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Ethiopian Airlines grounds all its Boeing 737 Max 8 planes

A spokesman says Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as a safety precaution, following the crash of one of its planes in which 157 people were killed.

Asrat Begashaw said Monday that although it is not yet known what caused the crash on Sunday, the airline decided to ground its remaining four 737 Max 8 planes until further notice as "an extra safety precaution." Ethiopian Airlines was using five new 737 Max 8 planes and was awaiting delivery of 25 more.

Begashaw said searching and digging to uncover body parts and aircraft debris will continue. He said forensic experts from Israel have arrived in Ethiopia to help with the investigation.

Source: Fox News World

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Brazilian town fines Vale, closes port terminal in Rio de Janeiro state

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Vale SA is pictured in Rio de Janeiro
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Vale SA is pictured in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 7, 2017. Picture taken August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

March 11, 2019

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The town of Mangaratiba, in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state, fined miner Vale SA and closed its iron ore port terminal on Monday, citing pollution problems and the alleged lack of an operating license.

The city’s environment department fined Vale for 30 million reais ($8 million) and closed the Ilha da Guaiba terminal for the second time this year. In a statement, Mayor Alan Costa said Vale needs to “comply with environment laws.”

Mangaratiba had closed the terminal briefly in January, after a mining disaster at a Vale facility in another state that killed hundreds, before reopening it.

Around 40 million tonnes of iron ore go through Vale’s Ilha da Guaiba terminal yearly, according to Brazil’s port regulator.

In a statement, Vale said it was notified by the city and had “all necessary licenses to operate the port terminal.”

The company added that it would take adequate measures to resume the port operation but it did not elaborate.

(Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Tatiana Bautzer and Tom Brown)

Source: OANN

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Trump says trade talks with China going ‘very well’

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump participates in briefing on southern U.S. border in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a briefing on "drug trafficking on the southern border" in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

March 19, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. trade talks with China were going well as two top American officials reportedly plan a visit to China next week for a fresh round of talks.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expect to fly to Beijing the week of March 25 to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who will pay a return trip to Washington the following week, the Wall Street Journal said, citing Trump administration officials.

Talks between China and the United States are in the final stages, with a target date for a deal by the end of April, according to the report.

“China’s going very well. Talks with China are going very well,” Trump said in response to a shouted question at the end of his White House news conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Washington and Beijing have slapped import duties on each other’s products that have cost the world’s two largest economies billions of dollars, roiled markets and disrupted manufacturing and supply chains.

Representatives of the U.S. Treasury and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative could not be immediately reached for comment. The White House had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Grant McCool)

Source: OANN

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USC music student, son of Oakland councilwoman, killed near campus: police

A student who is the son of an Oakland, California, city councilwoman was shot and killed in what might have been a robbery attempt near the University of Southern California campus, officials said.

Victor McElhaney, who was studying at USC's Thornton School of Music, was killed shortly after midnight Sunday about a mile from the campus, USC Annenberg Media reported.

McElhaney, 21, is the son of Oakland Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Zachary Wald, the councilwoman's chief of staff, told the Los Angeles Times.

UNIVERSITY  OF UTAH STUDENT, 21, KILLED BY EX-BOYFRIEND WAS ON PHONE WITH PARENTS BEFORE FATAL SHOOTING

On Sunday night, the councilwoman posted a statement mourning her son's death.

"I miss my baby. Please keep me, my family, and all of my son's friends in your thoughts and prayers," she wrote. "We are beginning a new chapter in this reoccurring circle of violence ... And it will take all of us together to make it through this tragedy."

Three or four men approached the victim at the corner of Maple Avenue and Adams Boulevard in what might have been a robbery attempt and one shot him, LAPD Officer Mike Lopez told Annenberg Media. The men fled in a vehicle, police said.

McElhaney was in critical condition when he was taken to a hospital, where he died, police said. He was pronounced dead at 11 a.m. Sunday, Annenberg Media said.

No arrests had been made in connection with the shooting as of Sunday afternoon.

ABDUCTED OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY  STUDENT AND SUSPECTED ABDUCTOR KILLED IN POLICE SHOOTOUT

USC Interim President Wanda Austin sent a letter to students and faculty in which she praised the police investigation. "We appreciate the ongoing and diligent efforts of the Los Angeles Police Department to quickly identify and arrest those responsible for this senseless crime," Austin said.

The school, which is on spring break, has been in touch with McElhaney's family, she said.

McElhaney is from Oakland, where he was an instructor at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, the university said. In the fall of 2017, he transferred from California State University East Bay to USC to pursue Jazz Studies.  He was an active member of USC's Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs.

"He believed in the power of music to touch lives, to heal, and to bring hope," Austin said in her statement. "Victor's loss will affect all of the faculty and students who knew him."

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The USC community has previously been hit by violent crime. On July 24, 2014, 24-year-old student Xinran Ji was killed after he was attacked by a group of four people as he walked home from a study group near the campus. He made it back to his apartment and died before he was found by a roommate.

The attackers were convicted of the killing and sent to prison.

Source: Fox News National

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Exclusive: Israel’s chip sales to China jump as Intel expands

FILE PHOTO: Intel logo is seen behind LED lights in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: Intel logo is seen behind LED lights in this illustration taken January 5, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

March 19, 2019

By Tova Cohen and Steven Scheer

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel’s exports of computer chips to China soared last year as Chinese companies bought more semiconductors made at Intel’s Kiryat Gat plant.

An official at the Israel Export Institute told Reuters that new data showed semiconductor exports to China jumped 80 percent last year to $2.6 billion. An industry source told Reuters that Intel Israel accounted for at least 80 percent of those sales.

The data will be welcome news for the Israeli government as it pushes for deeper ties with China and because semiconductors accounted for $3.9 billion of overall goods exports in 2018, according to the institute, a government agency.

The two countries have started negotiating a trade deal and technology is expected to be a major part of the discussions. Overall exports of Israeli goods to China, excluding diamonds, rose 50 percent to $4.7 billion, statistics.

Intel announced a $5 billion investment to expand capacity in its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel in 2017, which makes some of the smallest and fastest chips in the world.

That year it also bought Israeli auto-focused chip and technology firm Mobileye for $15 billion. It said this year it would invest $11 billion in a new Israeli plant.

A spokesman for Intel said the firm exported $3.9 billion worth of goods from Israel last year, up from $3.6 billion in 2017. He declined to give further details of Intel’s operations in Israel.

Chinese officials have said they are looking to develop a domestic chip market because Chinese companies import $270 billion of semiconductors each year. Israel has a reputation for exporting high-end chips.

Israel’s export institute also said sales to China of inspection equipment for semiconductor manufacturing jumped 64 percent to $450 million last year.

That equipment is used to control and inspect manufacturing processes in semiconductor plants and is useful for China as its domestic chip manufacturing increases.

Companies in Israel making such equipment include Orbotech, which was just acquired by fellow semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor of California for about $3.4 billion.

That deal was announced a year ago but was held up by Chinese regulators, who only gave their approval in February.

PIVOT TO ASIA

China is now Israel’s second largest export market for goods after the United States, having overtaken Britain last year.

Sales of semiconductors to the United States slipped 20 percent to $860 million, contributing to a 3 percent drop in goods exports. But at $10.9 billion, overall goods exports still dwarf those to China.

Israel has been pivoting its economy toward Asia in the past few years both because of perceived political hostility in some European countries and the fact that Asian markets are growing rapidly.

In recent years, Chinese-based airlines have started direct flights to Tel Aviv, the two countries signed a visa agreement and are working on the trade deal. Israel is also in talks for free trade agreements with Vietnam and South Korea.

Some analysts in China expect the ties to get stronger due to the tit-for-tat trade war between the United States, a major chip producer, and China.

“Because of the trade war, China and Israel’s cooperation is closer than it has been before,” said Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at ICWise, a semiconductor consultancy in Shanghai.

“Israel has the technology and China has the market – the space for cooperation is big.”

Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox, said his company was benefiting from China’s policies.

“In China they prefer to use Chinese silicon and then after that non-U.S. silicon and only if they don’t have that then U.S. silicon, so we are benefiting from that,” he told Reuters.

“We are seeing better growth in China.”

Mellanox agreed this week to sell itself to California-based chipmaker Nvidia Corp for almost $7 billion. Intel lost the bidding war to Nvidia. Russell Ellwanger, the CEO of another major chip manufacturer TowerJazz, said his company’s growth in China “is very, very strong”.

(Additional reporting by Josh Horwitz in Shanghai and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Anna Willard)

Source: OANN

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Venezuela’s Maduro orders militia expansion as Guaido tours blackout-ravaged state

Ceremony to mark the 17th anniversary of the return to power of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez in Caracas
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony to mark the 17th anniversary of the return to power of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez after a coup attempt and the National Militia Day in Caracas, Venezuela April 13, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

April 14, 2019

By Deisy Buitrago and Mariela Nava

CARACAS/MARACAIBO (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered an expansion of civilian militia by nearly one million members as opposition leader Juan Guaido toured western Zulia state, which has been hard hit by electricity blackouts.

Guaido, the leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly who in January invoked Venezuela’s constitution to assume an interim presidency, has called on the military to abandon Maduro amid a hyperinflationary economic collapse made worse by several nationwide blackouts in the past month.

Guaido has been recognized as Venezuela’s rightful leader by the United States and most Western countries, who agree with his argument that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

The civilian militia, created in 2008 by the late former president and Maduro mentor Hugo Chavez, reports directly to the presidency and is intended to complement the armed forces.

Maduro, who calls Guaido a U.S. puppet, said he aimed to raise the number of militia members to three million by year-end from what he said was more than 2 million currently. Maduro has encouraged them to become involved in agricultural production.

Shortages of food and medicine have prompted more than three million Venezuelans to emigrate in recent years.

“With your rifles on your shoulders, be ready to defend the fatherland and dig the furrow to plant the seeds to produce food for the community, for the people,” Maduro, a socialist, told thousands of militia members gathered in the capital Caracas, wearing khaki camouflaged uniforms.

So far, the military top brass has remained loyal to Maduro despite Guaido’s offer of amnesty to military members who switch sides. Hundreds of soldiers have sought asylum in neighboring Colombia.

While electricity has largely been restored in Caracas, Maduro’s administration is rationing power to the rest of Venezuela.

Guaido is traveling in the interior to drum up support. In Zulia state, the site of the OPEC member’s first oil well and home to Venezuela’s second-largest city, Maracaibo, he said: “We are here to check on the situation, your suffering. But Zulia will rise up.”

Separately on Saturday, two employees of Venezuela’s central bank who were arrested after meeting with Guaido earlier this week were freed, rights group Penal Forum said.

Rights groups say Venezuelan authorities have arrested over 1,000 people after anti-government demonstrations this year. Guaido’s chief of staff was arrested last month.

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas and Mariela Nava in Maracaibo; additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Grant McCool)

Source: OANN

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Vodafone connects 5G smartphones to its network for first time

FILE PHOTO: The Vodafone logo is seen at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
FILE PHOTO: The Vodafone logo is seen at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo

February 20, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Mobile phone group Vodafone has conducted a successful trial connecting next-generation 5G smartphones to its network for the first time as it prepares to launch 5G in some European cities later this year, it said on Wednesday.

Vodafone said it had made an ultra-high-resolution 4K video call during trials in Madrid and Barcelona, at speeds 10 times faster than current 4G technology.

Worldwide commercial launch of 5G is expected in 2020, and some countries led by the United States, China and South Korea have already announced or carried out deployments on a small scale.

The technology is likely to be used first for private or industrial networks, with national roll-outs for consumers some way behind.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Kate Holton)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

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The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

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After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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