The week at a glance...United States

Sioux City, Iowa

Battling bullies: In a rare and powerful act of journalistic advocacy, an Iowa newspaper this week devoted its entire front page to an anti-bullying editorial, in response to the suicide of a gay teenager. After coming out to his family and friends in March, Kenneth Weishuhn Jr., 14, endured a barrage of harassment from classmates, relatives said, including threatening phone calls and a vicious anti-gay Facebook page created solely to harass him. Weishuhn died on April 15, from what the sheriff’s office described as a self-inflicted injury. “We feel we have to be a strong advocate for our community,” said editor Mitch Pugh of the Sioux City Journal. Calling on residents to join the fight against bullying, the editorial noted that while many students are targeted for being gay, “we have learned a bully needs no reason to strike.”

Washington, D.C.

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Secret Service agents ousted: The Secret Service sex scandal that combined booze, carousing, and 20 Colombian prostitutes claimed three more agents’ jobs this week. Two agents handed in their resignations, while a third had his security clearance revoked, a step likely to result in his eventual dismissal, said Secret Service Assistant Director Paul Morrissey. Two agents were cleared of serious misconduct but will face “administrative” action, Morrissey added. In all, nine agents have lost their jobs or will quit the service over the episode that saw prostitutes partying at the men’s hotel ahead of a visit by President Obama to Colombia earlier this month. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said investigators were examining whether such conduct had occurred before. “Part of our investigation is confirming that this was an aberration—or not,” she said.

N.Y., Conn., R.I., Pa., Del.

Romney sweeps primaries: The Republican National Committee declared Mitt Romney the party’s presumptive nominee for president this week, after the former Massachusetts governor swept all five Republican primaries and put an end to any comeback hopes of his beleaguered opponents. “It’s beyond an endorsement,” said party chairman Reince Priebus. “The RNC is putting all of its resources and energy behind Mitt Romney to be the next president of the United States.” After 43 primaries and caucuses, Romney has bested a pack of opponents, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who will suspend his campaign next week, according to his aides. In contests in five Northeastern states, Romney picked up over 200 delegates, and is now certain of reaching the 1,144 needed to formally clinch the nomination. Confident and relaxed, Romney signaled to supporters in Manchester, N.H., that the general campaign had begun with a blistering attack on President Obama’s record: “The last few years have been the best that Barack Obama can do,” said Romney, “but it’s not the best that America can do.”

Greensboro, N.C.

Edwards’s trial begins: The trial of disgraced Democratic superstar and onetime presidential candidate John Edwards got underway this week, with a former aide testifying that Edwards’s first reaction on learning that his mistress might be pregnant was to downplay the odds that he was the father. “He said she was a crazy slut and there was a 1-in-3 chance that [the child] was his,” said Andrew Young. Edwards told his aide to pay off the luxury-loving Rielle Hunter after she threatened to go public with their affair during his 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards is accused of violating campaign-finance laws by using more than $900,000 to pay for Hunter’s silence and to protect his family-man image. His lawyers say he used the cash to hide his affair to avoid humiliating his cancer-stricken wife, the late Elizabeth Edwards, not to further his bid for the presidency.

Sanford, Fla.

Zimmerman released: George Zimmer-man, who is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, walked out of jail on $150,000 bail this week and dropped out of sight, seeking to avoid threats and publicity as he awaits trial. Wearing a bulletproof vest under a brown jacket and carrying a paper bag, the former crime-watch volunteer ignored photographers as he was driven away in a white BMW. “He’s very glad to be out, trying to get settled in, still worried about his safety, but, you know, talking to his family and feeling much better,” said Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara. In a heated debate, city commissioners refused to accept the resignation of police Chief Bill Lee, who failed to charge Zimmerman in the shooting. While white supporters of Lee held signs and cheered, officials blamed outsiders for the racial polarization in Sanford.

New Orleans

First arrest in BP spill: Two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster claimed 11 lives and spewed 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Justice Department this week issued its first criminal indictment, charging a former BP engineer with destroying evidence. Kurt Mix, 50, of Katy, Texas, was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for deleting a string of some 300 emails and text messages related to what BP knew about the true flow rate of the Macondo well in the days after the explosion. One email detailed how the “top kill” method of capping the well was failing, because the flow rate was three times what BP publicly admitted. If true, “that obstructed more than justice,” said Richard J. Lazarus, who headed a panel set up by President Obama to help investigate the spill. “It may have impeded the effort to contain the flow and allowed it to continue...increasing the damage.”