Accounting firm cuts ties with Trump
Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and his family business last week, saying it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization, court documents show. The decision, disclosed to the company in a Feb. 9 letter from the accounting firm, comes amid criminal and civil investigations into whether Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided. The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents from 2011-20.
Pedestrian deaths spike in US
Two years into the pandemic, pedestrian fatalities are soaring into record territory amid a nationwide flare-up in reckless driving. In various initiatives to reverse the trends, authorities in one state after another are citing factors from the rise in anxiety levels and pandemic drinking to the fraying of social norms. Going into the pandemic, some traffic specialists were optimistic that pedestrian deaths would decline. The opposite happened. Crashes killed more than 6,700 pedestrians in 2020, up about 5% from the estimated 6,412 the year before, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
Prosecutor outlines Arbery killers’ use of racial slurs
The prosecutor in the federal hate crimes trial for the men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery began her case Monday with a raw litany of the defendants’ past expressions of racism, key evidence in the government’s case that the men chased Arbery through their Georgia neighborhood and killed him because he was Black. The racist statements detailed in court Monday were not directed at Arbery himself. But they were exceptionally harsh, a fact that even defense lawyers acknowledged. The ugliness of such evidence was widely anticipated, having been hinted at in court filings in the earlier state trial.
SpaceX tourists will make attempt at spacewalk
Space tourists have flown to the International Space Station, and even orbited Earth in their own space capsule for three days. Now, a group of private astronauts wants to attempt a spacewalk, one of the most dangerous things people flying in space have ever done. As soon as the end of this year, four private astronauts, including Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who chartered SpaceX’s first space tourist mission last year, could launch to space aboard the company’s Crew Dragon capsule. At some point during their five days circling Earth, at least one of the crew members will exit the spacecraft.
Nicaragua seizes universities, inching toward dictatorship
Nicaragua’s politically active student population, one of the last pockets of opposition to President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian government, is also the latest target of his wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, with five private universities brought under state control. The government said the colleges were stripped of their ability to operate independently this month because they had not complied with financial regulations. Critics, however, saw the move as Ortega’s latest effort to clamp down on challenges to his tightening grip on power. Since last year, his administration has jailed or put under house arrest political activists and civil society leaders, raided media offices, outlawed street protests and shuttered dozens of nongovernmental organizations.
Israeli leader makes historic visit to Bahrain, deepening new ties
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett became the first Israeli leader to make an official visit to the small Persian Gulf state of Bahrain on Monday, a historic trip that highlighted the strengthening ties between Israel and some Arab governments. Bennett’s visit, unthinkable a few years ago, builds on a diplomatic thaw that began in 2020 when Israel forged formal ties for the first time with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, revived diplomatic relations with Morocco and improved ties with Sudan. Bahrain is a tiny but strategically important country and is widely considered a proxy for Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most powerful state.
© 2022 The New York Times Company
