The Highlander
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
For the week of Tuesday, February 18, 2025
VOL. 73, ISSUE 17
est. 1954
New York City Mayor corruption case dismissed DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ORDERS FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TO DROP CORRUPTION CHARGES AGAINST NEW YORK CITY MAYOR ERIC ADAMS. SENNA OMAR Editor-in-Chief
COURTESY OF DONKEYSPOTTER
DonkeySpotter Spotlight: Tracking UCR’s donkeys RIVERSIDE’S VERY OWN APP FOR KEEPING TABS ON THE DONKEYS. NATALIE DAHL Features Editor
When visiting college friends, most people just get a spot to sleep on the couch. But first-year computer science major Henry Wang’s friend got an entire app. Wang wanted to show his friend visiting from the Bay Area the iconic University of California, Riverside (UCR) donkeys, but knew that there was no easy way to track where they were at any given time. Reminiscing on what spurred him to create the app, Wang shared, “One of my friends was planning to visit [UCR] from the
[The San Francisco] Bay Area. He was gonna stay at our dorm, and we were trying to line up some activities... I wanted to take them to see the donkeys because I know that’s an interesting part of campus. But there wasn’t any easy way to go see them.” And so, he created DonkeySpotter. DonkeySpotter is an app where you can drop a pin on a map to report a donkey sighting in real time. This allows other users to track where the donkeys on campus have last been, and people can even upload photos to document their sightings. The app’s map view helps users
locate past and recent sightings, and its integration with Apple Maps can navigate users exactly to reported locations. When making the app, Wang researched another unofficial UCR app, GoHighlander to understand the approval processes. Initially DonkeySpotter was rejected from the App Store due to explicit mentions of UCR. But after following the advice from another student developer and removing mentions of UCR, the app was successfully published.
After an order from the United States (U.S.) Department of Justice (DOJ), federal prosecutors dropped corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The DOJ directive argued that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Dismissal of this case marks a long deviation from DOJ norms, where public officials of all levels of governance are often investigated — including President Trump. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, in a two-page memo, directed prosecutors to dismiss the charges against Adams immediately not because of strength of evidence, but rather because the timing of the case was too close to Adam’s reelection and posed a threat to the Trump administration’s law and order priorities. Bove ordered prosecutors not to take “additional steps” against Adams until after the mayoral elections in November, leaving the possibility that charges could be refiled in the future, pending review. Adam’s attorney Alex Spiro reacted to the memo, stating, “Now, thankfully, the mayor and New York can put this unfortunate and misguided prosecution behind them.” Following the dismissal of the charges against Adams, multiple federal prosecutors in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned. Southern District of New York acting U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon was... COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
► SEE DONKEYSPOTTER PAGE 15 ► SEE ERIC ADAMS PAGE 6
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