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Lady Gaga splits with fiance Christian Carino

61st Grammy Awards - Arrivals - Los Angeles, California, U.S.
FILE PHOTO: 61st Grammy Awards - Arrivals - Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 10, 2019 - Lady Gaga. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

February 19, 2019

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop superstar and Oscar nominee Lady Gaga has split with her fiance, her second broken relationship in three years.

A representative for the 32-year-old Gaga on Tuesday confirmed celebrity media reports that the “Shallow” singer and Christian Carino, who is also her talent agent, had ended their engagement, but gave no details.

“It just didn’t work out. Relationships sometimes end,” an unidentified source told People magazine. “There’s no long dramatic story.”

News of the split came days before Sunday’s Oscar ceremony. Gaga is a best actress nominee for her role in the musical romance “A Star is Born.”

The singer will perform “Shallow” from “A Star is Born” on the Oscars telecast, which is seen as a front runner to win the Academy Award for best original song.

Gaga announced in October that she and Carino were engaged. They began dating in February 2017, a few months after she ended her five-year relationship with “Chicago Fire” actor Taylor Kinney.

Gaga and Carino had appeared close when they attended the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles in January, but fans noticed she was not wearing her large engagement ring when she sang at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 10.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Source: OANN

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Uber hires more IPO underwriters as it prepares to go public: sources

FILE PHOTO: Uber's logo is displayed on a mobile phone
FILE PHOTO: Uber's logo is displayed on a mobile phone, September 14, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay

March 12, 2019

By Carl O’Donnell and Joshua Franklin

(Reuters) – Ride-hailing startup Uber Technologies Inc has hired a string of investment banks to its syndicate of initial public offering underwriters, as it ramps up preparations for a stock market debut, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Smaller rival Lyft Inc is racing to list in the stock market at the end of March. While Uber will not beat Lyft to an IPO, the preparations are aimed at giving it the flexibility to go public as early as the first half of 2019, the sources said.

Uber has added more than half a dozen investment banks, including Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc, Allen & Company, Deutsche Bank AG and JMP Securities, to its IPO underwriting lineup, the sources said.

These banks will support Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which Uber hired late last year to lead its public offering, the sources added. Uber will make additional bank hires in the coming weeks to complete the IPO syndicate, the sources said.

The sources asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential. Bank of America and Citigroup declined to comment. Uber, Barclays, Allen & Company, Deutsche Bank and JMP Securities did not immediately return requests for comment.

Several investment banks held off pitching Lyft for an IPO role in order to be hired by Uber, a more lucrative and high-profile assignment given its size and status. However, JMP Securities managed to get on both Uber and Lyft’s IPO syndicates, showing that such overlap is possible, albeit mainly with more junior underwriting roles.

Lending relationships between the companies and the banks have also proved important in winning IPO roles.

Lyft’s top-tier of seven underwriters was responsible for around a quarter of capital raised through last year, compared to more than 40 percent for the six top-tier banks that Uber has hired so far, according to Dealogic.

Like Lyft, Uber filed confidentially for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in December. Its bankers have indicated it could be valued at as much as $120 billion, though some analysts have pegged its value closer to $100 billion based on the earning figures it discloses.

Lyft could be valued close to $25 billion in its IPO, according to the sources.

Earlier on Tuesday, Uber agreed to pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit brought nearly six years ago by drivers who claimed they are employees, not independent contractors. Uber still faces thousands of arbitration claims from drivers who are not covered by the settlement.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell and Joshua Franklin in New York; additional reporting by Liana Baker in New York; editing by Leslie Adler)

Source: OANN

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The Latest: Kids of woman in abuse case on YouTube channel

The Latest on an Arizona woman arrested on allegations of abusing adopted children (all times local):

11:25 a.m.

A YouTube channel of an Arizona woman arrested on suspicion of abusing her seven adopted children shows them in simple skits about a kid stealing cookies or a little boy with super powers.

The channel that authorities say 48-year-old Machelle Hackney runs has millions of views. She also has related Instagram and Facebook accounts.

A police report released Wednesday says the children say they were disciplined with pepper spray or locked in a closet without food or water if they did not perform in the videos as directed.

Two adult sons of Hackney were arrested on allegations of failing to report child abuse.

Hackney and the two grown sons remained in jail on Wednesday. It was unknown if any of the three have attorneys.

___

9:20 a.m.

Arizona authorities say two adult sons of a woman arrested on allegations of using pepper spray to discipline her seven younger adopted children are being held on suspicion of failing to report abuse of a minor.

A police statement released Wednesday says Logan and Ryan Hackney were booked into jail.

Authorities said their mother Machelle Hackney disciplined the adopted children by locking them in a closet for days without food, water or bathroom access. The kids were featured on her popular YouTube channel.

A police report says officers arriving at the house in the small city of Maricopa south of Phoenix found six of the children appeared malnourished and underweight.

It was not immediately clear if the 48-year-old mother or her two grown sons had an attorney.

___

8 a.m.

Arizona authorities say a woman has been arrested on allegations of using pepper spray to discipline her seven adopted children and locking them for days inside a closet.

A police report says Machelle Hackney's adopted children had no food, water or access to a bathroom for days while inside the closet at her home in the small city of Maricopa south of Phoenix.

The report says that officers who went to the house last week reported that six of the children appeared malnourished and underweight.

Hackney was being held at the Pinal County Jail on suspicion of two counts of molestation of a child, seven counts of child abuse and five counts of unlawful imprisonment and child neglect.

It was unclear Tuesday whether 48-year-old Hackney had a lawyer.

Source: Fox News National

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25 MS-13 gang members deported from migrant caravan in Mexico, officials say

At least 25 gang members affiliated with the MS-13 gang were deported from Mexico after they were revealed to be concealed within the caravan of 1,600 Central American migrants just across the U.S. border, immigration officials said Tuesday.

The caravan first arrived in Piedras Negras, Mexico, two weeks ago across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas when officials from the Instituto Nacional de Migración identified 10 gang members from Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13.

But after warehouse scuffles with police last week, officials discovered and deported 15 additional MS-13 "agitators," INM Media Deputy Director Aline Juarez told Fox News.

In addition to the gang members, a total of 70 central American migrants have been deported to their home countries, while about 1,500 have been granted humanitarian visas to move freely within Mexico.

MIGRANTS BRAVE THE RIO GRANDE, LOOKING TOWARD EAGLE PASS, TEXAS

News of the deportations was first reported by Mexican state news agency Notimex. The news agency reported that deportations came after issues at a shelter in the border city of Piedras Negras.

On Saturday, officials said the shelter where hundreds of Central American migrants have been confined will close by Wednesday.

Coahuila State Public Safety Secretary Jose Luis Pliego told the Associated Press that authorities have taken some 400 migrants to neighboring states such as Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas to be incorporated into the workforce, while others may seek other options to try to cross into the United States.

Some migrants still at the shelter said they were not being allowed to come and go despite holding the permits, and they hope to leave as soon as possible for fear of possible deportation.

"I don't feel safe here," Donaldo, a Honduran migrant who declined to give his last name, told the AP.

Six-year-old Daniela Fernanda Portillo Burgos sits on the shoulders of her mother, Iris Jamilet, 39, as they look out through the fence of a immigrant shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019.

Six-year-old Daniela Fernanda Portillo Burgos sits on the shoulders of her mother, Iris Jamilet, 39, as they look out through the fence of a immigrant shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019. (Jerry Lara/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

The migrants have wanted to appear at the U.S. border to apply for asylum, but only about a dozen per day have been allowed to do so.

BORDER AGENTS OVERWHELMED AS TEXAS BEGINS PROCESSING MIGRANT CARAVAN

Last month, border patrol sources told Fox News that authorities arrested more than 100 people believed to be El Salvadorian gang members in the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector in Texas.

The notorious MS-13 gang that originated in Los Angeles prisons before infiltrating the rest of the U.S. is mainly comprised of El Salvadorans.

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The Rio Grande Valley Sector is where President Trump visited in January amid the partial government shutdown to highlight what he called a crisis of crime and drugs along the southern border.

Agents in the sector patrol an area of over 17,000 square miles in 19 counties, which includes 320 river miles and 250 coastal miles, according to CBP.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Bill Murray film’s use of famed U.S. horse racing phrase draws lawsuit

FILE PHOTO: Actor Bill Murray recites his words during a performance with cellist Jan Vogler from their new album New Worlds, at the Southbank Centre in London
FILE PHOTO: Actor Bill Murray recites his words during a performance with cellist Jan Vogler from their new album New Worlds, at the Southbank Centre in London, Britain June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

March 20, 2019

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. horse racing announcer Dave Johnson, who called Triple Crown races for ABC television for two decades, on Wednesday sued the makers of Bill Murray’s 2014 film “St. Vincent” for using his signature phrase “and down the stretch they come” without permission.

Johnson, 77, a Manhattan resident, accused the film’s distributor Weinstein Co, the producers Chernin Entertainment and Crescendo Productions and other defendants of infringing his 2012 trademark in the phrase, one of the most recognizable in American sports.

The lawsuit does not name Murray as a defendant.

Murray’s character Vincent MacKenna, a grumpy retiree who drank and gambled, used the phrase “in the context of a race and in a clear attempt to imitate” Johnson, the complaint said.

Johnson said this would likely confuse the public, tarnishing his rights to a phrase “inextricably linked” with his celebrity persona, likeness and identity.

The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court seeks unspecified damages. “St. Vincent” grossed $54.8 million worldwide, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

A lawyer for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“‘And down the stretch they come’ embodies all that is good about thoroughbred racing,” Johnson’s lawyer Andrew Mollica said in a phone interview. “Mr. Johnson owns that mark. If the defendants are going to put it in a major motion picture that earned $54 million, they had a duty to seek his permission.”

Johnson’s use of the phrase involves emphasizing the word “down” as horses turn into the homestretch of a race.

In 2015, Johnson told The New York Times he began using the phrase in the 1960s, and gave it more verve when calling races at Santa Anita Park in California to combat an ancient sound system.

The lawsuit references other trademarked signature sports phrases, including late baseball broadcaster Harry Caray’s “Holy Cow!”, basketball broadcaster Dick Vitale’s “awesome baby” and boxing and wrestling announcer Michael Buffer’s “Let’s get ready to rumble!”

Johnson stopped calling the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes for ABC Television when the races moved to NBC in 2001.

Asked why Johnson did not sue over “St. Vincent” sooner, Mollica said: “Mr. Johnson did not see the movie, and I’m afraid I did not either.”

“When we knew, we moved,” he added.

The case is Johnson et al v Chernin Group LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-02485.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nick Carey)

Source: OANN

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Multiple fatalities at New Zealand mosque shooting: police 

New Zealand police said one person was in custody in connection with a mass shooting that claimed multiple lives at two mosques in the city of Christchurch Friday.

The name of the person detained by authorities was not released. Officers responded to a shooting at the Masjid Al Noor Friday afternoon where witnesses said several people had been killed and injured.

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Details on the shooting were not released and no official number of casualties were given. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday's events were "one of New Zealand's darkest days."

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source: Fox News World

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Jokowi 2.0 could open Indonesia’s door to foreign investors

Indonesia's presidential candidate Joko Widodo laughs as his running mate for the upcoming election Ma'ruf Amin gestures at a carnival during his campaign rally in Tangerang
Indonesia's presidential candidate Joko Widodo laughs as his running mate for the upcoming election Ma'ruf Amin gestures at a carnival during his campaign rally in Tangerang, Banten province, Indonesia, April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo

April 17, 2019

By Tom Allard and John Chalmers

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Foreign investors desperate for more access to Indonesia’s huge market can take comfort from the re-election of Joko Widodo as president for a second and final term on Wednesday: according to government insiders he is poised for a splurge of reform.

On the list of areas he might tackle is sagging foreign investment, the troubled education system and restrictive labor rules.

“If the president’s victory ranges from 52-55 percent that would be the sweet spot,” said a senior government official who works closely with Widodo. “That would spur him to continue and maybe even accelerate economic reforms.”

Widodo – popularly known as Jokowi – looked set to hit that ‘sweet spot’ as early election results came in, showing he was set to win the popular vote and come at least eight percentage points ahead of challenger Prabowo Subianto, who investors feared would be a champion of economic nationalism.

Unofficial counts also suggest Widodo’s coalition will increase its hold on the national legislature.

Still, some analysts doubt that Widodo will move much beyond the cautious reform agenda of his first five-year term.

That’s partly because of his own plodding style, but also because conservative Muslims and nativists will remain a potent political force that is hostile to foreign capital, especially from China.

While the contest between Widodo and his challenger, former special forces general Prabowo was characterized by nationalist posturing on both sides, government officials and advisers say Widodo recognizes the need for more foreign investment to boost growth and raise productivity in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Citing internal government discussions, Mohamad Ikhsan, an economic adviser to outgoing Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, said Widodo was told that economic growth would likely slip below 5 percent without a more liberal approach to foreign investment.

“The president understands this very well. He also understands that it’s not only capital that must be injected, foreign capital … we need to upgrade our human resources,” Ikhsan said.

“He promised that will be in the second term.”

That assessment was backed by the senior government official, who said a big part of Jokowi’s second-term reform drive would be opening education – and particularly universities – to foreign players and making the sector a business. He declined to be identified to speak openly about policy plans.

LEGACY

Some analysts suggested that Widodo’s margin of victory in the election, which looks likely to be less than his campaign had hoped for, might be a brake on reformist plans. His predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, took 61 percent of the vote when he won a second term and is widely thought to have squandered that chance to address systemic flaws in the economy.

“We expect Jokowi’s victory, especially as it was not emphatic, to only result in modest economic reform,” said Peter Mumford of the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. “(It) will be insufficient to break him free of the constraints of coalition partners and vested interests — elite political, military, religious and state-owned enterprise leaders.”

Australian National University analyst Greg Fealy said Widodo was committed to leaving his mark.

“He’s determined to make the biggest impact on national life that he can. He wants more development. He wants more infrastructure. He wants greater prosperity. He wants that legacy.”

Fealy said Indonesia’s recently negotiated free trade deal with Australia, which includes zero-tariff access on many goods and services and provisions for Australian universities to set up campuses in Indonesia, reflected the free market instincts of Widodo, a former furniture entrepreneur and big exporter.

The first president from outside Indonesia’s political, business and military elites, Widodo prioritized infrastructure development in his first term, building roads, railways, ports and airports across the archipelago of thousands of islands.

His building program has gone some way to address a major deficiency in the Indonesian economy, where logistics costs make many of its exports uncompetitive.

Ikhsan said more foreign capital would be needed to continue the program, and budget-sapping subsidies of petrol and food staples would have to be trimmed.

HUMAN RESOURCES

In his final campaign speech at Jakarta’s main stadium, Widodo said the next five years would bring a focus on developing “quality human resources”.

Indonesia’s education system has long been identified as substandard and a drag on development. Although 20 percent of the government budget is allocated to education, international surveys show math, reading and science skills among secondary students badly lag those of the country’s neighbors.

Business leaders say poor schooling and a weak tertiary education sector also deter investment, as do the country’s restrictive labor laws.

According to the senior government official, labor market reform “is something the president is very passionate about”.

“It’s very difficult to terminate or lay off people, therefore people are reluctant to hire. It’s pushed employment dramatically toward informal employment.”

Even so, “it would be the mother of all dogfights in parliament” to get labor reforms passed, he said.

Education reforms are no fait accompli either.

Many academics, nationalists and some Islamic bodies are opposed to liberalizing the university sector and bristle at suggestions that a modern curriculum might be imposed on pesantrens, the network of religious schools.

(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: OANN

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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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