NEWARK: New Jersey legislators yesterday planned to release nearly 1,000 pages of documents that may shed new light on a probe of four days of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge apparently orchestrated by Republican Governor Chris Christie’s top aides to settle a political score.
The release would come the day after Christie, a star of his party seen as a likely 2016 White House contender, fired the staffer who had sent e-mails calling for trouble at the key commuter choke point and repeatedly apologized in a two-hour press conference.
The scandal, which had been brewing for weeks, burst onto the national stage on Wednesday when New Jersey officials released e-mails that appeared to show Christie’s staff plotting the lane closures in September to retaliate against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, because he had not endorsed the governor’s re-election campaign.
Christie had counted on the decisive victory he won in November to show a degree of bipartisan appeal and boost his chances of winning his party’s nomination for president, political experts say.
During Thursday’s press conference, where Christie repeatedly apologized for his staff’s actions but also denied knowing of their move, he said he was not yet thinking about a possible 2016 bid.
Observers said that if the scandal turns out to be an isolated incident, voters are likely to look past it. But if it becomes one of a series of disclosures, it could hurt Christie’s chances at the presidency.
Russia detains six over December bombing
MOSCOW: Russia’s federal Anti-Terrorist Committee said yesterday it had detained six men suspected in a bombing in the southern city of Pyatigorsk last month that killed three people and added to security fears in the run-up to the Winter Olympics.
Russia is on security alert only weeks before it opens the 2014 Winter Games on February 7 in the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi, some 270km west of Pyatigorsk where the car bomb went off.
The blast on December 27 blew out the windows of buildings in an industrial neighbourhood of the spa resort town and badly damaged a traffic police building.
The committee said the six men, who include one Azerbaijani citizen, have admitted to carrying out the bombing and that they were planning another attack on a larger scale. It also said it opened criminal cases against the suspects for murder and terrorism, among others.
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