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Pete Buttigieg defends his experience, says 2020 calls for candidate with 'completely different' background

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. who has dipped his toes into the 2020 presidential race, defended his record, expressed support for the Green New Deal and sought to differentiate himself from his rivals for the Democratic nomination by pointing out the unique nature of his biography.

During an exclusive interview with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," the 37-year-old Democrat who recently eclipsed the number of donors needed to appear onstage during the Democratic National Committee's first debates this summer, hinted that he's likely to officially launch a campaign to be the next president soon.

"I know I'm the young face in this conversation, but not only do I have more years of government experience under my belt than the president, but I've got more years of executive government experience under my belt than the vice president," Buttigieg, who was re-elected to a second term as mayor in 2015, told Wallace.

JEB BUSH: TRUMP NEEDS A PRIMARY CHALLENGER IN 2020

The millennial mayor, who served in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserves in 2014, explained his support for progressive ideas like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

"What the Green New Deal gets right, is it recognizes that there's also an economic opportunity. Retrofitting buildings means a huge amount of jobs for the building trades in this country," he said, adding that the timetable to act is being set by "reality and science," not Congress.

In terms of Medicare for All, Buttigieg carved out space for himself somewhat apart from at least one other candidate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, who has said there won't be a role for private insurers in the future. "I think there will be a role for the private sector, but a very different one than what we have in the corporate system today," he said, adding that even in the United Kingdom, which has nationalized health care, private insurers still play a role.

Buttigieg defended his record of fighting violent crime in South Bend, Ind., which has been challenging and has seen the city's homicide rate fluctuate during his time as mayor, and took a swipe at President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

32nd Mayor of South Bend, Indiana and 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (right) and husband Chasten Glezman are seen arriving at 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' at the Ed Sullivan Theater on February 14, 2019, in New York City. 

32nd Mayor of South Bend, Indiana and 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (right) and husband Chasten Glezman are seen arriving at 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' at the Ed Sullivan Theater on February 14, 2019, in New York City.  (Getty Images)

"The president's promise is to turn back the clock, that we can somehow just go back to the 1950s, and it's just not true," Buttigieg said.

However, he offered a different take on Democrats' ability to win back voters from the industrial Midwest who did not support Hillary Clinton in 2016.

"Some of them [Trump voters] voted to burn the house down because for years they saw that Democratic and Republican presidents produced economic and social policies that let them down," Buttigieg, whose last name is pronounced "Buddha-judge," said. "There are things that we can do to make sure that we succeed as these changes come especially in economically vulnerable communities like where I come from in the Midwest."

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG CALLS OUT BIG TECH'S 'MONOPOLY POWER' 

In a 2020 Democratic field that includes potentially history-making candidates such as Joaquin Castro, who would be the first Latino president, Sen. Harris, who would be the first black female president, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who would be the second black male president — not to mention Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren a handful of other female candidates — Buttigieg said that he's well-suited to address the urgent problems facing America now.

"There's something happening right now, that calls for something completely different than what we've been seeing. Generationally different, regionally different, somebody with a different life story and a different background," he told Fox News. "And to the surprise of many, including myself, this moment could be the only moment over the last 100 years or the next 100 years, when it's appropriate for someone like me to be in this conversation."

"More and more, people just want to know what your ideas are and whether they make any sense," he added.

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Source: Fox News Politics

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Pittsburgh City Council moves to restrict guns after attack

The Pittsburgh City Council gave initial approval Wednesday to gun-control legislation introduced in wake of the 2018 synagogue massacre, an effort certain to be challenged in court by Second Amendment advocates who point out that state law doesn't allow municipalities to regulate firearms.

The legislation would place restrictions on military-style assault weapons like the AR-15 rifle that authorities say was used in the Oct. 27 rampage at Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 and wounded seven. It would also ban most uses of armor-piercing ammunition and high-capacity magazines, and would allow the temporary seizure of guns from people who are determined to be a danger to themselves or others.

The council voted 6-3 to approve the bills, with a final vote scheduled for April 2.

"I have never understood why anyone needs an assault weapon unless they are on the field of war," gun-control supporter Tim Stevens, of the Black Political Empowerment Project and Greater Pittsburgh Coalition Against Violence, told council members ahead of the vote.

The three-bill package — proposed not long after the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history — was watered down last week in an effort to make it more likely to survive a court challenge.

State law has long prohibited municipalities from regulating the ownership or possession of guns or ammunition. While one of the Pittsburgh bills originally included an outright ban on assault weapons, the revised measure bars the "use" of assault weapons in public places. A full ban on possession would only take effect if state lawmakers or the state Supreme Court give municipalities the right to regulate guns — which even the bill's boosters say is an unlikely prospect in a largely rural state where legislative majorities have been fiercely protective of gun rights.

"It's an uphill battle, but we're trying to look at every angle to get a win," Democratic Councilman Corey O'Connor, a co-sponsor, said in an interview ahead of the vote. He added: "It's time to fight back against this senseless violence."

Pro-gun advocates cast the amended legislation as an attack on the right to bear arms and said they will immediately file suit if the City Council approves the bills.

"All of it's illegal. Pennsylvania preemption law says that no municipality, period, may in any manner regulate. And that's at the heart of what they're doing," said Kim Stolfer, president and co-founder of Firearms Owners Against Crime.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., a Democrat, told city council members in January that while he understood their desire to curtail gun violence, their proposed remedies were unconstitutional. A spokesman said Zappala had not seen the revised legislation, and declined comment on its merits.

Pittsburgh and its larger counterpart to the east, Philadelphia, have tried before to enact gun legislation, with mixed results.

Both cities passed assault-weapons bans in 1993. The state Legislature quickly took action to invalidate the measures, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that city officials had overstepped.

Philadelphia tried again in 2008, enacting limits on gun purchases and another ban on assault weapons. The state Supreme Court threw out both ordinances, but ruled the city could enforce three other measures: one that requires people to report lost or stolen firearms; another that empowers police to seize guns from people posing a risk to themselves or others; and a third that bans gun ownership for anyone subject to a protection-from-abuse order.

Pittsburgh has had its own lost-and-stolen law for more than a decade, but it's never been enforced. Tim McNulty, a spokesman for Democratic Mayor Bill Peduto, said the city is reconsidering that stance in the wake of the synagogue massacre and a recent announcement by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner that he intended to begin enforcing that city's lost-and-stolen ordinance.

Peduto, who has long advocated for stricter gun laws, has thrown his weight behind the new legislation.

"Pittsburgh owes it to those murdered at Tree of Life and countless others living in fear of gun violence every day in city neighborhoods to take this cause on," McNulty said.

Second Amendment attorney Joshua Prince, who represents Stolfer's pro-gun group and has won a string of victories against Pennsylvania municipalities that enacted gun measures, called the latest Pittsburgh effort to restrict firearms "political grandstanding" and predicted it will fail.

___

Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania.

Source: Fox News National

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China tech firms, seeking passion and energy, promote younger staff

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a poster showing the QR codes for job-seeking information during an internet expo at the fifth WIC in Wuzhen
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a poster showing the QR codes for job-seeking information during an internet expo at the fifth World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, November 7, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

March 25, 2019

By Sijia Jiang and Pei Li

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese tech giants are in the hunt for young, energetic staff to take the place, in some cases, of veteran managers.

The companies deny that the moves, which are worrying some older employees, reflect any discrimination based on age. Explicit age discrimination is illegal in many countries, though not in China.

Chinese tech companies are known to prefer young workers, in part because of demands such as the so-called “996” schedule that asks employees to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

On Thursday, Tencent Holdings confirmed plans to reshuffle 10 percent of its managers.

“Let some older members of management retire from their positions,” Tencent Holdings President Martin Lau said. “Their jobs will be taken up by younger people, new colleagues who may be more passionate.”

Asked to elaborate on the reshuffle, Tencent cited its annual report as stating its employment practice complies with laws and regulations and “does not discriminate on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, race, disability, age, religious belief, sexual orientation or family status”.

Analysts said the move to promote younger managers is driven in part by the rise of a new generation of Chinese internet companies such as Pinduoduo and Bytedance, which are mostly run by entrepreneurs and engineers born in the 1980s or 1990s.

“The environment and external pressures are pushing these companies to reform, if the leadership is too old, it’s easy for them to fall behind,” said Li Chengdong, a Beijing-based tech analyst who used to work at Tencent and e-commerce giant JD.com Inc.

“In the U.S. and Europe you rarely see companies going through structural reform every other year, but it’s quite common in China… core leadership can be replaced within a very short amount of time.”

RETIREMENT PLAN

At Baidu, CEO Robin Li said in an internal letter – which the company made public – that it plans to accelerate efforts to become more youthful this year by promoting more workers born after 1980, and also announced an executive retirement plan.

The first executive to leave under that plan is its president for new business, Zhang Yaqin, who will retire in October, Li said. Local media reported Zhang’s age as 53.  

“For senior managers which have worked hard for the company and accompanied its growth, if they want to choose a new life because of personal or family reasons, we will take care of them under the executive retirement plan,” Li wrote.

A Baidu spokesman said that age is not a factor in whether managers chose to retire or not and that it was up to them if they wanted to join the plan.

Lei Jun, chief of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, said at a news conference on March 20 that the company was appointing new, younger general department managers as part of an organisational restructuring.

A Xiaomi spokesman said the company was not cutting the senior management team but that it needed to promote “younger talents” to support its rapid expansion.

Chinese tech workers in their 30s and 40s told Reuters they had come to accept the industry’s preference for youth but worried that it was becoming more extreme, especially in up-and-coming fields such as artificial intelligence.

“I’m not worrying so much about losing my job, but certainly there is worry that I will not get promoted,” said a 38-year-old engineer at JD.com. Like other employees interviewed for this story, he declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

A JD.com spokeswoman said it did not discriminate and that any high-performing employee is eligible for promotion.

LONGER TIME TO PROGRESS

A 29-year-old female programmer for one of China’s top short video platforms said ageism was of greater concern to women.

“It can take a longer time for women to progress to the better jobs, so the age restriction more heavily affects women,” she said. “There is definitely the feeling that if you are older, you won’t understand the product.”

Older workers have few legal options.

“The only recourse Chinese workers have is if they’re not properly compensated once they’re laid off,” said Geoffrey Crothall of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labour rights group.

While age discrimination is illegal in the United States, it is often hard to prove. Bias in favour of younger workers often shows itself openly in the Silicon Valley start-up scene, where investors often prefer to back entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s.

In China, some in the tech industry said older employees could still get ahead if they were top performers. At telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, known for an aggressive internal culture where everyone’s contract is up for renewal every few years, one employee defended the approach as common in the industry. Huawei declined to comment.

“Companies are moving away from the traditional iron rice bowl type of mentality,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing and Josh Horwitz in SHANGHAI; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Richard Borsuk)

Source: OANN

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Turkish soldier killed in attack in northwest Syria

The Turkish military says one of its soldiers has been killed in northern Syria, blaming "terrorists" for the attack and responded with a barrage of shelling.

Turkey's ministry of defense said a mortar attack on Sunday near the town of Afrin killed one soldier and wounded another. It said Turkey responded by shelling "terrorist targets."

Turkey and allied Syrian fighters took control of Afrin last year, expelling local Kurdish fighters that Ankara considers terrorists and setting off attacks against Turkey's presence there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkey responded to the attack on its forces with a barrage of shells against several villages to the north of Afrin, mainly causing material damage. The Kurdish-run Hawar news agency reported the shelling but gave no details on casualties.

Source: Fox News World

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Strzok-Page texts suggested using post-election briefing to gather information on Trump team

Text messages between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page indicate they discussed using briefings to the Trump team after the 2016 election to identify people they could "develop for potential relationships," track lines of questioning and "assess" changes in "demeanor" – language one GOP lawmaker called “more evidence” of irregular conduct in the original Russia probe.

Fox News has learned the texts, initially released in 2018 by a Senate committee, are under renewed scrutiny by congressional investigators reviewing the genesis of the FBI's counter-intelligence probe that was opened in late July 2016 by then-agent Strzok.

It was not clear from the messages whether Strzok and Page merely sought to build bridges with the incoming administration, or wanted to engineer the briefings to investigate Trump and his associates.

“This is yet more evidence that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was filled with irregularities," Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said. "The more we discover about the true origins of the investigation, the more abnormal it appears in every conceivable way.”

Late Thursday, citing the same text messages and other incidents, GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security Committee chair Ron Johnson sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr inquiring about the DOJ's review of "FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign," and seeking more information on the transition counter-intelligence briefings as well as media leaks.

"Were these efforts done to gain better communication between the respective parties, or were the briefings used as intelligence gathering operations?" Grassley, R-Iowa, and Johnson, R-Wis., wrote. "Further, did any such surveillance activities continue beyond the inauguration, and in the event they did, were those activities subject to proper predication?"

The senators added: "Any improper FBI surveillance activities that were conducted before or after the 2016 election must be brought to light and properly addressed."

FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: INTERNAL FBI TEXT MESSAGES REVEAL DOJ CONCERNS OVER 'BIAS' IN KEY WARRANT TO SURVEIL TRUMP AIDE

Barr was criticized by Democrats for testifying earlier this month that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign – an apparent reference to a well-documented surveillance warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page, among other incidents. Barr stressed that the question for him, as the DOJ reviews the conduct of the original investigation, is whether that "surveillance” was justified and based on solid intelligence.

“Congress is usually very concerned with intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane,” he noted.

FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who exchanged 375 text messages with Department of Justice attorney Lisa Page that led to his removal from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin's efforts to interfere in the U.S. election last summer, photographed outside his home in Fairfax, Virginia, in January 2018.

FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who exchanged 375 text messages with Department of Justice attorney Lisa Page that led to his removal from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin's efforts to interfere in the U.S. election last summer, photographed outside his home in Fairfax, Virginia, in January 2018. (AP, File)

The November 2016 text messages may speak to another episode. The text messages begin on the evening of Nov. 17 -- nine days after the election. The string discusses an email and briefing to "Pence," presumably Vice President-elect Mike Pence – and appears to refer to another upcoming briefing.

The messages show Strzok and Page, on their FBI work phones, debating staffing for the upcoming briefing and whether it would make sense to stay with the same agent or send a different one. It is unclear from the texts whether these were part of the formal transition-period briefings between outgoing or incoming administrations or routine intelligence briefings.

"Re above re email, it might be more important for (redacted) to know that (redacted) briefed Pence, no?” Page writes.

Strzok responds: "I think that's a good idea.  I"ll talk with (redacted) so they build messaging/don't overlap."

The texts continue with Strzok telling Page he consulted "Bill" – a possible reference to his supervisor, Bill Priestap – about who to send to handle the briefing.

Strzok: "Talking with Bill. Do we want (redacted) to go with (redacted) instead of (redacted) for a variety of [reasons]?"

Page: "Hmm.  Not sure.  Would it be unusual to have show up again? Maybe another agent from the team?”

Strzok: "Or, he's ‘the CI [counter-intelligence] guy.’  Same.might make sense. He can assess if [there] are any new Qs, or different demeanor.  If (redacted's) husband is there, he can see if there are people we can develop for potential relationships."

A former FBI intelligence officer, who retired after nearly two decades of experience, said the texts conflict with strict rules laid out by Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, known as the FBI's Domestic Investigations Operations Guide (DIOG).

"Based on the formal training all FBI Employees were required to undergo and be tested on with regard to DIOG Sensitive Investigative Matters, these texts indicate both FBI employees were executing investigative strategies on a sensitive investigative matter without any regard for the Mueller/Holder endorsed DOJ DIOG," Timothy Gill Sr. told Fox News.

Regarding the references to new “Qs" and assessing "demeanor," Gill said: "This reference may indicate an ‘outside the box [question]’ that may not fall within the uniform line of briefing questions in an effort to see how the recipient of the question may change their tone or catch them off guard."

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As for using someone’s "husband" to develop “potential relationships," Gill said it was difficult to comment, not knowing who the husband is and whether the spouse was connected to the FBI and DOJ.

Lawyers for Strzok and Page did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Soccer: Equal pay still a stretch for French women

FILE PHOTO: France Team Photo
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - France Team Photo - Clairefontaine, France - April 1, 2019 France's Amandine Henry REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

April 2, 2019

By Julien Pretot

CLAIREFONTAINE, France (Reuters) – Women’s soccer has been developing rapidly in France but Frenchwomen do not believe they are in a position to ask for the same financial treatment as the men even though their American counterparts have filed an equal pay lawsuit.

France, fourth in the FIFA women’s world rankings, are among the favorites for this year’s World Cup on home soil, but they are still trailing the U.S., the three-times world champions.

“The guys have a huge exposure, they have results and a lot of people following them,” 21-year-old midfielder Grace Geyoro told Reuters on Tuesday ahead of a friendly game against Japan.

While the U.S. men’s team failed to qualify for last year’s World Cup, Didier Deschamps’s French side emerged triumphant in Russia.

“The bonuses will depend on our performances, on how things are going to pan out, on what kind of exposure we will get,” added Geyoro.

“We would like to get a little bit more. Maybe not as much as the men but a bit more would be great,” striker Valerie Gauvin, who plays at Montpellier, told Reuters.

The 22-year-old is hoping that the World Cup will boost the sport’s visibility and consequently, its financial attractiveness.

“I hope it won’t take too long even if it has been going in the right direction and maybe after this summer things will evolve faster and the World Cup will draw more media and more sponsors.”

Deschamps’s men earned 300,000 euros ($336,000) each after beating Croatia in the 2018 World Cup final and French media reported that the women will receive a 15,000-euro bonus each if they lift the trophy in Lyon on July 7.

Paris St Germain player Geyoro explained that women’s soccer has a higher profile in the U.S. due to the team’s success at multiple World Cups.

“In the U.S., women’s soccer is growing faster,” she said. “Now it is up to us to increase our exposure.”

One of the ways to increase exposure to the media and the fans would be for women to play in the same stadiums as the men.

Last week, 39,000 supporters turned up for a women’s game between Juventus and Fiorentina at Turin’s Allianz Stadium.

“We have played some games at the Parc des Princes for big events and obviously playing in bigger stadiums would attract more people,” said Geyoro.

Women playing in one of France’s top clubs (Lyon, PSG, Marseille, Montpellier) earn an average 4,000 euros a month, according to French federation figures – a far cry from the reported 3 million euros a month earned by PSG’s Neymar.

However, it is not all doom and gloom for the women.

“There are less barriers with the fans, a lot of people can come and see us. There are more and more young girls coming to the stadium to see the training sessions for the games,” said Gauvin, who managed to complete a marketing and communications course while playing football.

($1 = 0.8925 euros)

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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Vladimir Putin Calls For Defending Internet Free Speech

In stark contrast to attempts in numerous western countries to stifle free speech online, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Internet freedom during a conference earlier today.

When rulers of authoritarian regimes are more pro-freedom than western leaders, you know we’re in trouble.

Putin told the Russian Internet Governance Forum, “I am confident that we should continue to follow the principle of the freedom of the Internet, creating conditions for a wide exchange of information and the implementation of business initiatives and startups.”

The Russian leader said that it was important to balance free speech online with concerns about tackling cyber-crime and illegal content.

Putin’s position is at odds with many western leaders, who have elevated concerns about “fake news” and people’s feelings being hurt over free speech.

In addition to the widespread banning and deplatforming of numerous dissident speakers over the course of the last year, Internet regulation by the state is also intensifying in the west.

According to reports, the UK is about to impose what some are calling “the toughest Internet laws in the world” in the name of stopping cyber-bullying and the spread of “disinformation”.

The European Union also recently passed Article 13, which some fear could lead to the banning of memes.

In the not too distant future, the Russian Internet, where for example you can criticize transgenderism without the risk of being arrested (unlike in the UK), might be more free than anywhere in western Europe.

I can think of nothing more humiliating than that.

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Source: InfoWars

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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