Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said Tuesday.

“Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery,” attorneys for Pike said in a statement.

Her attorneys said they are grateful for the first responders and the medical team at the hospital “who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her.”

The statement was the first indication that Pike has improved since an ambulance carried her away from a Nashville prison last Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction said she could provide no information other than that Pike remained hospitalized Tuesday.

Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital as they attempted to put her to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

The lethal injection drug didn’t kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were left burned and blistered.

New York

Cornell hires former DOJ official for probe

A former high-ranking Department of Justice official will look at how Cornell handles sexual misconduct complaints, university trustees announced Tuesday as they tried to address an outpouring of anger over allegations of a 2024 gang rape at a fraternity house.

Sally Yates, who was a deputy attorney general in the Obama administration, will spearhead the review, the trustees said.

“It is imperative that Cornell be willing to examine itself with the same rigor we expect of others,” trustee Chair Anne Meinig Smalling said in a statement.

The announcement comes after days of outrage and a large demonstration over Cornell’s response to a complaint from a woman known publicly only as Jane Doe. She told campus police in November 2024 that she had been sexually assaulted by multiple Chi Phi fraternity brothers the month before after being pressured into drinking and taking drugs.

White House

Russian says Don Jr. repaid him for party

The Russian oligarch who helped bankroll Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration says the president’s eldest son has paid back the money.

“Yes, he did,” Umar Kremlev told an International Boxing Association press conference in Istanbul on Tuesday. “He did repay the money I spent on the present.” Still, he said he felt the repayment was unnecessary.

“Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so,” he went on. “There are all kinds of events organized by all kinds of people. It is as if I invite you to come and visit my country house. Would you expect me to issue an invoice to them afterward?” Speaking through an interpreter, he said that would be “ridiculous.”

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative website, reported last month that Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses” when Trump Jr. married socialite Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May. That included paying to rent one of two private islands where the three-day party was held.

Texas

Base Mass-shooter to face firing squad

Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009 in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military post, is to be executed by firing squad, U.S. military officials say.

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman Sean Parnell posted on social media that Hasan will face a firing squad in the killings of 12 soldiers, one of them a pregnant woman, as well as a civilian.

“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Parnell wrote.”

Hasan is out of appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court last year denied his final appeal.

Quebec

Separatist party wins provincial election

The separatist Parti Québécois won Quebec’s provincial election Monday but fell short of enough seats to govern alone, returning to power with a promise to hold another referendum on independence from Canada.

The result returns Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s party to power for the first time in more than a decade but denies it the majority it sought, forcing the separatists to rely on opposition parties even as they try to revive Quebec’s independence debate.

Africa

Kenya sees its first Ebola case

A Kenyan citizen who had been living in Congo before returning to Nairobi over the weekend became Kenya’s first confirmed case of Ebola and the country’s first death from the disease in the fast-moving outbreak, authorities said Tuesday, sparking urgent contact-tracing efforts to try to contain the spread of the virus.

The man had been residing in Congo for the past seven years and fell ill about a month ago. He was treated at various hospitals before traveling by road to Kampala, Uganda, where he boarded a flight to the Kenyan capital, arriving on Saturday afternoon, Health Minister Aden Duale said.

Health authorities in Kenya have placed the country’s border points on high alert and are monitoring for possible additional cases.

Duale said that the man had been isolated and treated at Nairobi Hospital, where he tested positive for the Ebola virus and died late Monday.

Germany

Former spy chief accused of spying

Federal police in Germany arrested a former head of the nation’s intelligence services Tuesday on suspicion of “treasonous espionage” and other spying charges, including attempting to pass state secrets to foreign governments.

The federal prosecutor’s office announced it had detained the former spy chief, August Hanning, 80 — who led Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, from 1998 to 2005 — but did not say which foreign countries he was accused of helping.

The prosecutors said they had also arrested a former chief of staff to Hanning at the agency, who they said sold 2,000 government documents to Hanning — many of them classified — in the years after Hanning left his post and worked as a consultant.

Hanning, the prosecutors said, had used some of the classified information to create an analysis for a foreign intelligence officer. He also supplied a representative of a separate foreign intelligence service with information over the years, the prosecutors said.

— From news services