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Auburn men’s basketball team plane diverted after fight between players
A chartered plane was forced to turn back on Friday after two players on Auburn University’s men’s basketball team engaged in a physical altercation, CBS Sports reported.
Meregrass Flight 681 took off from Auburn University Regional Airport at 2:40 p.m. on Friday, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. The flight returned to the airport at around 3:30 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The flight did not leave Alabama airspace, according to FlightAware. The Auburn Tigers were traveling to William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas. The team is set to face off against the University of Houston Rockets on Saturday night.
The FAA said the flight crew had “reported a passenger disturbance,” but offered no other details.
The incident involved freshman forward Jahki Howard and senior forward Ja’Heim Hudson, sources told CBS Sports.
Both players were barred from getting on a second flight, which left the airport later Friday night, according to CBS Sports. The two players will miss Saturday’s highly-anticipated game. The University of Alabama told CBS Sports it would release a statement, but has not done so at the time of publication.
Howard, 19, was the 2024 King’s Hawaiian National Slam Dunk Champion, according to his biography.
Hudson, 22, played for two seasons at the University of Georgia and one season at Southern Methodist University before transferring to the University of Auburn for his senior year, according to his biography.
Neither player are starters, CBS Sports said, but both played in Wednesday’s season opener game against the University of Vermont’s Catamounts.
CBS News
House Ethics Committee planned to vote Friday on whether to release report on Matt Gaetz
The House Ethics Committee, which has been conducting an investigation into sexual misconduct and obstruction allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a vote for Friday on whether to release its report, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee’s work.
Hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate Gaetz to be attorney general, Gaetz resigned his congressional seat, effective immediately.
“I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress, to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump Administration,” Gaetz said in his resignation letter obtained by CBS News
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that there was about an eight-week period during which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could fill his seat by setting the date for a special election.
Now that Gaetz has resigned, it is unclear whether the panel will vote on releasing the report, since Gaetz is no longer in Congress.
There is precedent in Congress on the Senate side for an ethics committee report to become public after a member resigns from Congress, however. In 2011, this happened when Sen. John Ensign of Nevada resigned amid allegations that he tried to hide an extramarital affair.
But it’s not clear that that would apply to the House, leaving open the possibility that the report on Gaetz would not be released.
In June, the House Ethics Committee released a statement saying it was investigating a range of allegations against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and bribery.
Multiple sources at the time told CBS News that four women had informed the House Ethics Committee that they had been paid to go to parties that included sex and drugs, and that Gaetz had also attended. The committee has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the committee’s investigation a “frivolous” smear campaign.
Some of the allegations of sexual misconduct under review by the committee were also the subject of a previous Department of Justice probe into Gaetz. Federal investigators sought to determine if Gaetz violated sex trafficking and obstruction of justice laws, but no charges were filed.
The House Ethics Committee resumed its investigation into Gaetz in 2023, following the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges against him.
Gaetz has long blamed then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also a Republican, for the probe. And Gaetz later led the movement to sack McCarthy as speaker.
CBS News
Democratic Congressman on the party’s messaging, focus
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