West Lafayette, Indiana - An astronaut reunion took place during October’s Homecoming festivities to celebrate the end of Purdue’s sesquicentennial, “150 Years of Giant Leaps.”
Purdue upholds the Cradle of Astronauts tradition, graduating 25 astronauts, including the first and most recent people to walk on the moon. Twelve astronauts who have flown with NASA and one commercial astronaut were expected at the reunion.

Dallas, Texas - The President of EarthWater Limited, a Dallas-based company, was charged in an indictment with obstructing justice in connection with an ongoing federal investigation.

Washington, DC - On Tuesday, Angel Armando Adrianzen, 45, of California was indicted by a Miami, Florida grand jury on fraud and extortion charges for engaging with call centers in Peru that took money from U.S. Spanish-speaking victims through lies and threats.  Adrianzen was charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, five counts of wire fraud, five counts of mail fraud, and four counts of extortion. 

New Orleans, Louisiana - The Justice Department announced Wednesday that UTC Laboratories Inc. (RenRX) has agreed to pay $41.6 million, and its three principals, Tarun Jolly M.D., Patrick Ridgeway, and Barry Griffith, have agreed to pay $1 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by paying kickbacks in exchange for laboratory referrals for pharmacogenetic testing and for furnishing and billing for tests that were not medically necessary.  RenRX, a laboratory company headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, also agreed to a twenty-five year period of exclusion from participation in any federal health care program. 

Washington, DC - The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) Thursday announced the agency’s case completion numbers topped 275,000 cases for fiscal year 2019 (FY19), the second highest number of case completions in EOIR’s history. This number marks an increase of roughly 80,000 case completions from fiscal year 2018 (FY18), the same year that EOIR established case completion goals for immigration judges in response to years of declining or stagnant productivity. The FY19 numbers are nearly double the number of completed cases from just three years ago.

Washington, DC - An employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was arrested Wednesday on charges related to his alleged disclosure of classified national defense information (NDI) to two journalists in 2018 and 2019.