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Tampa Bay Times Poll: Biden Huge Dem Favorite in Fla.

Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to dominate 2020 Democratic primary polls despite not being a declared candidate.

The latest affirmation from Democrats who say Biden should run is a Tampa Bay Times survey, which found 70 percent said Biden has the best chance of winning the Democratic primary in Florida, which takes place March 17, 2020. The next person on the list was Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who garnered roughly 10 percent support.

Other findings in the poll of almost 200 political operatives, lobbyists, fundraisers, political scientists, and other people with ties to Florida's political scene:

  • A plurality of 43 percent said Biden will earn the Democratic presidential nomination, with 23 percent saying it will go to Harris.
  • 16 percent said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will be selected to represent the party in the November 2020 election.
  • 75 percent said the primary in Florida will play a role in who earns the Democratic nomination.

"Joe Biden is the ONLY option that the Democrats have to appeal to moderates, independents, and disaffected Republicans who are sick of Trump," a Democrat wrote in the survey. "Joe Biden can appeal to every side of the spectrum and has the experience and qualifications that NO other Democrat running for the White House has, having actually served as vice president under the successful two-term run of the last Democrat in the White House, Barack Obama."

It was reported this week Biden is likely gearing up to announce his candidacy for president in the coming weeks.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Twitter not amused by long wait for Tesla earnings

FILE PHOTO: File photo of the Twitter logo displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE
FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

April 24, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter was ablaze on Wednesday with humorous commentary and speculation over why Tesla Inc’s first-quarter earnings release was so late. As of 5:05 p.m. ET (2105 GMT), one hour after the market close, the results still had not been released.

Here is a sampling of comments on Twitter:

“Tesla forgot to get Deepak’s password when he left and now they can’t release the earnings. 40 minute late and counting…” – @FredericLambert, referring to former Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja

“TSLA has sent one of the new flawless robotaxis to deliver the earnings report, apparently.” – @NickGiva

“Maybe Tesla switched to full self accounting and it works as well as their full self driving.” – @bgrahamdisciple

“TSLA forgot to pay their WebEx Conference call bill.” – @mackandcompany

“I’m imagining Elon in a huge fight with the board right now who’s trying to convince him that he has to release the #s.” – “@EternityStake

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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Pakistan FM's letter to UN warns of security deterioration

Pakistan's foreign minister has appealed to the U.N. Security Council to draw attention to Indian threats of force in the wake of the Pulwama suicide bombing that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers in disputed Kashmir.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi in a letter to the Security Council on Friday warned that the security situation in the region is deteriorating as India threatens to use force against Pakistan.

Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attack.

The Pulwama attack last week escalated tensions between the two nuclear-armed south Asian neighbors and India blames Pakistan. It was the worst attack on Indian forces since the start of the Kashmir insurgency in 1989.

Source: Fox News World

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Rep. Eric Swalwell Reacts To Mueller Report News

Scott Morefield | Reporter

Rep. Eric Swalwell reacted on Friday to news of the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation minus any additional indictments of President Donald Trump or anyone else connected to the Trump administration, campaign, or transition team.

Appearing on CNN’s “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer,” the California Democrat expressed his desire to “hear from Bob Mueller” himself, as well as the belief that the president will still have “indictments waiting for him” when he leaves office.

WATCH:

“It’s my personal view that the report will not be fully accepted by the American people until we hear from Bob Mueller,” Swalwell said.

After noting the “dozens of indictments” produced already and the work that has been “farmed off to other offices like the Southern District of New York,” Swalwell stated he would “accept the Mueller report if I hear it from Mr. Mueller, because I have respect for the rule as I know my colleagues do.”

“Do you accept the current Justice Department guideline that a sitting president of the United States cannot be indicted?” Blitzer asked. (RELATED: Dana Loesch Question On Gun Control Stops Eric Swalwell In His Tracks)

That’s their guidelines. I don’t accept that a president should escape criminal liability by being re-elected or running out the statute of limitations. What we will do, and we are working on this, we will put in place a law in Congress, and hopefully the Senate passes it too, which would say that the statute would not run if a president is not indicted because of DOJ policy. I don’t see how he does not have indictments waiting for him considering that he is individual one and considering the conduct that Michael Cohen talked about when he came to Congress and testified.

Follow Scott on Twitter

Source: The Daily Caller

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FAA meets with U.S. airlines, pilot unions on Boeing 737 MAX

FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, on a flight from Miami to New York City, comes in for landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, on a flight from Miami to New York City, comes in for landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York, U.S., March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

April 12, 2019

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration met for three hours on Friday with representatives from the three major U.S. airlines that fly now grounded Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and their pilots’ unions to discuss two fatal crashes and the path forward.

More than 300 Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes, one in Indonesia in October and one in Ethiopia last month.

Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell told participants “he wanted to know what operators and pilots of the 737 MAX think as the agency evaluates what needs to be done before the FAA makes a decision to return the aircraft to service,” the agency said in a statement.

At the meeting with American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co, the FAA discussed the preliminary reports from both crashes and Boeing’s proposals for a software upgrade and new pilot training, said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association which represents American’s pilots.

American Airlines said in a statement it was “confident in the direction the FAA is heading. We’ll continue to work collaboratively with the FAA, Boeing and the Allied Pilots Association in this process.”

Tajer said pilots were pleased with the “very good briefing” and said pilots need to be satisfied in the training and software upgrade. He said the FAA sought pilots’ input.

“We have to unground the confidence in this airplane,” Tajer told reporters outside FAA headquarters.

American and United have canceled flights through early June, while Southwest said Thursday it would remove its 34 737 MAX jets from its flying schedule through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.

Tajer said everyone is focused on getting the plane back in service safely. “We take off out watches and put the calendars in the drawer,” he said.

Boeing said it has reprogrammed software on the 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes. On April 1, Boeing said it delayed submitting the proposed revisions to the FAA for approval.

The FAA said the meeting covered a review of the publicly available preliminary findings of the investigations into the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents; an overview of anticipated software enhancements to an anti-stall system and, an overview of pilot training. Elwell said the meeting participants’ “operational perspective is critical input as the agency welcomes scrutiny on how it can do better.”

The agency is also convening a joint review with aviation regulators from China, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other countries.

Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector general’s office and a blue-ribbon panel are also reviewing the plane’s certification.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Source: OANN

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Caste rivals ally to beat ruling party in India’s state

Political archrivals in India's most populous state have stitched an inventive political alliance that fuses votes from the ancient caste system to take on the ruling Hindu nationalist party-led government.

The low-caste-dominated Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party, which holds sway among a section of so-called "backward" castes and Muslims, have decided to contest elections in vote-rich Uttar Pradesh state in a rainbow coalition headed by BSP President Mayawati.

The first test of this alliance takes place Sunday in Saharanpur, where Mayawati and SP President Akhilesh Yadav will hold their first election event, rallying support to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

In Uttar Pradesh, lower-caste people are 22% of the population, "backward" people are 45%, and 19% are Muslims. The remaining 14% are upper caste.

Source: Fox News World

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Who’s Really Behind the Green New Deal?

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The Green New Deal blueprint introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was crafted by three far-left organizations and is being pushed by a coalition of well-funded professional progressive groups and known leftist agitators.

Some of the organizations helping to promote the Green New Deal have ties to financing from billionaire George Soros and trace their roots to such radical groups as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez posted an 11-page Google document in the form of a nonbinding legislative resolution that has become the most authoritative version of the Green New Deal, a broad outline for the current conception of the socialist-style plan.

Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution, introduced along with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), has already been endorsed by more than 45 Democratic representatives. The deal received high-profile endorsements from Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders.

The Green New Deal seeks, as the New Yorker recently put it, “nothing less than a total overhaul of our national infrastructure.”

The utopian deal demands 100 percent of all buildings in the U.S. convert to clean energy, calls for the removal of all greenhouse gases from the entire atmosphere, and includes such non-“green” clauses as a federal jobs guarantee while protecting the right of all workers to organize and unionize.

It also pledges “affordable, safe and adequate housing” for “all people of the United States.”

The wealth-spreading deal aims to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”

Radical groups, Soros ties

The Green New Deal was crafted by Ocasio-Cortez along with three groups — the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats and a group calling itself New Consensus.

The New Yorker reported:

The document was written over a single December weekend by the staff of the freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three like-minded progressive groups, none of which existed two years ago: the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots climate organization; the Justice Democrats, which recruits and supports progressive candidates; and an upstart policy shop called the New Consensus.

Besides helping to write the deal text, the Sunrise Movement has been the central progressive organization lobbying the Democratic Party to implement the Green New Deal.

Sunrise markets itself as an “army of young people” seeking to “make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.”

Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash described his organization’s expansive goals for 2020: “We, along with our partners, are going to be attempting to build the largest youth political force this country has ever seen.” Markey invited Prakash to be his guest at President Trump’s State of the Union address two weeks ago.

Sunrise was in part inspired by the activism of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and the radical immigration group United We Dream.

Sunrise took the national spotlight last month when Ocasio-Cortez joined some two-hundred of the movement’s protesters to temporarily occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office to peddle the Green New Deal. Sunrise engaged in that direct action campaign alongside Justice Democrats.

In December, Sunrise said that it raisedless than one million dollars, mostly from foundations and grassroots donors. It is not known how much Sunrise has since raised.

Inside Philanthropy reported on donations to Sunrise from the Rockefeller Family Fund:

The group raised just under $1 million in 2018 between its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, and received early support from a set of core funders that have since stuck with it. Wallace Global Fund, which was instrumental in the fossil fuel divestment campaign, funds Sunrise, as do the Rockefeller Family Fund (one of the smaller foundations associated with the oil family), and the Winslow Foundation, run by Wren Winslow Wirth, who is married to former politician Tim Wirth. Institutional funders made up about 55 percent of its 2018 budget, with 35 percent coming from individual donors, and the rest from nonprofit partners.

To promote the deal, Sunrise sponsored an activist campaign called “Operation Green New Deal Blitz.” Co-sponsors with Sunrise include 350.org, Organic Consumers Association, People’s Action, CPD Action and Justice Democrats.

CPD Action is led by Ana Maria Archila, one of the two women who infamously confronted Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator prior to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Archila was a guest of Ocasio-Cortez for Trump’s State of the Union.

Archila serves as co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and maintains the same position as the group’s activist arm, the Center for Popular Democracy Action.

CPD, which is advocating the Green New Deal, is heavily financed by billionaire George Soros. In October 2014, literaturethat was part of a CPD event listed Soros’s Open Society Foundations as one of CPD’s “three biggest funders.” The Foundations provided the CPD with $130,000 in 2014 and $1,164,500 in 2015,tax documents show. In 2016, Soros’s Open Society Policy Center provided$705,000 to the Center for Popular Democracy’s Action Fund.

CPD is highly involved in anti-Trump activism. In May 2017, CNN reported that the Center for Popular Democracy Action fund unveiled an “$80 million effort to coordinate the work of dozens of smaller progressive groups from around the country” as part of what the news network characterized as the anti-Trump “resistance” movement.

People’s Action, another Sunrise partner pushing the Green New Deal, is a mergerof a group that previously went by the name of National People’s Action. National People’s Action was also fundedby Soros to the tune of $1.2 million and reportedly helped to train protesters for the Occupy Movement, which was also close to Soros funding. The Washington Times previously reported that Soros donated to People’s Action itself.

350.org, which is aiding Sunrise in pushing the Green New Deal, has disclosed a donation from the Tides Foundation. Tides, in turn, has been financed by Soros and has been a donor partner of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

Also forming the backbone of advocacy for the Green New Deal are the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Sierra has received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Greenpeace has been funded by the Soros-financed Tides Foundation. Tides also funds the Sierra Club.

The Green New Deal, meanwhile, is viewed in progressive activist circles as taking the mantle from something called the Leap Manifesto, a so-called clean energy plan co-authored by radical activist and author Naomi Klein.

Leap was initiated by the Tides-funded 350.org as well as Black Lives Matter-Toronto. Leaked documents from Soros’s Open Society Foundations previously disclosed donations to Black Lives Matter.

 ‘Democratic socialist party-within-a-party’

On its website, meanwhile, Sunrise advertises its partnership with Justice Democrats, with the two groups working together with Ocasio-Cortez to craft the Green New Deal.

Justice Democrats backed the Congressional campaign of Ocasio-Cortez when she was largely unknown and the two are closely linked. According to reports, it was Justice Democrats that originally recruited Ocasio-Cortez to run in the first place.

Waleed Shahid, Justice Democrats’ communications director, reportedlyworked on Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign prior to joining the group. Justice Democrats was co-founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, who serves as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.

Justice Democrats does not hide its socialist ideology, with Shahid tellingVox.com the organization seeks to nudge the Democratic Party toward democratic socialism:

Shahid describes it as a “social democratic or democratic socialist party-within-a-party,” arguing that the vicissitudes of the US party system force people like him to share a party with people like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who, in a European-style proportional system, would simply inhabit different political blocs. The point, however, is not to displace the Democrats but to change them.

Justice Democrats is looking to push far-left candidates in largely uncompetitive local races, and it plans to use support for the Green New Deal as a bellwether for possible Democratic primary challenges from the far-left.

“We’re going to recruit Democratic primary challengers for House races in 2020 who will fight with us,” statedAlexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats. “And we’ll keep putting pressure on Democrats in Congress and those running for President in 2020 to support the Green New Deal.”

One Justice Democrats founder was Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks. He resigned from the group after old blog posts surfaced that were out of step with Justice Democrats’ ideology, with some of the posts appearing to be sexist.

Uygur’s The Young Turks is a member of The Media Consortium, a network of far-left media organizations that is reportedlyfunded by Soros.

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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.

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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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Joe Biden may have just stepped into the 2020 ring, but he’s wasted no time in throwing punches at President Trump.

Former Vice President Biden appeared on “The View” Friday in his first interview since officially announcing he is running for the White House on Thursday.

After batting away a softball opening question from host Joy Behar about why he took so long to enter the race, the ex-VP delivered what is likely to be his campaign’s major message.

Asked about the comment in his announcement that a battle is underway for “the soul of this nation,” Biden replied: “What I mean by that is we are not — this is not who we are the way we’re treating people. It’s not who we are as a nation when we’re talking about things like the reason for your problem is the other.

JOE BIDEN’S SENIOR ADVISER IN 2016: ‘WE DON’T NEED WHITE PEOPLE LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RIGHT NOW’

“It really is what I said and I really mean it and I wrote an article at the time in “The Atlantic” magazine when Charlottesville happened. This is not who we are. It’s about decency, honor, including everyone. The idea to compare these racists and not condemn them. Neo-Nazis — I don’t ever remember that happening in an administration in well over 100 years.

“I found myself thinking — by the way I travel around the world a lot as vice president and since then I have as well. The rest of the world — I mean, they look at us like my god — what happened to America?”

Behar then asked Biden how he plans to win over “blue-collar voters, a group that Trump won.”

“By making the case that we have to restore dignity to work. Think about this. The way we treat ordinary hard-working Americans who are middle class and working class people fighting to get in the middle class is we treat them like they’re a means to an end as opposed to an ends to themselves,” Biden said.

TRUMP ASSESSES 2020 DEMS; TAKES SWIPES AT BIDEN, SANDERS; DISMISSES HARRIS, O’ROURKE; SAYS HE’S ROOTING FOR BUTTIGIEG

“Go out. When’s the last time we went out and thanked the guy who kept the sewer from overflowing into your basement. What about the woman up on a bucket reconnecting a connection?

“Think about what we don’t do guys. It’s all been about dividing. There’s a real opportunity, incredible opportunity if we just treat each other with more decency.

“My dad had an expression. He said, ‘Joey, a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, it’s about your place in the community, it’s about your place in society and your self-worth. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say it’s going to be okay and mean it.’

“Think about how many people can’t do that today. This president has done nothing to help that group.”

BIDEN VOWS THAT ‘AMERICA IS COMING BACK,’ SPARKING ‘MAGA’ COMPARISONS

Biden’s appearance came after President Trump took a swipe at him in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

“I think we are calling him ‘Sleepy Joe’ ’cause I’ve known him for a while. Is he a pretty sleepy guy? He won’t be able to deal with [Chinese] President Xi, I will tell you. That’s a different level of energy and, frankly, intelligence. So I sort refer to him as ‘Sleepy Joe.’ A lot of people wanted me to change the word ‘sleepy’ to something else that rhymes with it,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “I thought it was too nasty.

“He’s not going to be able to do the job.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Biden officially announced his candidacy in a video Thursday morning, going directly after Trump.

“If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen,” Biden said in the video.

Source: Fox News Politics

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