Nation & World Glance
Kushner retains scores of real estate holdings while in WH
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s sonin-law and daughter are holding onto scores of real estate investments — part of a portfolio of at least $240 million in assets — while they serve in White House jobs, according to financial disclosures released publicly late Friday.
The revelations about Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were part of a massive White House release of financial disclosure forms for more than 100 of its top administration officials.
Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser, resigned from more than 260 entities and sold off 58 businesses or investments that lawyers identified as posing potential conflicts of interest, the documents show.
But his lawyers, in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics, determined that his real estate assets, many of them in New York City, are unlikely to pose the kinds of conflicts that would trigger a need to divest.
“The remaining conflicts, from a practical perspective, are pretty narrow and very manageable,” said Jamie Gorelick, an attorney who has been working on the ethics agreements for Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Witness: Driver in crash admitted texting before collision
HOUSTON — The driver of a pickup truck that collided with a church minibus in rural Texas, killing 13 people, apologized after the crash and acknowledged he had been texting while driving, a witness said Friday.
Jody Kuchler told The Associated Press he was driving behind the truck and had seen it moving erratically prior to the Wednesday collision on a two-lane road about 75 miles west of San Antonio, near the town of Concan. Kuchler said the truck had crossed the center line several times while he followed it.
Kuchler said he called the sheriff’s offices for both Uvalde and Real counties while he followed the truck and told them “they needed to get him off the road be- fore he hit somebody.”
Kuchler said he witnessed the crash and afterward, he checked on both the bus and the truck and was able to speak with the driver, who has been identified by the Texas Department of Public Safety as 20-year-old Jack Dillon Young, of Leakey, Texas.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was texting.’ I said, “Son, do you know what you just did? He said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’” Kuchler quoted the pickup driver as saying.
Venezuela’s top prosecutor rebukes Supreme Court power grab
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s chief prosecutor broke with the government Friday and rebuked a Supreme Court decision stripping congress of its last vestiges of power, showing a crack in the embattled administration of socialist President Nicolas Maduro amid a torrent of international condemnation over what many decried as a major step toward dictatorship.
In a shocking pronouncement, long-time government loyalist Luisa Ortega Diaz said it was her “unavoidable historical duty” as the nation’s top judicial authority to denounce what she called a “rupture” of the constitutional order in the court ruling against the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
“We call for reflection so that the democratic path can be retaken,” she said to the loud applause of aides gathered around her.
The statement gave a major boost to the opposition, some of whom spent the day sparring with riot police and gearing up for what they hope will be nationwide protests Saturday.
A defiant Maduro defended the Supreme Court in an appearance on state television and said the opposition would be left with “their cold champagne, uncorked.”
Trump paying $25M after judge approves Trump University deal
SAN DIEGO — A judge on Friday approved an agreement for President Donald Trump to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits over his now-defunct Trump University, ending nearly seven years of legal battles with customers who claimed they were misled by failed promises to teach success in real estate.
U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said the agreement represents an “extraordinary amount” of money for customers to recover. Plaintiff attorneys say about 3,730 people will get at least 90 percent of their money back.
The ruling settles two class-action lawsuits and a civil lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that had dogged the Republican businessman throughout the presidential campaign.
Trump fueled the controversy by repeatedly assailing Curiel, insinuating that the Indiana-born judge’s Mexican heritage exposed a bias.
Trump had vowed never to settle. But he said after the election that he didn’t have time for a trial, even though he believed he would have prevailed.