EPA CHIEF’S TRAVEL COST DETAILED
FRANCISCO» Travel SAN vouchers show the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and staffers billed taxpayers nearly $200,000 for trips over six months last year, including 10 trips to Pruitt’s home city of Tulsa.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is one of several Trump administration officials who have drawn attention over travel costs.
The Environmental Integrity Project environmental group obtained the travel vouchers for Pruitt and 14 staffers through open-records requests.
The costs included $138,969 overall for trips involving commercial airfare from March to August, including $93,308 for flights.
Venezuelan party to skip election.
VENEZUELA» A leading opposition party in Venezuela says it has ruled out taking part in the April presidential election against President Nicolas Maduro.
Leopoldo Lopez said Friday that his Popular Will party refuses to validate the election, which is being held earlier in the year than usual for Venezuela. He is urging some 20 other parties in the opposition coalition to follow suit.
Opposition leaders continue meetings this weekend trying to reach a decision on whether to participate.
Officials loyal to Maduro’s socialist administration set the April 22 vote after the collapse of negotiations between the government and opposition leaders aimed at holding a fair election.
German official slams Trump approach.
MUNICH»
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen slammed President Donald Trump’s militaryheavy approach to global affairs Friday, saying the United States was shortchanging diplomacy and soft power in favor of a dangerous overreliance on its military.
The tough criticism, made to an audience of the world’s security elite, including an unsmiling Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, was a European riposte to Trump’s ongoing push for Europe to spend more on defense. Even as von der Leyen acknowledged her nation’s need to boost defense spending, she said that Trump’s proposed deep spending cuts to diplomacy, development aid and the United Nations could threaten international security just as much as a failure to invest enough in weaponry.
U.S., Turkey work to mend bridges.
The United States and Turkey agreed Friday to open a formal dialogue to resolve their differences over a Kurdish militia in Syria, averting a near-collapse in relations but without mending any of the deep fissures keeping them apart.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, after marathon talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, said a working group to tackle the differences would meet by mid-March.
Tillerson acknowledged how close the NATO allies had come to a breakdown in relations.
“We find ourselves in a bit of crisis point in the relationship,” he said at a news conference.
“We’re not going to act alone any longer,” he added. “We’re not going to be the U.S. doing one thing, and Turkey doing another.”
VA official stepping down.
WASHINGTON» The Department of Veterans Affairs says the agency’s chief of staff has stepped down after an investigation found she had doctored emails to justify Secretary David Shulkin’s wife accompanying him on a European trip at taxpayer expense.
The internal investigation by the department’s inspector general found “serious derelictions” by Shulkin and his staff and urged administrative action against Chief of Staff Vivieca Wright Simpson.
Veterans Affairs spokesman Curt Cashour says Simpson “elected to retire” and the VA is opening a formal investigation into her actions.
Man accused of smashing truck into clinic.
A Massachusetts man has been accused of deliberately crashing a stolen bakery delivery truck into a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Jersey, injuring a pregnant woman and two other people.
Marckles Alcius faces numerous charges stemming from Wednesday’s crash in East Orange, including aggravated assault, theft and attempting to cause widespread injury or damage. The 31year-old Lowell man pleaded not guilty during a court hearing Friday.
Deputies didn’t pursue Texas report.
Sheriff’s deputies didn’t pursue a sexual assault investigation against the gunman in a mass shooting at a Texas church, even though the woman reporting it signed a complaint detailing the alleged attack, according to records released Friday.
The records also contradict the reason previously given for why the case stalled against Devin Patrick Kelley, four years before the November 2017 massacre at a tiny church in Sutherland Springs.
Had Kelley been prosecuted for sexual assault, a conviction could have stopped a trail of violent allegations that culminated in the shooting.