Midday Roundup: Foreign governments propping up Clinton foundation

Foreign favorite. As Hillary Clinton prepares to announce a run for the White House in 2016, the foundation she runs with her husband, Bill, is collecting money from foreign governments. Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany, and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, as it is now called, promotes education, healthcare, and environmental issues around the world. It recently launched a $250 million endowment campaign. The money might be for overseas efforts, but foreign governments’ willingness to contribute raises questions about whether they’re trying to curry favor with the woman who might be America’s next president. While Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, the foundation stopped taking donations from foreign governments. The foundation has raised $48 million from foreign governments since it’s founding, according to the Journal.

Contaminated. Two patients have died and several more have been infected by a drug-resistant superbug at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center. The bacteria lived on medical scopes physicians send down patients’ throats to examine their digestive systems. Now the U.S. Food and Drug administration is warning all hospitals to vigilantly clean the scopes between each patient. But doctors and nurses say the scopes are difficult to disinfect because they have so many intricate parts. An earlier outbreak related to endoscopes killed seven people in Seattle.

Radicalized. The White House summit on violent extremism Wednesday explored homegrown terrorism. The discussion focused on American communities where young Muslim men have attempted to join terrorist organizations overseas. FBI Special Agent Rick Thornton said more than 20 young Somalis in the Minneapolis area, some of them American citizens, have been indicted on terrorism-related charges: “Some of the travelers who remain in Somalia are still actively recruiting Somali Minnesotans, encouraging our youth through videos and social media to either join the fight overseas or to conduct an attack in the United States.”

Schooled. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is under fire for asking the nearly 500 employees of the archdiocesan schools to avoid publicly challenging the church’s doctrinal positions. A new handbook for employees states adultery, out-of-wedlock sexual relations, and viewing pornography are all “gravely evil.” It also affirms church teaching that marriage is “the union of one man and one woman.” Contracts for existing teachers in San Francisco-area Catholic schools expire this summer. The new handbook is designed to make plain expectations for teachers under a new three-year contract. The new contract also will classify faculty members as ministers, following a Supreme Court ruling last year that allows religious schools to control employment matters of ministers without interference from the courts. On Tuesday, eight members of the California assembly, each representing part of the San Francisco area, called on Cordileone to drop the new language from the faculty handbook. The legislators said the language on church teaching related to human sexuality conveyed “an alarming message of intolerance.”

Poisoned property. The Newtown, Conn., town council voted unanimously Tuesday night to tear down the house were Adam Lanza killed his mother before driving to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and gunning down 20 children and six adults in 2012. After the murders, the bank holding the note on the property, valued at $400,000, donated it to the city. A local construction company offered to tear down the house for free. Council members want to make sure none of the building materials ends up at auction, where they might carry significant value to people who collect items related to high-profile murders. Local residents are happy to see the house go. “Most of the people I talk to are in favor of getting rid of this place because it’s just bad memories,” said Newtown resident Philip Carroll. “They drive by it, and it’s poison to them.”

WORLD Radio’s Joseph Slife and Carl Peetz contributed to this report.