Reports say doctors diagnosed the woman with critically low blood sugar, likely leading to her weakened condition.

A woman in Thailand has shocked staff at a Buddhist temple when she started moving in her coffin after being brought in for cremation.

Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, a temple in the province of Nonthaburi on the outskirts of the capital, Bangkok, posted a video on its Facebook page, showing a woman lying in a white coffin in the back of a pick-up truck, slightly moving her arms and head, leaving temple staff bewildered.

Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager, told The Associated Press news agency on Monday that the 65-year-old woman’s brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated.

He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin.

“I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” he said.

“I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.”

According to Pairat, the brother said his sister had been bedridden for about two years, when her health deteriorated and she became unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing two days ago.

The brother then placed her in a coffin and made the 500km (300-mile) journey to a hospital in Bangkok, to which the woman had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs.

The hospital refused to accept the brother’s offer as he didn’t have an official death certificate, Pairat said. His temple offers a free cremation service, which is why the brother approached them on Sunday, but was also refused due to the missing document.

The temple manager said that he was explaining to the brother how he could get a death certificate when they heard the knocking. They then assessed her and sent her to a nearby hospital.

The abbot said the temple would cover her medical expenses, according to Pairat.

According to the Thailand News website, doctors later diagnosed the woman with severe hypoglycaemia, or critically low blood sugar, and confirmed she had not experienced cardiac or respiratory failure.

A MAJOR music legend just opened up about a life-changing health battle that left him unable to speak.

He couldn’t believe at one point he had to accept there was a chance of losing his voice forever, so he would never be able to sing again.

The 68-year-old from Essex found fame in 1983, after the huge success of his single ‘Mama Used To Say’.

From then on his career only continued to thrive on a global scale, making him into a household name.

Junior Giscombe was rushed over to St George’s Hospital in Tooting after he began struggling with speech in 2023.

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He noticed his voice had changed after a performance, realising that by the end of his set he had no voice.

Upon being examined at the hospital, Junior learned that his left vocal cord had suddenly collapsed.

Without speech therapy and vocal rest, there wouldn’t have been a chance for the singer to take to the stage again.

Speaking about his recovery, Junior expressed unending thanks to the staff at St George’s who he fully credits for being the reason he’s still able to do what he loves.

“I’m extremely grateful to the team at George’s – without them, I would have no voice and would have to give up the job I’ve loved for almost 50 years.

“They have been amazing, and all the care I’ve had every step of the way has been second to none.

“I can’t stop singing their praises.”

Junior continued to urge fans – singers and non-singers out there – to make sure they look after their voices and to never take them for granted like he did in the past.

“Not being able to use my voice was incredibly frightening.

“Over the years, I would do shows and didn’t warm up my voice beforehand.

“As I never had any issues with my voice, I took for granted that it would always be there.

“Please don’t take your voice for granted like I did.

“Look after it.”

There are many factors aside from the strain of frequent singing that can lead to vocal cord damage, such as ageing or certain health conditions.

If you notice a change to your speech or a consistent soreness when speaking, it’s recommended to see a doctor.

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When 32-year-old theoretical physicist Ron Unz decided to run for governor, even some friends tried to talk him out of it.

“Politics is not the kind of thing you expect geniuses to go into,” said Eric Reyburn, who attended Harvard University with Unz.

Rivko Knox, Unz’s aunt, worried that the race would be brutal. “I said: ‘Can you take criticism? What if you speak and people laugh at you?’ ”

David Horowitz, the conservative activist, was more blunt. Instead of a politician, Unz “looks like a person who reads science fiction novels at night and spends all the rest of his time on a computer talking to other people about science fiction,” said Horowitz, who has spent hours discussing politics with Unz. “I told him: ‘You’re an intellectual. . . . Your passion is ideas. You’ll be murdered.’ ”

But Unz, the soft-spoken owner of a small computer software company in Silicon Valley, calculated the odds and made up his mind. A month ago he formally challenged Gov. Pete Wilson for the Republican nomination, launching a statewide media blitz financed with more than $1 million of his own money.

Ever since, Unz has blistered Wilson, calling him a hypocrite, an opportunist–even a closet Democrat. The ultraconservative long shot has attacked the more moderate incumbent for raising taxes, bashing immigrants and supporting “the pathology of the social welfare state.” Although he has been short on specific solutions, Unz’s relentless debating style and his willingness to spend freely have won over some skeptics.

“I was afraid he would embarrass himself. But he hasn’t. I’m glad he’s out there pushing,” said Horowitz, who has dubbed Unz’s campaign “The Revenge of the Nerds.”

Arnold Steinberg, a Republican strategist, said his reservations have been replaced by enthusiasm. He tried to talk Unz out of running, he said–but ended up signing on as an adviser.

*

Few people believe Unz can beat Wilson–Unz admits that his campaign is an “uphill battle.” Still, some Republicans worry that the young challenger will wound Wilson, making it easier for a Democrat to replace him.

The Wilson campaign, which at first attempted to ignore Unz, recently began responding to him, labeling one TV ad in which he accused Wilson of letting Los Angeles burn during the 1992 riots “a new low” in the campaign. Though their recent tracking polls show only about 8% of Republicans would vote for Unz, Wilson’s camp has begun to take him more seriously, poking into his background–and informing reporters of the results.

Dan Schnur, Wilson’s spokesman, said one call to First Boston Bank, one of Unz’s former employers, yielded this tidbit: Unz is remembered as the only job applicant ever to list his IQ on his resume.

In fact, Unz may have one of the few IQs worth noting on a resume. It has been estimated at 214, a statistic that one intelligence expert describes as “one in a million.” Educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford universities, he has mastered not only theoretical physics and computer programming, but also ancient Greek history. The author of several scholarly papers on the Spartan naval empire, he is probably the only gubernatorial candidate who warms to the subject of Plutarch.

“The history of the Greek city states really gives you a sense of how nations or states can decline,” said Unz, who claims that his many areas of expertise have each helped prepare him for executive office. “People told me that politics can be frustrating. But when you have sat month after month working on the same computer program, you get used to . . . incremental change.”

Braininess does not necessarily yield political savvy. Unz used the mathematical concept of “expected return” to assess whether he should enter the race. Multiplying the probability by the possible payoff, he concluded that if he had at least a one-in-five chance, running would be worth it. But most political experts say he drastically misjudged the odds.

If Unz’s intellect is unique among political candidates, Unz says that is not the reason to vote for him. Instead, he wants people to respond to his ideas–among them, smaller government, fewer regulations and traditional values. He claims he, not Wilson, is in the Republican mainstream.

He rails against bilingual education and affirmative action (policies that he says amount to “ethnic separatism”) and bad-mouths welfare programs that he says foster “irresponsibility, illegitimacy and a total sense of disconnection from the work ethic in American society.”

To hear Unz’s current ideology, one might never guess at his background.

Unz’s ads describe him as “the Republican for governor,” but he grew up a Democrat. He was born in the San Fernando Valley in 1961 and had his first involvement with politics at age 11 when he donned a McGovern T-shirt and accompanied his mother door to door, stumping for the Democratic presidential candidate.

The candidate who vows to “roll back” public assistance programs once relied on those programs for survival–when growing up in North Hollywood, he and his mother were on welfare. Unz, who today describes the culture of illegitimacy as a root cause of crime, was born out of wedlock–a fact that made the young Unz feel “very ashamed,” he said.

Some politicians might use such personal details to bolster their arguments. Unz, by contrast, prefers to keep them at a distance, discussing his childhood only at a reporter’s request.

“I really don’t think my personal background has had much of an impact on my views,” Unz said recently, moments after comparing his mother, Esther–a former high school teacher who he says “made some stupid mistakes”–to TV’s “Murphy Brown.” “The ‘Murphy Brown’ case works great on TV, but it’s not clear to me that it works in practice.”

In his case, Unz says, “the system worked.” Enrolled in public schools, he proved a top student–a math and debating whiz who as a senior in high school became the third Californian ever to win first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition. Despite his own success story, he firmly believes that welfare does more harm than good.

“The truth is that the cost of living in America, if you’re talking about living relatively simply, is pretty low. The marginal cost of eating simple foods and not starving is minimal. And there . . . would be more charitable organizations in society if these (welfare) programs didn’t exist,” he said, adding that he does not believe that the assistance he and his mother received “was that much of a help.”

Esther Unz recalls things differently. To cut costs, she said, she and her young son lived with her parents. But when she fell ill and was unable to work, she applied for aid. The money she received from the government was essential, she said.

“Ron’s father was out of the picture very soon. . . . But my parents’ home was paid for. What saved us financially completely was there were no rent payments,” she said, adding that her son’s conservative views are something of a mystery to her. “For some reason he turned to the other side. I never tried to structure him as far as (political) party. He just kind of came out this way.”

Despite their differences, she is immensely proud of her son and believes his sincerity and industriousness would make him an effective governor. She has long worried, however, that his penchant for hard work has left him without a fully rounded life.

“Now all I can hope for is he will have time for some extracurricular life,” she said. “And get a girl. Because he has had very few in his life.”

Unz says he wants to marry and have children, eventually. But when he puts his mind to something, he says, he focuses completely. For several years his financial software company, which devises specialized “code” to help Wall Street firms manage their investments efficiently, has been his primary fascination. So far he has not given his personal life the same kind of attention.

A visit to Unz’s large Spanish-style home in Palo Alto reveals a life completely built around work. Three of the five bedrooms–which house his company, Wall Street Analytics Inc.–are filled with files and computer equipment. The rest of the house appears largely unoccupied. He sleeps on a mattress and box spring set on the floor. His spacious living room not only lacks furniture–it is utterly empty.

“I’ve only lived here a year,” he says, nodding toward a well-appointed kitchen he has never used. “Monomaniacal” is the word one friend says Unz uses to describe himself. Asked what he does for fun, he answers: “I’ve been very busy.”

When asked the same question, Unz’s best friends from Harvard do not hesitate. For fun, they said, Unz has always loved to talk politics. “Ron’s idea of a good time at a party is to have five or six people stand around and talk about the issues of the day,” said Reyburn, who fondly remembers a nightly college ritual: dinner, spiced with spirited political debate.

“He’s an intellectual, not a party animal,” recalled Robert Dujarric, another friend who remembers those dinners warmly. “He likes to talk to people. Even though he’s very much at home in the realm of computer software and numbers, he likes to socialize.”

Unz graduated in 1983 with a double major in theoretical physics and ancient history and headed to England. There on a Churchill Science Fellowship, he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.

*

While continuing his studies at Stanford in 1986, Unz and two of his former junior high school teachers developed a plan to create a public academy for Los Angeles County’s high-ability students. Despite winning the support of some educators, the proposal was rejected by officials who worried that if an elite school drained off the best students, ordinary schools would become less challenging.

Unz describes this incident, his first deep involvement on a public policy issue, as an eye-opener. He came to believe that if he wanted to improve society, he would have to get rich enough to champion the causes important to him.

He took a summer job on Wall Street in 1987, working in mortgage finance at First Boston Bank. He taught himself computer programming and soon wrote “The Solver,” a program that used the computer to carve up mortgage loans into securities–a series of calculations that until then had been done by hand.

Unz’s work was outstanding, his colleagues recall, and he accepted a full-time job. But some who worked with him said he could be inflexible when he believed he was right. It was that single-mindedness that ultimately led to his departure, they said.

David Warren, a managing director at First Boston who was hired the same day as Unz, recalled: “He came from an academic background where if your professor told you to do x, and you did y because it was better than x, and then you explained your reasoning–your professor shook hands with you and said: ‘Congratulations, you were right.’ He felt that was the way he was going to behave.”

Unz’s bosses did not share this approach. A few months after taking the job, Unz left to start his own company. For the next six years, Unz worked seven days a week, up to 20 hours a day, writing computer code in his modest apartment in Queens.

New York City appalled him. The crime and the poverty proved to Unz that welfare programs not only were not working but were the cause of society’s decline. He began reading Commentary magazine, and was so impressed that he ordered 15 years of back issues. When his long hours started to pay off (his first sale, to a Wall Street investment firm, netted nearly $200,000), he used the money to fund conservative projects.

*

Unz will not say what he is worth, but says he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute in New York City and to Linda Chavez’s Center for the New American Community in Washington, D.C. Even before moving back to California two years ago, Unz sought out the Los Angeles-based Horowitz to see if he needed funding.

“I wanted to do this book ‘Surviving the PC University,’ ” recalled Horowitz, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. “He said: ‘How much will it cost?’ I said $10,000, and he pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check.”

“I don’t care much about money,” said Unz, who drives a compact car and has spent more on clothing while preparing to become a candidate than he had during the previous several years. “The whole reason I wanted to make money was to be able to influence policy.”

Late last year, when Unz realized that no other Republican was likely to challenge Wilson, that attitude made it easy for him to volunteer. To others, spending a hard-earned personal fortune to run what in all likelihood will be a losing race might seem crazy. To Unz, it was civic duty.

“The odds are, you lose. But if you don’t try it, you’re sure to lose,” he said, adding that he plans to spend a lot more of his money before the June 7 primary. “A lot of this is patriotism. . . . At some stage, individuals have to decide whether they’re going to make an effort.”

So far, Unz’s rhetoric has been dominated by criticism of Wilson. His lack of specific alternatives has hurt him even among some Republicans who dislike Wilson.

“He’s not for me,” Dieter Holberg, a retired engineer, said after hearing Unz speak at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. “You can say, ‘Cut things.’. . . But it would have been long done if it was easy to do.”

But at times he strikes a chord. The California Republican Assembly, a conservative grass-roots organization, has endorsed him. And recently, after hearing Unz blast programs such as prenatal care, drug rehabilitation and “New Age self-esteem counseling,” a few members of UC Berkeley’s College Republicans came away impressed.

“You get a strong sense that here is a fundamentally competent person who is intelligent enough to grasp everything–though that is not the same thing as being able to command or lead. But I don’t particularly think that Wilson leads,” said Gregory Sikorski, 27, a history major. “I will support him now and support the Republican (nominee) later.”

The 13 Welsh players based in England and France initially named in Tandy’s autumn squad are not available for Wales this weekend.

Lock Adam Beard is based in France, while there are 12 players who ply their trade in England with Rhys Carre, Olly Cracknell, Archie Griffin, Nicky Smith, Dafydd Jenkins, Freddie Thomas, Tomos Williams, Jarrod Evans, Louie Hennessey, Max Llewellyn, Nick Tompkins and Louis Rees-Zammit unavailable.

In contrast, Wales have a long-term deal with their own sides to release players for the national side, so Ospreys, Cardiff, Scarlets and Dragons names make up the 30-strong squad this weekend.

The Springboks will also have a limited selection because some of their players have returned to English, French and Japanese clubs, while head coach Rassie Erasmus has also released players back to South African sides for URC action.

South Africa will be without world player of the year Malcolm Marx, Thomas du Toit, Boan Venter, Lood de Jager, RG Snyman, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Grant Williams, Handre Pollard, Manie Libbok, Jesse Kriel, Cheslin Kolbe and Edwill van der Merwe, who have returned to their provincial unions and clubs.

Nov. 24 (UPI) — The United States on Monday announced it was imposing visa restrictions on Haitian government officials the Trump administration accuses of supporting gangs and other criminal organizations in the Caribbean nation.

Individuals affected were not identified in the State Department press release, which said the move comes under a Biden-era policy targeting those who provide financial or material support to gangs and criminal organizations operating in Haiti.

“The United States remains committed to supporting Haiti’s stability and expects measurable progress toward free and fair elections,” the State Department spokesperson said.

“The Haitian people have had enough with gang violence, destruction and political infighting. The Trump administration will promote accountability for those who continue to destabilize Haiti and our region.”

Haiti has suffered from a political crisis and a surge in gang violence since President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July 2021.

Criminal violence has since exploded, with gangs controlling much of Port-au-Prince. In a Nov. 12 press release, United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti said at least 1,247 people were killed and 710 injured between July 1 and Sept. 30 in the capital area. There were also 145 kidnappings and 400 victims of sexual violence, it said.

More than 1.4 million have been displaced across the country.

Between April 1 and June 30, there were at least 1,520 people killed and 609 injured, 185 kidnappings and 628 victims of sexual violence, the BINUM said in a previous update.

The Biden administration announced the visa restriction policy, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, in October 2022.

The move comes as the Trump administration is conducting an immigration crackdown.

The Trump administration has sought to end temporary protection status for Haiti, which shields some Haitian nationals in the United States from deportation. However, the move is being challenged in the courts.

Fletcher fought for greater recognition of one of the deadliest incidents of race violence in US history.

Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of Oklahoma’s 1921 Tulsa Massacre, has died at age 111.

Despite her advanced age, Fletcher was a well-known activist thanks to her work trying to win justice for the victims of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in United States history.

“Today, our city mourns the loss of Mother Viola Fletcher. She was a survivor of one of the darkest chapters in our city’s history and endured more than anyone should,” Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols wrote in a Facebook post. “Mother Fletcher carried 111 years of truth, resilience, and grace and was a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we must still go.”

Fletcher was seven years old at the time of the Tulsa Massacre in Oklahoma, a state living under the Jim Crow system that segregated the US South from the end of the 1800s until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The massacre began on May 31, 1921, when police arrested 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, over allegations that he had assaulted a white woman, according to a report by the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story so that we’d never forget this painful part of our history. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and send our love to her family. https://t.co/km7RXnDKcW

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 25, 2025

When a group of white men gathered at the courthouse calling for Rowland to be lynched, a group of Black men from a nearby community responded and tried to protect him before “all hell broke out”, the report said.

Over the next two days, vigilante groups and law enforcement looted and burned down 35 blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, which was then home to one of the wealthiest Black communities in the US. The Bureau of Labour Statistics in 2024 estimated that the scale of the damage was around $32.2m when adjusted for inflation.

As many as 300 residents of Tulsa were killed and another 700 injured, the report said, although the final tally is unknown because many were buried in unmarked graves.

Survivors like Fletcher and her family were forced to leave the area. Left destitute, her family became sharecroppers, a form of subsistence work where farmers give over almost all their harvest to their landlord.

Rowland was never charged, after Sarah Page, the lift operator he was accused of assaulting, said that she did not want to prosecute the case.

Despite the scale of devastation, the Tulsa Massacre received limited national attention until Oklahoma state launched an investigative commission in 1997. Efforts to win compensation for victims in 2001, however, failed due to the statute of limitations.

On the centennial anniversary of the massacre, Fletcher testified before the US Congress in 2021 about her experiences and co-authored a memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, with her grandson in 2023.

Fletcher was mourned by US leaders like former President Barack Obama.

“As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story so that we’d never forget this painful part of our history. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and send our love to her family,” Obama posted on X.

For officials in Singapore, one Australian man’s actions at the “Wicked: For Good” premiere earlier this month wrought enough chaos to keep him out of the country — for good.

Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority has deported and barred 26-year-old Johnson Wen from reentering the country after he crashed the yellow carpet and accosted star Ariana Grande, according to several reports. A representative for the authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Singapore’s the Straits Times reported that Australian national Wen arrived in the country earlier this month on a 90-day social-visit pass to attend the movie musical’s premiere and for a vacation. The self-proclaimed “Troll Most Hated” was seen in video jumping over the fan barricade onto the other side of the carpet. He ran toward Grammy winner Grande with his arms and legs flailing before grabbing her roughly around the neck and shoulders. He turned and smiled for the cameras before Grande’s co-star Cynthia Erivo interfered and separated Wen from Grande. He was arrested, charged and later released.

Wen, who has a history of crashing other celebrity events including concerts down under by Katy Perry and the Weeknd, was charged with being a public nuisance days after the incident. Shortly after that, he was convicted and sentenced to nine days in jail.

During his trial in Singapore, Wen said he was “going to stop,” according to the Straits Times. His courtroom statement, however, doesn’t seem to match up with his tone on social media.

Wen re-shared video of the incident Sunday on Instagram. “Dear Ariana Grande thanks for letting me join the Red Carpet 💛,” he captioned the video.

“Wicked: For Good” premiered Friday, a year after after the first “Wicked” film. The sequel also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Marissa Bode and Jonathan Bailey. Jon M. Chu directs both films.

Times assistant editor Christie D’Zurilla contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — On Saturday, after 19 years of war, the United States and the Taliban began what both sides delicately called a seven-day “reduction of violence” in Afghanistan, a trial attempt at a partial truce. If the experiment works, they have set Feb. 29 for a ceremony to sign an agreement that would launch broader peace negotiations.

The Taliban has a good reason to keep its promise to pause offensive operations for a week: Under the proposed deal, the U.S. will withdraw about one-fourth of its roughly 12,000 troops from Afghanistan by this summer. It’s one goal the Taliban shares with President Trump, who wants to run for reelection claiming he is ending the United States’ longest war.

But the larger peace process that is supposed to follow will be far more difficult — and the Taliban is not the only complicating factor.

There’s also Trump’s impatience and his penchant for disrupting slow-moving diplomatic efforts at whim.

As early as 2012, Trump declared the U.S. war in Afghanistan “a complete waste” and said it was time to pull out. If something goes wrong in the Afghan peace process — and something surely will — will he check his impulse to declare victory and leave?

The plan negotiated by Trump’s special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, has plenty of moving parts. Its text hasn’t been released, but officials and others say it is almost identical to a draft deal Khalilzad reached in September.

According to their accounts, the deal calls for the United States to trim its troop presence from about 12,000 to 8,600 by July — and later, if all goes well, to zero. Or as the Taliban put it in a statement Friday, the deal would lead to “the withdrawal of all foreign forces … so that our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the shade of an Islamic system.”

The Taliban must agree not to harbor Islamic State, Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups that seek to attack the West. The plan even provides for U.S. forces and the Taliban to cooperate on counterterrorism.

Peace negotiations among all Afghan factions are supposed to begin within 10 days after the plan is signed. But the government in Kabul led by President Ashraf Ghani is mired in an internal power struggle and could prove incapable of acting as an effective player.

Those talks could lead to a new constitution and give the Taliban a major role in a future Afghan government.

Keeping that complex process on track will require Washington to stay involved in Afghanistan with both diplomatic muscle and continued financial aid — which means Congress will have to buy in.

That hasn’t happened. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other Republican hawks are already grumbling about trusting the Taliban and the folly, in their view, of reducing troops below 8,600.

One question is practical: U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy Al Qaeda, which launched the 9/11 attacks from its sanctuary there, and to push the Taliban out of power. Can U.S. counterterrorism needs be met without troops in Afghanistan?

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who helped run the war under two presidents, says the answer is yes.

“The threat is not what it was in 2001. Al Qaeda is much diminished,” he told me. “And we’re much better at counterterrorism than we were back when we were simply launching cruise missiles into the desert.”

Other questions could be difficult in a different way.

Most Americans have concluded that the U.S. war in Afghanistan turned into a tragic, expensive failure once it expanded beyond unseating Al Qaeda. The explicit U.S. recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force makes that verdict official.

And allowing the Taliban to win a share of power — or potentially dominate the government in Kabul — will diminish whatever hope remains of helping Afghanistan become a recognizable democracy.

Americans once congratulated themselves for freeing Afghanistan’s women from Islamic extremism. Taliban leaders have said they intend to protect women’s rights to education and employment, but their track record — closing schools, barring women from public life, and worse — inspires little confidence.

Many, including Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, are pessimistic.

“We encouraged women to step forward,” Crocker told me. “Now it appears they’re expendable.”

Trump has disrupted his own diplomacy more than once. When the U.S. and Taliban reached a tentative deal last September, Trump impulsively decided that he wanted Taliban leaders to fly to Camp David for a splashy ceremony three days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The Taliban, which isn’t big on photo ops, refused. Republicans in Congress also denounced the idea of honoring the leaders of a guerrilla force who had killed 1,800 Americans by bringing them to the presidential retreat in Maryland. Trump announced that he was canceling the deal entirely, blamed the Taliban for an attack that killed a U.S. serviceman in Kabul, and pronounced the peace talks “dead.”

Khalilzad needed almost six months to bring the deal back to life.

If the Feb. 29 deal holds, Trump will claim credit for cutting U.S. troops in Afghanistan down to 8,600 — the same number deployed when President Obama left office.

But what Trump really wants is to announce —in an election year, no less — that those troops are on their way home, too.

Given the complexities of Afghan politics, that’s probably impossible. Diplomats warn that putting pressure on the Afghans to conclude a peace agreement could scuttle the process.

If Trump wants to withdraw troops as part of a comprehensive deal — one that avoids chaos, meets U.S. counterterrorism needs and gives Afghanistan a chance at peace — he’ll need to exercise unwonted self-restraint.

After three years as president, he doesn’t have many diplomatic achievements to his name. He’s staged disruptive events, including summit meetings with Kim Jong Un, trade wars and withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, but produced few tangible accomplishments.

Launching a peace process for Afghanistan, if it succeeds, could be his most substantive achievement — but only if he gets out of his own way.

Shohei Ohtani will once again represent Team Japan in next year’s World Baseball Classic.

Whether or not he pitches in the international tournament, however, remains unclear.

On Monday, Ohtani announced on Instagram he is planning to participate in the WBC for the second time in his career.

In the 2023 WBC, he won tournament MVP with a .435 batting average and 1.86 pitching ERA, helping Japan to that year’s title. He punctuated the event with his memorable strikeout of Mike Trout for the final out in the championship game.

“I’m happy to play again representing Japan,” Ohtani wrote in Japanese on Monday.

The question now is whether Ohtani will pitch in the event, which takes place in March, just five months removed from his heavy postseason workload during the Dodgers’ run to a second-consecutive World Series title.

At this point, no decision on that front has seemingly been made.

After spending the first half of the 2025 season limited only to designated hitting duties while completing his recovery from a 2023 Tommy John procedure, the 31-year-old Ohtani resumed his two-way role over the second half, making 14 pitching starts for the Dodgers from June to September while increasing his workload one inning at a time.

By the postseason, he was fully built up for full-length starts, and went on to throw 20⅓ innings over four playoff outings — including a 2⅓ inning appearance on shortened three days’ rest in Game 7 of the World Series.

Oftentimes, pitchers who are that heavily taxed during a deep playoff run will consider sitting out a WBC the following year because of the early ramp-up required to throw in the tournament takes place during spring training.

However, the WBC is of supreme importance in the Japanese baseball community; more significant even than the World Series. And Ohtani is the face of the county’s iconic Samurai Japan national team, which will be trying to win its fourth WBC title.

Shohei Ohtani celebrates with his teammates after striking out Mike Trout to secure Japan’s World Baseball Classic championship win over the United States in 2023.

(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

Ohtani is expected to hit in the event, coming off a career-high 55-homer season that helped him earn a third-consecutive MVP Award and the fourth of his MLB career.

But there remains no indication about whether he will pitch, nor if such a decision has been made between him and the Dodgers (who can’t block Ohtani from participating in the event, but could request he either not pitch or follow strict usage rules given he missed the first half of last season on the mound).

It is unlikely that decision will be made until closer to the tournament.

The Dodgers’ two other Japanese pitchers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, face a similar dynamic leading into next year’s WBC.

Yamamoto made 30 starts in the 2025 regular season, the most of his MLB or Japanese career, then threw 37⅓ more innings in six outings during the playoffs — including his heroic back-to-back victories in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series.

Sasaki missed most of his rookie MLB season with a shoulder injury, but returned late in the year and became the team’s de facto closer in the playoffs. Next year, he is slated to return to the starting rotation.

Like Ohtani, they are both key cogs in the Dodgers’ 2026 pitching plans, which, as manager Dave Roberts alluded to during a promotional tour in Japan last week, could make the WBC something of a potential complication.

“We’ll support them,” Roberts told the Japanese media. “But I do think that the pitching, it’s a lot on the body, the arm. The rest will be beneficial for next year, for our season. But we understand how important the WBC is for these individual players and for the country of Japan.”

The Dodgers could choose to block Sasaki’s participation in the WBC, since he spent much of last year on the 60-day injured list, but have not yet given any indication about whether they would do so.

The club can’t do the same with Yamamoto, but could still try advocating for him to be used more conservatively in the tournament coming off his especially burdensome October performance.

For now, at least, what is known is that Ohtani will participate in some capacity.

But whether he, or his Japanese Dodgers teammates, will pitch in the tournament will remain a subplot as the offseason progresses.

Islamabad, Pakistan – A new assessment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has concluded that corruption in Pakistan is behind an economic crisis driven by “state capture” – where public policy is manipulated to benefit a narrow circle of political and business elites.

The Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA), finalised in November 2025, presents a grim picture of a system marked by dysfunctional institutions that are unable to enforce the rule of law or safeguard public resources.

According to the 186-page report, corruption in Pakistan is “persistent and corrosive”, distorting markets, eroding public trust and undermining fiscal stability.

The report, requested by the Pakistani government, warns that without dismantling the structures of “elite privilege”, the country’s economic stagnation will persist.

While corruption vulnerabilities are present at all levels of government, according to the report, “the most economically damaging manifestations involve privileged entities that exert influence over key economic sectors, including those owned by or affiliated with the state.”

The report argues that Pakistan stands to gain substantial economic benefits if governance improves and accountability is strengthened. Such reforms, it notes, could significantly lift the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which stood at $340bn in 2024.

“Based on cross-country analysis of the reform experience of emerging markets, IMF analysis projects that Pakistan could generate between a 5 to 6.5 percent increase in GDP by implementing a package of governance reforms over the course of five years,” the report said.

Stefan Dercon, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford who has advised the Pakistani government on economic reforms, said that he agreed that the absence of accountability in corruption cases was eating away at the country’s economic potential.

“Failure of implementation [of laws and principles of accountability] gives vested interests too often free rein and addressing this must be at the core of efforts for economic reform,” he told Al Jazeera.

Here is what we know about the IMF report, the areas of weakness it highlights, the policy recommendations it makes, and what the experts say.

What does the IMF report say?

Pakistan has turned to the IMF 25 times since 1958, making it one of the fund’s most frequent borrowers. Nearly every administration, whether military or civilian, has sought IMF assistance, reflecting chronic balance of payments crises.

The current programme was started under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The GCDA’s release comes ahead of the IMF executive board’s expected approval of a $1.2bn disbursement next month, part of the ongoing 37-month-long, $7bn programme.

Pakistan narrowly avoided default in 2023, surviving only after the IMF extended an earlier nine-month deal, which was followed by the ongoing 37-month programme.

According to the GCDA, Pakistan consistently ranks near the bottom of global governance indicators among nations. Between 2015 and 2024, the country’s score on control of corruption remained stagnant, placing it among the worst performers worldwide and within its neighbourhood.

At the heart of the IMF’s findings is the concept of “state capture”, where, according to the fund, corruption becomes the norm and, in fact, the primary means of governance. The report argues that the Pakistani state apparatus is frequently used to enrich specific groups at the expense of the broader public.

The report estimates that “elite privilege” – defined as access to subsidies, tax relief and lucrative state contracts for a select few – drains billions of dollars from the economy annually, while tax evasion and regulatory capture crowd out genuine private sector investment.

These findings echo a 2021 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report, which said economic privileges granted to Pakistan’s elite groups, including politicians and the powerful military, amount to roughly 6 percent of the country’s economy.

Ali Hasanain, an associate professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, said the IMF’s description of elite capture is accurate but added that it was “hardly a revelation”.

He pointed to the 2021 UNDP report and other domestic studies that describe how Pakistan’s economic system has long served politically connected actors who secure “preferential access to land, credit, tariffs and regulatory exemptions.”

“The IMF diagnostic repeats what many domestic studies, including those by the World Bank and Pakistan’s own institutions, have already emphasised: Powerful interests shape rules to maintain their advantage,” he told Al Jazeera.

The new report notes that tax expenditures, including exemptions and concessions granted to influential sectors such as real estate, manufacturing and energy, cost the state 4.61 percent of GDP in the 2023 fiscal year alone.

It also calls for an end to special treatment for influential public sector entities in government contracts and urges greater transparency in the functioning of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC).

The SIFC, created in June 2023 during Sharif’s first term, is a high-powered body comprising civilian and military leaders and tasked with promoting investment by easing bureaucratic obstacles. Although positioned as a flagship initiative jointly owned by the government and the military, it has faced sustained criticism for a lack of transparency.

The report describes broad legal immunity granted to SIFC officials, many from the armed forces, as a major governance concern. It warns that this immunity, combined with the council’s authority to exempt projects from regulatory requirements, creates significant risks.

Highlighting the absence of transparency, the GCDA says the SIFC should publish annual reports with details of all investments it has facilitated, including concessions granted and the rationale behind them.

“The recently established Special Investment Facilitation Council, which has been vested with substantial authority to facilitate foreign investments, operates with untested transparency and accountability provisions,” the report said.

Judiciary and rule of law

The report identifies the judiciary as another critical bottleneck. Pakistan’s legal system is overwhelmed by more than two million pending cases. In 2023 alone, the number of unresolved cases before the Supreme Court increased by 7 percent.

Over the last 12 months, Pakistan has passed two constitutional amendments, both of which faced severe backlash from many in the legal community who said that they represent a “constitutional surrender”. In essence, the amendments create a parallel Federal Constitutional Court that critics say will reduce the powers of the Supreme Court, while also changing rules that guide how judges are appointed and transferred, in ways that opponents say could give the executive great control over whom to promote and whom to punish.

The government, however, has insisted that the changes were made to improve the efficiency and efficacy of the judicial system.

Similar credibility challenges affect the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the two principal bodies responsible for investigating corruption.

The GCDA cites a 2024 government task force, which found that NAB has, at times, exceeded its mandate and launched politically motivated cases. This selective accountability, the report says, has damaged public trust and created a climate of fear within the bureaucracy, slowing decision-making.

While NAB says it recovered 5.3 trillion rupees ($17bn) between January 2023 and December 2024, the report notes that conviction rates remain low.

The diagnostic calls for fundamental reforms to NAB’s appointment processes to ensure independence and a shift from “political victimisation” to “rule-based enforcement”.

Was the report necessary?

The IMF outlines reforms which experts acknowledged would be comprehensive if pursued by authorities.

Yet analysts also note that international institutions and domestic researchers have repeatedly made similar observations in the past, with little follow-through by the government.

Sajid Amin Javed, a senior economist at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad, says the fact that Pakistan is already under an IMF programme may compel the government to take the findings more seriously.

He said that the IMF report could have gone further than it has by acknowledging that many of its recommendations have been made by others in the past, “without bringing any change”.

“Perhaps the assessment could have been made to see why these failures happened,” he said.

Javed welcomed the report’s attempt to quantify economic losses from corruption, hoping it might push policymakers to act.

“Corruption and governance are intrinsically tied to each other. Corruption leads to weak governance, and weak governance promotes corruption, making them conjoined,” he said.

Hasanain, however, was more sceptical, questioning why the IMF waited for a formal request from the Pakistani government despite having its own internal assessment mechanisms.

What can the government do?

Analysts said Pakistan’s economic landscape has long been shaped by politically connected actors who enjoy preferential access to land, credit, tariffs and regulatory exemptions. The IMF’s observations, they noted, are not new.

Hasanain argues that corruption, including elite capture of markets, regulatory bodies and public policy, is political in nature and cannot be addressed without deeper reforms.

“Without a broader political awakening, governance reforms will remain technical fixes built on unstable foundations. Ultimately, elite capture is undone only when political incentives change,” he said.

Javed, meanwhile, pointed to what he called policy design capture, arguing that those responsible for drafting governance and anticorruption reforms are often part of the same elite ecosystem.

“Elite policy capture on policy design is perhaps the most important component which allows the elite capture. The report’s recommendations show that we must go for participatory and inclusive methods to get out of our current conundrum,” he said.

For Hasanain, the most urgent reform is a unified economic turnaround plan that is fully owned by the prime minister and communicated clearly.

He said that Pakistan’s economic landscape was cluttered with “committees, councils, task forces and overlapping ministries”, each producing its own documents without accountability.

“The government should consolidate these scattered structures into one clear reform platform with defined priorities, timelines and measurable outcomes. Progress should be published monthly, debated publicly, and subjected to independent scrutiny,” he said.

Hasanain argued that such consolidation would improve coordination, build public trust and signal seriousness to investors.

For Javed, the most immediate priority is reforming the public procurement system, which governs how government bodies buy goods and services using public funds.

“Our procurement system is not working on value of money, but instead it focuses on quantity of money, where lowest bidder wins the bid,” he said, arguing that this approach meant that contracts often did not go to those best suited to deliver what was needed. “This system needs urgent modernisation.”

“An urgent realisation is the order of the day that if we need to have a flourishing, transparent economy, we have no choice but to overhaul our entire economic framework,” Javed said.

The controversial, US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says it is winding down its aid operations in the Palestinian territory, after almost six months.

The organisation had already suspended its three food distribution sites in Gaza after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took effect six weeks ago.

The GHF aimed to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Gaza’s population. UN and other aid agencies refused to co-operate with its system, saying it was unethical and unsafe.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed while seeking food amid chaotic scenes near GHF’s sites, mostly by Israeli fire, according to the UN. Israel said its troops fired warning shots.

The GHF said on Monday that it was winding down operations now because of the “successful completion of its emergency mission”, with a total of three million packages containing the equivalent of more than 187 million meals delivered to Palestinians.

The GHF’s executive director, Jon Acree, also said the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) – which has been set up to help implement US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan – would be “adopting and expanding the model GHF piloted”.

US state department spokesperson Tommy Piggott wrote on X: “GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire.”

Hamas – which denies stealing aid – welcomed the closure of the GHF, Reuters reported. A spokesman for said GHF should be held accountable for the harm it caused to Palestinians.

“We call upon all international human rights organisations to ensure that it does not escape accountability after causing the death and injury of thousands of Gazans and covering up the starvation policy practised by the (Israeli) government,” Hazem Qassem wrote on his Telegram channel.

The GHF began operations in Gaza on 26 May, a week after Israel had partially eased a total blockade on aid and commercial deliveries to Gaza that lasted 11 weeks and caused severe shortages of essential supplies. Three months later, a famine was declared in Gaza City.

The GHF’s food distribution sites in southern and central Gaza were operated by US private security contractors and located inside Israeli military zones.

The UN and its partners said the system contravened the fundamental humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence, and that channelling desperate people into militarised zones was inherently unsafe.

The UN’s human rights office said it recorded the killing of at least 859 Palestinians seeking food in the vicinity of GHF sites between 26 May and 31 July. Another 514 people were killed near the routes of UN and other aid convoys, it added. Most of them were killed by the Israeli military, according to the office.

The Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots at people who approached them in a “threatening” manner.

The GHF said there were no shootings at the aid sites and accused the UN of using “false and misleading” statistics from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The GHF’s future had been uncertain since Hamas and Israel agreed a ceasefire deal to implement the first phase of Trump’s peace plan.

It said aid distribution would take place “without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner” with Hamas and Israel.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Monday that the GHF’s shutdown would have “no impact” on its operations “because we never worked with them”.

He also said that while more aid was getting into Gaza since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October, it was “not enough to meet all the needs” of the 2.1 million population.

Kelly Brook is one of this year’s contestants on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and the ITV series, complete with the campsite banter, has already left viewers in hysterics

I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! viewers have taken to social media adamant producers are “giving Kelly Brook too much airtime”.

Fans of the programme suggested there hasn’t been a fair distribution of airtime and some think ITV are playing up to their favourites. Kelly, 46, is striving to win the show but faces tough competition from the likes of Tom Read Wilson, Shona McGarty, Vogue Williams and Martin Kemp.

Many intriguing moments of this series have concerned Kelly, including how she appeared to forget it was her birthday on Sunday, and a dig at Jack Osbourne. However, writing on Reddit and other social media apps, viewers have shared their frustration of airtime given to Kelly, a model and actress.

One person asked on Reddit: “But why are the editors so obsessed with her?… Catching up on Saturday’s show, and oh my GOD it’s like nobody else is there. Kelly is in almost every shot it feels like. Compared to Shona, who was actually in the trial and didn’t get the breakfast, Kelly seems to be on-screen constantly.” Another posted: “I couldn’t believe how little Shona was shown last night. I said to my husband about it.”

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Viewers referred to 34-year-old Shona, who played Whitney Dean in EastEnders between 2008 and 2024. One fan described her as “funny and entertaining” and expressed disappointment the actress had “little screen time” despite taking part in a recent Bushtucker Trial.

Shona, originally from Barnet, north London, has taken part in three trials, more than Kelly’s two. However, recent episodes have explored Kelly’s “feud” with Jack, media personality and son of tragic Ozzy Osbourne.

Jack and Kelly clashed over preparing fish for dinner, which followed on from when Jack criticised her potato slicing while preparing a previous meal in the jungle.

But other social media users also stressed, despte the row, they’d like to see the air time split evenly. One wrote: “Let’s hear more from others, like Alex [Alex Scott].” Another viewer posted: “I wish they would give others, rather than Kelly, more screen time. It’s annoying.”

However, Kelly, who was in The Italian Job and Ripper among other films, faced scathing criticism before going into the jungle. Trolls made vicious comments about her figure, which led to husband Jeremy Parisi to defend his spouse. The actor, who wed Kelly in 2022, said: “I’m so happy to see Kelly being so confident and happy in her own skin, it’s hard for women in the public eye to be put under such scrutiny but she is a positive role model for so many women which is something she should be proud of.”

Roger Stone’s sentencing Thursday is shaping up as a test of judicial independence after President Trump inserted himself in the court’s deliberations over the fate of his longtime confidant.

If U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentences Stone in line with the Justice Department’s new and lower recommendation, partisans will see that as caving to Trump, former federal prosecutor Harry Sandick said. If she gives a jail term closer to the maximum, she’ll be seen as defying the pressure.

“Given how polarized the country is, some people will look to Jackson to be a hero and give him a long sentence, and others will look to her to be a hero and give him a short sentence, but she’ll likely come in somewhere in between,” Sandick said. “She doesn’t need to be a hero. She’s a federal judge.”

Jackson said Wednesday that she’ll allow Stone to remain free regardless while she considers his bid for a new trial and any other motions filed after the sentencing. Speculation that sending him straight to prison could prompt Trump to swiftly pardon him rose after the president issued a slate of high-profile clemencies Tuesday in cases often supported by conservatives.

The Stone case stems from the U.S. investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and was always politically charged. But it turned surreal last week when senior Justice Department officials overruled career prosecutors who had recommended a prison term as long as nine years. The rare step seemed a reaction to angry tweets by Trump. The prosecutors quit the case in response, and Trump mocked them afterward on Twitter.

The about-face over the sentencing recommendation prompted Democratic lawmakers to accuse Trump of using the Justice Department for his own bidding. It also set up a rare clash between the president and his attorney general, William P. Barr, who complained on television that Trump’s comments were harming the public perception of the Justice Department as impartial. Even the chief federal judge in Washington issued a statement affirming that public pressure wouldn’t affect sentencing decisions.

The four prosecutors who oversaw Stone’s case made a comprehensive argument about why he should be locked up for seven to nine years. It was based on sentencing guidelines and details of his case, including his combative and disruptive behavior during the court proceedings. Stone, 67, asked for no prison time at all.

The Justice Department said the line prosecutors didn’t calculate Stone’s offenses correctly and revised the sentencing recommendation to between three and four years. In his tweets, Trump called the original sentencing recommendation “a miscarriage of justice” and suggested the prosecutors behind it were minions of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election he has often derided as a corrupt “witch hunt.”

However she rules, Jackson may use the hearing to grill Justice Department lawyers about the decision-making behind the scenes, given how quickly the prosecutors who were most familiar with Stone’s case were overruled.

Jackson is “entitled to ask DOJ to explain in some way why they changed their position within 24 hours,” said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office who’s running as a Democrat for Manhattan district attorney. “Judges are in charge when it comes to sentencing, so none of this would be out of the ordinary.”

Sharon L. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who’s now in private practice in New York, said Jackson could go so far as to ask Barr himself to appear.

“I think what has happened calls for that sort of drastic order,” McCarthy said.

Judges frequently hand down sentences that are lower — sometimes much lower — than what prosecutors suggest, and it’s possible that Jackson would have done so in Stone’s case even if Trump hadn’t weighed in or the Justice Department hadn’t reversed course. The perceived interference from the White House may complicate such a decision in Stone’s case.

Indeed, Trump’s commentary on the case could blow back on Stone if Jackson — who has also been criticized by Trump on Twitter — feels the need to demonstrate her independence by giving Stone a longer sentence than she otherwise would have, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School.

“If Judge Jackson were inclined to give a lower sentence, that actually makes it harder for her to do so now,” Levenson said.

Jacob S. Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor and Securities and Exchange Commission trial attorney, said that “the irony of the president’s tweet is that it could end up backfiring.” The judge may decide “that to protect the integrity and project the independence of the judiciary, she may end up imposing a longer sentence than she may have originally intended,” Frenkel said.

Randall Jackson, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who prosecuted Bernard Madoff, says the judge isn’t likely to adjust her sentence in response to Trump. Even so, he said, the furor that erupted over suspected interference by Trump and Barr could hurt Stone in court.

“A reasonable observer could question whether this is the type of thing that is going to distract the judge from what most defense attorneys would want the judge to be focused on, which is the mitigating factors for their client that could lead to a lower sentence,” Jackson said.

In February 2024, Sheffield United team-mates Jack Robinson and Vinicius Souza had to be separated as tempers flared during their 1-0 defeat at Wolves.

The bizarre spat between the Blades duo led to the video assistant referee checking for a possible red card, but no action was taken.

Manager Chris Wilder said his players did not “overstep the mark” and dismissed the incident as something that happens “at every club up and down the country, three or four times a year”.

Here are the key events from day 1,370 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Tuesday, November 25.

Trump’s plan

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a proposed peace plan now under discussion with the United States and Europe has incorporated “correct” points, but sensitive issues still need to be discussed with US President Donald Trump.
• Zelenskyy added that if negotiations proceeded on resolving the war, “there must be no missiles, no massive strikes on Ukraine and our people”.
• Trump also hinted at new progress in the talks, which took place in Geneva. “Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening,” he wrote on Truth Social.
• A senior official told the AFP news agency that the US pressed Ukraine to accept the deal in Geneva, despite Kyiv’s protests that the plan conceded too much to Moscow. The official said Washington did not directly threaten to cut off aid if Kyiv rejected its deal, but that Ukraine understood this was a distinct possibility.
• White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that there is no meeting scheduled between Trump and Zelenskyy this week amid reports of a possible trip by the Ukrainian leader to the US capital.
• Leavitt told US broadcaster Fox News that “a couple of points of disagreement” remain between the US and Ukraine on a potential deal to end Russia’s invasion.
• Leavitt also pushed back against criticism, including from within Trump’s Republican Party, that the president is favouring Russia in efforts to end the war in Ukraine, describing those statements as “complete and total fallacy”. She said the US president was “hopeful and optimistic” that a plan could be worked out.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would wait to see how talks between the US and Ukraine on a potential peace plan pan out, and would not be commenting on media reports about such a serious and complex issue.
• But Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that a European counter-proposal to a US 28-point peace plan for Ukraine was “not constructive” and that it simply did not work for Moscow.
• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there was more work to do to establish a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine, but added that progress was being made.
• Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, too, welcomed progress made at the meetings in Geneva, but added that major issues remain to be resolved.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said no deal regarding Ukraine can be allowed to undermine the security of Poland and Europe; on the contrary, it should strengthen it.
• German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that the talks in Geneva on amending Trump’s 28-point plan to end the war with Russia had produced a “decisive success” for Europeans. Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said that to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine, its borders can’t be changed by force and there can’t be limitations on Ukraine’s military that would invite further Russian aggression.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a phone call that Ankara will contribute to any diplomatic effort to facilitate direct contact between Russia and Ukraine and to reach a “just and lasting” peace, his office said.

Fighting

• Powerful explosions rocked Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday as the Ukrainian air force issued a warning about missile attacks across the country.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the country’s air defences shot down 10 drones en route to Moscow, a day after a Ukrainian strike on a power plant cut off heating in a town near the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said emergency services were clearing up sites where debris from drones had fallen.
• The Defence Ministry added that a total of 50 Ukrainian drones were downed across the Moscow, Bryansk, Kaluga and Kursk regions, as well as Crimea and over the waters of the Black Sea.

Politics

• Polish prosecutors have arrested and charged a third Ukrainian man suspected of collaborating with Russia to sabotage a rail track, authorities said. Two other Ukrainians, who fled to Belarus, had already been charged in absentia over the blast on the Warsaw-Lublin line connecting Warsaw to the Ukrainian border.

• Two young street musicians who were jailed for more than a month in Russia for singing anti-Kremlin songs have left the country after being released from detention, according to Russian media reports. Vocalist Diana Loginova, 18, and guitarist Alexander Orlov, 22, were detained on October 15 in central St Petersburg after an impromptu street performance deemed critical of Putin and the government.

Energy

• Oil prices climbed about 1 percent on mounting doubts about whether Russia will get a peace deal with Ukraine that will boost Moscow’s oil exports. Brent futures rose 81 cents, or 1.3 percent, to settle at $63.37 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained 78 cents, or 1.3 percent, to settle at $58.84.

• Four opposition Democratic US senators, including Elizabeth Warren, said that the lax enforcement by the Trump administration of sanctions on Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 export terminal has allowed China to buy discounted liquefied natural gas and has helped Moscow fund the war in Ukraine.

• A heating and power plant in Russia’s Moscow region has resumed operations after shutting down due to a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone strike on Sunday, regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

• Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse resumed oil product exports last week after a two-week suspension following Ukrainian drone attacks, while the local oil refinery has restarted processing crude, the Reuters news agency reported, citing industry sources and data.

• Russian state oil and gas revenue may fall in November by about 35 percent from the corresponding month in 2024 to 520 billion roubles ($6.59bn) due to cheaper oil and a stronger local currency, according to calculations and analysis by Reuters.

The Trump administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine took another turn today, this time with a revised deal reportedly more favorable to Ukraine than an earlier iteration. Meanwhile, Kyiv continues to lose ground at several points across the 600-mile front lines.

A new plan introduced on Monday reportedly eliminates some, but not all of Ukraine’s major concerns, with a 28-point plan unveiled last week. The revised document was hammered out over the weekend by the U.S. delegation, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and a Ukrainian team, led by the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak. The updated peace proposal now contains 19 provisions.

As with the previous peace plan, we cannot independently verify the details of this latest one, which could be preliminary, subject to change, and/or not reported in the proper context.

The reported details of the original 28-point plan that emerged last week were highly controversial, seemingly lopsided in favor of Russia and raised concerns across Europe and even among Ukraine’s staunch Republican supporters in Congress. The backlash was so great that Rubio reportedly assured the lawmakers that the leaked version did not represent the Trump administration’s position. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly drafted that plan with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, the Trump administration’s top negotiator, on Friday warned that Washington would show little flexibility.

“We are not negotiating details,” he said, Financial Times wrote, citing a senior European official in the meeting at the Kyiv residence of US chargé d’affaires, Julie Davis

Monday’s version of the plan appears to be more amenable to Kyiv.

“Many of the controversial provisions were either softened or at least reshaped” to get closer to a Ukrainian position, said Oleksandr Bevz, an adviser to Yermak who participated in the Geneva summit, The Washington Post reported. “By Monday, while not all the language in the draft was considered entirely ‘acceptable’ to Kyiv, the text was revised to a point that it can at least ‘be considered, whereas before it was an ultimatum,’” Bevz said.

The U.S. had reportedly threatened to cut all support if the deal wasn’t accepted.

“The Ukrainian delegation affirmed that all of their principal concerns—security guarantees, long-term economic development, infrastructure protection, freedom of navigation, and political sovereignty—were thoroughly addressed during the meeting,” the White House said in a statement Sunday night. “They expressed appreciation for the structured approach taken to incorporate their feedback into each component of the emerging settlement framework.”

Ukrainian representatives “stated that, based on the revisions and clarifications presented today, they believe the current draft reflects their national interests and provides credible and enforceable mechanisms to safeguard Ukraine’s security in both the near and long term,” the statement continued. “They underscored that the strengthened security guarantee architecture, combined with commitments on non-aggression, energy stability, and reconstruction, meaningfully addresses their core strategic requirements.”

Among other measures, the U.S. seemed willing to remove a Russian demand to limit Ukraine’s military to 600,000 troops. 

However, the biggest sticking point remains. according to reports.

The aforementioned 28-point proposal would have seen Ukraine give up a considerable amount of territory in the east, including land it still controls. That is not something the Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky appears willing to accept, even with the stick of reduced or eliminated support from Washington.

The Ukrainian leader has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs,” The Associated Press noted. “The proposal acquiesced to many Russian demands that Zelensky has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory,” the AP reported.

The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people “will always defend” their home.

On Monday, Zelensky seemed hopeful that peace could be achieved, but he didn’t specifically address Russia’s lingering demand for land concessions.

“Today our delegation returned from Geneva after negotiations with the American side and European partners, and now the list of necessary steps to end the war can become workable,” Zelensky explained on Telegram. “As of now, after Geneva, there are fewer points, no longer 28, and much of the right has been taken into account in this framework.”

“There is still work to be done together – it is very difficult – to make the final document, and everything must be done properly,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “And we appreciate that most of the world is ready to help us and the American side is constructive. In fact, the whole day yesterday was meetings; it was a difficult, extremely detailed work.”

“I discuss the sensitive issues with President Trump,” Zelensky added.

However, there is no meeting scheduled between the two leaders, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.

The White House, she said, feels “optimistic” about the president’s proposed peace plan to end the war in Russia. The plan has input from both Russia and Ukraine.

Leavitt also stated that the U.S., which has been selling arms to NATO, ultimately bound for Ukraine, cannot keep that up.

Meanwhile, European nations also introduced their own 28-point peace proposal. Russia, for its part, seems more amenable to the American version.

“Yuri Ushakov, a veteran foreign policy aide to the Russian leader, told reporters in Moscow that the EU’s peace plan, launched in response to the 28-point plan presented by Washington, ‘constructively doesn’t fit us at all,’” Politico reported. “Ushakov added that Trump’s plan, which included several major concessions to Russia, including ceding vast swathes of Ukrainian territory and capping the size of Kyiv’s military, was more ‘acceptable’ to the Kremlin.”

Amid the flurry of diplomatic moves, Russia continues to slowly grind up Ukrainian territory, albeit at a tremendous cost in personnel and equipment.

“Russian forces have broken through Ukrainian defenses north of Huliaipole, creating a rapidly expanding threat to one of Ukraine’s most fortified positions in Zaporizhzhia Oblast,” Euromaidan Press reported on Sunday. “The breakthrough has prompted Ukrainian forces to reposition for a high-stakes defensive battle along the Zarichne River.”

Russian forces broke through Ukrainian defenses north of Huliaipole after capturing Uspenivka, the key Ukrainian strongpoint on the western bank of the Yanchul River. The breakthrough came after Russia concentrated approximately 40,000 troops on the position and fired over 400… pic.twitter.com/fJ7bpBiKnp

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) November 23, 2025

The community, which had a population of about 14,000 in 2016, was originally created in the 1770s as a military bulwark against invading forces. Huliaipole is once again fighting to ward off an encroaching enemy and is “the largest and most fortified Ukrainian stronghold in the region,” Euromaidan Press explained.

The Russians have amassed a force of about 40,000 troops, the publication claimed, adding that they are attacking from the north to try and encircle Ukrainian forces and avoid a costly head-on attack.

Russian troops reached the western outskirts of the settlement of Zatyshshia, 2,5km from the northern entrance to the town of Huliaipole, located on the Zaporizhzhia front.

📍47.691444, 36.304132 pic.twitter.com/4dxPnD1MaK

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) November 24, 2025

“Ukrainian defenders repelled seven attacks by the occupiers near the settlements of Zelenyi Hai, Zatyshshia, Solodke, and towards Varvarivka and Dobropillia,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff claimed on Monday. “Two clashes are still ongoing. In addition, enemy aviation struck the settlements of Huliaipole and Zaliznychne.”

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry MoD) claimed it captured a small community about a mile and a half north of Huliaipole 

The “liberation of Zatishye has strengthened the position of the Vostok Group of Forces and has become an important step towards further progress in this direction,” the Russian MoD stated on Telegram.

Meanwhile, about 60 miles to the northeast in the hotly contested Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces are still holding out in the embattled city of Pokrovsk; however, “Russian forces will very likely complete the seizure of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad,” according to the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment. 

Another 60 miles northeast of Pokrovsk, the Russians are also pushing closer to the town of Siversk, according to ISW.

“Ukrainian 11th Army Corps (AC) spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Dmytro Zaporozhets reported on November 23 that Russian forces are the most active in the Slovyansk direction and are attacking more specifically toward Siversk,” ISW explained.

“While attention is focused on Huliaipole and Pokrovsk, systemic problems are arising in other directions as well,” Ukrainian activist and noted milblogger Serhii Sternenko posited on Telegram. “Another front line where the crisis will soon become noticeable is Siversk/Yampil. I won’t write the details publicly. In short — the same set of problems as in other areas + increasingly active enemy drone operations against our logistics.”

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, recently suggested that Russia plans to occupy all of Donetsk by next spring

While Budanov called that aspiration “unrealistic,” the ongoing peace process, if successful, could make that a moot point. However, given the tumultuous nature of the negotiations, Russia’s unwavering demands, and Ukraine’s continuing battlefield losses, that’s a pretty big if.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

LIBERTY X star Jessica Pietersen beat a speeding charge after hiring lawyer Nick Freeman, known as “Mr Loophole”.

The 45-year-old, married to ex-England cricketer Kevin, was accused of doing 28mph in a 20mph zone in West London last November.

The mum of two, from Sunningdale, Berks, did not appear at Lavender Hill magistrates’ court, where the case was dropped yesterday.

Prosecutor John Shepherd said: “We will be offering no evidence for various technical reasons.

“I have spoken to a Crown Prosecution Service manager and my instructions are to offer no evidence in relation to Mrs Pietersen and for the matter to be dismissed and that is all I have to say.

“She has been paying privately for representation so there is an application for a defence costs order”.

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The star’s lawyer, instructed by Mr Freeman’s firm, declined to say why.

Liberty X came second to Hear’Say in 2001’s Popstars and topped the charts with Just a Little.

Jessica, who married Pietersen in 2007, still performs as a Liberty X trio with Michelle Heaton and Kelli Young.

DALLAS — Ross Perot, outlining how he would mend the U.S. economy, proposes a combination of tax cuts and loans for small business and tougher trade policy to create more jobs at home.

“We cannot be a superpower if we cannot manufacture here,” the Texas billionaire said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. He called for the United States to make almost everything it needs at home. “We have to manufacture here,” he said.

Perot, whose undeclared presidential candidacy has surged in opinion polls, described himself as a “fair and free trader” but believes that “agreements we’ve cut with countries around the world are not balanced at all.”

He said he would adjust the “tilted deck” of trade with Japan “in a very nice, diplomatic way. In this case (make) the Japanese say: ‘We’ll take the same deal on cars we’ve given you.’ ”

The effect, he said, would be to drastically reduce imports from Japan. “You are going to see the clock stop,” said Perot. “You could never unload the ships to this country; just could never unload the ships.”

In a similar vein, he opposes a free-trade agreement with Mexico, believing it would drain manufacturing jobs from a U.S. economy that cannot afford to lose them.

Perot said he is willing to have his mind changed. “This is a complicated, multi-piece equation that we need to think through very carefully. In carpenter’s terms, measure twice, cut once,” he said.

But in Mexico, “labor is a 25- year-old with little or no health-care expense working for a dollar an hour. You cannot compete with that in the U.S.A., period,” he said. “So you would have a surge in building factories down there but a long-term drought here at a time we cannot pay our budget deficits.”

The interview centered on Perot’s agenda on the issues of trade, taxes and the federal deficit. In Perot’s view, problems of the U.S. economy are interrelated, from trade to the national debt and the troubled public school system–which he calls “the least effective public education system in the industrialized world.”

“We’ve got a country $4 trillion in debt, adding $400 billion this year,” he said in his Dallas office–graced by portraits of his family and the painting “Spirit of ‘76” on a wall behind his desk.

“And we have a declining job base, which gives us a declining tax base at a time when we’ve run our debt through the ceiling. In business terms, that’s a ticket for disaster. Never forget that every time you lose a worker–who goes on welfare–the welfare check exceeds the tax payment that used to come to the IRS.”

Perot’s reference to a declining job base reflects his belief–disputed by some scholars–that jobs created in the 1980s were at lower wages than the jobs they replaced as manufacturing companies restructured. Most analysts and government data agree that wages for less educated, industrial workers have fallen over the last two decades. But there have been rising incomes at the same time for educated employees–especially those in new, computer-based information industries.

Perot, who will turn 62 this month, is a pioneer of the information-based industry. In 1962 he founded Electronic Data Systems, which innovated the business for organizing computer data for large companies and the government. It made Perot one of the nation’s wealthiest men. But Perot says that advanced industries alone cannot be the solution for the United States.

“Don’t bet the farm on high tech,” he said. “Information industry is all about intellectual acuity. And in a country with the least effective public education in the industrialized world, it kind of makes you grimace.

“What I’m saying is, right now, we can’t take people out of factories and send them to Microsoft (the leading computer software firm). If their children had a great education, we could. That’s generational change. But their children are not getting a great education.”

Perot made great efforts on behalf of educational reform in Texas in 1984, and has said he supports greatly expanded funding for education starting at preschool levels for all children. “It’s the best investment we can make,” he has said.

But education is for the future, and there is a need to create jobs now in the United States, not overseas, Perot declared.

“Do we need to make clothing in this country? Of course we do. Do we need to make shoes in this country? Of course we do. We have places in our country where people would be delighted to work in a shoe factory for reasonable wages.

“When I think of shoes, I think of Valley Forge (the winter encampment during the American Revolution where George Washington’s soldiers wrapped their feet in bandages and rags),” said Perot, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

“My mind bounces back and forth between the world I hope we have and the world that might be. We might be fighting barefooted.”

Perot contended that jobs can be created fastest in small companies.

“The quickest way to stimulate the economy and have a growing, dynamic job base is to stimulate small business. You’ll create more jobs faster by going through small business than through the huge industries,” said Perot, who started his business career as a salesman for IBM.

He said small-business people today are starved for credit and capital since banks are cautious of lending in the aftermath of the speculative 1980s, and small business doesn’t have access to big stock and bond markets.

But if he should become President, solving the credit problem will be “easy,” Perot said. “Change the regulations and the banks will loan the money,” he said, indicating that bank examiners should loosen their definitions about prudent loans and reduce the amount banks must reserve against potential losses.

Perot would attract investors to small business ventures by reducing the tax on capital gains. “I’ve got to give you a reason to take money out of Treasury bills to invest in a high-risk, wildcatting venture,” Perot explained.

“I can’t force you to take your money out of T-bills, so I have to create an environment where you want to take this risk.” That means a tax preference. “But I’m not changing capital gains for everybody. This is for the really high-risk start-up of a small company,” Perot said.

But “you will rarely hear me use the word ‘capital gains tax rate.’ I’ll be talking about money to create jobs,” he said.

Perot’s own considerable fortune, estimated by various business publications at $3.3 billion, is invested mostly in T-bills and corporate and high-rated municipal bonds. He has $200 million invested in Perot Systems, $350 million in real estate and about $40 million in funds for start-up companies, including a stake in Next Inc., the computer company headed by Apple co-founder Steven P. Jobs.

Perot also spoke of pushing for legislation to allow, and encourage, banks to make equity investments in start-up companies–a form of government-backed development bank.

“Or some other vehicle will emerge,” he said. “You find what seems to be the best way out–and then you adjust 1,000 times as you go. That’s the way you do anything, whether it’s cutting grass or making rockets.”

Perot’s views on big business are harsh. He believes a ruinous gap opened up between management and labor in large corporations, between executives who paid themselves handsomely while demanding reductions in the pay of ordinary workers. The result was a reduction in American competitiveness and hurt the U.S. economy, he says, repeating a theme he sounded often in two stormy years on General Motors’ board of directors.

Today, he is not surprised that the chief executives of more than a dozen major corporations, meeting last month at the Business Council in Hot Springs, Va., uniformly disapproved of him and his candidacy.

“They’re part of the Establishment,” Perot said. “The status quo works for them right now, and I’m talking about major, major change.”

Still, big companies should be enlisted in a drive to turn the U.S. economy to pursuits of peace, from what Perot terms “45 years of Cold War which drained us. The Cold War broke Russia, but it drained us.”

For all his distrust of foreign trade agreements, Perot admires the way Japanese companies do business–in particular Toyota, which he studied while a director of GM. “They work as a team and their products have quality,” Perot said. “Have you spent time in a Lexus dealership? All those guys selling Lexuses have to do is get you to drive it around the block.”

Perot himself drives an ’87 Oldsmobile. But he said U.S. industry should start doing things the way Japanese industry does, having senior business figures help small start-ups, “targeting industries of the future and making sure sacrifice in corporations starts at the top.”

Perot acknowledges that many things he admires in Japanese industry stem from that country’s different way of organizing society. “But my point is, you and I, our company is failing. And we have a competitor who’s winning. I would say, let’s go study him and figure out why he wins.”

To pay for his programs, Perot said, “We are not going to raise taxes unless we have to. But I ain’t stupid enough to say ‘Watch my lips.’ ”

He would “go to a new tax system because the one we have now is paper-laden, inefficient, not fair and so on.” But he claims to have no specific ideas yet on how to change taxes. “I would get people in, and in 60 days I’d have half a dozen new tax systems,” he said.

“My points on taxes are basically three: We’ve got to raise the revenues to make the country go.

“Two, we’ll get rid of the waste. The Department of Agriculture, with 2% of our people engaged in farming, is bigger than it was when a third of our people were farming. You’ve got to cut it down and you need a strong consensus to do that.”

He has been criticized for not being more specific on what other programs he would cut, and by how much. But as a third step, he said he would demand authority to selectively cut programs approved by Congress. “Give me the line-item veto, or don’t send me there,” said Perot, echoing a demand first raised by Ronald Reagan.

Perot has become linked with the idea that wealthy people might help reduce the federal deficit by giving up their rights to Social Security and Medicare. By one calculation, which Perot ascribes to Bush Administration chief economic adviser Michael J. Boskin, such a sacrifice by the wealthy could save the Treasury $100 billion a year–although Perot says that figure has proved dubious.

“I’d give up Social Security in a minute,” said the Texas billionaire. “And if a lot of people would give it up who did not need it, that’s worth looking at.”

Would that be subjecting the venerable Social Security program to a “means test,” which would adjust individual benefits based on income or assets.

“I never got down to what means testing is,” Perot said. “We’ve just got to go through and look at every single item. We have work to do.”

LAHAINA, Hawaii — Rodney Rice scored a season-high 27 points and Chad Baker-Mazara had 11 points and eight rebounds as USC beat Boise State 70-67 on Monday in the Southwest Maui Invitational.

USC (5-0) will play on Tuesday against Seton Hall, which beat North Carolina State earlier.

Rice split two defenders at the top of the key to get into the paint for a runner while being fouled with 14.8 seconds left in the game. He made the basket and free throw to give USC the lead at 68-65.

After the teams traded free throws, Boise State inbounded it with 4.2 seconds left and quickly got down the court for Javan Buchanan’s good look from three-point range that came up just short at the buzzer.

Rice made four of USC’s 11 three-pointers, while Boise State went five for 25.

Buchanan led Boise State (4-2) with 18 points. Pearson Carmichael added 14 points and Aginaldo Neto 10.

Boise State trailed for 25-plus minutes, with its last lead at 59-58 at 2:57.

Nov. 24 (UPI) — Police in Illinois said they captured Morgan Geyser, one of the two people who pleaded guilty to stabbing a friend to appease an imaginary creature called Slender Man, 165 miles from the Wisconsin group home where she was staying.

Geyser, 23, allegedly cut off her monitoring bracelet Saturday night before leaving the residence in Madison and meeting up with an acquaintance.

In an incident report, Madison police said the Department of Corrections received an alert around 9:30 p.m. Saturday that Geyser’s GPS monitoring bracelet was malfunctioning. Around 11:35 p.m., group home staff informed DOC that Geyser was not at the home and she had removed her GPS bracelet.

On Sunday night, police in Posen, Ill., a suburb south of Chicago, told ABC News that law enforcement officials took her into custody. Madison police confirmed her capture to CNN.

Madison police said they received confirmation at 10:34 p.m. Sunday that Geyser had been taken into custody in Illinois.

The Posen police said officers found Geyser at a truck stop with another person, identified as a 42-year-old man, who was arrested on charges of criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, WBBM-TV in Chicago reported.

Geyser is scheduled for an extradition hearing on Tuesday in Chicago. She is not facing any charges in Illinois.

Geyser and the friend were found at a truck after police received reports of two people loitering behind the building. They were sleeping on the sidewalk.

Initially, Geyser gave police a false name. She then told police she didn’t want to give her name because she had “done something really bad,” and officers could “just Google” her.

The friend told WBBM-TV she didn’t want Geyser to be alone after Geyser left the group.

They took a bus and then walked to the truck stop.

Geyser and Anissa Weier pleaded guilty to the 2014 stabbing of their friend, Payton Leutner, when all three girls were 12. Geyser and Weier lured Leutner into the woods where they stabbed her 19 times. They told police a creature known as Slender Man threatened their lives and the lives of their families if they didn’t kill Leutner, who survived the attack.

Geyser and Weier were charged with attempted second-degree murder in 2017 but were found not guilty by reason of mental defect.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren committed them to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years.

Psychiatrists diagnosed Geyser with schizophrenia and she was released to a group home this year.

A spokesperson for the Leutner family released a statement saying they were aware of Geyser’s disappearance.

“Payton and her family are safe and are working closely with local law enforcement to ensure their continued safety,” a statement said.

“The family would like to thank all of the law enforcement entities involved in the efforts to apprehend Morgan.”