President-elect Donald J. Trump signaled a return to his first term’s maximum-pressure policies against left-wing regimes on Sunday when he named a longtime foreign policy hawk known for hard-line positions on Cuba to be the special envoy for Latin America.
His choice, Mauricio Claver-Carone, 49, is a lawyer, blogger, lobbyist and former Treasury Department official. Mr. Claver-Carone served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council during Mr. Trump’s first term.
He left the administration for a prestigious five-year post running the Inter-American Development Bank. But he was fired after two years when allegations emerged that he was in a romantic relationship with a subordinate whose salary he had increased by $133,000 in less than a year, according to a confidential internal investigative report cited by The Associated Press.
Mr. Claver-Carone strongly denied the allegations of an affair.
In being named a special envoy at the State Department, Mr. Claver-Carone could dodge the Senate nomination process, which would dredge up the murky circumstances surrounding his departure from the regional development bank.
The bank, made up of 48 member countries, aims to reduce poverty and develop Latin America; its presidency had always been held by someone from the region.
Mr. Claver-Carone has said he was the victim of a smear campaign by officials in various countries who wanted to force him out after he refused to hire their cronies. He added that the subordinate received a raise when she fought for a higher salary after learning that her predecessor earned significantly more. The bank reached a financial settlement with him and two other employees after they filed complaints in an administrative tribunal, Mr. Claver-Carone told The New York Times on Monday. He declined to comment further.
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Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.
Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children.
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