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NCAA roundup: No. 1 Duke barely holds off UCF

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-Second Round-Duke vs UCF
Mar 24, 2019; Columbia, SC, USA; Duke Blue Devils forward RJ Barrett (5) drives in while UCF Knights center Tacko Fall (24) defends during the second half in the second round of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at Colonial Life Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports

March 25, 2019

RJ Barrett scored off a rebound with 12 seconds remaining, and Duke made a final defensive stand to pull out a 77-76 victory against Central Florida in the NCAA Tournament’s East Region second round Sunday in Columbia, S.C.

Central Florida’s BJ Taylor missed a runner in the final seconds, and a tip-in attempt by Aubrey Dawkins barely rolled off, allowing top-seeded Duke to advance. Duke (31-5) will meet Virginia Tech on Friday night in the Sweet 16 in Washington, D.C.

Taylor made two free throws with 45.2 seconds to play for a 76-73 lead for ninth-seeded UCF (24-9).

After Zion Williamson missed a 3-pointer, Javin DeLaurier grabbed the offensive rebound. Williamson drove for a layup and was fouled with 14.4 seconds left, with UCF 7-foot-6 center Tacko Fall fouling out on the play. Williamson missed a chance for a three-point play by leaving the free throw short, but Barrett rebounded and laid it in to put Duke ahead.

EAST REGION

No. 4 Virginia Tech 67, No. 12 Liberty 58

Post player Kerry Blackshear Jr. scored 19 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead the Hokies over the Flames in San Jose, Calif.

Blackshear’s work inside helped offset the early hot shooting of the Flames (29-7), who went cold in the second half, going almost seven minutes without a basket until Georgie Pacheco-Ortiz’s 3-pointer brought Liberty within 59-54 with 2:24 left.

Virginia Tech (26-8) set a school record for victories.

SOUTH REGION

No. 2 Tennessee 83, No. 10 Iowa 77

Junior power forward Grant Williams scored six of his 19 points in overtime as the Volunteers blew a 25-point lead before posting a victory over Iowa at Columbus, Ohio.

Senior guard Admiral Schofield also scored 19 points for the Volunteers (31-5). Junior guard Lamonte Turner scored 15 points and junior point guard Jordan Bone added 14 for Tennessee, which never trailed.

Junior guard Jordan Bohannon scored 18 points and junior guard Isaiah Moss added 16 for the 10th-seeded Hawkeyes (23-12). Sophomore forward Luka Garza tallied 13 points and junior power forward Tyler Cook and freshman guard Joe Wieskamp added 11 apiece for Iowa, which shot 39 percent from the field and went 7 of 21 from 3-point range.

No. 1 Virginia 63, No. 9 Oklahoma 51

The Cavaliers advanced to their third Sweet 16 in six seasons with a win over the Sooners at Columbia, S.C.

Mamadi Diakite got the start for the Cavaliers (31-3) and provided a spark with a game-high 14 points and nine rebounds. Despite a 2-for-15 shooting performance from junior Kyle Guy, the Cavaliers got 12 points from Ty Jerome and 10 from De’Andre Hunter to make up for the lack of scoring.

Oklahoma (20-14) shot just 37 percent and was led by Christian James, who scored 13 points and pulled down five rebounds in his final game with the Sooners.

MIDWEST REGION

No. 1 North Carolina 81, No. 9 Washington 59

Luke Maye poured in 20 points as the Tar Heels defeated the Huskies in Columbus, Ohio.

The Tar Heels (29-6) were in control for most of the game, with freshmen Nassir Little’s 20 points and Coby White’s 17 points also providing a lift. North Carolina will face fifth-seeded Auburn in the Sweet 16 on Friday night in Kansas City, Mo.

Jaylen Nowell scored 12 points, while Noah Dickerson and Nahziah Carter each posted 10 points for Washington (27-9), which was hurt by 4-for-10 shooting on free throws.

WEST REGION

No. 3 Texas Tech 78, No. 6 Buffalo 58

Sophomore guard Jarrett Culver recorded 16 points and 10 rebounds as the Red Raiders crushed the Bulls at Tulsa, Okla.

Senior center Norense Odiase added 14 points and a career-best 15 rebounds for Texas Tech (28-6), which will face second-seeded Michigan in the Sweet 16 in Anaheim, Calif., on Thursday. Senior guard Matt Mooney and sophomore guard Davide Moretti had 11 points apiece and senior forward Tariq Owens had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Red Raiders.

Senior forward Nick Perkins registered 17 points and 10 rebounds off the bench for Buffalo (32-4), which scored its fewest points of the season. Senior guard CJ Massinburg added 14 points and junior guard Davonta Jordan had 13.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Barr forms ‘team’ to investigate the FBI’s Russia investigators; Sanders to release tax records

Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.
 
Developing now, Wednesday, April 10, 2019

BARR INVESTIGATING THE INVESTIGATORS: Attorney General William Barr has assembled a "team" to investigate the origins of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Fox News has learned ... Republicans repeatedly have called for a thorough investigation of the FBI's intelligence practices and the basis of the since-discredited Russian collusion narrative following the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

Meanwhile, Barr is expected to return to Capitol Hill Wednesday for the second of two days of hearings about the Justice Department's budget. However, like House lawmakers on Tuesday, members of the subpanel of the Senate Appropriations Committee are expected to focus on Barr's plan release a redacted version of the Mueller report. Barr said Tuesday a redacted version of the Mueller report would be made available "within a week."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP.

HOMELAND SECURITY SHAKEUP CONTINUES: President Trump's high-level overhaul of the Department of Homeland Security continued on Tuesday, with the announcement that DHS' acting deputy secretary is resigning amid a reported historic surge in illegal immigrants and asylum seekers at the border ... Claire Grady was technically the next in line to replace Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned Sunday. But Trump chose Kevin McAleenan, the head of Customs and Border Protection, as acting secretary.

BERNIE SANDERS, SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRE: 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has announced that he'll release 10 years of tax returns next Monday -- filings expected to show that the Democratic socialist made millions from book sales ... Sanders told the New York Times in an interview published on Tuesday that he hopes that his release will make President Trump more inclined to follow suit.

  • TUNE IN: 'America's Election Headquarters' Town Hall with Bernie Sanders on Monday, April 15, 6:30 p.m. ET

(Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)

LORI LOUGHLIN COULD FACE PRISON TIME: Actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, two of the 16 parents indicted on new fraud and money laundering charges in the college admissions cheating scandal, could face up to 40 years in prison—a maximum of 20 years for each of the charges, a report said ... 
The "Fuller House" star and her husband, along with 14 other parents, are being charged with a "second superseding indictment with conspiring to commit fraud and money laundering," the Department of Justice revealed in a statement to Fox News on Tuesday.

Last month, Loughlin and Giannulli were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud for allegedly paying $500,000 to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew recruits. (The young women did not play the sport.)

NETANYAHU APPEARS HEADED TOWARD RE-ELECTION: Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to be headed toward a historic fifth term as Israel's prime minister on Wednesday, with close-to-complete unofficial election results giving his right-wing Likud and other nationalist and religious parties a solid majority in parliament ... The outcome affirmed Israel's continued tilt to the right and further dimmed hopes of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Re-election will also give Netanyahu an important boost as he braces for the likelihood of criminal charges in a series of corruption scandals. - The Associated Press

THE SOUNDBITE

'UNBELIEVABLY DISHONEST' - "I think it's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip…That was unbelievably dishonest…I'm deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me." – Candace Owens, conservative commentator and communications director for Turning Point USA, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on online hate speech, accusing Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., of flagrantly distorting her comments on Hitler to smear President Trump and the Republican Party as a whole. (Click the image above to watch the full video.)

TODAY'S MUST-READS
Ocasio-Cortez claims climate change is driving migrant crisis.
Leslie Marshall: Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez are in a power struggle, with Pelosi winning.
Gregg Jarrett: Investigation into Trump-Russia hoax collusion will lead to criminal investigation.

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS
U.S. banks, in contrast to Wells Fargo, tout post-financial crisis improvements.
FBI indicts CEOs, COOs in $1.2B telemarketing scam that targeted Medicare recipients.
Friendly's closes 23 restaurants amid sagging sales.

STAY TUNED

On Fox News:

Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: Special guests include: Kellyanne Conway, special counselor to President Trump; U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Yale "blacklisting Christian organizations."

Special Report with Bret Baier, 6 p.m. ET: An exclusive interview with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

On Fox Business

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Special guests include: Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel; economist Stephen Moore; Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News senior judicial analyst; U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla.

Lou Dobbs Tonight, 7 p.m. ET: Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China."

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: "The Legacy and Faith of Justice Antonin Scalia" - Christopher Scalia, son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, discusses his father’s personal side and the new book he co-edited, “Antonin Scalia On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer.”  Jared Halpern, Fox News radio Capitol Hill correspondent and host of "From Washington" and Leslie Marshall, Fox News contributor on Attorney General William Barr's testimony on Capitol Hill about releasing a redacted Mueller report. Plus, commentary by Christopher Scalia.

Want the Fox News Rundown sent straight to your mobile device? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher.

The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 a.m. ET: The debate over Attorney General William Barr's decision to release a redacted version of the Mueller report and the latest in the 2020 presidential race will be discussed with U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.; John Yoo. former deputy assistant attorney general; Martha MacCallum, host of "The Story."

Benson & Harf, 6 p.m. ET: Co-hosts Guy Benson and Marie Harf will be discussing news of the day with "The Five's" Jesse Watters and the Israeli election.

#TheFlashback
2018: During five hours of questioning from a U.S. Senate panel, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg deflects accusations that he had failed to protect the personal information of millions of Americans from Russians intent on upsetting the U.S. election, though he concedes that Facebook needed to work harder to make sure the tools it creates are used in "good and healthy" ways.
1947: Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey purchases the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals.
1925: The F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "The Great Gatsby" is first published by Scribner's of New York.

Fox News First is compiled by Fox News' Bryan Robinson. Thank you for joining us! Have a good day! We'll see you in your inbox first thing Thursday morning.

Source: Fox News National

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China central bank has no intent to tighten or relax monetary policy: vice-governor

FILE PHOTO: Headquarters of the PBOC, the central bank, is pictured in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: Headquarters of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, is pictured in Beijing, China September 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

April 25, 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central bank has no intent to tighten or relax monetary policy, a vice governor said on Thursday, adding that its use of reverse repos or a medium-term lending facility (MLF) does not signal it has a loosening bias.

Liu Guoqiang, a People’s Bank of China vice-governor, made the above comments at a briefing in Beijing.

China’s prudent monetary policy is appropriate overall, and is neither tight nor loose, Sun Guofeng, another PBOC official, said at the same briefing.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Source: OANN

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India’s millions of young voters can swing national election

Young Indians could play a crucial role in the ongoing general election in the world's largest democracy.

With nearly two-thirds of India's population below 35, and more than 15 million first-time voters aged 18 and 19, young men and women have the power to swing the national vote in any direction.

Ambitious, aspirational and impatient for change, young voters — at least in India's capital — are less focused on issues such as caste and religion than older generations, according to interviews with The Associated Press.

They are interested, instead, on landing jobs after college, living in cleaner cities with breathable air, increasing women's safety and competing with the world's biggest economies.

Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be the favorite, riding a wave of Hindu nationalism that peaked after India's air force attacked an alleged militant base in Pakistan to avenge a suicide attack on an Indian security convoy that killed more than 40 soldiers in disputed Kashmir.

His main opponent, Congress party's Rahul Gandhi, hopes to revive the glory of India's grand old party that ruled the country for more than 50 years, since independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

Here are some of the views of young voters in New Delhi:

___

Mayank Thakur, 18, engineering student

"Unemployment is very high in India currently. India has a lot of engineers who haven't been able to develop their skills because there aren't enough jobs for them in India."

"Narendra Modi has provided a lot of facilities for the poor people of this country. In my home state of Uttar Pradesh, villages that were rarely lit now have electricity. Where food used to be cooked on firewood, he has given gas cylinders."

"India is now a very secure nation in the last five years. When Pakistan attacked us, Narendra Modi gave them a jaw-breaking reply."

___

Vardha Kharbanda, 20, psychology student:

"I am looking out for an issue that no government is actually talking about, that is pollution. I have been in Delhi for my entire life and my lungs are gone without ever smoking. So I might just die of lung cancer without touching a cigarette even once. Nobody is talking about pollution."

"No left and no right can actually run a secular and democratic nation that is multilingual and multicultural in nature. It cannot be done with a single ideology."

___

Arjun Parcha, 32, hospital supplies assistant:

"Nowadays, whoever comes into power is busy serving their own interests. Who is looking out for us? Nobody. They are only looking at filling their own pockets. What has happened? Every day we hear about fighting. One party blames the other for corruption, the other blames them back for corruption. There is no solution."

___

Jitesh Nagpal, 20, university student

"For me the biggest issue is job opportunities. Whichever party creates more jobs for the new industries will get my vote because I will have to start looking for jobs very soon."

"I don't care much about parties, but there is just one clear candidate for victory and that is Narendra Modi. I don't think we have a better option to lead the country."

"I haven't seen any other strong candidate. I don't trust Rahul Gandhi yet. Maybe my views about him will change in the future, but not right now."

___

Rajanvir Singh Luthra, 23, YouTube vlogger

"Whichever government comes to power, the first thing they should do is to look after the poor because the rate of poverty is very high in India. No doubt, we now have digital India, we have everything online, but do something for the poor people also."

"India is still not on top. We don't have basic facilities. If you go to a government hospital, you have to stand in long lines. You can only go in after waiting and filling forms. A lot of our police officers and other officers are corrupt. There is a lot of corruption in India."

___

Monika Dalal, 20, psychology student

"Women's safety is the major issue for me. People are talking a lot about it and there are slogans like 'Save girl child, educate girl child,' being launched, but I don't think these concepts are applied to the roots with practicality. I have been to the villages and seen how girls are treated. They are not even educated and if they do go to school, they are forced to marry right after completing grade 12."

"Modi has done a lot definitely to help us establish ourselves globally and even in the U.N. By him visiting different countries we are getting recognition there. And they are coming up with some impressive projects to start in India, which has happened because of Modi. So, I think we have really progressed."

___

Kavita Srivastava, 18, studying banking and financial services

"The biggest issue in Delhi is girls' safety, which is still not 100%."

"Girls should feel safe leaving their homes and going out at whatever time of the night."

"I don't think Rahul Gandhi is the best option. I too am in support of Narendra Modi. I think he has the potential to take India to those heights."

___

Ashutosh Kumar Singh, 24, charity worker:

"The issues that should be important aren't even being discussed. We don't see or hear about them. The issue should be education and increasing the level of education. Employment should be an issue. And they are working toward that, but it is not considered an important issue. Currently, the state of politics is so lowly in India that people are just busy in pointing fingers and avoiding key issues."

___

Mohammad Anjar, 18, engineering student

"At present only Narendra Modi is fit to run this country because they have done a tremendous amount of work in the last five years. The Modi government is taking the country forward. At least, that is what I hear."

"Everyone should cast their votes. We all sit at home and say 'This government is not working, that government is not working.' Get out of your homes and vote as it is an invaluable weapon."

___

Associated Press videojournalist Shonal Ganguly contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Trump nominates naval aviator as next Navy chief

President Donald Trump is nominating a naval aviator with extensive experience in budgeting and personnel reform to become the next officer to lead the Navy.

Navy Adm. Bill Moran, who piloted P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft during the Cold War, is currently the Navy's vice chief. If confirmed by the Senate, he would become the 32nd chief of naval operations and take over from Adm. John Richardson, who is retiring.

Trump nominated Vice Adm. Robert Burke, a submariner with experience on both attack and nuclear-armed vessels, to be the next vice chief of the Navy. He is currently the deputy for personnel and training.

Richardson called Moran an amazing leader who has been a central figure as the Navy transforms to fight other great powers around the globe.

Source: Fox News National

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At least 89 dead in Zimbabwe as Cyclone Idai leaves trail of destruction

Flooding caused by Cyclone Idai is seen in Chipinge
Flooding caused by Cyclone Idai is seen in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, March 16, 2019 in this still image taken from social media video obtained March 17, 2019. Tony Saywood via REUTERS

March 18, 2019

HARARE (Reuters) – At least 89 people have died in Zimbabwe after Cyclone Idai tore across the eastern and southern parts of the country, a government official said on Monday, creating a humanitarian crisis in a nation grappling with economic woes and a drought.

The scale of destruction is only becoming apparent as rescuers reach the most affected areas, near the border with Mozambique.

Chimanimani district has been cut off from the rest of the country by torrential rains and winds of up to 170 km per hour that swept away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power and communication lines.

“The number of confirmed deaths throughout the country is now 89,” Nick Mangwana, the secretary for ministry of information told Reuters via a text message.

Local officials say the body count is expected to rise.

The United Nations says more than 100 people have died in weeks of heavy rain and flooding in Mozambique and Malawi, where villages were left underwater.

Rescuers are struggling to reach people in Chimanimani, many of whom have been sleeping in the mountains since Friday, after their homes were flattened by rock falls and mudslides or washed away by torrential rains. Many families cannot bury the dead due to the floods.

The government has declared a state of disaster in areas affected by the storm, the worst to hit the country since Cyclone Eline devastated eastern and southern Zimbabwe in 2000.

The country of 15 million people is already suffering a severe drought that has wilted crops. A United Nations humanitarian agency says 5.3 million people will require food aid.

(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Source: OANN

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Microsoft turned down facial-recognition sales on human rights concerns

FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft sign is shown on top of the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft sign is shown on top of the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 16, 2019

By Joseph Menn

PALO ALTO (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp recently rejected a California law enforcement agency’s request to install facial recognition technology in officers’ cars and body cameras due to human rights concerns, company President Brad Smith said on Tuesday.

Microsoft concluded it would lead to innocent women and minorities being disproportionately held for questioning because the artificial intelligence has been trained on mostly white and male pictures.

AI has more cases of mistaken identity with women and minorities, multiple research projects have found.

“Anytime they pulled anyone over, they wanted to run a face scan” against a database of suspects, Smith said without naming the agency. After thinking through the uneven impact, “we said this technology is not your answer.”

Speaking at a Stanford University conference on “human-centered artificial intelligence,” Smith said Microsoft had also declined a deal to install facial recognition on cameras blanketing the capital city of an unnamed country that the nonprofit Freedom House had deemed not free. Smith said it would have suppressed freedom of assembly there.

On the other hand, Microsoft did agree to provide the technology to an American prison, after the company concluded that the environment would be limited and that it would improve safety inside the unnamed institution.

Smith explained the decisions as part of a commitment to human rights that he said was increasingly critical as rapid technological advances empower governments to conduct blanket surveillance, deploy autonomous weapons and take other steps that might prove impossible to reverse.

Microsoft said in December it would be open about shortcomings in its facial recognition and asked customers to be transparent about how they intended to use it, while stopping short of ruling out sales to police.

Smith has called for greater regulation of facial recognition and other uses of artificial intelligence, and he warned Tuesday that without that, companies amassing the most data might win the race to develop the best AI in a “race to the bottom.”

He shared the stage with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who urged tech companies to refrain from building new tools without weighing their impact.

“Please embody the human rights approach when you are developing technology,” said Bachelet, a former president of Chile.

Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw declined to name the prospective customers the company turned down.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Greg Mitchell and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Alex Jones – Info Wars

12:00 pm 4:00 pm



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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