GOP DONOR, SIX OTHERS RECEIVE AWARD
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Donald Trump on Friday recognized a major Republican Party donor and six other “extraordinary Americans” with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the nation reserves for a civilian.
Miriam Adelson is a doctor, philanthropist and wife of Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate considered one of the nation’s most powerful Republican donors. The Adelsons donated $30 million to Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016 race. They followed up by donating $100 million to the Republican Party for last week’s midterm elections.
Trump also honored Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah; retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page; Roger Staubach, Hall of Fame quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys; Elvis Presley; baseball’s Babe Ruth; and Antonin Scalia, the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court justice.
CNN’s Acosta back at White House after judge’s ruling.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to return the White House press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta immediately, although a lawsuit over the credentials’ revocation is continuing.
U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, announced his decision at a hearing Friday morning. The judge said Acosta’s credentials must be reactivated to allow him access to the White House complex for press briefings and other events.
Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, was back in the afternoon. The White House said it would be developing new rules for orderly news conferences.
The White House revoked Acosta’s credentials last week after he and Trump tangled verbally during a news conference after the midterm elections.
Authorities find eight more bodies.
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» Butte County Sheriff
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Kory Honea says searchers found eight more bodies Friday from a deadly northern California wildfire that is only half con- tained.
The death toll from the deadliest wildfire in the country in at least a century is 71. More than 1,000 people are missing, but authorities stressed that it doesn’t mean they are all missing.
Honea said such a list is “a dynamic list” that will fluctuate.
More than 9,800 homes have been destroyed in the Camp fire. Portions of the fire are burning in steep and rugged terrain that can be difficult to access.
House passes bill to drop legal protections for gray wolves.
The Republican-controlled House passed a bill Friday to drop legal protections for gray wolves across the lower 48 states, reopening a lengthy battle over the predator species.
Long despised by farmers and ranchers, wolves were shot, trapped and poisoned out of existence in most of the U.S. by the mid-20th century. Since securing protection in the 1970s, wolves have bounced back in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest.
About 5,000 wolves live in the lower 48 states, occupying less than 10 percent of their historic range.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing the wolf’s status and is expected to declare they’ve recovered sufficiently to be removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act.
President acknowledges nuclear test lies.
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French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch has said the leaders of the French collectivity of islands in the South Pacific lied to the population for three decades over the dangers of nuclear testing.
From 1960 to 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia, provoking international protests.
“I’m not surprised that I’ve been called a liar for 30 years. We lied to this population that the tests were clean. We lied,” Fritch told officials in the local assembly Thursday in footage broadcast by Tahiti Nui Television.
Last Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of genocide, get life terms.
» The last PENH , C A MBODI A surviving leaders of the Communist Khmer Rouge regime that brutally ruled Cambodia in the 1970s were convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes Friday by an international tribunal.
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to life in prison, the same punishment they are already serving after earlier convictions at a previous trial for crimes against humanity connected with forced transfers and mass disappearances. Cambodia has no death penalty.
Both men have suggested they were targets of political persecution. Nuon Chea was considered the main ideologist of the Khmer Rouge and the right-hand man of the group’s late leader, Pol Pot, while Khieu Samphan served as the head of state.
First pot shops on East Coast get OK to open.
Two marijuana stores in Massachusetts were given the green light to begin selling to recreational customers next week, making them the first commercial pot shops in the eastern United States. The Cannabis Control Commission said Friday that New England Treatment Access, in Northampton, and Cultivate Holdings, of Leicester, were authorized to open in three calendar days.
Oscar-winning screenplay writer Goldman dies at 87.
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» Oscarwinning screenplay writer William Goldman has died. He was 87.
Goldman won Academy Awards for the comic Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and the political thriller “All the President’s Men.”
He converted his novels “Marathon Man” and “The Princess Bride” into hit movies and coined a favorite Hollywood catchphrase, “Nobody knows anything,” that summed up the mystery of what makes a movie work. In his time, he was among the highestpaid writers in the business. Goldman’s daughter Jenny said her father died early Friday in New York due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. His other screen credits included “The Stepford Wives,” “Misery” and “A Bridge Too Far.”