Family
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Mar 15, 2019; Tampa, FL, USA; Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson works out prior to the game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
April 17, 2019
The Seattle Seahawks and Russell Wilson agreed to a four-year extension worth a reported $140 million, making the franchise quarterback the highest-paid player in the NFL.
The deal, which includes a $65 million signing bonus and no-trade clause, was reached late Monday night. Wilson confirmed the new deal in a Twitter post early Tuesday.
“Hey Seattle, we got a deal,” Wilson said from his bed, next to his wife, Ciara. “Go Hawks. But I’ma see y’all in the morning. Time for y’all to go to bed.”
Wilson’s reported annual average of $35 million tops the blockbuster extension signed last summer by Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers at $33.5 million. Rodgers’ deal included a $57.5 million signing bonus, also topped by Wilson.
–The Oakland Athletics reportedly offered Kyler Murray, their 2018 first-round draft pick, a whole lot of money to give up his football dreams.
Sports Illustrated reported that Oakland offered to add a guaranteed $14 million to his $4.6 million signing bonus to try to persuade the Heisman Trophy winner to play baseball. The A’s also would have added him to their 40-man roster.
Instead, the 21-year-old Murray, who won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma last season, walked away from baseball to enter the 2019 NFL Draft. He could be the first player selected when the draft kicks off on April 25 in Nashville, Tenn.
–The Atlanta Falcons reunited with defensive end Chris Odom and signed offensive lineman John Wetzel, the team announced.
Odom got a two-year deal. The 24-year-old originally signed with the Falcons as an undrafted free agent in 2017 but was eventually cut. He went on to play seven games with Green Bay and is coming off a halted season in the Alliance of American Football league where he registered 2.5 sacks for the Salt Lake Stallions.
Wetzel, 27, inked a one-year deal with the Falcons after spending the past three seasons with Arizona, where he made 24 starts. The 6-foot-7 combo guard/tackle was put on injured reserve last November due to a neck injury.
–Los Angeles Chargers wideout Travis Benjamin received a one-year extension through 2020 as part of a reworked contract, ESPN reported.
Benjamin reportedly will receive a $3 million signing bonus in exchange for agreeing to reduce his 2019 base salary from $5.25 million to $1 million. His 2020 salary wasn’t immediately known.
The new agreement creates $2.75 million in salary-cap space for the Chargers, according to ESPN.
–The New England Patriots signed four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Demaryius Thomas to a one-year deal, according to published reports.
Thomas, 31, could earn up to $6 million on the deal, NFL Network reported. He bolsters New England’s passing attack ahead of next week’s NFL draft.
In nine seasons with Denver and Houston, Thomas has hauled in 688 catches for 9,330 yards and 62 touchdowns. The Broncos traded him to the Texans before last season’s trade deadline, and he finished the year with 59 catches for 677 yards and five touchdowns in 15 games overall.
–Chicago Bears tight end Zach Miller announced his retirement, 18 months after he sustained a horrific knee injury.
He had hoped to return to the game but in an Instagram post said he just physically couldn’t do it.
“The time has come to move on from playing the game of football,” Miller, 34, said in the post. “It has been an incredible journey for myself and my entire family and we can’t thank you enough for your continued support. I would love more than anything to step on Soldier Field one last time but I physically cannot give the game and our fans what they deserve.”
–The NFL will release the 2019 schedule Wednesday night during a televised show on NFL Network.
The unveiling begins at 8 p.m. ET, and it comes one week before the NFL draft, which starts April 25.
The NFL previously announced that the season will kick off Sept. 5 with a game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears, a storied rivalry to commemorate the league’s 100th anniversary.
–Field Level Media
Source: OANN
A freshman at a high school in New Hampshire received an apology from her principal after she was ordered to remove a shirt and hat promoting President Donald Trump.
Ciretta MacKenzie, 15, says she was confused because she wore the items to celebrate the school’s American Pride Day, but last Monday Epping High School Principal Brian Ernest asked her to change her clothes because it could offend other students.
“It was a shirt and it only says, ‘Trump: Make America Great Again,’” Ciretta said. “It doesn’t say anything like ‘build a wall,’ so I don’t understand how anyone could be offended, how it’s disrespectful.”
MacKenzie’s story soon went viral after it was picked by local media.
She said the school went too far and violated her First Amendment rights.
“If it said no political gear, I could understand why it was dress coded but it didn’t say that, so I feel like I’m obligated to have my own opinion and other people can have theirs,” she said. “We don’t have to agree, that’s fine.”
Epping High freshman Ciretta MacKenzie wasn’t trying to make a statement in her ‘Make America Great Again’ T-shirt, students had been asked to wear red, white and blue to celebrate American pride. Then the school told her to remove it or else.https://t.co/olnzIPvrIu pic.twitter.com/3yI6BBLdmJ
— UnionLeader.com (@UnionLeader) April 10, 2019
.@EppingHighNH freshman Ciretta MacKenzie says she was taken out of class on Monday and told that her @realDonaldTrump T-shirt violated the dress code. #NBC10Boston #NECN pic.twitter.com/FzugxdTgEo
— Mike Manzoni NBC10 Boston (@MikeNBCBoston) April 11, 2019
On Friday Principal Ernest issued an apology to MacKenzie, saying he had acted in error.
“We have begun to draft a plan to move forward to promote civil discourse and diversity in our schools,” Ernest stated. “In retrospect, I want to fully acknowledge my error in judgment and sincerely apologize if my actions were misinterpreted and offended anyone. That was never my intention.”
School district superintendent Valerie McKenny also issued a statement to the community saying the incident should never have happened.
“The Epping School Board and Epping District’s position is that this event should not ever have taken place, and we are committed to the creation of a school environment that promotes open and free thought and dialogue.”
MacKenzie’s family is relieved and satisfied by the apology, according to CBS Boston.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a Liberal Party caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 2, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo
April 16, 2019
OTTAWA (Reuters) – A federal judge has ordered Canada’s lobbying commissioner to reconsider a probe into whether the Aga Khan broke the rules by inviting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family to vacation on his private island at a time when his foundation was registered to lobby Trudeau’s office.
Canada’s previous lobbying commissioner declined to investigate a public complaint about the matter in 2017, saying that since the Aga Khan was not paid by his foundation, his offer of a luxury Caribbean vacation could not be seen as lobbying.
The Canadian prime minister was separately found to have broken ethics rules by accepting the vacation, though he did not face any penalties.
Trudeau has said that the Aga Khan is a close family friend.
Democracy Watch, a democracy reform advocacy group, challenged former Commission of Lobbying Karen Shepherd’s decision.
In a recently released ruling, Federal Court Justice Patrick Gleeson agreed that Shepherd’s scope was too narrow, quashing her decision not to probe the issue further. But he declined to order Canada’s new lobbying commissioner, Nancy Bélanger, to launch a formal investigation, instead returning the matter to her for reconsideration.
A renewed probe could revive a scandal that haunted Trudeau for months, with opposition politicians calling the luxury trip inappropriate and painting the prime minister as an out-of-touch elite.
When asked about the matter by reporters on Tuesday, Trudeau said: “We trust in the processes in place and respect the work that the court and the lobbying commissioner will do.”
Trudeau has said he has known the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini, since childhood. He and his family visited the billionaire philanthropist’s private island in the Bahamas in late 2016 and early 2017.
The ruling comes just months ahead of a federal election in Canada and as Trudeau is embroiled in another scandal over alleged interference in a corporate corruption case.
(Reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa, editing by G Crosse)
Source: OANN
A Libyan displaced family, who fled their house because of the fighting between the Eastern forces commanded by Khalifa Haftar and the internationally recognised government, is seen at an industrial complex which is used as a shelter, in Tripoli, Libya April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
April 16, 2019
By Ahmed Elumami
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – At a shut-down factory in the Libyan capital, traumatized men, women and children are living in cramped huts that used to house workers but are now makeshift shelter for civilians uprooted by conflict.
More than 18,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations, by a two-week offensive by forces from eastern Libya trying to take the capital from the internationally recognized government.
Many been unable to leave the southern districts of Tripoli, trapped by non-stop shelling and gun battles where the advance has been stopped for now by Tripoli forces.
Streets have been changing hands as both sides have been unable to gain significant ground, leaving families trapped near the frontline seeking shelter with neighbors.
Among those who got out was 19-year-old Ali, who fled with his family and is now living in a hut built for men making truck trailers at the now defunct factory.
“We were evacuated from our home after three days of clashes,” Ali said. “This shirt I’m wearing is the only item of clothing I have.”
He is a former fighter for one of the myriad of armed groups that have dominated life in Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, filling the political and security vacuum.
Wounded in fighting last summer, he quit the group.
“They paid me 100 dinars ($70) a day … now I’m broke but this is better than fighting,” he said.
Some 47 families are housed in the camp with up to six individuals to each small room.
The factory itself if a victim of the chaos that has reigned in Libya as foreign firms pulled out since 2011 and workplaces closed.
One mother at the factory was away on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia when the latest fighting broke out. She came straight from Tripoli airport to the shelter to be with the rest of her family who had fled their home.
“My family managed to bring the family papers but not my jewelery,” she said, sitting next to her daughter on a mattress on the floor, her head in her hands.
Her father, suffering from Parkinson’s, only muttered: “What can we do?”
In another hut, 34-year-old housewife Nabila Ayad al-Ammari prayed for the friends she had left behind.
“After we left we received news that there are killed and wounded among our neighbors,” she said.
More families were arriving, some queuing at a municipal office a 10-minute drive away to speak to officials struggling to find places in schools or workers’ huts.
“Since the beginning … the state has not provided us with aid,” said Abdulfatah Mohamed Ottman, head of a local crisis council.
“Some families and businesses have been offering support but under these circumstances we will be unable to help.”
(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Source: OANN
A photo of Kenyan George Kabau who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash is seen before a news conference where his family’s lawyers announced they plan to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against Boeing, at the Serene hotel in Nairobi, Kenya April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
April 16, 2019
By Katharine Houreld
NAIROBI (Reuters) – A Kenyan family has filed a lawsuit in Chicago against American aviation giant Boeing over a March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, lawyers and family members said on Tuesday.
Siblings of 29-year-old engineer George Kabau said they wanted to force the company to release documents and emails relating to its 737 MAX 8 model, which was grounded worldwide after two major plane crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
A preliminary report released earlier this month indicated Ethiopian Airlines pilots wrestled with a computer system that repeatedly ordered the nose down because of faulty sensor data. The same system was a focus of the preliminary report into the October Lion Air crash in Indonesia, which killed 189 people.
Dozens of families are already suing Boeing over the Lion Air crash, and three lawsuits have already been lodged over the Ethiopian Airlines crash, by the families of two Americans, including consumer activist Ralph Nader’s great niece, and a Rwandan.
Lion Air’s co-founder on Monday lashed out at Boeing’s handling of the accidents.
Kabua’s sister, Esther Kabau-Wanyoike, choked up as she told a press conference that she wanted to use her brother’s death to improve aviation safety.
“He didn’t leave a child. My mum is devastated,” she said. “We can use his demise to ensure safer travel for all.”
U.S. lawyer Nomi Husain, who is also representing one of the American families, said the lawsuit was filed in Chicago late on Monday. The family was seeking to hold Boeing accountable, he said.
“We want to let the litigation process play out,” he said. “When you put profits over safety, you will be held accountable and you will pay a price.”
Boeing, which has previously declined to comment on individual lawsuits, and directed enquiries about the crash to investigating authorities, had no immediate comment on the latest case.
Kenya had the largest number of citizens on the flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. At least 32 Kenyans were on board, the airline said at the time, although that number may be larger because some of the travelers were dual nationals and the full manifest has still not been released.
(Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
Source: OANN
Children play near damaged houses in Kobani, Syria April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
April 16, 2019
By John Davison
KOBANI, Syria (Reuters) – A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago.
The converts say the experience of war and the onslaught of a group claiming to fight for Islam pushed them towards their new faith. After a number of families converted, the Syrian-Turkish border town’s first evangelical church opened last year.
Islamic State militants were beaten back by U.S. air strikes and Kurdish fighters at Kobani in early 2015, in a reversal of fortune after taking over swaths of Iraq and Syria. After years of fighting, U.S.-backed forces fully ended the group’s control over populated territory last month.
Though Islamic State’s ultra radical interpretation of Sunni Islam has been repudiated by the Islamic mainstream, the legacy of its violence has affected perceptions of faith.
Many in the mostly Kurdish areas of northern Syria, whose urban centers are often secular, say agnosticism has strengthened and in the case of Kobani, Christianity.
Christianity is one of the region’s minority faiths that was persecuted by Islamic State.
Critics view the new converts with suspicion, accusing them of seeking personal gain such as financial help from Christian organizations working in the region, jobs and enhanced prospects of emigration to European countries.
The newly-converted Christians of Kobani deny those accusations. They say their conversion was a matter of faith.
“After the war with Islamic State people were looking for the right path, and distancing themselves from Islam,” said Omar Firas, the founder of Kobani’s evangelical church. “People were scared and felt lost.”
Firas works for a Christian aid group at a nearby camp for displaced people that helped set up the church.
He said around 20 families, or around 80 to 100 people, in Kobani now worship there. They have not changed their names.
“We meet on Tuesdays and hold a service on Fridays. It is open to anyone who wants to join,” he said.
The church’s current pastor, Zani Bakr, 34, arrived last year from Afrin, a town in northern Syria. He converted in 2007.
“This was painted by IS as a religious conflict, using religious slogans. Because of this a lot of Kurds lost trust in religion generally, not just Islam,” he said.
Many became atheist or agnostic. “But many others became Christian. Scores here and more in Afrin.”
MISSIONARIES AND CRITICS
One man, who lost an arm in an explosion in Kobani and fled to Turkey for medical treatment, said he met Kurdish and Turkish converts there and eventually decided to join them.
“They seemed happy and all talked about love. That’s when I decided to follow Jesus’s teachings,” Maxim Ahmed, 22, said, adding that several friends and family were now interested in coming to the new church.
Some in Kobani reject the growing Christian presence. They say Western Christian aid groups and missionaries have exploited the chaos and trauma of war to convert people and that local newcomers to the religion see an opportunity for personal gain.
“Many people think that they are somehow benefitting from this, maybe for material gain or because of the perception that Christians who seek asylum abroad get preferential treatment,” said Salih Naasan, a real estate worker and former Arabic teacher.
Thousands of Christians have fled the region over decades of sectarian strife. From Syria they have often headed for Lebanon and European countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to help minorities fleeing the region when he imposed a travel ban on Muslims in 2016, but many Christians were denied asylum.
“It might be a reaction to Daesh (Islamic State) but I don’t see the positives. It just adds another religious and sectarian dimension which in a community like this will lead to tension,” said Naasan, a practicing Muslim.
Naasan like the vast majority of Muslims rejects Islamic State’s narrow and brutal interpretation of Islam. The group enslaved and killed thousands of people from all faiths, reserving particular brutality for minorities such as the Yazidis of northern Iraq.
Most Christians preferred not to give their names or be interviewed, saying they fear reaction from conservative sectors of society.
The population of Kobani and its surroundings has neared its original 200,000 after people returned, although only 40,000 live in the town itself, much of which lies in ruins.
(Editing by Tom Perry and Alexandra Hudson)
Source: OANN
A general view shows an oil treatment plant in the Yarakta Oil Field, owned by Irkutsk Oil Company (INK), in Irkutsk Region, Russia March 10, 2019. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko
April 16, 2019
By Olesya Astakhova
YARAKTA OIL FIELD, Russia (Reuters) – In the frozen taiga of eastern Siberia, where bears roam in spring after waking from hibernation, an independent Russian oil company is bucking the domestic industry trend by rapidly ramping up its output and expanding operations.
Irkutsk Oil Company, known by the Russian acronym INK, has increased its crude production levels 30-fold over the past decade and has negotiated access to a pipeline network that allows it reach the Asian market.
The company told Reuters it is planning investments worth $3-$4 billion over the next three years, including developing its gas business by building four processing plants.
INK stands out in the Russian oil sector, more than half of which is in state ownership, and is dominated by massive players like Rosneft and Lukoil. Production growth in the sector has been sluggish and a combination of low oil prices and Western sanctions have weighed on new investment.
There is no immediate prospect of the industry landscape changing, leaving INK as a throwback to the 1990s, when the state had a smaller role and enterprising businesses blossomed.
However, its experience suggests there are still opportunities in the sector for smaller, nimbler independent players, backed up by some international know-how and a dose of good luck.
INK is not subject to the U.S. sectoral sanctions that apply to Russia’s biggest energy firms and which place restrictions on the type of financing they can attract from Western creditors. INK’s minority shareholders include Goldman Sachs and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Its crude production was 9 million tonnes last year, or 180,000 barrels per day (bpd) – small beer compared to the 230 million tonnes, or 4.6 million bpd, produced by Rosneft.
The company faces a series of obstacles that could put the brakes on its growth, including the increasing risk of being swallowed up by a larger rival, the need to invest huge amounts of money to build infrastructure in eastern Siberia and a lack of skilled staff in the remote region.
-58 CELSIUS, SNOW DRIFTS, FLOODS
Producing oil in such a hostile environment is also challenging. Winter temperatures fall as low as 58 degrees Celsius below zero, and snow drifts reach 1.5 meters in height, according to INK workers.
When the snow melts in spring, rivers flood, cutting the oil workers off from the outside world and meaning they have to travel in and out by helicopter.
To reach reserves in the fledgling oil region, INK has to sink wells up to 5 km (3 miles) in depth, compared with 1-3 km in western Siberia which is more developed.
A global deal to curb oil production agreed by OPEC and Russia, which means INK will have to keep its output at 9 million tonnes until July, has come at an opportune time for the company, according to Dmitry Zotov, its head of oil production.
“The OPEC deal has given us a chance to stop and draw breath,” said Zotov, adding that INK was using the time “to touch up the paint here, do some repairs there”.
To help with exploring in such a difficult environment, INK said it had hired Don Walcott, an expert in oil production who has previously worked for Schlumberger and YUKOS, the Russian oil firm taken over by Rosneft.
INK does not have publicly-traded shares so there is no independent estimate of its value.
The company’s estimated value in 2013, when Goldman Sachs acquired its stake of slightly less than 4 percent, was $2.7 billion, according to a source familiar with the terms of that deal who declined to be identified as the information is confidential.
The estimated value of the firm now is at least $4 billion, Yuri Rubin, INK’s chief financial officer, told Reuters. He did not detail how that estimate was calculated.
Andrei Polishchuk, an analyst with Raiffeisen, said the $4 billion estimated was plausible. “The company has good production assets and their proximity to ESPO infers a premium on the company’s value compared to competitors,” he said.
ESPO is the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, which pumps Russian crude to Asian markets.
Goldman Sachs did not respond to a request for comment on its investment. The EBRD, which owns a 1.6 percent stake in INK, said it was satisfied with its investment and had no plans to increase its holding.
SIBERIAN OIL TO ASIA
The company started out in the oil-producing business in the late 1990s when its main shareholder, Nikolai Buinov, whose family had run a local fuel transport business, acquired three oil concessions from the local government. The previous owners had run into financial difficulties.
At the time, eastern Siberia had no infrastructure and was thousands of kilometers from markets. Oil majors were preoccupied with easier prospects elsewhere.
Luck played a part when the first wells found oil of an unusually high quality. Some of INK’s wells have a yellow-reddish color, a sign of low residue levels.
In 2011, INK’s fields were connected to the ESPO pipeline, where its crude mixes with other blends. INK now sells 300,000-400,000 tonnes of oil a month, or around half of its production, for export. The rest of its production goes to the local market.
(Editing by Christian Lowe and Pravin Char)
Source: OANN
Former head of the Border control under President Obama, Mark Morgan, has warned that the migrant crisis on the Southern border is the worst it has ever been and has to be addressed to avoid dire consequences.
“This isn’t just a crisis, this is a crisis like we’ve never experienced in the history of this country since we started tracking numbers,” said Morgan during a Fox Business interview Monday.
“There’s still this very false talking point out there that — ‘well, back in the ’90s, the numbers were higher — over a million.’ Morgan, also a long time FBI official, noted.
“Well, first of all, again, you got to remember they were Mexican adults, we were moving, deporting 90 percent of them.” he continued.
“With the broken asylum laws and other loopholes that are there, we’re seeing 65 to 70 percent increase in family units, and because of those broken laws, we’re allowing them in.” Morgan added.
“This year, we’re expected to hit a million, but we’re going to let 650,000 into the country. That’s driving this crisis, driving our resources, being overwhelmed. We have to address it.” the former Border Patrol chief urged.
Morgan has previously expressed his support for a border wall, saying that “The president is right. The wall works.”
While senior Democrats and candidates for the Democratic nomination continue to suggest that there is no crisis on the border, Morgan isn’t the only former Obama official sounding the alarm on the situation.
Obama’s former head of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has also repeatedly warned that the situation is “a crisis by any measure.”
“This is, in my view, having owned this problem for three years, first, I know what a thousand a day looks like. I saw it myself at border patrol holding stations,” Johnson said last week.
“I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. It must overwhelm the system.” he added.
“I think we have to get away from Democrat vs. Republican, crisis vs. no crisis.” Johnson continued.
“This is a crisis by any measure, and the solution inevitably is bipartisan. It has to be bipartisan. It requires a change in law,” Johnson urged.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks with journalists before undergoing a drugs and alcohol test, which is a precondition to participate in a policy debate ahead of the second round of a presidential election, outside a hospital in Kiev, Ukraine April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo
April 16, 2019
By Polina Ivanova
KIEV (Reuters) – Volodymyr Zelenskiy, front runner to be the next Ukrainian president, has connections to one of the country’s wealthiest tycoons that are undermining his image as an insurgent who will sweep aside the powerful moneyed elite.
Presenting himself as an anti-establishment outsider backed by spontaneous grass-roots support, Zelenskiy won the first round of voting last month, and opinion polls make him strong favorite in the run-off on April 21 against the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko.
Zelenskiy’s ties to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky have, however, become an election issue. Poroshenko has said that, if elected, Zelenskiy will do the businessman’s bidding, something the front runner denies. In interviews, Zelenskiy has bridled at suggestions he is Kolomoisky’s “puppet”.
The Ukrainian government has alleged that billions of dollars were fraudulently siphoned out of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s biggest lender, while Kolomoisky owned it. It has since been nationalized. Kolomoisky denied any wrongdoing.
Zelenskiy’s celebrity was established by a comedy show – in which he played an everyman who accidentally becomes president – broadcast by 1+1, a TV network controlled by Kolomoisky.
A study by Reuters of vehicle registration databases, company ownership documents and photographic records indicates that Kolomoisky and the Zelenskiy intersect in other ways.
According to that evidence, the two men have business partners in common, Zelenskiy uses security staff also seen in the past accompanying Kolomoisky, a former Kolomoisky adviser is on Zelenskiy’s campaign team and at least two vehicles used by Zelenskiy and his entourage are owned by people or entities linked to Kolomoisky.
None of the evidence demonstrates that Kolomoisky is financing Zelenskiy’s campaign or influencing him.
Both Zelenskiy and Kolomoisky have said their relationship is strictly professional, and centered on the comedian’s TV work. Both say no undue influence is being exerted by the oligarch.
ELECTION RESULT
While Zelenskiy’s connections to Kolomoisky are not seen as swaying the election result, given the candidate’s popularity with voters, commentators question how the relationship would develop later.
“The risks of influence are there, and they will most likely become evident in his hiring policies,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, political analyst and director of Kiev’s Penta think-tank.
“If Zelenskiy becomes president, taking into account that he basically doesn’t have any people, or has very few, Kolomoisky can suggest different people to him (for government office) through whom he will then exert his influence on power.”
Asked to comment on the connections documented by Reuters, Zelenskiy’s campaign did not reply. Kolomoisky did not reply to a request for comment sent to him via his 1+1 media company.
After one campaign stop on April 5, Zelenskiy squeezed through a scrum of journalists and climbed into a black bulletproof Mercedes that was registered, according to a vehicle ownership database, to an associate of Kolomoisky.
The car is an example of a web of connections between Zelenskiy and Kolomoisky that have muddied the candidate’s image as an outsider
The Mercedes was registered in the name of a Ukrainian businessman called Timur Mindych, who is on the board of trustees of the Jewish Community of Dnipropetrovsk, a body of which Kolomoisky is president.
Until recently Mindych shared ownership with Kolomoisky of Vision TV. In 2017 Mindych was registered as holding a 9 percent stake in Kolomoisky’s Belize offshore company, Harley Trading Limited, one of the firms via which Kolomoisky controls the 1+1 media empire.
Mindych is also a part of Zelenskiy’s orbit.
Cyprus and Ukrainian business registry records show that he is a co-owner of Cyprus-registered Green Family Ltd, founded by Zelenskiy and his partners in 2012. Zelenskiy exited the company in January this year.
Ukrainian business ownership records list Mindych as co-owner, with Green Family Ltd and other owners, of three companies involved in producing Zelenskiy’s TV shows, among other activities.
Calls to a phone number listed for Mindych went unanswered.
CAMPAIGN
Some of the people helping Zelenskiy with his election campaign have worked in the past for Kolomoisky.
A lawyer called Andrei Bogdan is on Zelenskiy’s staff, and represented him at a meeting with a government official last week, the official’s press office confirmed.
Bogdan became Kolomoisky’s adviser in 2014, when the businessman was the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, the lawyer told the Ukrainian Pravda newspaper in 2016.
Dmytro Razumkov, an adviser to Zelenskiy’s campaign, declined to answer questions from Reuters about Bogdan’s role and declined to put Reuters in contact with him. Ukrainian media outlet Bihus quoted Razumkov as saying Bogdan was involved in Zelenskiy’s campaign “as his old friend”.
At the appearance in April, Zelenskiy was accompanied by a man who appeared to be in his security detail. The two were also photographed together during the campaign in the city of Lviv.
Reuters has also found photographs from six different occasions when the same man was with Kolomoisky.
Earlier this year, members of Zelenskiy’s security detail were filmed with him in a van owned by a company connected to Kolomoisky. Asked for comment, Zelenskiy’s campaign and Kolomoisky’s representatives did not reply.
(Reporting by Polina Ivanova, Natalia Zinets, Sergiy Karazy and Pavel Polityuk in KIEV, Rinat Sagdiev and Anton Zverev in MOSCOW; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Source: OANN
Once upon a time, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle were three of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet.
I know that this is hard to imagine today, but there was a time when millions of people eagerly moved out to the west coast for a better quality of life. Sadly, the reverse is true today. Millions of people are moving away from our major cities on the west coast because of the hellholes that they have become. A former Seattle police officer that was recently interviewed by a reporter from KOMO News was very honest about the fact that he would never want to raise a family in Seattle because of the hellhole that it has become. Every night he saw the worst of Seattle firsthand, and he finally felt forced to quit because city officials would not allow him to effectively do his job. An explosion of homelessness in our major west coast cities has fueled a wave of crime, drugs and human degradation unlike anything we have seen before, and in many cases our law enforcement officials have their hands tied and are literally being prevented from cleaning up the streets.
Right now, more than half a million people are homeless in the United States. As the economy gets worse, that number will continue to rise.
Many homeless Americans are law-abiding citizens that have just had a tough break. Everyone gets knocked down in life at some point, and we need to do all that we can to help those law-abiding citizens get back on their feet.
But because of their ultra-liberal policies, some of the major cities on the west coast have become magnets for drug addicts, serial criminals, sex offenders, illegal immigrants and people that have simply heard about all of the “free benefits” that are being offered. As a result, the streets of those cities have become a showcase for the social decay that is sweeping across our nation.
Let’s start with San Francisco. According to one report, it is home to more than 28,000 homeless people, and that would make San Francisco the city with the third largest homeless population in the United States.
Others feel like that number is way too low, and the truth is that it is exceedingly difficult to count the homeless.
After all, how are you supposed to accurately count people that don’t want to be counted?
What we do know is that San Francisco is a huge magnet for drug addicts. The city handed out 5.8 million free syringes in 2018, and that number would seem to suggest a homeless population far in excess of 28,000.
And as all those drug addicts aimlessly wander through the streets, many of them use those streets as their own personal toilets. Over the past 8 years, more than 118,000 reports of human feces in the streets have been filed with city authorities…
Since 2011, there have been at least 118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city streets.
New mayor, London Breed, won election by promising to clean things up. However, conditions are the same or worse. Last year, the number of reports spiked to an all-time high at 28,084. In first quarter 2019, the pace continued with 6,676 instances of human waste in the public way.
In addition to endless piles of poop, the drug addicts are also endlessly committing property crimes in order to pay for their drug habits.
Each year, there are more than 6,000 property crimes per 100,000 residents in San Francisco. That is about four times the rate of property crime that New York City has reported.
Mayor Breed would like to get a lot of these homeless people off of the streets, but finding a place to put them has been problematic. Residents of one wealthy liberal neighborhood are currently fighting like mad to keep a proposed homeless shelter away from their gated mansions…
A wealthy liberal neighborhood in San Francisco whose residents cast the most votes for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election is fighting against a proposal to build a new homeless shelter near their gated mansions.
Mayor London Breed has sponsored legislation to fast track a homeless shelter that would house 200 people. However, wealthy liberals living in the affected area have set up a GoFundMe to stop the project which has already hit $80,000 of its $100,000 target.
Things are certainly not any better in Los Angeles.
According to the same report mentioned above, L.A. has nearly twice as many homeless people as San Francisco…
Los Angeles has the second largest population of people exploring homelessness, according to a new report.
The LA area contains 55,200 homeless people, according to data released by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
The homeless population in L.A. has surged 75 percent in six years, and this has happened during a time when the economy has been relatively stable.
So how bad are things going to become when the economy starts getting really bad?
When I was running for Congress, one of the people that came to help the campaign had spent a lot of time in some of the worst parts of Los Angeles. He told me about the public drug use, the constant crime and the human degradation that is seemingly everywhere. This greatly saddened me, because Los Angeles was once a magnificent city. In fact, at one point in my life I wanted to live there.
But not anymore. Today, millions of people are leaving California and never looking back because of the utter hellhole the entire state has become.
Further up the coast, the city of Seattle is experiencing similar issues. Not too long ago, a veteran Seattle reporter named Eric Johnson produced an hour-long documentary entitled “Seattle Is Dying”, and if you have not seen it yet I would strongly recommend taking the time to watch it.
Since it was first released, it has been viewed almost 2 million times on YouTube…
In the past two weeks, Seattle Is Dying has garnered 38,000 shares on Facebook and nearly 2 million views on YouTube. The report has clearly resonated with anxious, fearful, and increasingly angry Seattle residents. Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.”
One of the moments in the documentary that really touched me was when a concerned resident described how drug addicts have been leaving needles and human waste in the graveyard near his home. The homeless have erected tents all around the graveyard, and he can clearly smell urine whenever he walks down the streets.
He would like to fix things, and he is fed up enough that he has decided to run for city council. But he is facing an uphill battle, because Seattle has been entirely taken over by socialists. The following comes from Mac Slavo…
The entire video is about an hour long, but it is pretty easy to see where Seattle continues to go wrong. A heavy tax burden, regulations that push out businesses, and a power-hungry group of totalitarian sociopaths have been slowly eroding the city. The decay of Western civilization can be seen up and down the entirety of the West coast. Some say it’s by design, others disagree. But the commonality is that all of the cities are being pushed into poverty by illusions and lies of socialists. Calling Seattle anything other than a leftist’s paradise would be inaccurate. The city has all of the laws the socialists want, yet it’s killing itself because of it.
In life, the decisions that we make have consequences, and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle are now experiencing the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.
But of course they are far from alone. All across the country there are thousands of communities where social decay is exceedingly evident, and it is getting worse with each passing year.
If we want to change the trajectory of our future, we have got to start doing things differently.
Because if we keep doing the same things, we are going to keep getting the same results, and our country is going to continue falling apart right in front of our eyes.
Source: InfoWars
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