State Dept. report on missing gifts finds poor oversight
The State Department’s inspector general has found in a new report that tens of thousands of dollars in gifts purchased with government funds during the Trump administration to give to foreign leaders and others given to senior officials are unaccounted for. The conclusions of the inspector general’s report were in line with previous disclosures about sloppy record keeping and poor oversight by the Trump administration when it came to gifts given to and received from foreign leaders. The report said that the missing gifts include a 30-year-old Suntory Hibiki bottle of Japanese whisky given to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo worth $5,800.
University reverses course to allow professors to testify against state
Acceding to a storm of protest, the University of Florida abandoned efforts Friday to keep three political science professors from testifying in a voting rights lawsuit against the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Hours later, however, the professors sued university officials in federal court, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated. They asked the court to permanently bar the university from limiting their outside work on matters opposing the state’s interests. The professors, Sharon D. Wright Austin, Daniel A. Smith and Michael McDonald, are providing expert testimony in a case that seeks to overturn restrictions on voting approved by the state Legislature last spring.
Former USC official pleads guilty in college admissions scandal
A former University of Southern California athletic administrator pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme to get students admitted to prestigious universities as fake athletic recruits in exchange for bribes. Donna Heinel, the administrator, appeared by video conference in Boston federal court Friday to enter the plea, less than two weeks before she was scheduled to go to trial. The charge against her arose from an investigation, known as Operation Varsity Blues, which exposed a corrupt private college consultant, William Singer, working with coaches, test administrators and wealthy parents willing to pay thousands of dollars in bribes to get their children into some of the country’s top universities.
The video showed a cadaver on a table in a hotel ballroom. A man stood over the body, addressing an audience that had paid to watch the dissection of a corpse. This was the body of David Saunders, a 98-year-old Louisiana man. It was not, his wife said, what she intended when she donated his body for medical research after he died of COVID-19 in August. The dissection was reported last week by King 5 News, a Seattle television station that said a journalist had attended the event. The station published footage from the hotel, in Portland, Oregon, saying audience members had paid up to $500 each to attend.
Cuomo sex-crime charge may be ‘defective,’ DA says
The sex-crime case against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was thrown into doubt Friday after the Albany County district attorney delivered an extraordinary public denunciation of the local sheriff, saying the criminal complaint the sheriff filed last week was “potentially defective.” In a letter to an Albany judge Thursday, the district attorney, David Soares, took issue with Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple for “unilaterally and inexplicably” filing the complaint without the knowledge of Soares, whose own investigation was still active. The letter underscored how the sheriff’s surprise decision to charge the former governor without coordinating with Soares could ultimately threaten the case against Cuomo.
UN Security Council calls for end to Ethiopia hostilities
The U.N. Security Council called for an end to the intensifying and expanding conflict in Ethiopia on Friday, and for unhindered access for humanitarian aid to tackle the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade in the war-torn Tigray region. The U.N.’s most powerful body expressed serious concern about the impact of the conflict on “the stability of the country and the wider region,” and called on all parties to refrain “from inflammatory hate speech and incitement to violence and divisiveness.” The press statement was approved by the 15 council members the day after the first anniversary of the war in the northern Tigray region that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions. It was only the council’s second statement on the conflict, and the first to address the worsening conflict.
Brazilian singer and Latin Grammy winner dies in plane crash
Marília Mendonça, one of Brazil’s most popular singers and a Latin Grammy winner, died Friday in an airplane crash on her way to a concert. She was 26. Mendonça’s press office confirmed her death in a statement, and said four other passengers on the flight also perished. Their plane crashed between Mendonça’s hometown Goiania and Caratinga, a small city in Minas Gerais state located north of Rio de Janeiro. The rising star performed country music, in Brazil called sertanejo. She was known for tackling feminist issues in her songs, such as denouncing men who control their partners, and calling for female empowerment.
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