The week at a glance...United States

last updated 8 January 2015

Detroit

Emergency manager: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder last week formally declared a fiscal emergency in Detroit, giving the city’s leaders 10 days to convince him not to give financial authority to an emergency manager of his choice. He has so far refused to name his candidate, saying only that he or she has strong financial and legal experience. Snyder’s decision came after a state review team concluded that the city had failed to fix its finances, leaving it facing $14.9 billion in long-term debt and pension obligations. Democratic city officials are threatening to sue over the Republican governor’s intervention, which would strip Mayor Dave Bing and the all-black city council of their powers for 18 months. Once the country’s fifth-largest city, Detroit has lost 25 percent of its population since 2000.

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Racial incidents: Oberlin College canceled classes this week after a student reported seeing someone roaming the campus near the college’s Afrikan Heritage House dressed in a Ku Klux Klan–style white robe. The sighting was the latest in a series of 15 hate-crime incidents reported in the last month alone, including the distribution of flyers containing racist, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic language; posters expressing derogatory statements; a “Whites Only” note hung on a water fountain; and a swastika drawn on a lecture hall window. “The frequency of these reports is astounding,” said Meredith Gadsby, chairwoman of the Africana Studies Department at the liberal arts college, which was one of the first in the country to admit black students. “I am worried about the students, who have been made to feel incredibly unsafe and still feel targeted.”

Hoboken, N.J.

False witness: Sen. Robert Menendez said he expected to be vindicated after a Dominican woman this week admitted to fabricating accusations that the New Jersey Democrat had paid her for sex. Nexis de los Santos Santana, 23, said she had never even met Menendez, and that she’d been paid to read the accusations from a script. A video of her statement was published last November by the conservative website DailyCaller.com. “I am the person in the video, that is me, and those are my words, but this statement is not true,” she said. DailyCaller.com has contested her version of events, saying that Santana was not one of the two women in the video. Menendez still faces questions over his alleged interventions to further business interests of Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, a generous donor who owns the private plane that flew Menendez to the Dominican Republic three times in 2010.

Washington, D.C.

Gun-trafficking bill: A bipartisan group of senators agreed this week on new legislation designed to stop gun trafficking. If passed, it would be the first federal anti-gun measure to become law since December’s school massacre in Newtown, Conn. The Stop Illegal Trafficking of Firearms Act of 2013 would mandate jail terms of up to 25 years for “straw purchasers” who buy a gun they have reason to believe may be used to commit a violent crime. Shipping two or more guns across state lines to illegal purchasers would also be outlawed. Unlike proposals to ban assault weapons and expand background checks, the gun trafficking bill currently has bipartisan support in the Senate and the House. “Our bill will help to keep guns out of the hands of criminals without infringing in any way on the rights of law-abiding citizens,” said co-sponsor Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Tampa

Sinkhole tragedy: Wrecking crews this week began demolishing the Tampa home where 37-year-old Jeff Bush died after the earth opened up beneath his bedroom, sucking him into a 60-foot sinkhole. Family members dropped flowers, notes, photos, and a teddy bear into the chasm, which they treated as Bush’s grave since emergency crews deemed the ground too unstable to conduct a rescue operation. Then four truckloads of gravel were tipped into the yawning hole to fill it. Bush’s brother Jeremy, who along with four other family members managed to escape the sinkhole, said rescuers could have “tried harder.” He initially jumped into the hole himself but was pulled to safety. “I think I’m the only one that really tried to get [him] out,” he said. Thousands of sinkholes develop in Florida every year owing to the collapse of underground caverns of limestone, a porous rock that is easily dissolved by acidic groundwater.

Clarksdale, Miss.

Disputed death: The family of a Mississippi mayoral candidate found dead last week has asked police to investigate the incident as a hate crime. The body of Marco W. McMillian, a black and openly gay candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, was located in the woods near a Mississippi River levee outside the historic Delta blues town. Coahoma County coroner Scotty Meredith said the candidate was found naked, with a black eye and “two little bitty burns” on his skin, but McMillian’s family members say they were initially told he had been badly beaten and burned or dragged. McMillian’s god-father said he’d been informed that “there were burns on his arms, his stomach, and his legs.” Lawrence Reed, 22, has been charged with the murder, but authorities have yet to release the cause of death pending toxicology tests.