Today in accountability news:

• Talking Points Memo reports that Horace Cooper, a former Bush-era Labor Department official, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to falsifying his 2003 disclosure report, in an attempt to hide that he solicited and accepted gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
• Reviews by the Federal Reserve found that its own regulators failed to monitor Citigroup adequately even after taxpayers spent $45 billion bailing out the bank, reports The New York Times.
• Lawsuits filed by investors against their banks are being dismissed in court, according to The Wall Street Journal. Banks have largely been successful in blaming investor losses on the "global financial catastrophe" rather than on any misrepresentation of risk on their part.
• An internal e-mail from a Toyota executive calling for the company to "come clean" and stop "keeping this quiet" suggests Toyota knew about its accelerator pedal defect but hid it for months before going public with a recall, reports the Detroit Free Press.
• The U.S. has approved the targeted killing of an American citizen believed to have participated in terrorist attacks, reports The New York Times. Counterterrorism officials say the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is one of the rare cases in which an American is approved for targeted killing.

These stories are part of our ongoing roundup of investigations from other news outlets. For more, visit our Investigations Elsewhere page.

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