam, South Korea, February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

March 31, 2019

By Cynthia Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – Yoon Chang-hyun’s parents told him to get his sanity checked when he quit his secure job as a researcher at Samsung Electronics Co in 2015 to start his own YouTube channel.

The 65 million won ($57,619) a year salary – triple South Korea’s average entry level wage – plus top-notch healthcare and other benefits offered by the world’s biggest smartphone and memory chip maker was the envy of many college graduates.

But burned out and disillusioned by repeated night shifts, narrowing opportunities for promotion and skyrocketing property prices that have pushed home ownership out of reach, the then 32-year old Yoon gave it all up in favor of an uncertain career as an internet content provider.

Yoon is among a growing wave of South Korean millennials ditching stable white collar jobs, even as unemployment spikes and millions of others still fight to get into the powerful, family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebol.

Some young Koreans are also moving out of city for farming or taking blue collar jobs abroad, shunning their society’s traditional measures of success – well-paid office work, raising a family and buying an apartment.

“I got asked a lot if I had gone crazy,” Yoon said. “But I’d quit again if I go back. My bosses didn’t look happy. They were overworked, lonely…”

Yoon now runs a YouTube channel about pursuing dream jobs and is supporting himself from his savings.

Samsung Electronics declined to comment for this article.

Chaebols such as Samsung and Hyundai powered South Korea’s dramatic rise from the ashes of the 1950-53 war into Asia’s fourth-largest economy in less than a generation. Well-paid, secure jobs provided a gateway to the middle-class for many baby boomers.

But with economic growth stagnating and competition from lower cost producers weighing on wages, even milliennials who graduated from top universities and secured chaebol jobs say they are less inclined to try to fulfill society’s expectations.

Similar issues among younger workers are being seen globally. However, South Korea’s strict hierarchical corporate culture and oversupply of college graduates with homogeneous skills make the problem worse, says Ban Ga-woon, a labor market researcher at state-run Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training.

South Koreans had the shortest job tenure among member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as of 2012, just 6.6 years compared to the average of 9.4 years and 11.5 years in neighboring Japan.

The same survey also showed barely 55 percent of South Koreans were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest rate in the OECD.

This January, ‘quitting jobs’ appeared on the nation’s top 10 new year resolution list on major social media sites.

‘DON’T TELL THE BOSS’

Some workers are even going back to school to learn how to do just that.

A small three-classroom campus in southern Seoul, named “School of Quitting Jobs”, has attracted over 7,000 attendees since opening in 2016, founder Jang Su-han told Reuters.

The 34-year-old Jang, who himself quit Samsung Electronics in 2015 to launch the school, said it now offers about 50 courses, including classes on how-to-YouTube, manage an identity crisis, and how to brainstorm a Plan B.

The school’s rules are displayed at its entrance: “Don’t tell your bosses, say nothing even if you run into a colleague, and never get caught until your graduation.”

“There is strong demand for identity-related courses, as so many of us were too busy with cram schools to seriously think about what we want to do when were teenagers,” he said.

To be sure, the lure of a prestigious chaebol job remains strong, especially with the country mired in its worst job slump since 2009 and youth joblessness near a record high.

Samsung Electronics is still the most desired workplace for graduates as of 2019, a survey of 1,040 job seekers by Saramin, a job portal, showed in February.

However, many entering the workforce are much less willing to accept the long hours or mandatory drinking sessions synonymous with the country’s hierarchical, cutthroat corporate life, says Duncan Harrison, country head of London-based recruitment agency Robert Walters Plc.

“The mindset of people entering the workforce is very different from past generations,” Harrison said.

YOUTUBER, SPORTS STAR, CLEANER

Among elementary school students, YouTube creator is now the fifth-ranked dream job, behind being a sports star, school teacher, doctor or a chef, a 2018 government poll showed.

Some are choosing a simpler life in the country.

Between 2013 and 2017, South Korea saw a 24 percent increase in the number of households who ditched city life for farming – more than 12,000 in total.

And in the face of dwindling opportunities at home, nearly 5,800 people also went abroad for jobs last year using government-subsidized programs, more than tripling from 2013, according to government data.

Others left without support or new jobs lined up.

Plant engineer Cho Seung-duk bought one-way tickets to Australia in December with his wife and two kids.

“I don’t think my son could get jobs like mine in South Korea,” said 37 year-old Cho, who moved from Hyundai Engineering & Construction to another top construction firm in 2015 before he emigrated.

“I will probably clean offices in Brisbane, but that’s ok.”

(Reporting by Cynthia Kim; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Lincoln Feast)

Source: OANN

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Battle for Hong Kong Airlines pulls complex HNA holdings into daylight

FILE PHOTO: A HNA Group logo is seen on the building of HNA Plaza in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: A HNA Group logo is seen on the building of HNA Plaza in Beijing, China February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 26, 2019

By Jennifer Hughes and Julie Zhu

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shareholders summoned by Hong Kong Airlines this month for a meeting were greeted with some shocking news: the airline needed at least HK$2 billion in fresh funds or it would lose its operating license.

The carrier had lost HK$3 billion ($382.54 million) in 2018, they were told, and an infusion was crucial, according to people present.

Dialed in, but silent for the hour-long meeting on April 1, were executives for Hainan-based HNA Group,, which holds 29 percent of the airline’s shares.

Investors were blunt about HNA’s role in the company’s troubles, according to people at the meeting – including accusations that it was siphoning off cash, which the conglomerate denies.

“There’s no point raising fresh capital if we cannot solve the problem of (a) major shareholder pumping out HKA’s assets,” said Zhong Guosong, who holds 27 percent of the shares and is vying for chairmanship of the company.

Another shareholder echoed his views: “This is Hong Kong, not Hainan.”

In the last week, drama from the call has spilled into the open as HNA and a rival group battled for control of Hong Kong Airlines’ chairmanship. The airline declined to comment on shareholders’ activities and said its operations “remain normal.”

The infighting illustrates the convoluted nature of HNA’s holdings around the world, which range from real estate to banks and are often divided among opaque, related entities.

On paper, HNA gave up control of Hong Kong Airlines two years ago just as it began selling off assets collected in a $50 billion worldwide acquisition spree.

But the carrier has close ties with several HNA affiliates.

“HNA’s shareholding structure and how they structure investments has always been very complicated, and the HKA case isn’t any different,” said David Yu, adjunct professor of finance at New York University, Shanghai. “The issue now is that there is some distress at the parent group, and this is obviously having implications on the underlying companies, including HKA.”

HNA TANGLE

Since Beijing in 2017 began cracking down on Chinese conglomerates’ rapid debt-fuelled global expansions, HNA has sold about $26 billion in assets, according to Dealogic data and Reuters calculations.

Disposals include control of the Radisson hotel group; a quarter stake in Hilton Hotels; prime property in New York, Sydney, Shanghai, San Francisco and Hong Kong; regional Chinese airlines; a stake in aircraft lessor Avolon; and half of its stake in Deutsche Bank.

But the prices HNA has sought and the complex structures, loans and other business links that bind its holdings have made unwinding its investments difficult.

HNA’s wider Hong Kong interests are a case in point. This week, HNA-controlled CWT International said lenders had seized assets, including U.S. property and its Singapore-based commodity trading and logistics unit, because it failed to repay a HK$1.4 billion ($178 million) loan.

HNA said that it was monitoring the situation, but that it was a matter for CWT and its creditors. Yet HNA units own 51 percent of CWT’s shares, and each of CWT’s executive directors has ties to other HNA businesses. CWT’s co-chairman, Mung Kin Keung, is a shareholder in Hong Kong Airlines.

HNA’s involvement with the airline is just as complicated. The conglomerate took control of CR Airways in 2006 and renamed it Hong Kong Airlines. In July 2017 it cut its stake, according to filings, by selling 34 percent to Chinese private equity group Frontier Investment Partners.

According to Hong Kong Airlines’ 2017 accounts, seen by Reuters, the airline held shares in four unlisted HNA affiliates, worth $367 million at the end of 2017, and had loaned $300 million to two other HNA firms.

That year, the airline’s trade receivables – money owed to it but not collected – jumped 50 percent even as revenue rose only 11 percent. Of those payments due, the amount HNA companies owed the airline more than doubled to HK$1.3 billion, or 73 percent of receivables.

Zhong is closely linked with HNA as well, having been a director of the airline for almost four years until August 2018. Since 2017, he has also been chairman of Hong Kong Express, Hong Kong Airlines’ low-cost sister, which HNA recently agreed to sell to Cathay Pacific for HK$4.93 billion.

Cathay’s announcement of the deal contained a warning that an HK Express shareholder planned to contest it. That shareholder is Zhong, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the issue. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In a further sign that the relationship between Zhong and HNA had soured, court papers show that HNA in December sued the company through which Zhong holds his 27 percent stake in the airline, seeking repayment of a HK$854 million debt from 2010.

A representative for Zhong did not provide comment.

CONTROL DISPUTES

Since the April 1 meeting, Frontier has aligned itself with Zhong, working to appoint him chairman of the airline as part of efforts to seize control and investigate its financial ties with HNA.

Late last week they won an injunction that blocked directors and executives from removing or destroying the airline’s documents.

That followed a week in which both Zhong and airline executive Hou Wei – still listed on its website as chairman – claimed control and fought over who had access to the company’s headquarters.

Adding to the confusion, a group called Grand City Investment Capital Limited this week said it owned the Frontier stake after a transfer dated April 11.

A spokesman for Grand City declined to discuss his company’s ownership. Frontier disputes Grand City’s claim to the stake.

Frontier and Zhong have also accused HNA of “embezzlement of HKA assets and serious financial misappropriation by HNA Group parties” – accusations that HNA has denied.

They and other shareholders are still demanding access to the airline’s 2018 accounts and details of how it lost so much money before they address its HK$2 billion capital shortfall.

Amid the court orders and competing statements uncertainty remains over who is in charge – although both sides have gone to lengths to ensure the airline keeps operating normally.

“There are so many moving parts that corporate control is under dispute because the changes are happening too rapidly for the company to organize coherently,” said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research, which focuses on China. He described HNA as “a poster child for overexpansion of China’s worst conglomerates.”

He added: “Because there is always a lack of transparency at HNA, this makes it twice as hard to figure out what the nature of the dispute is.”

(Reporting by Jennifer Hughes, Julie Zhu, Kane Wu and Alun John; Additional reporting by Shellin Li and Jamie Freed; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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Attorneys, judge to keep winnowing jury pool for cop trial

A judge and attorneys are set to continue winnowing the jury pool Thursday for the murder trial of a former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed woman who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home.

Another 10 prospective jurors were excused Wednesday for the trial of Mohamed Noor, bringing the total to 16 excused so far out of a pool of 75 potential jurors.

Noor is charged with murder and manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a 40-year-old dual Australian-U.S. citizen who had approached Noor's squad car after summoning police to the alley behind her home.

The 33-year-old Noor has declined to speak to investigators, but his attorneys plan to argue that he acted in self-defense.

Source: Fox News National

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FILE PHOTO: Naqvi Founder and Group Chief Executive of Abraaj Group attends the annual meeting of the WEF in Davos
FILE PHOTO: Arif Naqvi, Founder and Group Chief Executive of Abraaj Group attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Arnold

LONDON (Reuters) – A London court case to extradite Arif Naqvi, founder of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj Group, to the United States on fraud charges was adjourned until May 24, a court official said on Friday.

Naqvi was remanded in custody until that date, the official said. A former managing partner of Dubai-based Abraaj, Sev Vettivetpillai, was released on conditional bail to appear again at Westminster Magistrates Court on June 12, the official said.

Under the U.S. charges, both men are accused of defrauding U.S. investors by inflating positions held by Abraaj in order to attract greater funds from them, causing them financial loss, the official said.

Vettivetpillai could not be reached for a comment.

Naqvi, in a statement released through a PR firm, has pleaded innocent.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Naqvi and his firm raised money for the Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund, collecting more than $100 million over three years from U.S.-based charitable organizations and other U.S. investors.

Naqvi and Vettivetpillai were arrested in Britain earlier this month. Another executive, Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court on April 11.

Abdel-Wadood appeared at the Manhattan hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges.

(Editing by Jane Merriman)

Source: OANN

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Former Vice President Joe Biden announces his 2020 candidacy
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in this still image taken from a video released April 25, 2019. BIDEN CAMPAIGN HANDOUT via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

April 26, 2019

By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in his first interview as a Democratic presidential candidate, said on Friday that he does not believe he treated law professor Anita Hill badly during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Biden had joined the burgeoning 2020 Democratic field a day earlier.

Biden’s conduct during those hearings, when he was chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, became a renewed subject of controversy after the New York Times reported that Biden had called Hill earlier this month in the run-up to his presidential bid and that Hill was dissatisfied with Biden’s expression of regret.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” Biden largely defended his actions as a senator almost 30 years ago, saying he believed Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment levied at Thomas and tried to derail his confirmation.

Activists have long been unhappy that Hill was questioned in graphic detail by the all-white, all-male committee chaired by Biden.

“I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated,” Biden said, but later, he asserted, “I don’t think I treated her badly. … How do you stop people from asking inflammatory questions?”

“There were a lot of mistakes made across the board and for those I apologize,” he said.

Biden praised Hill as “remarkable” and said she is “one of the reasons we have the #MeToo movement.”

Asked why he had not reached out to Hill earlier, Biden said he had previously publicly stated he had regrets about her treatment and that he “didn’t want to quote invade her space.”

That seemed to be a reference to another controversy that looms over Biden’s presidential run: allegations by several women that he made them uncomfortable by touching them at political events.

Biden also addressed that criticism, saying he was now more “cognizant” about a woman’s “private space.” But he maintained that he had been “trying to bring solace.”

He suggested he was still trying to sort out the guidelines for his conduct going forward.

“I should be able to read better,” he said. “I have to be more careful.”

Pressed by the show’s panel for an apology to his accusers, Biden would not entirely capitulate.

“So, I invaded your space,” he replied. “I mean, I’m sorry this happened. But I’m not sorry in a sense that I think I did anything that was intentionally designed to do anything wrong or be inappropriate.”

Biden, 76, served as former President Barack Obama’s vice president for two terms. He is competing with 19 others for the Democratic presidential nomination and the chance to likely face President Donald Trump next year in the general election.

His first public event as a presidential candidate is scheduled for Monday in Pittsburgh.

(Reporting by James Oliphant; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Tesla Inc’s stock slumped over 4% on Friday to its lowest price in two years, rounding out a rough week that included worse-than-expected quarterly results and a pitch by Chief Executive Elon Musk on autonomous cars that failed to win over investors.

With investors betting Tesla will soon raise capital, the stock has fallen 13% for the week to its lowest level since January 2017, before the launch of the Model 3 sedan aimed at making the electric car maker profitable.

One positive development for Tesla: a U.S. District Court judge on Friday granted a request by Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission for a second extension to resolve a dispute over Musk’s use of Twitter.

On Wednesday, Tesla posted a worse-than-expected loss of $702 million for the March quarter. Musk said Tesla would return to profit in the third quarter and that there was “some merit” to raising capital.

Musk is still battling to convince investors that demand for the Model 3, the company’s first car aimed at the mass consumer market, is “insanely” high, and that it can be delivered efficiently to customers around the world.

Tesla ended its first quarter with $2.2 billion, down from $3.7 billion in the prior quarter, and the company is planning expansions including a Shanghai factory, an upcoming Model Y SUV, and other projects.

(GRAPHIC: Tesla’s cash – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DyJjX6)

On Monday, Musk hosted a self-driving event, where he predicted Tesla would have over a million autonomous vehicles by next year. Some analysts perceived the presentation as a way to deflect attention from questions about demand, margin pressure, increasing competition and even Musk’s ongoing battle with U.S. regulators.

Tesla’s stock has now fallen 29 percent in 2019 and the company’s market capitalization has declined to $41 billion from $63 billion in mid-December.

(GRAPHIC: Tesla’s declining market cap – https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dwd62r)

Analysts now expect Tesla’s revenue to expand 19% in 2019, compared with 83% growth in 2018 and 68% growth in 2017, according to Refinitiv.

Following Tesla’s quarterly report, 12 analysts recommend selling the stock, while 11 recommend buying and eight are neutral. The median analyst price target is $275, up 16% from the stock’s current price of $236. Berenberg analyst Alexander Haissl has the most optimistic price target, at $500, while Cowen and Company’s Jeffrey Osborne has the lowest, at $160, according to Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Friday that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s rare public criticism of the Obama administration was a “soft” way of accusing the previous administration of covering up Russia’s attempts at hacking the 2016 presidential election.

While speaking Thursday in New York at the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar Association, Rosenstein said that the Obama administration “chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls and how they relate to Russia’s broader strategy to undermine America.”

During an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” Friday morning, Huckabee called the comments an “unusually candid moment for Rosenstein.”

“I thought it was a soft way of him saying there was a cover-up,” Huckabee said. “They knew the Russians were attempting to influence the election and attempting to hack the election but they didn’t fully disclose that to the American people and certainly didn’t disclose it to the Trump campaign.

SWALWELL NOT CERTAIN TRUMP ISN’T A ‘RUSSIAN ASSET’

“Instead they tried to set a trap for them. It failed. The Trump team did not take the bait. And that’s the one conclusion that we can certainly come away with from the $35 million worth of investigation,” Huckabee continued.

Next week, Attorney General William Barr will testify before Congress and is expected to answer questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump, which found that there was not adequate evidence to conclude that President Trump and his administration colluded with Russia, though the president could not be exonerated in terms of the possibility that he obstructed justice.

Barr will testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next Wednesday and to the House Judiciary Committee the following day.

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

“It is going to be a theater, an absolute show,” Huckabee said of the hearings. “Just like the Kavanaugh hearings were and like everything else is in Congress. We ought to close the curtain on them and can’t come back until after the election. They aren’t doing their job anyway. We aren’t paying them because they’re doing a wonderful service to the country and spare us the hypocrisy of thinking they’re interested in getting to the bottom of the facts,” he continued.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Ultimately, Huckabee argued, if Americans “took their partisan hats off,” they would see that President Trump was exonerated by the investigation.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Sri Lanka's former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa greets his supporters after his return from the United States, in Katunayake
Sri Lanka’s former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa greets his supporters after his return from the United States, in Katunayake, Sri Lanka April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

April 26, 2019

By Sanjeev Miglani and Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens.

Gotabaya, as he is popularly known, is the younger brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the two led the country to a crushing defeat of separatist Tamil rebels a decade ago after a 26-year civil war.

More than 250 people were killed in bomb attacks on hotels and churches on Easter Sunday that the government has blamed on Islamist militants and that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for.

Gotabaya said the attacks could have been prevented if the island’s current government had not dismantled the intelligence network and extensive surveillance capabilities that he built up during the war and later on.

“Because the government was not prepared, that’s why you see a panic situation,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

Gotabaya said he would be a candidate “100 percent”, firming up months of speculation that he plans to run in the elections, which are due by December.

He was critical of the government’s response to the bombings. Since the attacks, the government has struggled to provide clear information about how they were staged, who was behind them and how serious the threat is from Islamic State to the country.

“Various people are blaming various people, not giving exactly the details as to what happened, even people expect the names, what organization did this, and how they came up to this level, that explanation was not given,” he said.

On Friday, President Maithripala Sirisena said the government led by premier Ranil Wickremesinghe should take responsibility for the attacks and that prior information warning of attacks was not shared with him.

Wickremesinghe said earlier he was not advised about warnings that came from India’s spy service either, presenting a picture of a government still in disarray since the two leaders fell out last October.

Gotabaya is facing lawsuits in the United States, where he is a dual citizen, over his role in the war and afterwards.

The South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, in partnership with U.S. law firm Hausfeld, filed a civil case in California this month against Gotabaya on behalf of a Tamil torture survivor.

In a separate case, Ahimsa Wickrematunga, the daughter of murdered investigative editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, filed a complaint for damages in the same U.S. District Court in California for allegedly instigating and authorizing the extrajudicial killing of her father.

Gotabaya said the cases were baseless and only a “little distraction” as he prepared for the election campaign. He said he had asked U.S. authorities to renounce his citizenship and that process was nearly done, clearing the way for his candidature.

‘DISMANTLE THE NETWORKS’

He said that if he won, his immediate focus would to be tackle the threat from radical Islam and to rebuild the security set-up.

“It’s a serious problem, you have to go deep into the groups, dismantle the networks,” he said, adding he would give the military a mandate to collect intelligence from the ground and to mount surveillance of groups turning to extremism.

Gotabaya said that a military intelligence cell he had set up in 2011 of 5,000 people, some of them with Arabic language skills and that was tracking the bent towards extremist ideology some of the Islamist groups were taking in eastern Sri Lanka was disbanded by the current government.

“They did not give priority to national security, there was a mix-up. They were talking about ethnic reconciliation, then they were talking about human rights issues, they were talking about individual freedoms,” he said.

President Sirisena’s government sought to forge reconciliation with minority Tamils and close the wounds of the war and launched investigations into allegations of rights abuse and torture against military officers.

Officials said many of these secret intelligence cells were disbanded because they faced allegations of abuse, including torture and extra judicial killings.

Muslims make up nearly 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million, which is predominantly Buddhist.

(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Source: OANN

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