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The Latest: Hearing about missing boy’s brother continued

The Latest on the missing suburban Chicago 5-year-old boy (all times local):

7:20 p.m.

A custody hearing involving the brother of a missing suburban Chicago boy and their parents has been continued.

JoAnn Cunningham and Andrew Freund Sr., the parents of missing 5-year-old Andrew "AJ" Freund, appeared Tuesday in McHenry County Circuit Court. They are seeking custody of their 4-year-old son, Parker. He was taken into custody by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services on Thursday after Andrew was reported missing by his parents.

A new attorney is expected to be appointed to the 4-year-old on Wednesday after a conflict of interest was found with the boy's current lawyer Tuesday.

The judge may determine who should have custody of the child on Monday.

Cunningham's attorney, George Kililis, said Tuesday that the state made numerous allegations in its petition that "requires a lot of work for us." He wouldn't comment further.

___

3:15 p.m.

Police reports indicate the 5-year-old boy who went missing from a suburban Chicago home had been living in squalor as recently as December when an officer dispatched to the scene said the "smell of feces" in a bedroom where children slept was overwhelming and that there was "dog feces and urine" throughout the home.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Crystal Lake Police Department released more than 60 pages of reports regarding several police visits to the home from which Andrew "AJ" Freund was reported missing last Thursday. The reports that were released in response to a Freedom of Information request are heavily redacted but the officers write that the house is "cluttered, dirty and in disrepair."

In one case, police called for state child welfare workers after an officer notices a large bruise on the body of one of the children but the children were not removed from the home after the case worker is unable to determine what caused the bruise.

Police on Tuesday continue the search for the boy. They have said the boy's mother has not cooperated with investigators.

___

12:15 p.m.

Police have released a recording of the 911 call a suburban Chicago man made when he discovered his 5-year-old son was missing.

In the call made last Thursday, Andrew Freund Sr. tells a dispatcher that he arrived home from a doctor's appointment to discover his son, Andrew "AJ" Freund, is gone. He says he searched the Crystal Lake house, garage, a park, and other locations but can't find him. Police released the recording Tuesday.

Crystal Lake police meanwhile announced they are still searching a nearby park and using sonar equipment to search ponds in the area. Police have asked neighbors for surveillance video in the hunt for clues about the boy's disappearance.

Police say they boy's mother, JoAnn Cunningham, is refusing to cooperate with detectives.

Source: Fox News National

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After bodysuit blow, Japan’s Zozo embarks on hiring spree to shore up online mall

Yuki Kanayama, Chief Innovation Officer of Zozo Technologies, poses with a Zozosuit after an interview with Reuters in Tokyo
Yuki Kanayama, Chief Innovation Officer of Zozo Technologies, poses with a Zozosuit after an interview with Reuters in Tokyo, Japan, March 20, 2019. Picture taken March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Sam Nussey

April 24, 2019

By Sam Nussey

TOKYO (Reuters) – For Japan’s Zozo Inc, a brash online fashion retailer, 2018 marked a turning point, but not in the way that anyone had hoped.

Its body-measuring Zozosuit, which was supposed to put the firm at the cutting edge of made-to-order fashion, failed to drive sales. Executives came under fire in the media for wildly optimistic targets and the company said in November it was phasing out the product.

Adding to its woes, fashion brands that helped make the reputation of Zozo’s billionaire founder and CEO Yusaku Maezawa became increasingly unhappy with what they saw as excessive discounting at its core Zozotown online mall. Japanese apparel firms like Onward Holdings Co Ltd and Right On Co Ltd left the site.

The turmoil forced Zozo to slash its profit outlook in January. Soon after, publicity-loving Maezawa, known for signing up to be the first private passenger on Elon Musk’s SpaceX voyage around the moon, said he was taking a hiatus from Twitter to concentrate on his “real job”.

According to Yuki Kanayama, chief innovation officer at unit Zozo Technologies, the Zozosuit was no failure – just the first iteration of the company’s made-to-measure business.

The next stage for made-to-order services “is still under debate internally” while Zozo concentrates on shoring up its online mall, he told Reuters in an interview.

The dropping of the suit, however, underscores the challenges in making mass-customization a fashion industry reality. Numerous retailers, from startups to giants like Amazon, are pushing forward with body measuring technology including in-store scanners and apps that capture data via the smartphone. None have had break-out success.

To bolster its mall business, Zozo is recruiting engineers to make shopping online more tailored to a user’s preferences as well as to work on areas such as advertising, said Kanayama, who started up fashion tech company Vasily before selling it to Maezawa in 2017.

Zozo Technologies, the firm’s research and development hub, hired just under 100 people in the past financial year, most of them engineers, lifting the unit’s headcount to 280. This year it plans to hire another 100 people or more, also mostly engineers.

“It’s about search. When you have more products, search becomes more difficult, so it’s about things like personalization and discovery – not only things you want but things that get recommended and that you discover.”

How Zozo, which secured a 15 billion yen ($135 million)commitment line from banks in late March, can rebuild its image and finances will be a key focus when it reports annual earnings and guidance for the current financial year on Thursday.

It has said it expects operating profit to have dropped to 26.5 billion yen, down by a third from an earlier estimate and 19 percent below the previous year’s results. Cash and deposits have also fallen sharply, to 8.2 billion yen as of end-December, down by two-thirds compared to nine months earlier.

Zozo’s problems have seen its stock slide almost 60 percent since its peak last July, valuing the company at 653 billion yen ($5.8 billion).

The company has, however, seen the number of shops on Zozotown climb by roughly a 100 to 1,200 over the past year, as it attracts more inexpensive brands like Shimamura Co Ltd. Zozo also has moved to make discounts less visible to users.

UNSUITED

Michael Causton, an analyst at JapanConsuming, describes the Zozosuit as a nice idea but “very badly executed.”

The first version, launched in late 2017, used embedded sensors to upload data via a smartphone but was afflicted with high costs and production problems. Zozo quickly abandoned that approach in favor of an easier-to-manufacture polka-dot version that used a smartphone camera to capture data.

But a bigger problem soon became apparent: customers who received one of the one million bodysuits distributed for free did not order many clothes and some did not even upload their data in the first place.

“It was a hassle for them,” said Kanayama, adding that positive results from test customers ahead of the bodysuit’s launch fed into Zozo’s overly optimistic sales targets.

“That’s a big point of reflection for us,” he said.

Zozo compounded the problems by extending its made-to-order offerings beyond basics like t-shirts to far more ambitious items like business suits, leading to delivery delays and complaints about poor sizing.

Zozo is, however, not going to abandon its bold approach to business, said Kanayama, who like Maezawa, used to be in a rock band and helps cultivate the firm’s unconventional image with his penchant for cowboy boots.

“Zozo will not mature,” he said, dismissing the idea that 2018 represented a rambunctious teenage period for a firm that needed to grow up. “We are still punk.”

(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Edwina Gibbs)

Source: OANN

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Friends seek to clear Houston couple killed in drug raid

When police fatally shot a couple during a raid of their home in a working-class Houston neighborhood, friends and family members angrily dismissed allegations that the two were selling heroin and had fired on officers while defending an illicit business.

Authorities have not cleared their names, even after alleging that an officer lied about the crime to obtain the search warrant justifying the Jan. 28 raid. The officer, Gerald Goines, has been suspended and more than 1,400 of his former cases are under review amid a civil rights investigation by the FBI.

Police Chief Art Acevedo said that until the investigation is complete, Dennis Tuttle, a 59-year-old Navy veteran, and his wife, 58-year-old Rhogena Nicholas, known to close friends as "Regi", will remain drug suspects.

"We exonerate them prematurely and the next thing you know, we find something," said Acevedo, who has kept in close contact with Tuttle's family since the raid.

But the couple's family and friends maintain the two, married for 20 years, were not criminals. They portrayed the couple as animal lovers who had lived quiet, simple lives and were dedicated to each other.

"They're trying to throw my friends under the bus and act like they were these horrible people which they weren't and they've ... slandered my friends all based on lies," Monique Caballero said.

Police say undercover narcotics officers were met by gunfire after they entered the couple's home. Four officers were shot and wounded, and a fifth injured his knee.

Authorities began investigating the home after receiving a 911 call on Jan. 8 from a woman who said her daughter had been doing drugs there. In a search warrant affidavit that was used to authorize the raid, Goines said that a confidential informant had bought heroin at the home. But police now allege Goines lied in the affidavit as the informant told investigators no such drug buy ever took place. The heroin allegedly bought at the home had been obtained elsewhere, according to investigators.

According to the police account, the couple was killed after Tuttle engaged in a firefight with officers and Nicholas tried to grab the shotgun of one of the officers who entered the home. But their friends have suggested the couple might have thought they were being attacked by intruders.

Acevedo said investigators are still determining whether the guns recovered at the couple's home had been bought legally.

Police used a "no-knock" warrant that didn't require them to announce themselves before entering. Such warrants were criticized after the raid and in response, Acevedo said he or someone he designates must now approve all such warrants.

Acevedo also announced that body cameras will now be worn by SWAT team members and by officers who execute search warrants. Officers involved in the drug raid did not wear body cameras.

A review of court records in Houston showed that only Nicholas had any prior criminal history, a misdemeanor charge in 2010 related to a bad check for $100. The charge was dismissed after restitution was paid.

Elizabeth Ferrari, Tuttle's sister, told KPRC-TV this didn't sound like the brother she knew and that a week before the shooting, she had spoken with him and they had "a great conversation."

Miguel Prats, who had known the couple for at least 20 years, said the two were "warm and fuzzy" kind of people.

"I couldn't even tell you how many dozens of times I'd been in their house, and I never, ever saw any dope dealing going down," Prats said.

Tuttle, who grew up in Houston, had worked as a machinist. Nicholas was originally from Mississippi. Both had dealt with various health problems in recent years and were on disability. Tuttle had suffered some work-related injuries as well as post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service, according to friends. Nicholas had health problems related to hepatitis and was battling cancer, Caballero said.

"They did stay to themselves. But they were the most caring, loving people," she said.

Caballero said that on the day of the drug raid, she had sent Nicholas a funny animal video. Nicholas texted her about 20 minutes before the raid happened, saying of the video, "LOL. That's funny." It was the last exchange the two friends would ever have.

Police have said officers immediately faced gunfire after they forced open the home's front door. The first officer through the door was charged by a large pit bull, which he shot and killed.

The couple's friends say they believe Tuttle and Nicholas likely thought someone was breaking into their home.

"You crash somebody's door down and shoot their dog in Texas, you damn well better be prepared to get shot back at," Prats said.

Police have said while no heroin was found in the home, officers recovered 18 grams of marijuana, 1.5 grams of a white powder believed to be cocaine, two shotguns and two rifles.

Prats said the weapons likely belonged to Tuttle as he used to go hunting. He said the drugs found were very small amounts that were likely used for medicinal purposes to treat pain.

But Caballero said because of the problems that have emerged about the raid, she doesn't trust anything police say about what they found at the home.

She said the officers involved in the raid need to be held accountable for what happened to her friends.

"They cared about everyone else other than themselves. They are not drug dealers. They are not drug addicts and they did not deserve to die that way," Caballero said.

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

Source: Fox News National

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War Room – 2019-April 17, Wednesday – Breaking: AG WIlliam Barr TO Hold Press Conference on Mueller Report

Attorney General William Barr has announced he will be holding a press conference and be taking questions in regards to the release of the Mueller report. Dr. Nick Beggich is in studio to discuss the culture war in Europe and the truth about climate change. Tommy Sotomayor joins the War Room to discuss the war on men.

GUEST // (OTP/Skype) // TOPICS:
Nick Begich//In Studio
Tommy Sotomayor//Skype

Source: The War Room

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O’Rourke candidacy asks: Can a moderate white male win the 2020 Democratic primary?

O'Rourke, the Democratic former Texas congressman, addresses supporters before a march in El Paso
Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic former Texas congressman, addresses supporters before an anti-Trump march in El Paso, Texas, U.S., February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

March 17, 2019

By James Oliphant

MOUNT VERNON, Iowa (Reuters) – As he had done at several stops in his first campaign trip as a presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke on Friday climbed atop a counter at a local Iowa business and addressed a small but adoring crowd. People clapped and cheered. Outside, some waited in the cold, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. 

By that measure, his tour across eastern Iowa last week was largely a success. But by no means was O’Rourke considered a front-runner. And that underscored the challenge he faces as he competes for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

O’Rourke, a former three-term U.S. congressman from Texas, became a celebrity last year when his longshot bid to unseat U.S. Senator Ted Cruz drew national attention and a torrent of money. But ultimately, his fame was not enough.

That loss led some critics to wonder why someone who couldn’t secure a Senate seat would then think he should run for president.

That is not his only obstacle. O’Rourke, 46, is a wealthy, white man from a conservative-leaning state who is more moderate on several key issues than many of his competitors. Given the energy among progressives in the early stages of the race and the diversity of the Democratic field, O’Rourke would appear to be everything that many in party say they do not want.

More than a dozen Democrats have declared their candidacy to take on President Donald Trump in next year’s election, including six women. U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Julian Castro, a former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, would be the first Hispanic to do so. Another contender, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is openly gay.

O’Rourke also must grapple with the enduring popularity of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive who remains a formidable adversary after battling Hillary Clinton in 2016, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who is weighing a presidential bid.

Even so, none of them are on the cover of the latest issue of Vanity Fair, as O’Rourke is. His interview with the magazine sparked controversy on social media last week when he said he was “born” to run for president. Critics also found fault with his oft-repeated joke on the trail about how he “helps” raise his three children with his wife, Amy.

To his detractors, it smacked of white male privilege. O’Rourke grew up affluent, attended the Ivy League’s Columbia University, and married the daughter of a real estate baron. His estimated net personal wealth is more than $9 million.

His image in his race against Cruz, however, belied that background. He fashioned himself as the scrappy underdog, a former punk rocker who was battling the establishment, visiting every county in Texas in a Dodge minivan and holding numerous town halls where he fielded questions from the public.

It was a strategy he took to Iowa last week, going so far as to rent another Dodge minivan that he drove himself and shooting a fundraising video on Facebook of him filling its gas tank.

O’Rourke differed from many of his liberal competitors by talking frequently about how he worked with Republicans in Congress to improve care for veterans in his home town of El Paso, Texas. Asked whether he was a true “progressive,” he referenced President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican.

O’Rourke maintained that his campaign would be relentlessly optimistic – and he only rarely rebuked Trump. “We will not belittle or demean or vilify other candidates,” he said in Mt. Vernon. “We will not define ourselves in contrast to others or say who we are against.”

His policy positions were largely nonspecific. He championed universal health care, immigration reform and combating climate change, but largely said any reforms would have to be pragmatic and incremental.

Occasionally, O’Rourke showed self-awareness of his status as a wealthy, white male, telling crowds that he had been given opportunities denied to minorities and describing the U.S. economic system as imperfect and racist.

He also found that despite the media attention he has received, he was not a household name in Iowa. “I didn’t even know who he was until two days ago,” said Sam Jennison, the owner of the bar in Mount Vernon where O’Rourke held his event.

But for the most part, those who attended his events spoke of him glowingly and dismissed concerns about whether he was progressive enough. “Issues are very important,” said Cathryn Layer, 65, of New London, Iowa. “Winnability is another thing.”

“We need a moderate Democrat, and we probably need a white male because that is not threatening to a lot of people,” said Holly Manon Moore, 65, of Fairfield, Iowa, who said she is undecided in the race and would want a person of color to be the vice-presidential nominee. “If we go too far left, we’re going to lose.”

At the close of his Iowa trip, it remained unclear how O’Rourke’s entrance would reshape the Democratic race. He notably declined to reveal how much money he raised in his first few days as a candidate.

But he did have an impact. At the same time O’Rourke was in eastern Iowa, so was one of his competitors, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. And while the size of the crowd that came to see her on Saturday was comparable to those at O’Rourke’s events, there were far fewer journalists present.

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Source: OANN

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Zookeeper seriously injured when rhino strikes her

A female zookeeper in Florida was seriously injured when a rhinoceros struck her.

Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens Executive Director Tony Vecchio says the zookeeper was hurt by the rhino's horn during a "routine training session" Tuesday morning.

Tom Francis with the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department says she was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. News outlets report that her condition wasn't immediately known.

Vecchio says the rhino, 50-year-old Archie, remained in his enclosure the entire time and the public was never in danger. He says zookeepers conduct routine training with the animals to prepare them for medical exams.

Zoo officials say they'll do a full investigation of the incident and act on safety recommendations.

Source: Fox News National

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Judge Andrew Napolitano: ‘Julian Assange is a hero’

Judge Andrew Napolitano called Julian Assange a “hero” after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police Thursday moments after Ecuador withdrew his asylum for “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.”

”I have to tell you, in my opinion Julian Assange is a hero. What he published was truthful information that the American public and the world had the right to see,” Napolitano, a Fox News legal analyst, said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday about an hour after Assange was arrested.

JULIAN ASSANGE'S ARREST DRAWS FIERCE INTERNATIONAL REACTION

The 47-year-old Australian native has been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 when British courts ordered him extradited to face questioning in a sexual assault case. That matter has since been dropped, but Wikileaks, an anti-secrecy site, is facing a federal grand jury investigation over its publication of American diplomatic and military secrets during the Iraq War.

Moments before he was arrested, Ecuador announced it had withdrawn Assange's asylum for “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.”

“There’s no basis to arrest him in London for the sexual assault investigation in Sweden,” said Napolitano. “He apparently has been charged with something in the United States. We don't know. Because of this inadvertent release of a warrant for him. That is probably the true reason for his arrest. He will probably be extradited here. We will see the indictment. And we will probably have a show trial.”

WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE ARRESTED AFTER ECUADOR WITHDRAWS ASYLUM

Napolitano said If Assange is brought to the United States, he is likely going to say he can’t answer questions about where he got the information because he’s protected by the first amendment. He thinks Assange would say: “'I'm not going to tell you how I got Hillary Clinton's emails but I got them and we published them.'”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Napolitano said he agrees that exposing state department secrets would “diminish the private communications.”

He added: “But just as if we, working for Fox News, received secret information, ‘my god the public has to know this.’ The person who gave it to us commits the crime. The publisher does not commit the crime."

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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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)

Source: OANN

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