Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to first lady Melania Trump who was also involved in the planning of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, has lashed out at the White House and publicly disputed claims that she was fired when she left her role last year. Wolkoff strongly objected to suggestions from White House officials that she was forced to leave because she made money from Trump’s inaugural events. “Was I fired? No,” Wolkoff told The New York Times. “Did I personally receive $26 million or $1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.” Wolkoff, a former top aide to Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, was one of Melania’s earliest advisers and a longtime friend. In February 2018, a financial disclosure from the inaugural committee showed her company, WIS Media Partners, was paid roughly $26 million, then a further $1.62 million, which was spread among contractors. Her lawyer says she has been cooperating with federal prosecutors in Manhattan investigating the committee’s spending.

Two Reuters journalists locked up in Myanmar for more than 500 days are now free, Reuters reports. Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29—who had been incarcerated near Yangon since being charged with unlawfully divulging state secrets—were released Tuesday after serving seven months of a seven-year sentence. Reuters has continually called for their release, asserting that the reporters did not commit a crime. Prior to their December 2017 arrest, the pair had been investigating the murders of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys who were killed by security forces and Buddhist civilians in the country’s Rakhine state. Their coverage was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in May, putting pressure on the government to reconsider their detention. President Win Myint has also pardoned thousands of other prisoners in the last month, part of a long-standing custom observed the time of traditional New Year, which started April 17.

Everyone should have a Kindle around just in case. Whether you forgot to re-up on a paper book in time for a trip or beach excursion or simply prefer e-readers for their versatility on the day-to-day, Amazon’s newest Kindle is your best option — and on sale right now for $90.

While it’s been on sale before, we’ve never seen it at this price and Amazon is likely hoping to encourage you to consider it as a great last minute Mother’s Day gift. The 8 GB hard drive is plenty large to fit all the books you’ll load onto it and if you go the route of audiobooks, you’ll still have plenty of storage for as many as you’re likely to find yourself reading at the same time. It’s the thinnest it’s ever been and its battery can still last you weeks (yes, weeks). A built-in and adjustable light means you can read in bed without waking your partner or enjoy dusk at its darkest navy blue outside without squinting at the pages of your book. Of course, you can download books onto the Kindle through WiFi without your phone and switch between them with a click, never carrying more than the compact e-reader in your bag. Whether you’ve been waiting for the price to drop to enter the e-reader-verse or will be using the sale to upgrade, we don’t expect to see the price lower than $90 anytime soon so now’s the time to make a move.

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A prominent critic of Saudi Arabia has been forced into hiding after the CIA warned that the kingdom was out to get him. Activist Iyad el-Baghdadi, who’s under asylum protection in Norway, is a vocal critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The CIA warned Norway that the writer is facing a potential threat from the Saudis and he’s now being held in a secure location, The Guardian reports. “The way I understood it was, the Saudis have a crosshairs on me, but there is no idea of what they are going to do,” said El-Baghdadi, who has written for The Daily Beast about the kingdom in the past. “They assured me that they are taking it very seriously. They came prepared,” he said, adding that authorities had arrived with two squads to take him to his safe house: one to transport him and another to make sure they were not being followed. He was granted political asylum in Norway in 2015 following his arrest and expulsion from the United Arab Emirates without any formal charges or trial. “If they don’t want to kill me then I am not doing my job,” he said.

“It’s been a long 46 years, seven months, and 20 days,” said the sister of Pamela Milam, an Indiana college student who was murdered in 1972. But, finally, her family has some peace after cops managed to solve the cold case through DNA testing and genealogy. Police said Jeffrey Lynn Hand has been identified with a 99.9 percent probability as the murderer of the 19-year-old. He was killed in a shootout with police in 1978 during an attempted kidnapping. “Many of us, as we got older, thought we would die before we ever learned who killed our sister,” said Charlene Sanford. “We were happy to know he hasn’t been out there living a great life for 47 years.” Last year, cops began working with Parabon NanoLabs, a company that works with law enforcement using DNA, ancestry databases, and traditional genealogical work. The possible suspects were narrowed down to Hand and, after tracking down and taking DNA from his widow and two sons, lab results came back saying the DNA matched the evidence from the crime.

The widow of former pro hockey player Todd Ewen is suing the National Hockey League over a brain injury that she blames for his death. Ewen, who took his own life in 2015, was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which Kelli Ewen believes triggered his depression. The lawsuit states that the NHL allowed violence at games and didn’t warn players of the long-term consequences of repeated blows to the head. “To this day, the NHL continues to downplay and deny the long-term neurocognitive effects of repeated head hits and the link between head hits and CTE, leading former NHL players to believe that the neurocognitive symptoms they suffer from are not a result of their head hits during their time in the NHL,” the suit alleges. CTE is a form of brain degeneration that can trigger depression, rage, and memory loss. Ewen was a noted enforcer for the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and San Jose Sharks from 1986 to 1997.

It’s one of the biggest financial fraud cases of all time. Now the U.S. government has begun returning to Malaysia around $200 million that it recovered from asset seizures linked to state fund 1MDB. Malaysian and U.S. authorities believe about $4.5 billion was siphoned from the state fund founded in 2009. The former prime minister who established the fund, Najib Razak, has been charged with more than 40 criminal offenses linked to losses at 1MDB and other state entities. Since 2016, the Justice Department has filed civil lawsuits seeking to seize about $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB funds. They include a private jet, luxury real estate, artwork, and jewelry. The DoJ is also in the process of remitting an additional $139 million pending the sale of a Manhattan property linked to playboy fugitive Jho Low. The financier allegedly funded his lifestyle by diverting as much as $3.5 billion away from the fund.

It’s official: The best meal in the U.S. can be found in Philadelphia. The prestigious James Beard Foundation’s awards were announced Monday night, and Israeli dining spot Zahav was named 2019’s outstanding restaurant in America. Zahav is no stranger to awards—owner Michael Solomonov won outstanding chef in 2017, and pastry chef Camille Cogswell won rising star last year. It describes itself as a “modern Israeli restaurant that brings the authentic flavors of Israel’s cultural heritage to Philadelphia.” Other winners at Monday night’s ceremony included Frenchette in New York City, which was named the best new restaurant, and Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, North Carolina, who was named America’s outstanding chef. More than 600 restaurant-industry pros voted on the winners across 23 categories.

A woman chucked an egg at Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a campaign event Tuesday in New South Wales, Reuters reports. Cameras caught the protester hurling the shell, yolk, and egg white at the leader’s head before she was dragged away by law enforcement. “We will stand up to thuggery whether it’s these cowardly activists who have no respect for anyone, or militant unionists standing over small businesses and their employees on work sites,” Morrison tweeted. The woman, whose projectile grazed the PM’s head, told reporters that her egg toss was prompted by Australia’s detainment of refugees in Papua New Guinea, noting that her action “speaks for itself.”

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Cellphone video taken by Sandra Bland, a black woman who was locked up after a traffic stop near Houston and was later found dead in her cell, shows how a white state trooper pointed his stun gun at her while hollering at her to exit the car, the Associated Press reports. The clip, less than a minute long, was released by the Investigative Network and aired Monday night on the Dallas station WFAA. The footage begins with Trooper Brian Encinia, who had opened 28-year-old Bland’s car door, attempting to pull her out of the vehicle. “Get out of the car!” Encinia yells as a light on the stun gun flashes on. “I will light you up. Get out!” Bland continues to record as the trooper orders her onto a sidewalk, his stun gun still aimed at her. When Encinia tells Bland to put down her phone, she says: “I’m not on the phone. I have a right to record. This is my property.” The video ends a few seconds later. Bland’s family attorney, Cannon Lambert, said the family had not seen the footage prior to settling lawsuits against the state and county jail that reached a total amount of nearly $2 million. “It is troubling that a crucial piece of evidence was withheld from Sandra Bland’s family and legal team in their pursuit of justice,” Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman said in a statement.