Walmart employee found dead inside walk-in bakery oven: Police

(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus has waived his right to a jury trial.

The judge granted the defense’s motion for a bench trial for the suspect, Jose Ibarra, during a hearing in Athens-Clarke County on Tuesday.

The bench trial is scheduled to begin on Friday before Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who will render a verdict in the case.

Jury selection had been scheduled to start in the case on Wednesday.

When asked by Haggard if he understood the waiver of jury trial, and if it was “freely, knowingly and intelligently signed and considered,” Ibarra said yes.

The defense also said they agree with their client’s decision to waive a jury trial, and confirmed that the form had been translated appropriately into Spanish by a court interpreter for Ibarra.

Last month, Haggard denied the defense’s motion for a change of venue in the high-profile case.

Ibarra, 26, was indicted by an Athens Clarke County grand jury on malice murder and felony murder and other offenses in May. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Riley, a student at Augusta University, was found dead in a wooded area on the Athens campus on Feb. 22 after she didn’t return from a run. The indictment alleges Ibarra killed her by “inflicting blunt force trauma to her head and by asphyxiating her” and seriously disfigured her head by striking her “multiple times” with a rock.

Additional charges in the 10-count indictment include aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. The latter charge alleged that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — a jacket and gloves — involving the offense of malice murder.

He was also charged with a peeping tom offense. The indictment alleges that on the same day as Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a different person who lived in an apartment on campus. The judge last month also denied a motion seeking to sever that charge from the case.

Ibarra was denied bond following his arrest on Feb. 23 and is being held at the Clarke County Jail.

Police have said they do not believe Ibarra — a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 — knew Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.” Her death has become a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including now President-elect Donald Trump.

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(MASSACHUSETTS) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Wednesday that students with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend the Cambridge institution tuition-free starting next fall.

The bulk of American households meet this income threshold, according to the university, which says the new policy will cover 80% of its incoming classes.

Additionally, students whose family income is below $100,000 will see their entire MIT experience paid for, including tuition, housing, dining, fees and an allowance for books and personal expenses.

“MIT’s distinctive model of education — intense, demanding, and rooted in science and engineering — has profound practical value to our students and to society,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a press release.

“The cost of college is a real concern for families across the board,” Kornbluth added, “and we’re determined to make this transformative educational experience available to the most talented students, whatever their financial circumstances. So, to every student out there who dreams of coming to MIT: Don’t let concerns about cost stand in your way.”

America’s top engineering university, which was also ranked as the third-most prestigious university in the nation by Forbes, comes at a steep annual price.

MIT tuition was $57,986 for the 2022-2023 school year, which is higher than the $39,400 average for four-year private institutions in the nation, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions and student financial services, said the financial aid initiative allows for America’s most eligible students to gain a top-ranked education, regardless of their family’s income.

“We believe MIT should be the preeminent destination for the most talented students in the country interested in an education centered on science and technology, and accessible to the best students regardless of their financial circumstances,” Schmill said in the release.

Before the landmark financial aid announcement, MIT was already one of nine universities in the U.S. that does not consider applicants’ ability to pay as part of its admissions process.

Unlike most American colleges, MIT does not expect students on aid to take loans, and the institution does not provide “an admissions advantage” to the children of alumni or donors, according to the release.

“With the need-based financial aid we provide today, our education is much more affordable now than at any point in the past,” Schmill, who graduated from MIT in 1986, said in the release, while acknowledging that, of course, “the ‘sticker price’ of MIT is higher now than it was when I was an undergraduate.”

The tuition-free financial aid initiative is made possible by “generous gifts made by individual alumni and friends” of the university, according to MIT.

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(NEW YORK) — The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case on Friday unsealed the redacted appendix of evidence gathered by special counsel Jack Smith, offering a glimpse of the evidence that could be seen by a jury if the former president’s case goes to trial.

The highly redacted appendix is an attachment to the immunity motion filed earlier this month by Smith that included new details about Trump and his allies’ actions leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

The majority of the appendix’s 1,889 pages are redacted, and the remaining documents are largely comprised of public materials, including transcripts released by the House select committee on Jan. 6, court transcripts, Trump’s social media posts, excerpts from Vice President Mike Pence’s autobiography, and fraudulent electoral certificates signed by Trump’s “fake electors.”

The patchwork of evidence includes a portion of an interview between a former White House employee and an investigator from the House Jan. 6 committee regarding Trump’s conduct when he learned of the riot at the Capitol.

According to the employee, Trump inquired why he could not watch the entirety of his speech at the Ellipse earlier that day.

“‘Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting down at the Capitol.’ And he was like, ‘What do you mean?'” the employee said.

The employee told congressional investigators that he set up a television in the Oval Office dining room and brought Trump a Diet Coke while he watched his speech, which was interrupted by coverage of the riot.

“I said, ‘It’s like they’re rioting down there at the Capitol,'” the employee said. “And he was like, ‘Oh really?’ And then he was like, ‘All right, let’s go see.'”

The unsealing of the appendix came a day after the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, denied Trump’s last-minute request to delay the release of the material until after the presidential election.

Chutkan, in Thursday’s ruling, pushed back on Trump’s argument that the release was politically motivated to influence the 2024 presidential election.

“There is undoubtedly a public interest in courts not inserting themselves into elections, or appearing to do so. But litigation’s incidental effects on politics are not the same as a court’s intentional interference with them,” Chutkan wrote in her order.

“As a result, it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference,” she wrote.

Trump last year pleaded not guilty to federal charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to remain in power.

Smith subsequently charged Trump in a superseding indictment that was adjusted to respect the Supreme Court’s July ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken as president — a decision that effectively delayed any potential trial until after the November election.

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