U.S. to announce end to sanctions waivers for Iran oil imports: source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is expected to announce on Monday that all importers of Iranian oil will have to end their imports shortly or be subject to U.S. sanctions, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. The source confirmed a report by a Washington Post columnist that the administration will terminate the sanctions waivers it had granted to some importers of Iranian oil late last year. U.S. President Donald Trump has been clear to his national security team over the last few weeks that he wants the waivers to end, and national security adviser John Bolton has been working the issue within the administration.

The U.S. reimposed sanctions in November on exports of Iranian oil after Trump unilaterally pulled out of a 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers. Washington is pressuring Iran to curtail its nuclear program and stop backing militant proxies across the Middle East. Along with sanctions, Washington has also granted waivers to eight economies that had reduced their purchases of Iranian oil, allowing them to continue buying it without incurring sanctions for six more months. They were China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy and Greece. But on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will announce “that, as of May 2, the State Department will no longer grant sanctions waivers to any country that is currently importing Iranian crude or condensate,” the Post’s columnist Josh Rogin said in his report, citing two State Department officials that he did not name.

On Wednesday, Frank Fannon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, repeated the administration’s position that “Our goal is to get to zero Iranian exports as quickly as possible.” Other countries have been watching to see whether the United States would continue the waivers. Last Tuesday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Turkey expects the United States to extend a waiver granted to Ankara to continue oil purchases from Iran without violating U.S. sanctions. Turkey did not support U.S. sanctions policy on Iran and did not think it would yield the desired result, Kalin told reporters in Washington.

Washington has a campaign of ‘maximum economic pressure’ on Iran and through sanctions, it eventually aims to halt Iranian oil exports and thereby choke Tehran’s main source of revenue. So far in April, Iranian exports were averaging below 1 million barrels per day (bpd), according to Refinitiv Eikon data and two other companies that track such exports and declined to be identified. That is lower than at least 1.1 million bpd as estimated for March, and down from more than 2.5 million bpd before sanctions were reimposed last May. Brent crude futures , the international oil benchmark, were up nearly 2 percent at $73.25 a barrel, on the report that the waivers were to end.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-oil/u-s-to-announce-end-to-sanctions-waivers-for-iran-oil-imports-source-idUSKCN1RX0R1?il=0

Sri Lanka’s Intelligence Warned 10 Days Before Easter Attacks

13 Now in Custody

Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said late Easter Sunday that the nation’s intelligence services had received warnings about possible suicide bombings at “prominent churches” 10 days before the senseless attacks. Wickremesinghe told reporters the morning of April 22 that the warning to Sri Lanka’s police by had not been acted upon and that the information had not been passed to him. “We must also look into why adequate precautions were not taken,” Wickremesinghe said the previous evening.

The intelligence information had been sent to the country’s top officers by Police Chief Pujuth Jayasundara, according to documents cited by AFP. “A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,” the alert said. The NTJ is a radical Islamic group in Sri Lanka. While no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, Sri Lanka’s defense minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, identified the culprits as religious extremists. He said that while they have been identified, their names will not be released to the public for security reasons. Wijewardene confirmed that suicide bombers have been found to be responsible for most of the bombings on April 21, and that a single group is believed to be responsible for the coordinated explosions that all went off around 9 a.m. local time.

Local media have reported that 13 people were arrested in a police raid. Wijewardene said that while those arrested were local names, investigators will be looking into whether the extremists had been supported by any “overseas links.” He added that world leaders have offered their assistance for the investigation.

More than 200 people were killed and at least 450 injured in multiple bomb blasts that ripped through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. It is the first major attack in the country since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war between the Marxist Tamil Tigers organization and the government in 2009. Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, said in 2009 that the Tamil Tigers were suicide bomb innovators. “The Tamil Tigers are a purely secular suicide terrorist group. They’re not a group that most of the listeners will have heard too much about because even though they’re actually the world leader in suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003, carrying out more suicide attacks than Hamas or Islamic Jihad,” he said at the time.

One witness who was near St. Anthony’s church when that blast went off told AFP: “I ran inside to help. The priest came out and he was covered in blood. “It was a river of blood.” At St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, north of the capital, another blast killed a witness’s brother. “We are all in shock. We don’t want the country to go back to that dark past where we had to live in fear of suicide blasts all the time,” the witness told AFP of the horrors of the civil war.

Government officials said that 32 foreigners were among those killed and another 30 foreigners were injured in the explosions that tore through congregations and gatherings in hotels in Colombo, Negombo, and Batticaloa. They included five British people, two of whom had dual U.S. citizenship, and three Indians, according to officials in those countries. Also among the fatalities were three people from Denmark, two from Turkey, and one from Portugal, Sri Lankan officials said. There were also Chinese and Dutch among the dead, according to media reports. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said U.S. nationals were among those killed, but did not give details.

The government announced a 12-hour nationwide curfew on April 21, banning people from moving locations. The curfew ends on April 22 at 6 a.m. local time. It also shut down social media and messaging services. “Teams from across Facebook have been working to support first responders and law enforcement as well as to identify and remove content which violates our standards,” a spokesperson from Facebook said. “We are aware of the government’s statement regarding the temporary blocking of social media platforms. People rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones and we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sri-lankas-intelligence-warned-10-days-before-easter-attacks-13-now-in-custody_2889237.html

Tamil Tigers: Suicide Bombing Innovators

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104391493

Federal Appeals Court Rules House Chaplain Can Reject Non-Religious Prayers to Congress

A federal appeals court recently delivered a legal victory to House Chaplain Father Patrick Conroy, ruling that he could not be ordered to allow a self-described atheist to offer non-religious prayers to the House of Representatives. The decision—a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia—stemmed from a case filed by Daniel Barker, a former minister who argued that the House violated the First Amendment when it rejected his request to give a secular invocation as a “guest chaplain.”

Barker spent nearly two decades as a pastor and missionary before he “lost faith in faith” and became an atheist. In his suit, he claimed Conroy “unconstitutionally excluded him” from the guest chaplain program because he is an atheist. Barker is now the co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. In a written court opinion posted April 19, Judge David S. Tatel clarified that Barker’s request to give secular prayers was denied because it broke the rules of the House, not because he was an atheist.

“Even though we accept as true Barker’s allegation that Conroy rejected him ‘because he is an atheist,’” Tatel wrote, “The House’s requirement that prayers must be religious nonetheless precludes Barker from doing the very thing he asks us to order Conroy to allow him to do: deliver a secular prayer.” “We could not order Conroy to allow Barker to deliver a secular invocation because the House permissibly limits the opening prayer to religious prayer. Barker has therefore failed to state a claim for which relief can be granted.”

Conroy first rejected Barker’s application in 2015 to serve as a guest chaplain because he was “ordained in a denomination in which he no longer practices.” The court noted how Conroy later revised his explanation. “But during the course of this litigation, Conroy has taken a different position: that Barker could not serve as a guest chaplain because he sought to give a secular prayer. More importantly, the House of Representatives itself, through House counsel, has now ratified that position,” the court said. “Both in briefing and at oral argument, House counsel represented to this court that the House interprets its rules to require ‘a religious invocation.’”

Debate on the issue began in 2015, when Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) invited Barker to serve as a guest chaplain. The next year, Barker filed a suit when Republicans, under former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), took Conroy’s side. In 2014, the Supreme Court upheld legislative prayer. At the time of the ruling, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) praised the court’s decision.

“Unlike so many other countries around the world, America always has been a place where religion brings people together. In times of war and peace, tragedy and triumph, prayer has united us,” he wrote in a statement. “Prayer has inspired many of the great reforms that have strengthened and delivered on the promises of liberty made in 1776.” “Legislative prayer, in particular, is a practice that goes back to the very Founders of the Republic,” he added. “It has enriched my career as a public servant, both in the Florida legislature and now in the U.S. Senate.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/federal-appeals-court-rules-house-chaplain-can-reject-non-religious-prayers-to-congress_2888631.html

Marco Rubio Statement

https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=9E7E0246-F077-4918-837B-CA30320BCE63

Appeals Court Ruling

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/6DF98786C32D5A24852583E1004D436F/$file/17-5278.pdf