Midday Roundup: Former Auschwitz guard sentenced to prison

Accessory to murder. A German court sentenced former SS sergeant Oskar Groening to four years in prison today for his role in the murders of 300,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Groening, known as the “accountant of Auschwitz,” testified at his trial that he oversaw the looting of prisoners’ valuables at the concentration camp. Though Groening’s sentence is short, his conviction marks an important step in prosecuting Nazis who made the death camps possible but were not physically involved in killings.

Backing down. The Obama administration is taking heat for abandoning a $1 billion criminal immigrant deportation program known as Secure Communities. The program used local criminal complaints to identify immigrants for deportation. Critics said the program was too broad and resulted in deportation of non-violent offenders, which ultimately led to cities passing sanctuary laws. Supporters say the Obama administration caved to amnesty advocates by abandoning the program.

Insult to injury. A report by the National Taxpayer Advocate says the 2015 tax season was a customer service nightmare for people who contacted the IRS. “Affected taxpayers often feel like they are victimized a second time by the IRS’s processes,” said the report by Nina E. Olson. Only 37 percent of people who called the IRS for help during tax season actually reached a person. For those who got through, the average hold time was 23 minutes. IRS help lines were so overloaded that the system hung up on 8.8 million callers—a huge jump from last year, when the IRS hung up on 544,000 people. Congress has cut the IRS’s budget by $1.2 billion since 2010, and House Republicans propose more cuts for next year.

Scrambled prices. Wholesale prices for chicken eggs rose by 84.5 percent in June, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The average price of a dozen large eggs in U.S. cities in May was $1.93. The outbreak of avian flu has caused severe shortages; more than 49 million chickens and turkeys died or were euthanized in 15 states this spring as the flu virus spread from the Pacific Northwest into Midwest farms. The increase in wholesale chicken egg prices is the largest since the government began tracking the costs in 1937. Consumers should expect to see egg prices go up even more in the next month, and some restaurants are removing eggs from their recipes and menus.

WORLD Radio’s Jim Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.