BOSTON—A former senior associate athletic director at the University of Southern California (USC) pleaded guilty on Friday to participating in a vast fraud and bribery scheme that allowed wealthy parents’ children to gain admission to colleges as fake sports recruits. Donna Heinel, 60, had been set to go before a federal jury in Boston later…

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai will have an online meeting on Wednesday with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, Tai’s media office said, weeks before it holds an import ministerial conference. Tai spoke by telephone earlier this month with the head of the WTO and acknowledged the “difficult logistical challenges” facing the…

The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to announce the tapering of its asset purchases in November and begin the process a month later, former Federal Reserve official Dennis Lockhart said on Thursday. Waiting until November will give policymakers more data on the labor market’s recovery and economic growth, Lockhart told the Reuters Global Markets Forum…

A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official confirmed that a suspect allegedly involved in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a former informant to the agency. A DEA official told Fox News and other news outlets Tuesday that “At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source…

BEIJING—Chinese Vice Premier Liu He exchanged views with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on issues of mutual “concern”, in his second virtual call in a week with top economic and trade officials under the U.S. Biden administration. Liu, who has led China’s negotiations in Sino-U.S. trade talks since former U.S. President Donald Trump went on…

LONDON—China’s planned digital yuan will not dethrone the dollar, a top Securities and Exchange Commission official said on Thursday, citing the growth of so-called stablecoins backed by the greenback. The world’s biggest central banks, including the People’s Bank of China and U.S. Federal Reserve, are stepping up work on issuing digital cash, eyeing improvements to…

BAGHDAD—A U.S. airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one of their militiamen and wounding a number of others, an Iraqi militia official said Friday. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded…