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German lawmakers challenge deputy finance minister’s Goldman link in bank merger

FILE PHOTO: Outside view of the Deutsche Bank and the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt
FILE PHOTO: Outside view of the Deutsche Bank and the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

March 19, 2019

By John O’Donnell and Arno Schuetze

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German lawmakers on Monday criticized deputy finance minister Joerg Kukies and Goldman Sachs, alleging a conflict of interest in the U.S. investment bank advising state-backed Commerzbank on a possible merger with Deutsche Bank.

Kukies, who was formerly co-head of Goldman Sachs <GS.N> in Germany, left the Wall Street firm a year ago to become deputy German finance minister.

Kukies has since advocated a merger between Commerzbank <CBKG.DE> and Deutsche Bank <DBKGn.DE>, which unions warn could mean up to 30,000 job cuts, people familiar with the matter say.

Goldman Sachs is advising Commerzbank on the $28 billion plus deal deliberations, people familiar with the matter said.

“It’s a conflict of interest,” Fabio De Masi, a prominent leftist lawmaker in the German parliament, said, pointing to the state’s 15 percent stake in Commerzbank.

A spokesman for Kukies told Reuters there was no conflict of interest and that he had worked in the trading department at Goldman Sachs, which was “strictly separated” from bankers who advised on mergers.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

“In his 17 years at Goldman Sachs, Joerg Kukies exclusively worked for the sales and trading sector with no responsibility for the advisory/mergers and acquisitions section,” the spokesman for Kukies said.

Although confirmation of merger talks between Germany’s two largest banks, following months of speculation, has boosted their share prices, it has also triggered opposition and concerns over the impact on employment.

The issue is a highly emotive one in Germany and in its Tuesday edition, top-selling tabloid newspaper Bild raised a question mark over Kukie’s future in the government.

“When 30,000 jobs are on the line, the government must avoid the impression of a conflict of interest,” De Masi added.

This was echoed by Danyal Bayaz, a German parliamentarian and finance expert from the country’s Green party.

“In the financial crisis, we saw that government and finance were too interconnected. Ten years later, we don’t want to have the same. We want a strict separation from politics and industry,” Bayaz said.

“It is important to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest,” he added.

(Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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Carnival permanently closed after large brawl breaks out

A large brawl that broke out at a Pennsylvania fire department's annual carnival has spurred the major fundraiser to come to a permanent end.

Police say fights started breaking out around 9:30 p.m. Thursday after a large crowd had gathered at the Aston Township Fire Department's Spring Carnival. As more people became involved, police from several departments responded to help break up the brawl.

Five youths were charged with disorderly conduct, but it wasn't clear if anyone was injured.

The fire department issued a statement saying the carnival that was due to run through Saturday would instead be immediately shuttered. They also said no further carnivals would be held because the event has "turned into a landing spot for out-of-town troublemakers."

Source: Fox News National

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Jeff Bezos to retain 75 percent of couple’s Amazon stake after divorce

FILE PHOTO: 89th Academy Awards - Oscars Vanity Fair Party
FILE PHOTO: 89th Academy Awards - Oscars Vanity Fair Party - Beverly Hills, California, U.S. - 26/02/17 – Amazon's Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo

April 4, 2019

(Reuters) – MacKenzie Bezos, ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, will give 75 percent of their stake in the company and all voting rights to the billionaire entrepreneur.

MacKenzie Bezos will also relinquish all her interests in the Washington Post newspaper and rocket company Blue Origin, she said in a tweet https://twitter.com/mackenziebezos/status/1113851260040503296 on Thursday.

(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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Tree that began ‘weeping’ on Good Friday draws hundreds of worshipers over Easter weekend

Hundreds of people paused to pray underneath a gum tree after it began leaking water on Good Friday — a mysterious occurrence many claimed to be divine intervention.

The "weeping" tree that was dubbed the "fountain of youth" was located in a suburb of Perth, Australia.

At first, many believed the large tree stump was just leaking rainwater it collected after a heavy pour last week. But when the water continued to flow nonstop through Sunday, many questioned whether it was something altogether more miraculous.

'THANK GOD FOR THE MIRACLE': MAN WHO SURVIVED 47-STORY FALL FROM NYC SKYSCRAPER RECOUNTS STORY

Over the course of three days, locals and tourists alike flocked to the scene on McKimmie Road to witness the overflowing tree — some even drinking and bathing in the "holy" water, according to WAtoday.

"I’ve either found the fountain of youth or a burst water main in Palmyra," a WAtoday reporter tweeted, along with a 15-second clip of the dripping water.

Jacqui Bacich, who lives down the block from the gum tree, said she was surprised to see a man strip down to wash off in the tree water.

NEW ORLEANS CHURCH HAS GOOD FRIDAY GAS GIVEAWAY, PRAYERS AT THE PUMP

“What made it exciting yesterday a man decided to take all his clothes off and have a shower," she told 9News. “We’ve had hundreds of people stop here, we’ve even had people try to pray here.”

But after a lengthy investigation, the Water Corporation for Western Australia discovered the true source of the leak on Tuesday: a cracked water pipe.

The roots of the gum tree were squeezing a water pipe located about a foot below the dirt, according to 9News, causing it to crack and fill the hollow tree trunk with water. It's unclear when exactly the pipe burst, but the water didn't stop until a construction crew dug up the roots and replaced the broken pipe.

"It's still bizarre," a local identified as Jason told WAtoday, joking that officials should have turned it into a "full-time venue."

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Local officials said they'd continue to monitor the tree to ensure it's stable and there are no other piping issues.

Source: Fox News World

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Democratic Socialists of America endorses Bernie Sanders despite some members' reservations

The Democratic Socialists of America, whose membership ballooned after the 2016 candidacy of allied Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced its endorsement this week of the Vermont lawmaker in his second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Sanders is the only Democratic Socialist running for president in 2020, and the only socialist in American history with a serious chance of winning the presidency,” said the DSA in a press release. “Sanders’s platform — Green New Deal, Medicare for All, College for All, ending cash bail, strengthening unions, and a living wage — would transform American society by ending the worst forms of poverty and inequality while empowering workers to fight for even more.”

TOP 5 FAILED SOCIALIST PROMISES: FROM LENIN TO CHAVEZ 

While the endorsement comes as little surprise, some democratic socialists had raised concerns that Sanders is not socialist enough.

“Sanders 2016 revived the progressive left and turned DSA into the largest socialist organization in America in seventy years,” former Sanders campaign worker Dan La Botz wrote on the DSA website in opposition to a Sanders endorsement. “Flooded with young people angry at the Democratic Party, DSA became a radical, activist organization projecting the need for a total socialist transformation of America.”

“Sanders 2020 will not have the same effect,” La Botz wrote. “Bernie will not appear to be much different than other progressive Democrats and his campaign threatens to lead DSA deep into the Democratic Party.”

About a quarter of some 13,000 DSA members responding to the organization’s poll before the decision to back the senator said they did not support the endorsement of Sanders.

But other DSA followers, who have debated among themselves whether they should seek to gain influence within the Democratic Party or on their own under the socialist banner, see Sanders as their ticket to growth.

An apparent DSA member identified only as “Neal M.” wrote on the organization’s website: “DSA benefited hugely from being the only socialist organization to actively endorse Sanders in 2016. If we enthusiastically support Sanders in 2020, DSA could become a 100,000 member organization, with significantly greater capacity and resources.”

“The number one lesson we should learn from 2016 is that small socialist organizations must participate in the big movements that dominate national politics.”

Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist. He announced his Democratic presidential bid last month, saying his campaign is about “creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”

Sanders spoke to striking university workers in Los Angeles this week and complained about “a war being waged against the working people.”

The DSA puts its membership at more than 56,000 as of March. Its long-term mission is to run candidates as socialists, and not under the Democratic Party banner.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks as he kicks off his second presidential campaign, Saturday, March 2, 2019, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Sanders pledged to fight for "economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice." (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks as he kicks off his second presidential campaign, Saturday, March 2, 2019, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Sanders pledged to fight for "economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice." (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Ella Mahony of the DSA’s national political committee said in recent days that democratic socialists have a unique spotlight right now to further their anti-capitalist agenda and convert more Americans to socialism. Not backing Sanders, she said on the DSA website, would mean losing an opportunity to push their message on a national stage.

“The combination of the Sanders campaign and the teachers’ strike wave has made our job as socialists so much easier,” Mahony said. “Now, we can go into our campuses or workplaces and find people willing to identify not just as union activists or as socially conscious but as Democratic Socialists.”

Jon Torsch, center, wears a t-shirt promoting democratic socialism during a gathering of the Southern Maine Democratic Socialists of America at City Hall in Portland, Maine, Monday, July 16, 2018. On the ground in dozens of states, there is new evidence that democratic socialism is taking hold as a significant force in Democratic politics. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Jon Torsch, center, wears a t-shirt promoting democratic socialism during a gathering of the Southern Maine Democratic Socialists of America at City Hall in Portland, Maine, Monday, July 16, 2018. On the ground in dozens of states, there is new evidence that democratic socialism is taking hold as a significant force in Democratic politics. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

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“It is our duty to take full advantage of this moment and run out the radicalizing processes happening in the formal political sphere, in labor, and in society as far as they can go, she added. “Whatever the details of his program may mean to us, to the rest of the world, the Bernie Sanders campaign will be a referendum on socialist politics in the United States.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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How U.S. bike companies are steering around Trump’s China tariffs

Employees work on the production line of Kent bicycles at Shanghai General Sports Co., Ltd, in Kunshan
Employees work on the production line of Kent bicycles at Shanghai General Sports Co., Ltd, in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, China, February 22, 2019. Picture taken February 22, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song

February 26, 2019

By Rajesh Kumar Singh

(Reuters) – U.S.-based bicycle manufacturer Kent International has found a way around President Donald Trump’s tariffs – by shifting production out of China.

Like almost all U.S. bike makers, Kent has long relied on low-cost Chinese labor and parts, but Trump’s tariffs have so far inflated his costs by about $20 million annually.

“We have no choice but to – as rapidly as possible – look to move production away from China,” said Arnold Kamler, chief executive and majority owner of the Parsippany, N.J.-based bike company.

But Kent and other bike makers don’t have to move their manufacturing operations to the United States to avoid tariffs – nor do they have to stop using Chinese parts.

The company now plans to make bike frames in Cambodia while continuing to buy about half the components it will attach to those frames from producers in China. The resulting bicycles can enter the United States tariff-free because of U.S. rules that generally allow products to be designated as made-in-Cambodia as long as 35 percent of their costs for parts and labor are derived from that country.

Gaming the so-called rules of origin is a legal tariff-avoidance strategy being adopted by other major U.S. bike builders and explored across the industry, along with other manufacturing sectors, according to bike executives and supply chain consultants.

The shift in the $6 billion bike industry underscores how such rules allow manufacturers, despite tariffs, to continue sourcing large portions of their parts from China, undermining the Trump administration goal of boosting U.S. manufacturing employment. It further shows how quickly light manufacturers with less capital-intensive operations can move to Southeast Asia, which has seen a blitz of new investment since Trump launched his first tariffs last spring.

The bike industry plays a small role in what experts call the biggest shake-up in cross-border supply chains since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Companies in an array of industries – furniture, electronics, apparel, tires, vacuum cleaners, to name a few – are moving operations to Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries, often while continuing to use some suppliers in China. [L4N1XV1EX]

“This is a mid- to long-term issue that is not going to blow over in a year,” said Brett Weaver, a supply-chain consultant at KPMG. “More and more companies are beginning to take that perspective.”

The Trump administration’s office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) did not respond to requests for comment.

RISING CHINA LABOR COSTS

For many companies, tariffs proved the deciding factor in moves already under consideration because of rising labor costs in China. Three decades ago, when Kamler first offshored Kent’s production, labor in China cost him 20 percent less than in the United States. That gap has narrowed to 5 percent, he said.

Kent currently sources nearly 90 percent of the 3 million bicycles it sells to Target, Walmart and other U.S. retailers from China. But sales took a hit after it raised prices in response to tariffs last September.

Kent’s new factory in Cambodia is estimated to cost $20 million – an amount equivalent to one year of Kent’s increased costs from Trump’s 10 percent tariffs, which were added to existing duties. Trump’s tariffs were set to rise to 25 percent on March 2, but on Sunday he delayed the increase, citing progress in trade talks with China.

Another major brand, Specialized Bicycle Components, has moved production from China to Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan, expanding its existing Southeast Asia operations, said Bob Margevicius, a vice president of the Morgan Hill, California-based bike maker. Smaller producer Pure Bicycles, based in Los Angeles, is preparing a move to Vietnam, said Michael Fishman, president of the Los Angeles-based firm.

Industry officials and supply chain consultants say all American bike-makers are considering similar moves to shield their low-margin businesses from tariffs.

“Their supply chains are disrupted,” said Morgan Lommele, a director at PeopleForBikes, an industry association. “They are looking at other countries.”

‘A WAKE-UP CALL’

All manufacturers face challenges in moving their operations to Southeast Asia, including constraints on port capacity and labor. And no country can easily supplant China’s scale and production volumes for bicycles after three decades of the industry migrating there from the United States.

In the 1970s, U.S.-based firms made more than 15 million bicycles annually, compared to fewer than 500,000 now, according to the data presented by the industry to the USTR last year. And 94 percent of U.S. bike imports currently come from China, U.S. Census data shows.

(GRAPHIC: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ElEW2d)

China also provides more than 300 million components such as tires, tubes, seats and handlebars – accounting for about 60 percent total component imports.

Specialized finished moving all its production out of China by December but, like Kent, will continue to buy components from there.

Trump’s tariffs provided a “wake-up call for the industry,” said Margevicius, who also serves on the board of an industry trade group, the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association.

CHINA FIGHTS BACK

Chinese authorities are keen to protect manufacturing jobs, too. To cushion the impact of tariffs, China has increased export tax rebates and quickened tax refunds to exporters, Margevicius said. It is also offering companies cheap loans.

A more than 5 percent decline in the value of the Chinese Yuan last year, along with forecasts of further depreciation this year, are also helping blunt the impact of higher U.S. duties.

Kent is, nonetheless, moving ahead with plans to start manufacturing in Cambodia in September, and Kalmer said it will shift the bulk of its production there over the long term. Lower labor costs were a major deciding factor in addition to tariffs, said Kalmer, who remains skeptical that Beijing will sustain its tax incentives to lower-end manufacturers as its economy shifts towards services, consumption and high-tech production.

South East Asian countries are also wooing firms exploring options outside China.

Cambodia has allowed Kent to bring in short-term workers from China. Thailand is promoting itself as a regional manufacturing hub, offering incentives such as an exemption of up to eight years on corporate income tax for certain industries and exemptions on import duties for some raw materials.

Vietnam has finalized 16 free trade agreements including with the European Union and is a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, offering companies almost duty-free access to big bike markets from Germany to Australia.

LOGISTICAL HURDLES

Specialized’s Margevicius advises companies considering a move to look carefully at whether locations outside China have the required infrastructure to meet their needs.

Each of the two biggest ports in Vietnam, for instance, has only a sixth of the capacity of the port of Shanghai, and Cambodia lacks a deep-water port to accommodate larger vessels.

The rush of manufacturers moving operations to Southeast Asia will also bring new competition to hire and train workers from a labor force far smaller than that of China.

Kamler is not deterred. Kent’s Chinese partner has already bought a plot for the Cambodian factory, five miles from downtown Phnom Penh. Construction is scheduled to start next month and finish by June.

The company will initially hire and train up to 300 workers to start the production. It will also bring in 100 robots from its Chinese facilities for welding work.

“We have a big business in the United States,” Kamler said. “My priority 1,2,3 and 4 is to rescue my USA business.”

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; editing by Joseph White and Brian Thevenot)

Source: OANN

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ECB will ask Deutsche Bank to raise fresh funds for merger: source

FILE PHOTO: Headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) are illuminated with a giant euro sign at the start of the
FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) are illuminated with a giant euro sign at the start of the "Luminale, light and building" event in Frankfurt, Germany, March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo

April 4, 2019

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European Central Bank will ask Deutsche Bank to raise fresh funds before it gives the go-ahead for a merger with a state-backed rival, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The official said that Deutsche would be required to have the buffer, which has yet to be calculated, to cope should it experience setbacks while integrating Commerzbank if a deal is agreed.

The ECB, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank declined to comment.

(Reporting by Reporting by John O’Donnell, Hans Seidenstuecker, Tom Sims)

Source: OANN

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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