Watchdog report: State’s Pompeo acted properly in arms sale
The State Department’s internal watchdog has found that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not act improperly last year when he approved billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia without the consent of Congress.
The State Department Office of Inspector General concluded in a report released Tuesday that Pompeo had the legal authority to declare an emergency and bypass Congress under the Arms Export Control Act.
Republicans joined with Democrats in Congress to oppose the sales, but President Donald Trump, who has made close relations to Saudi Arabia a priority, vetoed resolutions in July 2019 to block the transfers and there were not enough votes to override him.
The inspector general report itself has become the focus of congressional scrutiny after former Inspector General Steve Linick, who was removed from his post in May by Trump, testified to Congress that senior State Department officials had sought to block his inquiry.
Senior State Department officials have said Linick was removed from his watchdog position for leaking another report and not because of his probe of the arms sales, which came amid bipartisan congressional concerns about civilian casualties in the Saudiled war in Yemen.
Watchdog finds documents withheld: The Interior Department purposely withheld what it called “sensitive” public documents related to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt ahead of his Senate confirmation, an agency watchdog office concluded in a report made public Tuesday.
While the Interior Department says the move did not violate the law or ethical standards, Democratic lawmakers called it a cover-up to smooth Bernhardt’s April 2019 Senate confirmation and called for the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation.
The findings by the agency’s inspector general conclude the agency temporarily withheld 253 pages from documents it released last year under a federal court order.
The court order came after someone not identified in Tuesday’s report sued the Interior Department in federal court on allegations the agency wasn’t fully complying with a 2017 open-records request.
Daniel Jorjani, head of the agency’s legal office, defended delaying release of the records involving Bernhardt ahead of his confirmation, telling the agency’s investigators that the agency was within its rights “to strategically release that information” and time the release of public records.
Student slained: A 21year-old Southern Arkansas University student was killed and another student was wounded in an early Tuesday shooting on a campus parking lot, the school said.
Joshua Keshun Smith, an engineering student, died in the shooting and the second student, whose name has not been released, is hospitalized in stable condition, the Magnolia, Arkansas, university said in a statement on its website.
A Lebanese protester
“At approximately 12:31 a.m., the University Police Department reported three students who live off-campus came onto campus and met individuals not believed to be associated with the Institution in the parking lot of the Donald W. Reynolds Campus Community Center,” the university said.
Police face probe in Colorado: The Colorado attorney general has announced a civil rights investigation into the suburban Denver police department whose officers used a chokehold on Elijah McClain before the 23-year-old Black man died last year.
It’s the first investigation under a new police reform law passed after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis set off global protests over racial injustice and police brutality.
The attorney general’s office announced Tuesday that the investigation into whether the Aurora Police Department has been depriving people of their constitutional rights underway for weeks.
The department said the “patterns and practices” investigation is separate from the investigation it’s conducting specifically into McClain’s death, which was ordered by Gov. Jared Polis.
The announcement came as McClain’s family sued Aurora police and paramedics, who injected him with a sedative last August. has been several
Bus crash in Mexico: At least 13 people died Tuesday when a bus overturned on a highway outside Mexico City, authorities said.
Federal Civil Defense Coordinator Luis Felipe Puente said via Twitter that 27 other people were taken to area hospitals for treatment.
The accident closed a major inbound route to the capital on the Toluca-Mexico highway west of the city through the morning rush hour.
Puente said the bus was traveling from the Pacific resort of Acapulco to the northern city of Guadalajara. The crash was under investigation.
South Sudan deadly violence: More than 70 people were killed and dozens injured during weekend clashes between South Sudan’s army and armed civilians in north-central Tonj, the United Nations reported Tuesday.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan reported that “the violence was sparked by a disagreement over a disarmament exercise being conducted in the area.”
“During the fighting, the local market in Romich was reportedly looted and some shops were burned to the ground,” Dujarric said. “Many women and children fled in fear of their lives.”
The U.N. spokesman said a U.N. peacekeeping patrol is en route to the area to assess the security situation.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission is urging all those involved in the violence “to lay down their weapons and to help restore calm for the sake of their communities,” Dujarric said.
Lockdown in New Zealand: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday that authorities have found four cases of the coronavirus in one Auckland household from an unknown source, the first reported cases of local transmission in the country in 102 days.
Ardern said Auckland, the nation’s largest city, will be moved to Alert Level 3 from midday Wednesday through midnight Friday, meaning that people will be asked to stay at home, while bars and many other businesses will be closed.
“These three days will give us time to assess the situation, gather information, make sure we have widespread contact tracing so we can find out more about how this case arose and make decisions about how to respond to it once we have further information,” Ardern said late Tuesday.