inquiry

WASHINGTON — House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich, in line to become the next Speaker of the House, dismissed as a “nonsense issue” allegations that his political action committee improperly developed and financed a college course he taught last year.

Gingrich confirmed Saturday that the House Ethics Committee is examining questions about whether the course was educational or constituted political activity aimed at helping GOP candidates. The panel is to hold a hearing on the issue Nov. 29.

“This is the most bizarre thing I’ve been involved in in my career,” Gingrich said on CNN’s “Evans & Novak.” But he said his political action committee, GOPAC, did offer “ideas” on the initial financing of the course.

“In order to make the course available on television and . . . on video takes a fairly large amount of financing,” Gingrich said.

“Now, GOPAC provided some initial ideas on who might be interested in financing the course; that’s all they did.”

Gingrich first offered the course at Kennesaw College, a publicly funded school in his Georgia congressional district.

But he said the state Board of Regents acted to “drive me out” by ruling that elected officials were ineligible to teach at state-funded institutions.

Donors who contributed funds for the course were able to take tax deductions because the money went to the college’s educational foundation, which is forbidden to engage in partisan political activity.

Gingrich has said previously that the aim of the course was to offer intellectual underpinnings for a conservative drive to demolish Great Society social welfare programs and that “liberal” ideas opposed to that course were not welcome.

He asserted that while no nonprofit foundation can contribute to GOPAC or any other political action committee, “there’s nothing at all illegal or inappropriate about any political organization” helping such a foundation.

The original allegations were filed with the ethics committee by Democrat Ben Jones, whom Gingrich defeated in last Tuesday’s election.

“The fact is that every lawyer we’ve talked to says it is a nonsense issue,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich led the Republican drive that led to the resignation in 1989 of then-House Speaker Jim Wright on ethics charges, and he asserted that has inspired politically motivated attacks against him ever since.

Gingrich’s 10-week course, entitled “Renewing American Civilization,” was made available to Republican groups and a few other college campuses by satellite relay. Gingrich now teaches it at Reinhardt College, a private school in Waleska, Ga.

In his complaint, Jones said the Gingrich political action committee raised more than $300,000 to finance and distribute the course, which he said violates House rules.

Twenty-six corporations and individual citizens gave more than $300,000 to pay for the project, with large donors given a chance to help develop the content of the course.

Jones asserted that most of the contributors were simply trying to find a way to further help Gingrich financially.

“The fact they found a way to make their contribution tax-deductible only sweetened the pot,” he said.

The “toxic and chaotic” culture at the centre of the United Kingdom’s government led to a delayed response to the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in about 23,000 more deaths across the nation, a damning report from an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic has found.

The inquiry, which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered in May 2021, delivered a blistering assessment (PDF) on Thursday of his government’s response to COVID-19, criticising his indecisive leadership, lambasting his Downing Street office for breaking their own rules and castigating his top adviser Dominic Cummings. The inquiry was chaired by former judge Heather Hallett.

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“The failure to appreciate the scale of the threat, or the urgency of response it demanded, meant that by the time the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was first considered it was already too late and a lockdown had become unavoidable,” the inquiry found. “At the centre of the UK government there was a toxic and chaotic culture.”

The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions of people worldwide, with countries enforcing lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.

The UK went into lockdown on March 23, 2020, at which time it was “too little, too late,” the inquiry found, revealing that if the nation had gone into lockdown just a week earlier, on March 16, the number of deaths in the first wave of the pandemic up to July would have been reduced by about 23,000, or 48 percent.

“Had the UK been better prepared, lives would have been saved, suffering reduced and the economic cost of the pandemic far lower,” the inquiry found.

A failure to act sooner again, as cases rose later in the year, also led to further national lockdowns, Hallett’s inquiry found.

A campaign group for bereaved families said “it is devastating to think of the lives that could have been saved under a different Prime Minister”.

There was no immediate comment from Johnson on the inquiry’s findings.

The UK recorded more than 230,000 deaths from COVID, a similar death rate to the United States and Italy, but higher than elsewhere in western Europe, and it is still recovering from the economic consequences.

“Mr. Johnson should have appreciated sooner that this was an emergency that required prime ministerial leadership to inject urgency into the response,” the inquiry found.

Following the release of the inquiry’s findings, Sir Ed Davey called on Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, to apologise on behalf of the Conservatives.

“As this report is published, my thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic, and everyone who suffered,” Davey said. “This report confirms the abject failure of the last Conservative government.”

Ellie Chowns, a Green Party MP for North Herefordshire, said the British people were “let down” by their government.

“Families and communities – especially children – are still living with the consequences. It’s vital to learn from this report, and invest far more seriously in pandemic preparedness, so that Britain can be secure and resilient if – or when – we are again faced with such a challenge.”

The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and information from the country is seen as key to preventing future pandemics. As late as June 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was working to uncover the origin of the pandemic, with its work still incomplete, as critical information has “not been provided”.

“We continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in June.

In 2021, Tedros launched the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent international experts.

Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said earlier this year that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.

But she added that after more than three years of work, SAGO was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for detailed information made to the Chinese government.

A Tesla pictured in Oct. 2022 near the Meta campus in Menlo Park, Calif. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tesla received 16 reports of exterior door handles becoming “inoperative due to low 12VDC battery voltage in certain MY 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles.” File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 3 (UPI) — Federal regulators have ordered Tesla to comply with an investigation into possibly defective door handles that reportedly led to trapped passengers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the Elon Musk-owned Tesla that the federal government received scores of complaints on its electric vehicles.

As of Oct. 27, the NHTSA said it received 16 reports of exterior, retractable door handles becoming “inoperative due to low 12VDC battery voltage in certain MY 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles.”

Reports indicated children were trapped in the cars in some cases, and owners unable to enter or exit vehicles due to battery that impeded door handle use.

A deadly 2024 crash in Wisconsin led to a lawsuit that claimed Tesla was negligent in its door handle designs.

Meanwhile, Tesla officials have until Dec. 10 to provide records to federal regulators.