250 million gift to college withdrawn

1: Leaders aim to avoid early prison releases

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown and the four leaders of California’s Legislature reached a compromise on reducing the state’s prison population, offering to spend more money on rehabilitation efforts if a panel of federal judges will extend an end-of-the-year deadline to release thousands of inmates.

The deal relies on the state persuading three federal judges to give California time to let rehabilitation programs work rather than spend $315 million to lease cells in private prisons and county jails.

The leaders agreed that if the judges don’t extend the deadline, the state will fall back on Brown’s plan to lease the cells.

2: $

DANVILLE, Ky. — A small Kentucky liberal arts college lost out on one of the largest gifts in U.S. higher education history when the $250 million donation was withdrawn, school officials said Monday.

Centre College in Danville, Ky. — known for hosting vice presidential debates in 2000 and 2012 — said the all-stock gift from the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust was linked to a “significant capital market event” that didn’t pan out. As a result, the gift was withdrawn and a proposed scholarship program at Centre is on hold.

College officials said they were notified by the trustee last week that the gift had been withdrawn.

3: Official: Bus crash kills 44, scores hurt

GUATEMALA CITY — A bus plunged into a deep river canyon in northwestern Guatemala on Monday and at least 44 people were killed, officials said.

Mario Cruz, spokesman for the volunteer fire department in the area, said 46 more people were injured and taken to hospitals. At the accident site, medical personnel were conducting autopsies on the dead, which showed multiple injuries.

4: Long-lost painting by Van Gogh is ID’d

AMSTERDAM — A painting that sat for six decades in a Norwegian industrialist’s attic after he was told it was a fake Van Gogh was pronounced the real thing Monday, making it the first full-size canvas by the tortured Dutch artist to be discov- ered since 1928.

Experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam authenticated the 1888 landscape “Sunset at Montmajour” with the help of Vincent Van Gogh’s letters, chemical analysis of pigments and X-rays of the canvas.

The roughly 37-by-29-inch “Sunset at Montmajour” depicts a dry landscape of twisting oak trees, bushes and sky, and was done during the period when Van Gogh was increasingly adopting the thick “impasto” brush strokes that became typical of his work in the final years of his short life.