Bob Menendez poised to blame his wife in bribe case defense

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Bob Menendez is prepared to blame his wife at his bribery trial for withholding information from him about gifts they allegedly accepted from businessmen seeking favors, a newly unsealed court document shows.

The revelation came Tuesday in a portion of a March court filing in which lawyers for the New Jersey Democrat asked a U.S. judge to try him separately from his wife, Nadine. They are accused of accepting bribes of cash, gold bars and a car to help three businessmen and the Egyptian government. Menendez, 70, is also charged with acting as a foreign agent of Egypt.

At trial, Menendez may testify about communications he had with his wife regarding their dinners with Egyptian officials and her explanation of why two of the businessmen gave her “certain monetary items,” according to the March filing. But U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein agreed Tuesday to a media coalition’s request to unseal a passage that showed a rift between the couple.

That passage said the explanations and communications “will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez by demonstrating the absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part.” They may also incriminate “Nadine by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place,” according to the filing.

—Bloomberg News

Journalist who accused NPR of liberal bias resigns from the network

Uri Berliner, the veteran NPR journalist who publicly accused his employer of liberal bias, has resigned from the network.

Berliner posted a message Wednesday on the social media platform X with his resignation letter to the public broadcaster's chief executive Katherine Maher.

"I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years," Berliner wrote. "I don't support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems I cite in my Free Press essay."

Berliner, a business editor at the network, was suspended last Friday, four days after the appearance of an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack newsletter the Free Press. His essay said NPR is catering to "a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population." The overall thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has "lost America's trust."

—Los Angeles Times

All Florida K-12 students to learn about ‘atrocities’ of communism

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida public schools will be required to teach students from kindergarten through 12th grade about the history of communism under a bill signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday.

The lessons will be required to be “age appropriate and developmentally appropriate” for each grade and will be developed by the Florida Department of Education. Among the required instruction, which would begin in the 2026-27 school year: lessons on the history of communism in the United States, the “increasing threat of communism in the United States” and the “atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism.”

“My view is we might as well give them the truth when they are in our schools because a lot of these universities will tell them how great communism is, so we are setting the proper foundation,” DeSantis said at a news conference at the Hialeah Gardens Museum.

DeSantis signed the bill on the 63rd anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the last attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow the communist regime of Fidel Castro.

—Miami Herald

Julian Assange to face next stage of US extradition battle in May

LONDON — Julian Assange will face the next stage of his legal battle in May after the U.S. government filed assurances over his treatment if he were extradited at the High Court.

The WikiLeaks founder faces prosecution in the U.S. over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information after the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

During a two-day hearing in February, lawyers for the 52-year-old asked for the go-ahead to challenge a judge’s dismissal of the majority of his case to prevent his extradition.

Last month Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson dismissed most of Assange’s legal arguments but said that unless assurances were given by the U.S. he would be able to bring an appeal on three grounds.

—dpa