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Blast kills 8 children collecting scrap metal in Sudan

Sudanese officials say eight children have been killed in an explosion near a military facility where they were searching for scrap metal to resell.

The officials say the explosion happened Saturday in Omdurman, the twin city of the capital, Khartoum. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, an independent professional union, says seven children died at the scene and the eighth succumbed to wounds in a hospital.

The committee is part of an umbrella opposition movement that has been organizing street protests since December calling on President Omar al-Bashir to resign. A security crackdown has killed dozens of people.

Source: Fox News World

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Security heavy as Sri Lanka warns of further attacks

Heavy security is out on the streets of Sri Lanka's capital after warnings of further attacks by the militant group blamed for the Easter bombing that killed at least 250 people.

At St. Anthony's Church, one of those struck in the attacks Sunday, there were more soldiers than normal Friday. Shops nearby remained closed.

Gration Fernando crossed himself when he looked at the church after walking out of his shop there. Fernando says he, like other Sri Lankans, was worried about further attacks.

He says there's "no security, no safety to go to church." He also says "now children are scared to go to church" as well.

Authorities told Muslims to pray at home rather than attend communal Friday prayers that's the most important of the week.

Source: Fox News World

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Club for Growth: Trump Budget Deficits Similar to Obama's

The Club for Growth offered some constructive criticism of the White House budget unveiled Monday, saying the Trump administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill need to work together to lower the federal deficit.

The group's president David McIntosh first praised the 2020 spending blueprint for helping to continue economic growth, but he quickly turned into a critic.

"Club for Growth remains deeply concerned about the deficits within the budget proposal, which totals over $1 trillion each year until 2023," McIntosh said in a statement. "These deficits mirror the deficits President Obama left on the American people.

McIntosh then brought up entitlement programs, saying they need to be reformed in order to stay afloat and lower costs.

"Club for Growth encourages President Trump to work with Congress to make abrupt reforms that save these important programs for future generations," he said.

"Club for Growth also encourages every Member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate to look in the mirror and demand better of yourself on federal spending."

Source: NewsMax America

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Israel sentences French driver to 7 years for gun smuggling

An Israeli court has sentenced a French citizen who was working as a driver for his country's consulate in Jerusalem to seven years in prison for smuggling weapons from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

The Beersheba District Court on Monday handed Romain Franck the prison sentence as part of a plea deal. Franck was arrested by Israeli authorities last year and charged with involvement in a Palestinian arm smuggling ring.

Four other ring members have been sentenced to up to five years each.

Franck admitted to using the consulate's vehicle, which is not rigorous searched, to transport firearms through Israel's tightly secured crossing with the Gaza Strip.

The court documents say that in exchange for smuggling the weapons to the West Bank, Franck received 26,000 shekels, or $7,250.

Source: Fox News World

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North Carolina mom charged for having meth near baby bottle

Sheriff's deputies in North Carolina have filed multiple charges against the mother of a 21-month-old child after saying they found methamphetamine near a baby bottle.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports the Alamance County Sheriff's Office says its deputies were trying to serve a warrant at a home on Sunday when 27-year-old Kyle Elizabeth Hollingsworth allowed deputies inside to search for her live-in boyfriend. While searching, deputies found a bottle containing meth less than a foot (0.3 meter) from a half-full baby bottle.

Hollingsworth admitted that her child was drinking from the bottle in the same bed prior to the deputies' arrival. She was arrested on several charges, including felony possession of methamphetamine and misdemeanor child abuse.

Hollingsworth is jailed on a $25,000 bond and was scheduled to appear in court Monday.

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Information from: Winston-Salem Journal, http://www.journalnow.com

Source: Fox News National

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Is an FBI Interview a G-Man's License to Lie?

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At 10:38 on the morning of Feb. 4, 2019, the deputy for United States District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said, “Good morning, Your Honor. This is a sealed proceeding, and the courtroom has been locked.”

Paul Manafort: no transcript, video or audio of what he was accused by Robert Mueller's team of lying about. 

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File

It was a hearing at which lawyers for Special Counsel Robert Mueller would argue that Paul Manafort had lied to them during 12 interviews, both before and after striking his plea bargain on foreign lobbying and money laundering charges. We know what was said behind those locked doors because a word-for-word transcript was made of the courtroom proceedings.

Strangely, there was no such transcript of what Manafort had said in his interviews. This made it difficult to reconstruct what his responses to questioning had been, let alone determine whether they were truthful.

But if there was no transcript, surely the court could consult a videotape of his interrogation, the sort of recording that is standard practice for local police who are interviewing, say, a suspected car thief. And if there was no videotape for the judge to watch, surely there was, at the very least, an audiotape.

But no. The bureau has insisted instead, for more than half a century, on summarizing its interrogations, of everyone from witnesses to targets, in a type of memo designated an FD-302 or just “302.” Those memos have been used in recent high-profile investigations to summarize the statements of Manafort, Hillary Clinton, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others. Many were shocked to learn that Clinton’s interview with the FBI about her handling of classified emails was not tape-recorded. They may be more shocked to learn that is standard FBI procedure.

Amy Berman Jackson: Judge frustrated by having to consult an FBI 302 memo rather than verbatim testimony.

United States Government/Wikimedia 

Judge Jackson, who would ultimately side with Mueller’s team on the question of Manafort’s truthfulness, was flummoxed at first. She didn’t quite know what to make of the accusations Manafort had lied after he had pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate. Flummoxed, because she was trying to reconstruct from 302s what had and hadn’t been said.

“That's not the way the 302 read to me when I read it,” she said in response to the prosecution’s characterization of Manafort’s testimony. “This is the problem with not having grand jury testimony, but having to look at a 302.” Clearly frustrated, the judge added, “I may not be able to resolve it on the face of the 302.”

Although some media coverage has suggested otherwise, a 302 is not a transcript. Here’s how a standard FBI interview works. Two agents sit down with the person to be interrogated. One agent does the questioning, the other takes notes — by hand. After the interview is over, back at the bureau office, the agent who took notes uses them to construct a memo summarizing the conversation.

That summary, then, is twice removed from the actual interview. The notes are not an exact rendering of the dialogue; and the memorandum is not an exact copy of the notes. Yet the summary is treated as the official record of the interview. The 302 is a record to which the interviewee is held even though it is not close to a verbatim rendering of what was said — neither questions nor answers.

Those who regularly deal with 302s seem unsurprised when they are missing crucial information. In Jackson’s courtroom, lead Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann was declaring Manafort had been caught in “another false statement.” The proof, said the prosecutor, was found in paragraph 17 of a “declaration” made by an FBI agent involved in the interrogation.

“But it would be reflected in the 302, also?” the judge asked.

“I don’t think it is,” Weissmann responded. “I think it’s only in the declaration.”

The hearing moved on. But let’s pause to consider what just happened. The special counsel’s team was accusing Manafort of a specific lie, but the document ostensibly detailing what Manafort said -- the 302 -- did not have any record of the statement in question. So the prosecutor fell back on a supplemental declaration by an FBI agent. The 302, in other words, was so unreliable that it lacked key information on which prosecutors were basing their case.

Thomas Zehnle: Manafort attorney argued the absence of an "evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators.” 

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

At least Manafort’s lawyer, Thomas E. Zehnle, was paying attention. In a post-hearing memorandum, Zehnle and his co-counsels wrote to the court: “Finally, even if one has some concern about how the FBI’s summary report reads, it does not provide the evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators.” Pointing to the 302, they added, “The government’s summary is not a grand jury transcript that identifies specific questions and answers; it remains ambiguous.”

By their very nature, 302s are ambiguous not just because they may be unreliable narrations, but because they may include information beyond just what was said. In response to an inquiry from RealClearInvestigations, an FBI official explained, “The FD-302 form, in pertinent part, is used to memorialize interviews as well as other information that may become the subject of testimony.” Asked what exactly “other information” means, or for an example of such information, the official replied, “We’re not able to provide any specifics or further comment for you.”

But Jackson’s courtroom provided some inkling of what “other information” might be. Weissmann called the judge’s attention to “Exhibit 10, page 6, which is the 302” of one of the Manafort interrogations. The prosecutor asked the judge to “look at the 302 — and I'd just like to quote some of it to you, because some of it is factual about what the facts were, not just intuiting what was in someone's head.”

In this inadvertent admission, Weissmann declared that “some” of the government memo being used as evidence “is factual about what the facts were.” And that this part of the memo was “not just intuiting what was in someone’s head.” But doesn’t that suggest that other parts of the 302 passed along information that wasn’t factual or intuited “what was in someone’s head”? A 302 purports to be an accurate account of what was said in an interview. How accurate are agents’ intuitions about their interviewees’ states of mind? Are we willing to convict people and send them to prison for false statements based on what agents intuit?

An Old Habit

These problems are behind a decades-long campaign to have all law enforcement -- from small-town deputy sheriffs to deputy directors of the FBI -- make the recording of interviews standard policy.

One of the leaders of that effort has been civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, author of the book “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.” He argues that 302s present a pervasive and unnecessary temptation for agents to bend the truth. A “fundamental flaw in the FBI’s truth-gathering apparatus,” Silverglate wrote in 2011, is “the long-defended Bureau-wide policy of not recording interrogations and interviews, a practice that allows the FBI to manipulate witnesses, manufacture convictions, and destroy justice as we once knew it.”

That may sound like strong stuff, unfair even. But the FBI’s own intransigence in the face of the electronic recording movement lends credence to Silverglate’s critique. An FBI response to this proposed reform has become notorious in civil libertarian circles. In 2006, the bureau produced a written rebuttal to the “on-going debate in the criminal justice community whether to make electronic recording of custodial interrogations mandatory.”

Robert Mueller: Infamous 2006 policy memo was issued under his watch as FBI Director.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The policy memo offered several reasons why the FBI resisted recording, including the telling admission that, when people get a look at FBI interrogations in action, they don’t like what they see: As “all experienced investigators and prosecutors know, perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants,” the memo states. “Initial resistance may be interpreted as involuntariness, and misleading a defendant as to the quality of the evidence against him may appear to be unfair deceit.”

The bottom line is that FBI agents feel empowered lie to witnesses or suspects, but when those targets lie to the FBI they are charged with crimes. And being allowed to produce 302s, instead of taped interviews, allows this practice to continue. It’s worth noting that when that memo was produced, the FBI director was Robert Mueller.

The practice of using memos instead of actual transcripts became standard procedure a long time ago, and dates to precedents established by founding FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Sometimes the 302 reports reflected noble work. But not always.

In the 1950s, 302 forms were filed by special agents probing the private lives of suspected Communists. In the 1960s, 302 reports were used as a record-keeping tool by FBI agents penetrating the Ku Klux Klan. When Special Agents James P. Hosty Jr. and James W. Bookhout interrogated Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, they summarized the questioning in a 302 they dictated the next day. It’s a measure of the artificiality of the memos, and the agents’ skewed sense of what was important, to include in the 302 that the agents, in the first paragraph of their report, stated that Oswald “made many uncomplimentary remarks about the FBI.”

Mark Felt: "Deep Throat" FBI man filed a misleading 302 report.

AP Photo/File

During the Watergate scandal, Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt filed a misleading 302 form in an attempt to cast aspersion for news leaks to The Washington Post onto a Miami prosecutor. Yet it was Felt who was Bob Woodward’s infamous “Deep Throat.”

This last example highlights two problematic aspects of the practice. First, although FBI officials may portray the 302 as a neutral investigating device, the potential for abuse is so great that it’s practically baked into the process. These are not even-handed wire service stories. They are a one-sided recounting of a conversation tailored to put the author, and the bureau, in the best possible light.

Second, it’s so ingrained in FBI culture that the bureau’s leadership doesn’t question whether it’s an inherently unfair method of building a case.

Immediately after assuring President Trump in private meeting, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves,” then-FBI director James Comey went to his car, got out his laptop and immediately began writing a 302-style memo. Which he later leaked. According to his own congressional testimony, Comey did the same thing to former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Yet Comey seemed surprised anyone would see those as weasel moves or sneaky things, the obvious irony being that we only know about the “weasel moves” quote because Comey put them in his 302-type memo.

“The Bureau cherishes its procedures and lives by them,” Andrew McCabe, another fired top FBI official, wrote in his recent memoir. “The official write-up on my own application interview, conducted in Philadelphia more than two decades ago, can be found somewhere in the personnel files at the J. Edgard Hoover Building. It’s a form known as a FD-302. Every interview conducted by an FBI agent is reported or summarized on a 302. This form is the most basic building block of an investigation.”

Brian Boetig: When interviews and interrogations aren’t recorded, any number of things can go wrong.

AP Photo/The Buffalo News, Derek Gee

Not all FBI agents believe they should be. Around the same time as the controversial “misleading a defendant” explanation was being promulgated, Special Agent Brian Boetig co-authored an article, “Revealing Incommunicado: Electronic Recording of Police Interrogations,” for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. In it, he and his fellow authors made the case for recording all interviews. (Boetig is not squeamish: His crime-fighting bona fides are solid enough that he was recently promoted to be assistant director of the bureau’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.) “Testimony regarding what transpired inside the interrogation room,” they wrote, “can become tainted if only the participants witnessed what occurred.”

Boetig and his co-authors argued that when interviews and interrogations aren’t recorded any number of things can go wrong: “First, problems associated with recollection can contribute to conflicting statements. Interrogations often last for hours and exact transcripts cannot precisely memorialize everything. Furthermore, a trial may not occur for years after the interrogation, reducing the ability to cognitively recall all of the specific details and circumstances not recorded in notes or reports.”

Beyond that, note jotters and memo writers can simply get things wrong. It would be a remarkable feat of note-taking to capture every word that is said in a fluid conversation; so to start with, pertinent dialogue is missing even in the most scrupulously produced 302. There may also be things that the note taker mishears, misunderstands, or scribbles down incoherently.

Again, remember that the notes aren’t the finished product: They are used as a reference by the agent as he or she — perhaps days later — reconstructs the interview in summary form. Such summaries might be useful for agents and case managers to keep track of investigations, but the use of 302s goes far beyond that. They become the official record of what was said in an interview. If one contradicts that record in subsequent interviews or testimony, the 302 can be used as evidence that one has lied to the government.

The Michael Flynn Case

It’s one thing to be held accountable for what one says in a tape-recorded interview, where there is a complete record of what was said on both sides of the conversation. But how confident can we be that a memo summarizing handwritten notes is accurate, even assuming agents’ best good-faith efforts? Confident enough to send someone to the penitentiary for many years?

Michael Flynn: Mistakes were made in his FBI interview, but not only by him.

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Consider Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to “making materially false statements and omissions” to FBI agents because the 302s of his interview did not match other evidence the bureau had collected. It turns out that mistakes were made -- and not only by Flynn.

For starters, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 was Peter Strzok, who was later removed from the investigation because of deep anti-Trump animus he expressed in texts with a fellow FBI employee. Even then, according to congressional testimony, Strzok and the other agent didn’t really believe Flynn lied to them. And, of course, they had no tape recording to help them weigh the facts. As McCabe himself wrote in a memo, “[I]t was not a great beginning of a false statements case.”

That aspect of the saga received some media attention. But another one did not. Late last year, District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the special counsel to release the FD-302 memorializing the interview with Flynn. On Dec. 17, the Mueller team complied: “the government hereby files two redacted versions of the FD-302 report summarizing the FBI’s interview of the defendant on January 24, 2017.”

Two versions?

The first had been originally filed Feb. 15, 2017, three weeks after the interview with Flynn. Three weeks seems an awfully long time for recollection, especially of subtle details that may lead to a man being prosecuted for lying to the FBI. Is three weeks common or even consistent with official policy? It’s hard to say, because the publicly available version of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide reads, “Any matter that may be testimonial must be documented using an FD-302 within [REDACTED].”

Peter Strzok: He and the FBI agent with him didn’t really believe Flynn lied to them, according to testimony.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Let’s put aside the question of how it could possibly be the case that the standard deadline for filing a 302 is some sort of secret that warrants redaction. Let’s assume that three weeks is within the window. But even if three weeks doesn’t seem like a long time, that’s nothing compared to how long it took to file the second, final version of the Flynn 302 — 3½ months. Here’s how Robert Mueller explained what happened: “The content of both versions of the report is identical, except that the first version, which was digitally signed and certified in February 2017, inadvertently contained a header labeled ‘DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.’ Once that error was recognized,” Mueller said, “the header was removed and a corrected version, omitting only the header, was re-signed and re-certified in May 2017.”

How did the words “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL” find their way onto the 302? And don’t those words suggest that the document was still open to revision? The one thing we can be quite sure of, however, is that inaccurate claims were made in an official FBI record of an interview: Isn’t that the sort of thing that gets people in trouble?

But let’s be more generous than aggressive prosecutors tend to be and accept that the error was inadvertent, as Mueller claims. That would be proof of an astonishing tendency to error in the creation of FD-302s. Here we have a crucial 302 of the highest importance -- one providing the pretext to prosecute the White House national security adviser. And it not only has an “error” at the top of the page, that “inadvertent” text is centered and written in bold, all-capital letters. If that’s the sort of supersized mistake that happens in a high-priority case, what does that tell us about the accuracy and reliability of the average FD-302?

FD-302 from the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

FBI/Warren Commission/Wikimedia 

The concern isn’t a new one: “You can have a conversation with an agent,” Robert Kennedy’s press secretary when RFK was attorney general, once told journalist Victor Navasky, “and when it is over he will send a memo to the files. Any relation between the memo and what was said in the conversation may be purely coincidental. You would think you were at different meetings.”

It was that sort of reputation that led the Department of Justice in 2014 to issue a new Policy Concerning Electronic Recording of Statements. Promulgated by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, the document opens with this declaration: “This policy establishes a presumption that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the United States Marshals Service (USMS) will electronically record statements made by individuals in their custody.”

There was great anticipation that the new policy would finally be the end of commemorating interviews in memos derived from handwritten notes. “This policy change is an important step in the right direction,” the Harvard Law Review declared in 2015, “reflecting a growing movement that has recognized the benefits of recording interviews; however, the new policy puts in place little express accountability for failure to comply with the presumption.”

Not only is there “little express accountability” for not recording interviews at the FBI, the bureau has made it policy to interpret the presumption of recording in the narrowest possible way, while obliging agents to file 302s as a matter of course. DOJ policy notwithstanding, “FBI interviews with witnesses are rarely recorded,” says one prominent white-collar Washington, D.C., defense lawyer. “About 99 percent of the time agents take notes during the interview and then turn those notes into a 302.”

That 99 percent may be a slight exaggeration, but what is the real ratio of taped to typed interviews? If the bureau knows, it isn’t willing to share: “The FBI does not maintain statistical information about the aggregate number of electronic recordings or FD-302s prepared in a given window of time,” an FBI official told RealClearInvestigations.

Asked why 302s are still standard operating procedure, the bureau is coy. “The electronic recording of non-custodial interviews is not required,” the same FBI official said in an email exchange. But that covers a lot of suspects and witnesses, as any number of FBI targets can attest, including Michael Flynn. Although the current DOJ written guidelines call for video or audio recording of interviews of persons under arrest, it also includes this caveat: “Interviews in non-custodial settings are excluded from the presumption.” And “non-custodial” is an interesting term of art.

“There is a presumption that statements made by persons in FBI custody must be recorded,” the bureau instructs agents in the 2016 edition of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. But that leaves a lot of running room to interrogate people without cameras or recording devices. To the FBI, “custody” only applies “following arrest and prior to initial appearance when the arrestee is in a place of detention with suitable recording equipment.”

That means for those who have not yet been arrested when they are interviewed-- as was the case with Lt. Gen. Flynn -- FBI policy is to rely on 302s to memorialize what was said and done. The same holds true of those who have been arrested and then have been arraigned, which explains why the special counsel’s office and the FBI didn’t feel obliged to record any of their dozen interviews with Manafort.

The FBI does allow agents to consider recording non-custodial interviews, but requires “the interviewing employee” to consider a range of factors. One such factor is “[w]hether the interviewee’s own words and appearance (in video recordings) would help rebut any doubt about the meaning, context or voluntariness of his/her statement or confession raised by his/her age, mental state, educational level, or understanding of the English language; or is otherwise expected to be an issue at trial, such as to rebut an insanity defense; or may be of value to behavioral analysts.”

The other factors similarly focus on the question of whether a recording will help get a conviction rather than whether it will help get at the truth.

Recordings are not always perfect representations of what happened in interviews, either. (There is, for example, literature on how camera placement can affect viewers’ interpretations of a subject’s demeanor.) But electronic recording is clearly superior to the 302 process with its invitation to error and risk of baked-in bias. Yet, in a society where any and all of one’s movements are captured on videotape (just ask Jussie Smollett), the one situation in which there is likely not to be a camera running is in an official FBI interview.

What will it take to have the FBI give up its stubborn commitment to the scribble-and-type method of memorializing interviews? A decree from the attorney general or the president would likely get the job done. Or legislation from Capitol Hill, which controls the FBI’s funding. Concern about retaining the public’s confidence in the bureau certainly hasn’t been enough. Nor have humiliating courtroom defeats.

Noor Salman, second from right, with her lawyers. She was acquitted of lying to the FBI concerning the Orlando, Florida, nightclub massacre carried out by her husband.

Susan Clary via AP

A year ago, a jury in Florida acquitted Noor Salman of all charges against her in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The wife of Omar Mateen, the mass murderer who carried out the attack, Salman was charged by federal authorities with obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting her husband in the attack.

The Justice Department’s case was based almost solely on the confession FBI agents got Salman to sign after questioning her for 18 hours without a lawyer – and, crucially, as it turned out -- without a tape recorder. At the end of that interrogation, she signed a statement based on information fed to her by the two investigating FBI agents, a statement the agents wrote themselves. Some of that information would be disproven at trial, meaning that the prosecution relied on a “confession” that contained information fed to her by FBI agents that the government subsequently found out to be untrue. Moreover, at the trial, the agents contradicted each other on significant portions of what she said. These discrepancies might have been resolved by a tape or transcript of the interview, but of course, nothing of the kind existed.

“The FBI must join the rest of law enforcement and record all statements,” one of Salman’s attorneys, Charles Swift, said after the acquittal was announced. “It’s ridiculous if they don’t.”

The jury foreman agreed. In a statement issued afterward to the media, the foreman said the jury was convinced that Noor Salman did know what her husband was planning to do. But based on the incomplete method the FBI used to collect evidence, they couldn’t in good conscience convict her.

“I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman,” the foreman added, “as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements.

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End of ‘Avengers’ movies cloaked in high-level Hollywood secrecy

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo pose for a portrait while promoting the film
FILE PHOTO: Directors Joe (L) and Anthony Russo pose for a portrait while promoting the film "Avengers: Endgame" in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 6, 2019. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

April 22, 2019

By Rollo Ross

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co’s Marvel Studios went to great lengths to keep the plot of the movie “Avengers: Endgame” under wraps until its highly anticipated debut in theaters this week, the stars and directors said in interviews.

“Endgame” will offer the “grand conclusion” to a 22-movie story for six of Marvel’s Avengers — Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and the Hulk, according to Joe Russo, who directed the new film with his brother Anthony.

Marvel took extra steps to keep the plot secret during filming, and many of the movie’s A-list cast said they did not know how exactly the story would unfold.

“Endgame” begins rolling out in theaters around the world on Wednesday.

Brie Larson, who plays the newest big-screen hero, Captain Marvel, called “Endgame” the “most secretive movie possible.” For scenes where she had no lines, Larson said she would be called to the movie’s set without any script for guidance.

“I’d just have to be on set figuring it out,” she said, “which is very intimidating to the new kid.”

Mark Ruffalo, the actor who plays the Hulk, said he had not read a full script for the film and was unsure how it would end.

The predecessor to “Endgame,” last year’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” left audiences with an epic cliffhanger in which many of the superheroes appeared to turn to dust, and fans are anxious to see what’s next.

Captain America actor Chris Evans said he had faith that Marvel would put out a movie that will “end up being something pretty cool.”

“I have grown comfortable and confident that Marvel will make a movie we can be proud of,” Evans said.

(Reporting by Rollo Ross; Writing by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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Police secure the area where the body of a woman was discovered near the village of Orounta
Police secure the area where the body of a woman was discovered near the village of Orounta, Cyprus, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Stefanos Kouratzis

April 26, 2019

NICOSIA (Reuters) – Cypriot police searched on Friday for more victims of a suspected serial killer, in a case which has shocked the Mediterranean island and exposed the authorities to charges of “criminal indifference” because the dead women were foreigners.

The main opposition party, the left-wing AKEL, called for the resignation of Cyprus’s justice minister and police chief.

Police were combing three different locations west of the capital Nicosia for victims of the suspected killer, a 35-year-old army officer who has been in detention for a week.

The bodies of three women, including two thought to be from the Philippines, have been recovered. Police sources said the suspect had indicated the location of the third body, found on Thursday, and had said the person was “either Indian or Nepali”.

Police said they were searching for a further four people, including two children, based on the suspect’s testimony.

“These women came here to earn a living, to help their families. They lived away from their families. And the earth swallowed them, nobody was interested,” AKEL lawmaker Irene Charalambides told Reuters.

“This killer will be judged by the court but the other big question is the criminal indifference shown by the others when the reports first surfaced. I believe, as does my party, that the justice minister and the police chief should resign. They are irrevocably exposed.”

Police have said they will investigate any perceived shortcomings in their handling of the case.

One person who did attempt to alert the authorities over the disappearances, a 70-year-old Cypriot citizen, said his motives were questioned by police.

The bodies of the two Filipino women reported missing in May and August 2018 were found in an abandoned mine shaft this month. Police discovered the body of the third woman at an army firing range about 14 km (9 miles) from the mine shaft.

Police are now searching for the six-year-old daughter of the first victim found, a Romanian mother who disappeared with her eight-year-old child in 2016, and a woman from the Phillipines who vanished in Dec. 2017.

The suspect has not been publicly named, in line with Cypriot legal practice.

A public vigil for the missing was planned later on Friday.

(Reporting By Michele Kambas; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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An employee looks up at goods at the Miniclipper Logistics warehouse in Leighton Buzzard
FILE PHOTO: An employee looks up at goods at the Miniclipper Logistics warehouse in Leighton Buzzard, Britain December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson

April 26, 2019

LONDON, April 26 – British factories stockpiled raw materials and goods ahead of Brexit at the fastest pace since records began in the 1950s, and they were increasingly downbeat about their prospects, a survey showed on Friday.

The Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI) quarterly survey of the manufacturing industry showed expectations for export orders in the next three months fell to their lowest level since mid-2009, when Britain was reeling from the global financial crisis.

The record pace of stockpiling recorded by the CBI was mirrored by the closely-watched IHS Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index published earlier this month.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce, editing by David Milliken)

Source: OANN

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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks at the opening ceremony for the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Florence Lo

April 26, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Fewer than half of Malaysians approve of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, an opinion poll showed on Friday, as concerns over rising costs and racial matters plague his administration nearly a year after taking office.

The survey, conducted in March by independent pollster Merdeka Center, showed that only 46 percent of voters surveyed were satisfied with Mahathir, a sharp drop from the 71 percent approval rating he received in August 2018.

Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan coalition won a stunning election victory in May 2018, ending the previous government’s more than 60-year rule.

But his administration has since been criticized for failing to deliver on promised reforms and protecting the rights of majority ethnic Malay Muslims.

Of 1,204 survey respondents, 46 percent felt that the “country was headed in the wrong direction”, up from 24 percent in August 2018, the Merdeka Center said in a statement. Just 39 percent said they approved of the ruling government.

High living costs remained the top most concern among Malaysians, with just 40 percent satisfied with the government’s management of the economy, the survey showed.

It also showed mixed responses to Pakatan Harapan’s proposed reforms.

Some 69 percent opposed plans to abolish the death penalty, while respondents were sharply divided over proposals to lower the minimum voting age to 18, or to implement a sugar tax.

“In our opinion, the results appear to indicate a public that favors the status quo, and thus requires a robust and coordinated advocacy efforts in order to garner their acceptance of new measures,” Merdeka Center said.

The survey also found 23 percent of Malaysians were concerned over ethnic and religious matters.

Some groups representing Malays have expressed fear that affirmative-action policies favoring them in business, education and housing could be taken away and criticized the appointments of non-Muslims to key government posts.

Last November, the government reversed its pledge to ratify a UN convention against racial discrimination, after a backlash from Malay groups.

Earlier this month, Pakatan Harapan suffered its third successive loss in local elections since taking power, which has been seen as a further sign of waning public support.

Despite the decline, most Malaysians – 67 percent – agreed that Mahathir’s government should be given more time to fulfill its election promises, Merdeka Center said.

This included a majority of Malay voters who were largely more critical of the new administration, it added.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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The German share price index DAX graph at the stock exchange in Frankfurt
The German share price index DAX graph is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Staff

April 26, 2019

By Medha Singh and Agamoni Ghosh

(Reuters) – European shares slipped on Friday after losses in heavyweight banks and Glencore outweighed gains in healthcare and auto stocks, while investors remained on the sidelines ahead of U.S. economic data for the first quarter.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.1 percent by 0935 GMT, eyeing a modest loss at the end of a holiday-shortened week. Banks-heavy Italian and Spanish indices were laggards.

The banking index fell for a fourth day, at the end of a heavy earnings week for lenders.

Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland tumbled after posting lower first quarter profit, hurt by intensifying competition and Brexit uncertainty, while its investment bank also registered poor returns.

Weakness in investment banking also dented Deutsche Bank’s quarterly trading revenue and sent its shares lower a day after the German bank abandoned merger talks with smaller rival Commerzbank.

“The current interest rate environment makes it challenging for banks to make proper earnings because of their intermediary function,” said Teeuwe Mevissen, senior market economist eurozone, at Rabobank.

Since the start of April, all country indexes were on pace to rise between 1.8 percent and 3.4 percent, their fourth month of gains, while Germany was strongly outperforming with 6 percent growth.

“For now the current sentiment is very cautious as markets wait for the first estimates of the U.S. GDP growth which could see a surprise,” Mevissen said.

U.S. economic data for the first-quarter is due at 1230 GMT. Growth worries outside the United States resurfaced this week after South Korea’s economy unexpectedly contracted at the start of the year and weak German business sentiment data for April also disappointed.

Among the biggest drags on the benchmark index in Europe were the basic resources sector and the oil and gas sector, weighed down by Britain’s Glencore and France’s Total, respectively.

Glencore dropped after reports that U.S authorities were investigating whether the company and its subsidiaries violated certain provisions of the commodity exchange act.

Energy major Total said its net profit for the first three months of the year fell compared with a year ago due to volatile oil prices and debt costs.

Chip stocks in the region including Siltronic, Ams and STMicroelectronics lost more than 1 percent after Intel Corp reduced its full-year revenue forecast, adding to concerns that an industry-wide slowdown could persist until the end of 2019.

Meanwhile, healthcare, which is also seen as a defensive sector, was a bright spot. It was helped by French drugmaker Sanofi after it returned to growth with higher profits and revenues for the first-quarter.

Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES led media stocks higher after it maintained its full-year outlook on the back of the company’s Networks division.

Automakers in the region rose 0.4 percent, led by Valeo’s 6 percent jump as the French parts maker said its performance would improve in the second half of the year.

Continental AG advanced after it backed its outlook for the year despite reporting a fall in first-quarter earnings.

Renault rose more than 3 percent as it clung to full-year targets and pursues merger talks with its Japanese partner Nissan.

(Reporting by Medha Singh and Agamoni Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gareth Jones and Elaine Hardcastle)

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U.S. President Donald Trump hosts Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to his audience as he hosts Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

April 26, 2019

By Jan Wolfe and Richard Cowan

(Reuters) – The “i word” – impeachment – is swirling around the U.S. Congress since the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted Russia report, which painted a picture of lies, threats and confusion in Donald Trump’s White House.

Some Democrats say trying to remove Trump from office would be a waste of time because his fellow Republicans still have majority control of the Senate. Other Democrats argue they have a moral obligation at least to try to impeach, even though Mueller did not charge Trump with conspiring with Russia in the 2016 U.S. election or with obstruction of justice.

Whether or not the Democrats decide to go down this risky path, here is how the impeachment process works.

WHAT ARE GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT?

The U.S. Constitution says the president can be removed from office by Congress for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Exactly what that means is unclear.

Before he became president in 1974, replacing Republican Richard Nixon who resigned over the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford said: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor and author of a forthcoming book on the history of impeachment, said Congress could look beyond criminal laws in defining “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Historically, it can encompass corruption and other abuses, including trying to obstruct judicial proceedings.

HOW DOES IMPEACHMENT PLAY OUT?

The term impeachment is often interpreted as simply removing a president from office, but that is not strictly accurate.

Impeachment technically refers to the 435-member House of Representatives approving formal charges against a president.

The House effectively acts as accuser – voting on whether to bring specific charges. An impeachment resolution, known as “articles of impeachment,” is like an indictment in a criminal case. A simple majority vote is needed in the House to impeach.

The Senate then conducts a trial. House members act as the prosecutors, with senators as the jurors. The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court presides over the trial. A two-thirds majority vote is required in the 100-member Senate to convict and remove a president from office.

No president has ever been removed from office as a direct result of an impeachment and conviction by Congress.

Nixon quit in 1974 rather than face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were impeached by the House, but both stayed in office after the Senate acquitted them.

Obstruction of justice was one charge against Clinton, who faced allegations of lying under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Obstruction was also included in the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

CAN THE SUPREME COURT OVERTURN?

No.

Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday that he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats tried to impeach him. But America’s founders explicitly rejected making a Senate conviction appealable to the federal judiciary, Bowman said.

“They quite plainly decided this is a political process and it is ultimately a political judgment,” Bowman said.

“So when Trump suggests there is any judicial remedy for impeachment, he is just wrong.”

PROOF OF WRONGDOING?

In a typical criminal court case, jurors are told to convict only if there is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” a fairly stringent standard.

Impeachment proceedings are different. The House and Senate “can decide on whatever burden of proof they want,” Bowman said. “There is no agreement on what the burden should be.”

PARTY BREAKDOWN IN CONGRESS?

Right now, there are 235 Democrats, 197 Republicans and three vacancies in the House. As a result, the Democratic majority could vote to impeach Trump without any Republican votes.

In 1998, when Republicans had a House majority, the chamber voted largely along party lines to impeach Clinton, a Democrat.

The Senate now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who usually vote with Democrats. Conviction and removal of a president would requires 67 votes. So that means for Trump to be impeached, at least 20 Republicans and all the Democrats and independents would have to vote against him.

WHO BECOMES PRESIDENT IF TRUMP IS REMOVED?

A Senate conviction removing Trump from office would elevate Vice President Mike Pence to the presidency to fill out Trump’s term, which ends on Jan. 20, 2021.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)

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