Katie Zacharia was “let go” as White House press secretary on Friday, a White House official said, five days into a tenure dominated by questions over her claimed legal career in China, where she said she had passed a bar exam. Her exit came on the same day Beijing invited her to visit China more often, responding to her remark that the country “doesn’t even have proper toilets”. US President Donald Trump said he had urged her to reconsider the job but denied firing her. “I told her: ‘I think...

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has acknowledged that she never passed a bar exam, days after telling reporters she had passed one “when I moved to China”. In an interview with the conservative commentator Jack Posobiec on right-wing streaming channel Real America’s Voice on Thursday, Zacharia said she sat the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011 but did not pass. She said the results were “somewhat inconsequential, because I knew I...

US President Donald Trump on Thursday cancelled plans to live-stream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, reversing a Pentagon initiative that drew political and religious criticism. Trump said Hasan’s execution by firing squad would proceed as scheduled, but would not be broadcast. The Pentagon has set the execution for December 3. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Hasan, a former US Army...

Bank of America, the second-largest US bank, failed to promptly report hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious transactions bearing signs of Chinese money-laundering networks, US regulators said on Tuesday, announcing more than US$1.21 billion in penalties for broader anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, said the activity included large wire transfers to counterparties in China, repeated credit-card purchases at major retailers...

Katie Zacharia, US President Donald Trump’s newly appointed White House press secretary, faces questions about her legal credentials after telling reporters on Tuesday that she passed a bar exam “when I moved to China”, without identifying the jurisdiction. Zacharia, who has repeatedly described herself as a lawyer, made the remark after her first official White House press briefing. According to her LinkedIn profile, she worked as an associate at Zhong Lun Law Firm, one of China’s largest, in...