Aide: Clinton wanted few eyes on email
WASHINGTON— Huma Abedin, the former State Department deputy chief of staff, said in a legal proceeding that Hillary Clinton did not want the department emails she sent and received on her private computer server to be accessible to “anybody,” according to transcripts released Wednesday.
Abedin also said under oath that she was not aware whether Clinton personally deleted any emails during her tenure as secretary.
Abedin told lawyers for the nonprofit Judicial Watch in a deposition Monday that she could not recall whether she or Clinton discussed with any State Department officials Clinton’s use of her server exclusively for government business. Abedin now works with Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign.
Abedin used an email account on Clinton’s server occasionally for government business although Abedin also used a government address. “I assumed it was OK to do,” she testified.
Abedin is one of several former State Department officials who have been deposed by the conservative group in a civil lawsuit over the agency’s failure to turn over files under the Freedom of Information Act.
Trains in Texas yield 2 dead; 1 missing
DALLAS — The remains of two crew members who had been missing since a head-on freight train collision in the Texas panhandle were found Wednesday, officials said, and the third missing worker is presumed dead.
The bodies were found in the wreckage of the two trains near the town of Panhandle, BNSF Railway spokesman Joe Faust said. One crew member is still missing, and a fourth jumped from one of the trains just before impact Tuesday; he is hospitalized with injuries that are not life-threatening, Faust said.
Work crews continued to pick through the tangled and smoldering wreckage of the smashed locomotives, rail cars and shipping containers near the town, about 40 miles northwest of Amarillo, he said.
The BNSF Railway freight trains were on the same track when they collided, triggering a fireball and causing containers and cars to tumble onto one another in a pileup.
It’s not clear how fast the trains were traveling when they collided, but the speed limit in that area is 70 mph, and Faust said they were “traveling at less than track speed.” It also wasn’t clear why the trains were on the same track.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration are investigating the crash.
U.S. pays out for boy’s motorcade death
WASHINGTON — The United States has provided a wide range of compensation to a Cameroonian family whose child was killed by a vehicle in United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power’s motorcade. The package included everything from cash to cows, U.S. officials said.
The accident occurred in April as Power visited the front lines in the war against Boko Haram. Traveling near the remote, northern Cameroon city of Mokolo, an armored jeep in her caravan struck 7-year-old Birwe Toussem at high speed after he darted into the road, killing him instantly.
State Department officials said the cash payment was roughly $1,700.
Cameroon’s government, aid organizations operating in the area and the U.N. — which also had officials in the convoy — also contributed, bringing the total cash payout to more than $10,000.
In addition to money, officials said the U.S. government provided a pair of cows; hundreds of pounds of flour, onions, rice, salt and sugar; and cartons of soap and oil.
State Department spokesman Jeffrey Loree called it a “compensation package commensurate with local custom, as well as the needs of the family and village.”
At Illinois Capitol, crucial budget near
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats in the General Assembly are nearing agreement on a plan to keep the government open past today, the end of the fiscal year, and to ensure that schools open in August, lawmakers said Wednesday.
The tentative agreement emerged after a day of meetings between Republican Rauner and Democratic leaders. It could be brought up for votes in the House and Senate today.
Aides to Rauner and the Democratic leaders were not commenting on the tentative deal Wednesday evening. But Democratic Sen. Heather Steans, who is involved in the negotiations, said she was “cautiously optimistic there’s a deal.”
Sen. Pam Althoff, a Republican, said the deal would fund operations for six months while financing elementary and secondary education for a full school year.
Rauner and Democrats who control the Legislature failed to agree on a budget plan for this fiscal year, though Rauner signed legislation to keep schools open and road construction moving. But without an agreed-upon blueprint, the government can’t provide funding after today.