Secret Service director to retire

Secret Service director to retire

WASHINGTON

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan announced his retirement Friday, bringing to a close a turbulent period for the law enforcement agency that included a South American prostitution scandal and a pair of White House gate-crashers.

In nearly seven years as director, Sullivan had to answer serious questions from lawmakers on two occasions about his employees’ actions on the job and off.

Last May, in testimony before Congress, Sullivan apologized for the conduct of Secret Service employees caught in a prostitution scandal in Colombia. Thirteen agents and officers were implicated after an agent argued with a prostitute over payment in a hotel hallway in Cartagena, Colombia.

Ed Koch dies at 88

NEW YORK

When Ed Koch was mayor, it seemed as if all of New York was being run by a deli counterman. Koch was funny, irritable, opinionated, often rude and prone to yelling.

And it worked, for a while at least.

With a Bronx-born combination of chutzpah and humor, Koch steered New York back from the brink of financial ruin and infused the city with new energy and optimism in the 1970s and ’80s while racing around town, startling ordinary New Yorkers by asking, “How’m I doing?” He was usually in too much of a hurry to wait for an answer.

Koch died of congestive heart failure Friday at 88, after carefully arranging to be buried in Manhattan because, as he explained with what sounded like a love note wrapped in a zinger: “I don’t want to leave Manhattan, even when I’m gone. This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me.”

Clinton out, Kerry in

WASHINGTON

Hillary Rodham Clinton formally resigned Friday as America’s secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for the number of countries visited. John Kerry was sworn in to replace her.

Her resignation became effective at 4 p.m., when Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan swore in John Kerry as the top U.S. diplomat. The former Massachusetts senator and 2004 presidential candidate is the 68th secretary of state

Protests at Egypt’s presidential palace

CAIRO

Protesters denouncing Egypt’s Islamist president hurled stones and firebombs through the gates of his palace gates Friday, clashing with security forces who fired tear gas and water cannons, as more than a week of political violence came to Mohammed Morsi’s symbolic doorstep for the first time.

The streets outside the presidential palace were a scene of mayhem for hours into the night.

Security forces pumped volley after volley of tear gas, set fire to protester tents and at one point dragged a protester to the ground, stripped him and beat him. Protesters burned tires and hurled stones and fireworks. A 23-year-old died when he was shot in the chest and forehead, the Health Ministry said.

Associated Press