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Many of CNN’s national security analysts have undisclosed ties to oppressive Qatari regime

Several of the so-called national security experts at CNN that you see on television every night have direct links to the nation of Qatar, a terror-funding, Islamist enclave in the Middle East that has placed itself on the warpath against America’s most important regional allies.

But you would never know about these connections, because none of the CNN regulars disclose their financial and/or institutional ties to Qatar when they appear on the airwaves. And off air, they are also not forthcoming about their Qatar-backed connections. Even when it comes to discussing issues where they have a clear conflict of interest, such as commenting on Israeli, Saudi, or UAE affairs, these CNN contributors have no issue going to bat against Qatar’s rivals, while never mentioning that their editorial freedom is restricted or that they are personally compromised.

These four CNN regulars, two of whom are full-time employees, double as Qatar-tied propagandists, but you would never know it if you only watched CNN.

Ali Soufan

A CNN regular who was prominently featured in the network’s anti-Saudi Arabia documentary, Ali Soufan is the executive director of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS), which is based in Doha and funded by the Qatari regime. Oddly, the leadership roster at the state-controlled Qatari institution is almost identical to his U.S.-based Soufan Group.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Soufan has a “personal relationship” with the top leadership of Qatar.


CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour recently asked James Comey if the FBI should have “stopped” citizens from chanting “Lock her up!” at Trump campaign events. Paul Jospeh Watson discusses the tyranny being pushed by MSM fake news outlets.

Soufan, like his Qatar-backed colleagues, frequently rails against the Saudis, Qatar’s top rival, for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. He has also pushed debunked conspiracy theories about Saudi Arabia hacking into the personal information of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Mehdi Hasan

CNN regular Mehdi Hasan is a longtime presenter for Al Jazeera, the powerful Doha-controlled state media entity that was the favorite network of deceased al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Hasan’s employer pushes out a steady stream of pro-Islamist, anti-Semitic propaganda. As a state-controlled institution, its founding and continuing purpose is the advancement of Qatar’s national interests.

“Mr. Hasan works for al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned media enterprise that advances the interests of the state and its royal family. When he speaks, he’s no less a government spokesman than Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Sanders,” explained David Reaboi of the Security Studies Group in a Washington Times column last week.

“But the government he represents — to millions of unsuspecting American viewers — has long promoted the Muslim Brotherhood, funds the bloodthirsty designated terror group Hamas, has helped al Qaeda and the Taliban fundraise, and is relentlessly hostile to American interests,” he adds.

Juliette Kayyem

Kayyem, a CNN national security analyst, is a board member of the the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), a front group controlled by Qatar that is an influence operation to secure and defend Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid. Kayyem has regularly spoken on behalf of the organization and has been a media point of contact for the shadowy group. She has not been forthcoming about the reality that the ICSS is a Doha-controlled institution. A 2015 flyer from the group presents Kayyem as part of a group of “ICSS spokespeople” who can answer questions about a forthcoming two-day summit.

The leader of ICSS — which again, claims to be a sports-promoting outfit — is Mohammed Hanzab, who has a background as an intelligence and defense specialist in the Qatari military. Hanzab previously served as the president of Ali Soufan’s QIASS.

Kayyem regularly takes to the airwaves to bash Qatar’s rivals and has transformed her social media accounts into a one-stop shop for anti-Saudi Arabia talking points. When discussing issues involving Middle East politics, Kayyem does not disclose that she is on the board of a state-run Qatari institution.

Peter Bergen

Unlike the other individuals on this list, lead CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen does not appear to have a direct link to a Qatari state institution. However, Bergen, a regular visitor to the tiny, energy-rich nation, pushes blatant pro-Qatar agitprop when it comes to Middle East affairs.

Writing from Doha in November, in a piece that reads like propaganda from a state-run Qatari news site, Bergen commented that “Qatar looks like a far more natural ally for the United States than the Saudis.”

The CNN employee frequently lectures at Qatari-funded institutions such as Georgetown University Qatar. And last year, he moderated a panel at the Doha Forum, which is held under the auspices of the Qatari regime. Bergen’s bio states that he is a professor of practice at Arizona State University, which has the largest number of Qatari students at any U.S. university, many of whom are sponsored by Qatari state institutions, including its defense ministry. Additionally, Arizona State is among the top recipients of Qatari funding to U.S. universities.

CNN has not responded to a request for comment.

Source: InfoWars

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Brexit delay request will be rejected if no guarantees of deal success: France

Informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Bucharest
FILE PHOTO: French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian speaks to the media during the informal meeting of the European Union foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania, January 31, 2019. Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS

March 20, 2019

PARIS (Reuters) – Britain’s request for a delay to Brexit will be rejected by the EU if Prime Minister Theresa May cannot provide sufficient guarantees that her parliament will approve the divorce deal she negotiated, France’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The French stance was markedly tougher in tone than the public rhetoric out of Berlin, where Germany’s foreign minister said only that an orderly British departure from the European Union would solve the Brexit turmoil.

May asked for a three-month delay to Brexit on Wednesday to buy time to get her twice-rejected departure deal through parliament. Her request came just nine days before Britain is formally due to leave the EU, the latest twist in more than two years of negotiations that have left British politics in chaos.

“A situation in which Mrs May was not able to present to the European Council sufficient guarantees of the credibility of her strategy would lead to the extension request being dismissed and opting for a no-deal exit,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told the French National Assembly.

A senior official in President Emmanuel Macron’s office said May had requested a “technical extension”. This suggested that approval would be conditional on the British parliament ratifying the withdrawal agreement negotiated by May.

Any extension has to be approved by all 27 EU members remaining in the bloc.

In recent weeks, Germany has appeared to adopt a more conciliatory stance. Paris and Berlin are discussing their response to May’s delay request, a source familiar with the diplomatic effort said, with Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel due to meet on Thursday in Brussels, on the sidelines of an EU summit.

Speaking in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he expected EU leaders to make a decision on how to proceed with May’s request at that summit.

“We’d like to know where it leads,” Maas told a news conference in Berlin. “We’ve always said that if the (European) Council has to decide on a deadline extension for Britain, then we’d like to know why and what for.”

(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Richard Lough and Kevin Liffey)

Source: OANN

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What Scientists Found After Sifting Through Dust in the Solar System

Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too.

But when the dust settles in the solar system, it’s often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity tugs dust into place around the Sun, as it drifts by on its way to the center of the solar system.

The dust consists of crushed-up remains from the formation of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago — rubble from asteroid collisions or crumbs from blazing comets. Dust is dispersed throughout the entire solar system, but it collects at grainy rings overlying the orbits of Earth and Venus, rings that can be seen with telescopes on Earth. By studying this dust — what it’s made of, where it comes from, and how it moves through space — scientists seek clues to understanding the birth of planets and the composition of all that we see in the solar system.

Two recent studies report new discoveries of dust rings in the inner solar system. One study uses NASA data to outline evidence for a dust ring around the Sun at Mercury’s orbit. A second study from NASA identifies the likely source of the dust ring at Venus’ orbit: a group of never-before-detected asteroids co-orbiting with the planet.

“It’s not every day you get to discover something new in the inner solar system,” said Marc Kuchner, an author on the Venus study and astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This is right in our neighborhood.”

Another Ring Around the Sun

Guillermo Stenborg and Russell Howard, both solar scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did not set out to find a dust ring. “We found it by chance,” Stenborg said, laughing. The scientists summarized their findings in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal on Nov. 21, 2018.

They describe evidence of a fine haze of cosmic dust over Mercury’s orbit, forming a ring some 9.3 million miles wide. Mercury — 3,030 miles wide, just big enough for the continental United States to stretch across — wades through this vast dust trail as it circles the Sun.

Ironically, the two scientists stumbled upon the dust ring while searching for evidence of a dust-free region close to the Sun. At some distance from the Sun, according to a decades-old prediction, the star’s mighty heat should vaporize dust, sweeping clean an entire stretch of space. Knowing where this boundary is can tell scientists about the composition of the dust itself, and hint at how planets formed in the young solar system.

So far, no evidence has been found of dust-free space, but that’s partly because it would be difficult to detect from Earth. No matter how scientists look from Earth, all the dust in between us and the Sun gets in the way, tricking them into thinking perhaps space near the Sun is dustier than it really is.

Stenborg and Howard figured they could work around this problem by building a model based on pictures of interplanetary space from NASA’s STEREO satellite — short for Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory.

Ultimately, the two wanted to test their new model in preparation for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which is currently flying a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, swinging closer and closer to the star over the next seven years. They wanted to apply their technique to the images Parker will send back to Earth and see how dust near the Sun behaves.

Scientists have never worked with data collected in this unexplored territory, so close to the Sun. Models like Stenborg and Howard’s provide crucial context for understanding Parker Solar Probe’s observations, as well as hinting at what kind of space environment the spacecraft will find itself in — sooty or sparkling clean.

Two kinds of light show up in STEREO images: light from the Sun’s blazing outer atmosphere — called the corona — and light reflected off all the dust floating through space. The sunlight reflected off this dust, which slowly orbits the Sun, is about 100 times brighter than coronal light.

“We’re not really dust people,” said Howard, who is also the lead scientist for the cameras on STEREO and Parker Solar Probe that take pictures of the corona. “The dust close to the Sun just shows up in our observations, and generally, we have thrown it away.” Solar scientists like Howard — who study solar activity for purposes such as forecasting imminent space weather, including giant explosions of solar material that the Sun can sometimes send our way — have spent years developing techniques to remove the effect of this dust. Only after removing light contamination from dust can they clearly see what the corona is doing.

The two scientists built their model as a tool for others to get rid of the pesky dust in STEREO — and eventually Parker Solar Probe — images, but the prediction of dust-free space lingered in the back of their minds. If they could devise a way of separating the two kinds of light and isolate the dust-shine, they could figure out how much dust was really there. Finding that all the light in an image came from the corona alone, for example, could indicate they’d found dust-free space at last.

Mercury’s dust ring was a lucky find, a side discovery Stenborg and Howard made while they were working on their model. When they used their new technique on the STEREO images, they noticed a pattern of enhanced brightness along Mercury’s orbit — more dust, that is — in the light they’d otherwise planned to discard.

“It wasn’t an isolated thing,” Howard said. “All around the Sun, regardless of the spacecraft’s position, we could see the same five percent increase in dust brightness, or density. That said something was there, and it’s something that extends all around the Sun.”

Scientists never considered that a ring might exist along Mercury’s orbit, which is maybe why it’s gone undetected until now, Stenborg said. “People thought that Mercury, unlike Earth or Venus, is too small and too close to the Sun to capture a dust ring,” he said. “They expected that the solar wind and magnetic forces from the Sun would blow any excess dust at Mercury’s orbit away.”

With an unexpected discovery and sensitive new tool under their belt, the researchers are still interested in the dust-free zone. As Parker Solar Probe continues its exploration of the corona, their model can help others reveal any other dust bunnies lurking near the Sun.

Asteroids Hiding in Venus’ Orbit

This isn’t the first time scientists have found a dust ring in the inner solar system. Twenty-five years ago, scientists discovered that Earth orbits the Sun within a giant ring of dust. Others uncovered a similar ring near Venus’ orbit, first using archival data from the German-American Helios space probes in 2007, and then confirming it in 2013, with STEREO data.

Since then, scientists determined the dust ring in Earth’s orbit comes largely from the asteroid belt, the vast, doughnut-shaped region between Mars and Jupiter where most of the solar system’s asteroids live. These rocky asteroids constantly crash against each other, sloughing dust that drifts deeper into the Sun’s gravity, unless Earth’s gravity pulls the dust aside, into our planet’s orbit.

At first, it seemed likely that Venus’ dust ring formed like Earth’s, from dust produced elsewhere in the solar system. But when Goddard astrophysicist Petr Pokorny modeled dust spiraling toward the Sun from the asteroid belt, his simulations produced a ring that matched observations of Earth’s ring — but not Venus’.

This discrepancy made him wonder if not the asteroid belt, where else does the dust in Venus’ orbit come from? After a series of simulations, Pokorny and his research partner Marc Kuchner hypothesized it comes from a group of never-before-detected asteroids that orbit the Sun alongside Venus. They published their work in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 12, 2019.

“I think the most exciting thing about this result is it suggests a new population of asteroids that probably holds clues to how the solar system formed,” Kuchner said. If Pokorny and Kuchner can observe them, this family of asteroids could shed light on Earth and Venus’ early histories. Viewed with the right tools, the asteroids could also unlock clues to the chemical diversity of the solar system.

Because it’s dispersed over a larger orbit, Venus’ dust ring is much larger than the newly detected ring at Mercury’s. About 16 million miles from top to bottom and 6 million miles wide, the ring is littered with dust whose largest grains are roughly the size of those in coarse sandpaper. It’s about 10 percent denser with dust than surrounding space. Still, it’s diffuse — pack all the dust in the ring together, and all you’d get is an asteroid two miles across.

Using a dozen different modeling tools to simulate how dust moves around the solar system, Pokorny modeled all the dust sources he could think of, looking for a simulated Venus ring that matched the observations. The list of all the sources he tried sounds like a roll call of all the rocky objects in the solar system: Main Belt asteroids, Oort Cloud comets, Halley-type comets, Jupiter-family comets, recent collisions in the asteroid belt.

“But none of them worked,” Kuchner said. “So, we started making up our own sources of dust.”

Perhaps, the two scientists thought, the dust came from asteroids much closer to Venus than the asteroid belt. There could be a group of asteroids co-orbiting the Sun with Venus — meaning they share Venus’ orbit, but stay far away from the planet, often on the other side of the Sun. Pokorny and Kuchner reasoned a group of asteroids in Venus’ orbit could have gone undetected until now because it’s difficult to point earthbound telescopes in that direction, so close to the Sun, without light interference from the Sun.

Co-orbiting asteroids are an example of what’s called a resonance, an orbital pattern that locks different orbits together, depending on how their gravitational influences meet. Pokorny and Kuchner modeled many potential resonances: asteroids that circle the Sun twice for every three of Venus’ orbits, for example, or nine times for Venus’ ten, and one for one. Of all the possibilities, one group alone produced a realistic simulation of the Venus dust ring: a pack of asteroids that occupies Venus’ orbit, matching Venus’ trips around the Sun one for one.

But the scientists couldn’t just call it a day after finding a hypothetical solution that worked. “We thought we’d discovered this population of asteroids, but then had to prove it and show it works,” Pokorny said. “We got excited, but then you realize, ‘Oh, there’s so much work to do.’”

They needed to show that the very existence of the asteroids makes sense in the solar system. It would be unlikely, they realized, that asteroids in these special, circular orbits near Venus arrived there from somewhere else like the asteroid belt. Their hypothesis would make more sense if the asteroids had been there since the very beginning of the solar system.

The scientists built another model, this time starting with a throng of 10,000 asteroids neighboring Venus. They let the simulation fast forward through 4.5 billion years of solar system history, incorporating all the gravitational effects from each of the planets. When the model reached present-day, about 800 of their test asteroids survived the test of time.

Pokorny considers this an optimistic survival rate. It indicates that asteroids could have formed near Venus’ orbit in the chaos of the early solar system, and some could remain there today, feeding the dust ring nearby.

The next step is actually pinning down and observing the elusive asteroids. “If there’s something there, we should be able to find it,” Pokorny said. Their existence could be verified with space-based telescopes like Hubble, or perhaps interplanetary space-imagers similar to STEREO’s. Then, the scientists will have more questions to answer: How many of them are there, and how big are they? Are they continuously shedding dust, or was there just one break-up event?

Dust Rings Around Other Stars 

The dust rings that Mercury and Venus shepherd are just a planet or two away, but scientists have spotted many other dust rings in distant star systems. Vast dust rings can be easier to spot than exoplanets, and could be used to infer the existence of otherwise hidden planets, and even their orbital properties.

But interpreting extrasolar dust rings isn’t straightforward. “In order to model and accurately read the dust rings around other stars, we first have to understand the physics of the dust in our own backyard,” Kuchner said. By studying neighboring dust rings at Mercury, Venus and Earth, where dust traces out the enduring effects of gravity in the solar system, scientists can develop techniques for reading between the dust rings both near and far.



Here’s another “study” used to push an divisive narrative.

Source: InfoWars

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Uber nears investment deal for self-driving car unit: WSJ

FILE PHOTO: Uber sign is seen on a car in New York
FILE PHOTO: Uber sign is seen on a car in New York, U.S., April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

April 17, 2019

(Reuters) – Uber Technologies Inc is nearing a deal with a group, including SoftBank Group Corp, to invest in its self-driving car unit to be valued at $7.25 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

SoftBank, Toyota Motor Corp and Japan-based auto-parts supplier Denso Corp are expected to invest a total of $1 billion as part of the deal, which could be announced in the next few days, the report https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-nears-investment-deal-for-self-driving-car-unit-11555523985?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3 said.

SoftBank closed https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-softbank-tender/softbank-is-now-ubers-largest-shareholder-as-deal-closes-idUSKBN1F72WL its $8 billion investment in Uber in January 2018, which gave it a 16 percent stake in the ride-hailing company and made it the largest shareholder.

Uber is getting ready for its initial public offering (IPO) and filed for it last week.

Uber, SoftBank, Toyota and Denso did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

(Reporting by Sayanti Chakraborty in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel)

Source: OANN

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Ken Gibson, first black Northeast major city mayor, dies

Ken Gibson, who became the first black mayor of a major Northeast city when he ascended to power in riot-torn Newark almost five decades ago, died. He was 86.

NJ.com reported that Gibson, who died Friday, served as the city's mayor from 1970 to 1986, helping establish a foundation for black political power.

"He always thought that if you could help somebody, then that's what you should do," his wife, Camille Gibson, told NJ Advance Media. "That's what he thought being the mayor was. He was very happy to do that."

'MAJOR' NEW JERSEY FOREST FIRE CLOSES ROADS; SMOKE FROM BLAZE REPORTED IN NEW YORK CITY

Elected three summers after the devastating 1967 riots, Gibson is credited with stabilizing the city's finances and improving the health of citizens.

"He gets a lot of credit for holding things together when things could have easily fallen apart," said the late Bob Curvin, who spearheaded Gibson's 1970 campaign and later directed the Ford Foundation's Urban Poverty Program.

Born in 1932, Gibson spent his early years in Enterprise, Alabama, and came to Newark with his family when he was eight years old. He attended Newark College of Engineering, now the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and worked as an engineer for the Newark Housing Authority.

A 1966 run for mayor was unsuccessful but garnered 15,000 votes. The riots occurred the following year, and following his 1970 election he became a national spokesman on the plight of America's cities, featured on the cover of Time magazine and in 1976 becoming the first African-American elected president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Gibson ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1981 and 1985. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to three years of probation.

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Speaking to NJ Advance Media in 2017 during the 50th anniversary of the Newark riots, Gibson said he was seeing the city's reputation finally recover.

"The city's rep really got to be bad because of the disturbances in '67," Gibson said. "Trying to overcome that is very difficult. It never goes completely away. It gets better, though," he said from his home.

Camille Gibson called him a good husband and father, and "probably the best, sweetest and nicest man that anybody could know and love."

"I haven't spent a day without that man in 40 years," she said. "I just don't know how I am going to get through it, either."

Source: Fox News Politics

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Experts object to power concentration in new Hungary courts

The Council of Europe's constitutional experts say Hungary's budding system of administrative courts gives too much power to leading officials, with "no effective checks and balances."

The Venice Commission, after a meeting Friday attended by Hungary's justice minister, called on the Hungarian government to amend the laws regulating the courts taking into account its recommendations.

The new courts, to be launched Jan. 1, 2020, will hear cases involving the state on matters including public procurement and taxation.

The commission said there was "a particularly problematic provision" regarding the justice minister's power to make the final decision about the appointment of judges.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a civic group, said that amendments proposed this week by lawmakers from the ruling Fidesz party still did not guarantee the new courts' independence.

Source: Fox News World

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On heels of scandals, USC announces new president

The University of Southern California on Wednesday announced a new school president to usher "a new era" following a series of high-profile scandals that culminated last week with a massive college admissions bribery case.

Carol Folt, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will become USC's 12th president and the first permanent female president in school history — an announcement that came a week after news of the bribery scandal broke.

Folt said the scandal didn't give her pause about taking on the job.

"I want to be a part of fixing this," Folt said. "If you're trying to run an institution, you have to enjoy the fixing as well as the advancing."

Folt said she was horrified to learn of the scheme, which involved wealthy parents paying bribes to have a college counselor rig standardized tests or get their children admitted as recruits of sports they didn't play.

"Most of us (at universities) spend our lives caring about students and admissions and trying to do things fairly ... so when you see something like that, you're just aghast," she said. "But most of us immediately started thinking, 'OK, boy, we know how to get to the bottom of this, we're going to figure this out and that is not something I want to ever see happen again.' "

Rick Caruso, chairman of the USC board of trustees, said problems will occur, but the measure of great leadership is how one reacts to them.

"We have worked hard to try to turn a corner, to make a change," Caruso said. "Today firmly cements the fact that there is a dramatic cultural change in this university."

A lengthy search for a new president led a 23-member committee to unanimously recommend Folt, Caruso said.

"If nothing else, this last nine months has shown us that this university can handle whatever's thrown at us," he said. "We are ready to move forward."

Folt will take over USC from interim President Wanda Austin, who stepped in after former President C.L. Max Nikias resigned last summer amid two major controversies: reports that the school ignored complaints of widespread sexual misconduct by a longtime campus gynecologist and an investigation into a medical school dean accused of smoking methamphetamine with a woman who overdosed.

Combined with the bribery scandal, Folt will have her work cut out for her, said Roger Sloboda, a Dartmouth biology professor who worked with Folt at the New Hampshire school, where she started her academic career and spent three decades.

"Considering the recent stuff at USC, I feel sorry for Carol jumping into that mess. But I think she'll clean it up," he said. "She is a scientist and she'll look at the data, figure out what happened and how to fix it."

From a crisis standpoint at her previous job at UNC-Chapel Hill, Folt did just OK, said Jay Schalin, policy analysis director at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a right-leaning think tank.

At UNC, Folt inherited a department that offered irregular courses with significant athlete enrollments dating back years before her arrival. The courses were misidentified as lecture classes that didn't meet, required a research paper or two for typically high grades with little to no faculty oversight.

Folt also was forced out early from the job in January amid a controversy over a Confederate statue known as "Silent Sam" that was torn down on campus.

Schalin said Folt angered conservatives in North Carolina with "mixed signals" on Silent Sam that they felt emboldened protesters.

As far the academic scandal involving UNC athletes, he said the USC scandal seems smaller in scope. "Folt should have little trouble managing it, unless the media goes after USC in a major way," he said.

The president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, where Folt served as chair of a committee on science and technology policy, said he has always "admired her insights and wisdom on ways universities can better serve students and the public at large."

"Carol Folt is a very accomplished and highly respected higher education leader," association President Peter McPherson said in a statement.

Four USC students showed up to Folt's introduction at USC holding protesting her actions during the Confederate statue controversy, saying she took credit for taking it down when it really was a student-led movement.

One of the students, Rebecca Hu, said she wanted to make her concerns known and felt students should have been more heavily involved in the selection of a new president.

"I think the student community is really hurt by everyone in USC administration, and we just want to make sure they actually hear us for once and take us seriously," said Hu, a senior majoring in philosophy.

Jason Chang, a 20-year-old accounting major, said he and his fellow students "just want transparency" about the unfolding scandal.

"It's sad to say that it's tainting the school's reputation," he said.

Graduate student Myla Bastien also called for transparency and honesty. "I think that if USC just owns it, and then comes up with a plan to prevent it from happening in the future, that would be helpful," she said.

Folt said she's committed to addressing student concerns and that the university is off to "an amazing start."

"I think people have been very honest and forthright about it," she said. "I'm certainly not being encouraged to be anything but direct and open and honest and to try to do this the right way. That's really critical."

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Weber and John Antczak in Los Angeles, Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

April 26, 2019

By Rupam Jain and Hameed Farzad

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani encouraged newly-elected lawmakers to participate in the peace process with the Taliban as he opened on Friday the first session of parliament since a controversial election.

Ghani has invited thousands of politicians, religious scholars and rights activists to an assembly known as a loya jirga next week to discuss ways to end the 17-year war.

Several opposition leaders have said they will boycott the four-day assembly in Kabul, saying it was pulled together without their input and is being used by Ghani as he seeks a second term in a September presidential election.

“We have presented the peace plan on a regular basis and we are committed to it,” Ghani said in the first session since parliamentary elections marred by technical problems, militant attacks and accusations of voting fraud last year.

“Based on this plan, there will be no peace deal and negotiation that does not have the green card of the parliament,” he added.

Officials from the United States and the Taliban have held several rounds of talks to end the Afghan war.

U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has reported some progress toward an accord on a U.S. troop withdrawal and on how the Taliban would prevent extremists from using Afghanistan to launch attacks as al Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

The insurgents have so far rejected U.S. demands for a ceasefire and talks on the country’s political future that would include Afghan government officials.

The loya jirga, a centuries-old institution used to build consensus among competing tribes, factions and ethnic groups, is an attempt by Ghani to influence the peace talks and cement his position for a second term, Afghan politicians and Western diplomats say.

Amid growing political divisions in Kabul, opposition politicians have demanded that Ghani step down when his mandate ends next month, and give way to an interim government to oversee peace talks with the Taliban. Ghani has ruled that out.

The country’s top court said last week Ghani can stay in office until the presidential election in September.

(Reporting by Hameed Farzad, Rupam Jain, Editing by Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Thursday defended special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation while slamming former President Barack Obama’s administration for being slow to take action on Russian interference in U.S. elections and ex-FBI Director James Comey for telling Congress the agency was investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Our nation is safer, elections are more secure, and citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence schemes,” Rosenstein said in a speech to the Armenian Bar Association, marking his first public remarks after the Mueller report was released, reports CBS News.

He also pointed out that the investigation revealed a pattern of computer hacking and the use of social media to undermine elections as “only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration also made “critical decisions,” including choosing not to publicize the full story about Russian hackers and social media trolling, “and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” said Rosenstein.

He noted that the Mueller probe began after Comey disclosed during a hearing before Congress that President Donald Trump “pressured him to close the investigation and the president denied that the conversation occurred.”

Rosenstein said two years ago, when he was confirmed, he was told by a Republican senator that he would be in charge of the probe and that he’d report the results to the American people.

However, he said he didn’t promise to do that, because it is “not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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President Trump on Friday said “no money” was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, after reports that the U.S. received a $2 million hospital bill from Pyongyang for the late American prisoner’s care.

“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else. This is not the Obama Administration that paid 1.8 Billion Dollars for four hostages, or gave five terroist[sic] hostages plus, who soon went back to battle, for traitor Sgt. Bergdahl!” Trump tweeted Friday.

NORTH KOREA GAVE US $2M HOSPITAL BILL OVER CARE OF AMERICAN OTTO WARMBIER, SOURCES SAY

The Washington Post first reported that North Korean authorities insisted the U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier, 21, who was a student of the University of Virginia, sign a pledge to pay the bill before allowing Warmbier’s comatose body to return to the United States. Sources confirmed the bill and the amount to Fox News on Thursday.

Sources told the post that the envoy signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions from the president, but a source told Fox News that the U.S. did not ever pay money to North Korea.

The White House declined to comment when asked on the bill, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders saying in a statement that: “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”

Meanwhile, the president added: “’President[sic] Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.’ Cheif[sic] Hostage Negotiator, USA!”

Warmbier was on tour in North Korea when he allegedly stole a propaganda sign from a hotel. He was arrested in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016. Warmbier, for unknown reasons, fell into a coma while in custody and was held in that condition for an additional 17 months.

North Korean officials did not tell American officials until June 2017 that Warmbier had been unconscious the entire time. He died less than a week after he returned to the U.S. North Korean officials, though, have repeatedly denied accusations that Warmbier was tortured, instead claiming that he had suffered from botulism and then slipped into a coma after taking a sleeping pill.

AMERICAN PRISONERS HELD IN NORTH KOREA ON THEIR WAY HOME AFTER POMPEO VISIT, TRUMP SAYS

Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages – money that the Hermit Kingdom will probably never pay.

While the Warmbiers blamed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has said he believes Kim’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.

Trump and Kim have met in two separate summits. The most recent, held in February, ended without an agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Fox News: “Otto Warmbier was mistreated by North Korea in so many ways, including his wrongful conviction and harsh sentence, and the fact that for 16 months they refused to tell his family or our country about his dire condition they caused.  No, the United States owes them nothing. They owe the Warmbier family everything.”

Last year, the Trump administration was also able to save three American prisoners held by North Korea. Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, and Kim Hak Song were all detained in North Korea. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the three Americans home last May, and said they were all in “good health.”

Fox News’ John Roberts, Rich Edson, Nicholas Kalman, and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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