CHANTILLY, Virginia — The sheriff in missing Pitt student Sudiksha Konanki’s hometown doesn’t believe that Joshua Riibe was complicit in her disappearance — though US investigators still want Dominican authorities to keep working the case.
Riibe was the last person to see Konanki, 20, alive after apparently meeting her at a bar in Punta Cana, where she was partying with her girlfriends on a spring break trip early March 6.
Dominican authorities have said he is a “person of interest” in the case and have put him under police guard and seized his passport.
However, the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia sent investigators to the Dominican Republic and interviewed Riibe. As a result, detectives do not think he is responsible for her disappearance, Loudoun County sheriff’s spokesman Thomas Julia told The Post.
Officials in Loudoun County, Va., will continue investigating the disappearance of Sudiksha Konanki. via REUTERS
“Is he in any way complicit in any of this? And even if he’s not complicit in any way, and we don’t believe he is, we’ve interviewed him, and he was very cooperative,” Julia exclusively told The Post.
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“We believe he just struggles with his memory in the pre-dawn hours when you’re in a particular state of mind after going through a near-drowning yourself, you may indeed have passed out,” Julia said of Riibe.
Riibe, a 22-year-old college senior from Iowa, said he last saw Konanki while kissing her as the two swam in the ocean but soon after drunkenly passed out on the beach and could not say what happened to her.
Julia questioned how much time passed between when Riibe last saw Konanki and when he passed out — a key missing piece of information that would likely help investigators determine what happened to her.
“Was it a moment? Was it seconds? And that correspondingly bears on, could she have had a chance to get out and then somehow disappeared without his knowledge?” Julia said.
Loudoun County sheriff’s spokesman Thomas Julia said there’s still evidence to be analyzed in the case. REUTERS
“So that’s why all of this is very important, to try to understand the exact timeline as best we can from his limited recollection,” he continued.
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“If she really didn’t have any chance to get out and she did get washed out in a second wave, then all of this about ‘Might something else have happened to her if she did get out of the water that morning?’ becomes moot because it’s likely that never happened,” Julia said.
Even though Virginia officials in Konanki’s hometown don’t believe that Riibe, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, was directly involved, they’re pushing for the investigation to be completed by authorities in the Dominican Republic.
Konanki, 20, was last seen with Joshua Riibe the night she went missing.
“Anything that’s outstanding in terms of surveillance, phones, any other evidence that has been collected and hasn’t been analyzed, we would like all that completed,” Julia said. “We think this investigation and this family is owed the completion of the investigation.”
When asked what evidence or phone has not been analyzed, Julia said he couldn’t say but that they “haven’t seen 100% of the analysis yet.”
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office hopes authorities in the Dominican Republic close out their investigation, even after Konanki’s parents on Monday asked officials to declare her dead — despite authorities never finding her body.
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Riibe, 22, said the last time he saw Konanki was in the ocean but that he passed out on the sand and couldn’t say what happened to her. Southeast technical college
“There’s no reason not to do that, even if they acknowledge and accept what the parents have said, there’s no reason for them not to complete this investigation so there’s no lingering ‘Oh, what about that phone? Oh, what about that piece of videotape?’” Julia said. “There’d be no reason not to complete the investigation.”
Konanki’s parents on Monday also suggested authorities should stop investigating Riibe, who was the last person to see the 20-year-old pre-med student alive on March 6.
“The individual last seen with her is cooperating with the investigation, and no evidence of foul play has been found,” the grieving parents wrote to local officials, without mentioning Riibe by name.
Konanki has been missing in the Dominican Republic since March 6. REUTERS
The two, who met sometime after Konanki arrived at the resort town, were seen in surveillance footage together the night she went missing.
Local authorities initially said they believed Konanki drowned in the ocean — but then said they were not ruling out foul play after Konanki’s family earlier raised fears that she could have been kidnapped.
Your investigation of these allegations is consistent with the IG’s mission to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies, and can help determine if politically connected crypto interests are undermining our national security. As Congress considers legislation on the market structure for digital assets, we must ensure that cryptocurrencies like USD1 are not providing the President and senior officials with the ability to line their pockets at the expense of the public interest.
The following facts have been reported in multiple outlets regarding Mr. Witkoff:
• Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach Witkoff is the CEO of World Liberty Financial (WLF), which the President’s family owns a majority stake in.³
• Beginning in January, one of Sheikh Tahnoon’s employees, Fiacc Larkin, joined WLF as the “chief strategic advisor” while continuing to work at G42, an AI investment firm owned by Sheikh Tahnoon that, according to the U.S. intelligence community, works closely with Chinese military companies.4
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On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff announced that MGX, a state-owned investment firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, had agreed to use a WLF-issued stablecoin, USD1, to make a $2 billion investment in Binance. As a result of this deal, WLF stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees from MGX, and more from the returns on any investments it makes with the $2 billion deposit.³
As of August, Mr. Witkoff maintained a financial interest in WLF and thus stands to personally benefit from his son’s business dealings with the UAE.6 Nevertheless, he did not recuse himself from deliberations regarding the UAE, which may violate federal ethics law.
The following facts have been reported about Mr. Sacks:
●
•
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He is a special government employee who continues to serve as a “general partner” at his venture capital fund, Craft Ventures.
8
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, was an early investor in Craft Ventures and continues to hold an investment in the fund.
In addition, Craft Ventures is invested in BitGo, which has partnered with WLF to provide the technical infrastructure for USD1. If BitGo’s valuation grows, based on the UAE’s investment into USD1, Mr. Sacks and his firm stand to benefit.
3 Yahoo Finance, “Trump family reportedly has a 60% stake in the World Liberty Financial,” Anand Sinha, March 31, 2025,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-family-reportedly-60-stake-172742661.html.
4 New York Times, “Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China,” Mark Mazzetti and Edward
Wong, Nov. 27, 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/us/politics/ai-us-uae-china-security-g42.html.
5 New York Times, “At a Dubai Conference, Trump’s Conflicts Take Center Stage,” David Yaffe-Bellany, May 1, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-
announcement.html.
6U.S Office of Government Ethics, Form 278e for Steven C. Witkoff, August 13, 2025, p. 23, https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/090d0de07e1d2fdf/bbf02867-full.pdf.
18 U.S.C. § 208.
8 White House, “Limited Waiver Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) Regarding A.I. Assets,” June 2025,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/David-Sacks.pdf.
Nigel Farage has refused to criticise Donald Trump’s claims that paracetamol, sold in the US as Tylenol, could cause autism, insisting “science is never settled” and he would never “side with” medical experts.
The Reform UK leader said he had “no idea” if the US president was right to tell pregnant women to avoid taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol and paracetamol, and suggesting that those who could not “tough it out” should limit their intake.
Scientists and global health agencies including the World Health Organization have strongly dismissed Trump’s false claims, calling them misguided and saying the evidence linking paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism was “inconsistent”.
The UK’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”, adding: “I trust doctors over President Trump frankly, on this.”
But in a wide-ranging interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Farage was asked directly if Trump was right to share those unproven claims. He said: “I have no idea, I’ve no idea. You know we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn’t. Who knows Nick, I don’t know.
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“He [Trump] has a particular thing about autism. I think because there’s been some in his family, he feels it very personally. I’ve no idea.”
When Farage was asked if he would side with medical experts who say it is dangerous to make the link, he added: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody, right? You know? I don’t side with anybody, because science is never settled. We should remember that.”
Yet when challenged over whether it was irresponsible for Trump to make such an unproven claim, Farage said: “That’s an opinion he’s [Trump’s] got. It’s not one that I necessarily share.”
Farage’s refusal to condemn Trump’s claims comes weeks after a controversial doctor, Aseem Malhotra, was given top billing at Reform UK’s party conference and used his main-stage speech to claim the Covid vaccine caused cancer in the royal family. Malhotra is an adviser to Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy.
In the same interview, Farage said Trump was “right to say” that sharia law “is an issue in London”.
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“Never take what he [Trump] says literally, ever on anything. But always take everything he says seriously,” Farage said, adding: Trump “has a point.”
“So is he right to say that sharia is an issue in London? Yes. Is it an overwhelming issue at this stage? No. Has the mayor of London directly linked himself to it? No.”
Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to reprimand Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed in a speech to the United Nations: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed.
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“Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
Trump has been publicly attacking the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, since 2015 when the Labour politician criticised Trump, the then presidential candidate, for suggesting that Muslims should be banned from travelling to the US.
A spokesperson for Khan said: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response. London is the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities and we’re delighted to welcome the record number of US citizens moving here.”
During the LBC phone-in, Farage also said Reform’s plan to ban anyone who was not a UK citizen from claiming benefits would not apply to Ukrainians and Hongkongers.
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“No, because they come for different reasons,” Farage said, adding those who had lived in the UK on indefinite leave to remain and had not worked or paid into the system would be told their benefits would be cut.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Alphabet’s market capitalisation surged above $3tn for the first time on Monday on the back of a sharp rally for the search giant’s shares over the past few weeks.
Shares in Google’s parent company have climbed more than 30 per cent to a record high of $252 since the group posted double-digit growth in revenue and profit in quarterly results out in late July.
The rally means Alphabet joins Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple as the only US companies valued above $3tn. Chipmaker Nvidia in July became the first company to hit a $4tn market value.
