accused

A BRITAIN’S Got Talent star was accused of a child sex offence just days before she was found dead at home, an inquest heard.

Kerri-Anne Donaldson, 38, reached the semi-final of the ITV show in 2014 as part of the group Kings and Queens.

An inquest heard today Kerri-Anne was arrested on suspicion of “child sex offending” but no further details were revealed.

The dancer was detained on June 4, 2023, and questioned at a police station.

She was discovered dead at home in Farnborough, Hampshire, three days later by her sister Cara Donaldson.

There was a note at the top of the stairs urging Cara not to come inside alongside photos of her dog and family.

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The song “You are so Beautiful” was also playing when Kerri-Anne was found, the inquest heard.

The court was told the performer’s cause of death was given as hanging.

A post mortem also found she had non-fatal levels of medication in her blood, which were consistent with an overdose.

The inquest heard evidence yesterday from Detective Constable Benjamin Harris, of Hampshire Constabulary, who led the investigation into the unknown accusation against Kerri-Anne.

He said her accuser had let police know the dancer threatened to take her own life “if someone finds out” about the allegation.

Det Con Harris said he had considered the possibility her comments could be a “form of control” against the complainant.

He said: “In my experience in some offences it can often be said without wanting to carry it out.”

The officer told the inquest the suggestion of self-harm was “something we take very seriously” and he reported it to his senior officers and advised his colleagues who arrested Kerri-Anne.

He said following the interview, he graded the dancer’s risk of self-harm as “standard”.

The officer added: “When I spoke to Kerri, which was after the interview, in the cell she presented to me at that time that she was fine, so normal.

“She had no indication that she wanted to take her own life, when that was spoken about with her she gave no indication that would happen.”

Det Con Harris said Kerri-Anne told him she had seen a counsellor previously and added: “She knew how to get help and she was in no way considering harming herself.”

But he told the court “with the benefits of hindsight” he should have included a question about the complainant’s comments when making the risk assessment.

The inquest heard yesterday how following her release from custody, Kerri-Anne failed to return home – causing her family to report her as a missing person.

She was later found at a Travelodge hotel in Woking, Surrey, after taking an overdose.

Cara said her sister told an emergency doctor at St Peter’s Hospital in Surrey that she had wanted to kill herself.

Recalling the tragic statement, she continued: “I just wanted to hug her.”

Psychiatric liaison nurse Serina Juru, who carried out a mental health assessment after the overdose, said today she assessed Kerri-Anne as at a “high and imminent risk of suicide” and rated her risk as level 10 out of 10.

She told the court the dancer said she could be sent to prison if convicted of the offence and that she “could not face that”.

The nurse added: “She wanted to end her life because she was embarrassed about what had happened.”

Ms Juru said she offered Kerri-Anne an “informal” admission to hospital for further assessment or home care support but she refused both that day leading her to start a “high-risk care plan”.

She said the performer also told her that if she was discharged into the care of her sister Cara, she would wait for her to leave to look after her children and then take her own life.

The inquest heard Kerri-Anne was discharged from hospital the following day into Cara’s care when Ms Juru was not on duty.

Psychiatrist Dr David Enright, who had assessed her, said she was “calm” and no longer thinking about suicide.

But Cara said when she drove her sister home on June 6, the dancer told her she had made the decision to take her own life.

She claimed the family had not been given any care plan or advice on how to assist the star when they left the hospital.

Cara also said she asked her sister about the allegation and was told she was not guilty and that it had “all been constructed”.

She said she spent the evening with her sister and was reluctant to leave her alone, saying: “If you do anything, Kerri, that will always be on my shoulders.”

Cara continued: “[Kerri-Anne] joked ‘I am not going to do that’, so I left.

“One of the last messages was ‘Thanks for everything today’ and she gave a heart emoji, I just thought she was OK.”

But when Kerri-Anne did not answer the phone the next morning, Cara went round to her home and discovered her dead.

Describing her sister, she said: “Heart of gold, full of fun, brought happiness to life, especially mine, career-driven, adored her family, adored her friends, fantastic dance teacher, everyone loved her.”

She said Kerri-Anne had been on television a few times and added: “Her main passion was to choreograph dancing.”

The Kings and Queens Latin dance troupe were a big hit with BGT fans, making it all the way to the semi-final of the ITV show.

Kerri-Anne performed alongside Neil and Katya Jones and Kai Widdrington, all of whom became professionals on Strictly Come Dancing.

Following her death, Neil said: “Kerri Anne Donaldson – remember that name and please never forget it because it belongs to a woman who loved to dance, create and perform, she had the cheekiest laugh and a heart of gold.

“She hated getting in the car with me, but would always listen to my crazy ideas, we shared so many moments and stories and she was always the voice of reason.

“Kerri you were my friend and like my big sister.”

Ex-Strictly dancer Joanne Clifton also paid her respects to the “beautiful dancer”.

She said: “I have no words… This is just heartbreaking.. truly devastating.

“We’ve known you and shared the dance floor with you basically all our lives.

“Dance up there with the angels Kerri.. you beautiful dancer, you beautiful soul.”

Amy Dowden echoed those sentiments, writing: “So shocked and sad. Such a beautiful dancer and kind soul.

“Sending love to all your family and friends. Heaven has certainly gained an angel. Keep dancing up there lovely.”

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.

Feb. 14 (UPI) — Two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are on administrative leave after investigators said evidence does not match their stories after one shot a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis.

The suspended agents’ names have not been released, and they might be fired and charged with crimes for allegedly lying about the circumstances leading up to the shooting on the night of Jan. 14 after investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota finish their review of the incident.

“A joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” McLaughlin said in an email to Fox News Digital.

“Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation,” she said, while referring to the agents’ statements as “false.”

An ICE agent shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he allegedly fled an attempted traffic stop and eventually exited his vehicle at an apartment complex.

The agent and Sosa-Celis were treated at a nearby hospital, and Sosa-Celis, Aljorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma were arrested.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen on Thursday filed a motion to dismiss criminal charges filed against Julia Cesar Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, both of whom are Venezuelan and were accused of beating a pursuing ICE agent with a snow shovel and the handle of a broom.

The agents’ statements were “materially inconsistent” with evidence that recently was discovered, Rosen said.

A federal judge agreed and granted the motion to dismiss on Friday.

Israel is accused of spraying chemicals on farmland inside Syria and Lebanon to destroy crops and plants. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna reports from Quneitra in southern Syria, where farmers say the damage is threatening their livelihoods.

In 1948, as the foundations of the Israeli state were being laid upon the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (AFFFI), condemning the growing Zionist militancy within the settler Jewish community. “When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.”

Einstein — perhaps the most celebrated Jewish intellectual of the 20th century — refused to conflate his Jewish identity with the violence of Zionism. He turned down the offer to become Israel’s president, rejecting the notion that Jewish survival and self-determination should come at the cost of another people’s displacement and suffering. And yet, if Einstein were alive today, his words would likely be condemned under the current definitions of anti-Semitism adopted by many Western governments and institutions, including the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, now endorsed by most Australian universities.

Under the IHRA definition, Einstein’s outspoken criticism of Israel — he called its founding actors “terrorists” and denounced their betrayal of Jewish ethics — would render him suspect. He would be accused not only of delegitimising Israel, but also of anti-Semitism. His moral clarity, once visionary, would today be vilified.

That is why we must untangle the threads of Zionism, colonialism and human rights.

Einstein’s resistance to Zionism was not about denying Jewish belonging or rights; it was about refusing to build those rights on ethno-nationalist violence. He understood what too many people fail to grasp today: that Zionism and Judaism are not synonymous.

Zionism is a political ideology rooted in European colonial logics, one that enforces Jewish supremacy in a land shared historically by Palestinian and other Levantine peoples. To criticise this ideology is not anti-Semitic; it is, rather, a necessary act of justice and a moral act of bearing witness. The religious symbolism that Israel uses is irrelevant in this respect. And yet, in today’s political climate, any critique of Israel — no matter how grounded it might be in international law, historical fact or humanitarian concern — is increasingly branded as anti-Semitism. This conflation shields from accountability a settler-colonial state, and it silences Palestinians and their allies from speaking out on the reality of their oppression. Billions in arms sales, stolen resources and apartheid infrastructure don’t just happen; they’re the reason that legitimate “criticism” gets rebranded as “hate”.

READ: Ex-Israel PM accuses Netanyahu of waging war on Israel

To understand Einstein’s critique, we must confront the truth about Zionism itself. While often framed as a movement for Jewish liberation, Zionism in practice has operated as a colonial project of erasure and domination. The Nakba was not a tragic consequence of war, it was a deliberate blueprint for dispossession and disappearance. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has detailed how David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, approved “Plan Dalet” on 10 March, 1948. This included the mass expulsion and execution of Palestinians to create a Jewish-majority state. As Ben-Gurion himself declared chillingly: “Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion.”

This is the basis of the Zionist state that we are told not to critique.

Einstein saw this unfolding and recoiled. In another 1948 open letter to the New York Times, he and other Jewish intellectuals described Israel’s newly formed political parties — like Herut (the precursor to Likud) — as “closely akin in… organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”

Einstein’s words were not hyperbole, they were a warning. Having fled Nazi Germany, he had direct experience with the defining traits of Nazi fascism. “From Israel’s past actions,” he wrote, “we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.”

Today, we are living in the very future that Einstein feared, a reality marked by massacres in Gaza, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the denial of basic essentials such as water, electricity and medical aid. This is not about “self-defence”; it is the logic of colonial domination whereby the land theft continues and the violence escalates.

Einstein warned about what many still refuse to see: a state established on principles of ethnic supremacy and expulsion could never transcend its foundation ethos. Israel’s creation in occupied Palestine is Zionism in practice; it cannot endure without employing repression until resistance is erased entirely. Hence, the Nakba wasn’t a one-off event in 1948; it evolved, funded by Washington, armed by Berlin and enabled by every government that trades Palestinian blood for political favours.

Zionism cannot be separated from the broader history of European settler-colonialism. As Patrick Wolfe explains, the ideology hijacked the rhetoric of Jewish liberation to mask its colonial reality of re-nativism, with the settlers recasting themselves as “indigenous” while painting resistance as terrorism.

READ: Illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinian school in occupied West Bank

The father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, stated in his manifesto-novel Altneuland, “To build anew, I must demolish before I construct.” To him, Palestine was not seen as a shared homeland, but as a house to be razed to the ground and rebuilt by and for Jews alone. His ideology was made possible by British imperial interests to divide and dominate post-Ottoman territories. Through ethnic partition and military alliances embellished under the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the ironic Zionist-Nazi 1933 Haavara Agreement, the Zionist project aligned perfectly with the West’s goal, as per the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Israel is thus criticised because of its political ideology rooted in ethnonationalism and settler colonialism. Equating anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism is a disservice not only to Palestinians, but also to Jews, especially those who, like Einstein, refuse to have their identity weaponised in the service of war crimes. Zionism today includes Christian Zionists, military allies and Western politicians who benefit from Israel’s imperial reach through arms deals, surveillance technology and geostrategic partnerships.

Zionism is a global power structure, not a monolithic ethnic identity.

Many Jews around the world — rabbis, scholars, students and Holocaust survivors and their descendants — continue Einstein’s legacy by saying “Not in our name”. They reject the co-option of Holocaust memory to justify genocide in Gaza. They refuse to be complicit in what the Torah forbids: the theft of land and the murder of innocents. They are not “self-hating Jews”. They are the inheritors of a prophetic tradition of justice. And they are being silenced.

Perhaps the most dangerous development today is, therefore, Israel’s insistence on linking its crimes to Jewish identity. It frames civilian massacres, apartheid policies and violations of international law as acts done in the name of all Jews and Judaism. By tying the Jewish people to the crimes of a state, Israel risks exposing Jews around the world to collective blame and retaliation.

Einstein warned against this. And if Einstein’s vision teaches us anything, it is this: Justice cannot be compromised for comfort and profit. Truth must outlast repression. And freedom must belong to all. In the end, no amount of Israel’s militarisation of terminology, propaganda or geopolitical alliances can suppress a people’s resistance forever or outlast global condemnation. The only question left is: how much more blood will be spilled before justice prevails?

The struggle for clarity today is not just academic, it is existential. Without the ability to distinguish anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism, we cannot build a future where Jews and Palestinians all live in dignity, safety and peace. Reclaiming the term “Semite” in its full meaning, encompassing both Jews and Arabs, is critical. Further isolation of Arabs from their Semitic identity has enabled the dehumanisation of Palestinians and the erasure of shared Jewish-Arab histories, especially the centuries of coexistence, the Jewish-Muslim golden ages in places like Baghdad, Granada/Andalusia, Istanbul, Damascus and Cairo.

Einstein stood up for the future for us to reclaim it.

The way forward must be rooted in truth, justice and accountability. That means unequivocally opposing anti-Semitism in all its forms, but refusing to allow the term to be manipulated as a shield for apartheid, ethnic cleansing and colonial domination. It means affirming that Jewish safety must never come at the price of Palestinian freedom, and that Palestinian resistance is not hatred; it is survival.

And if Einstein would be silenced today, who will speak tomorrow?

OPINION: Palestinian voices are throttled by the promotion of foreign agendas

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

KANYE West accused Kim Kardashian of ‘flirting’ with Lewis Hamilton years before she entered into a relationship with the F1 driver, The Sun can reveal.

We revealed over the weekend that Lewis, 41, and Kim, 45, are in a new relationship, with the pair enjoying a string of international dates over recent weeks.

The reality star and entrepreneur has known Ferrari driver Lewis for over a decade, but things only recently turned romantic.

However, her ex-husband Kanye, 48, had previously accused her of flirting with Lewis when they were together.

Kim and Kanye were married from 2014 until 2021, and a source tells us that the Yeezy owner’s jealous streak especially came out around Lewis.

“It was so awkward as when they were together, Kanye would always fly into jealous rages and accuse Kim of flirting with Lewis,” revealed the source.

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They continued: “She wasn’t – of course – but Kanye was always so erratic that if Kim was even friendly with someone he’d accuse her of something.”

Kim and Kanye share children; and cited “irreconcilable differences” as a reason for their divorce five years ago.

Lewis was a friend of both Kim and Kanye, with them bonding over a shared love for fashion. The sportsman even spent Easter at the house they shared as a married couple back in 2016.

The Sun understands Kim and Lewis have been growing close for a number of months, with the pair attending actress Kate Hudson’s New Year’s Eve party together.

The new couple have enjoyed several dates in different cities over recent weeks, including London and Paris, to fit around Kim’s work commitments.

Earlier this week, a source told The Sun: “Kim and Lewis have such intense working schedules so they’re keen to spend as much time together as possible.

“Right now, they’re inseparable and are fitting their dates around Kim’s work commitments.”

Kim had to be in Paris to attend a NikeSkims event – her brand’s collaboration with Nike.

Taking Lewis along with her, the pair stayed at luxurious hotel Le Bristol, and ate in private during their stay.

A source revealed: “Kim absolutely loves spending time in Paris and wanted Lewis to go with her. Her work is so important to her but it’s all things she can slot around spending time with Lewis.

“They’re both used to travelling all over the world while working so doing it together means they can spend proper time with each other.”

Feb. 4 (UPI) — The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal lawsuit seeking information regarding allegations of discrimination against athletic shoemaker Nike Inc.

The EEOC has received complaints of systemic race discrimination against white workers via Nike’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other mechanisms, the federal agency said in a news release on Wednesday.

The EEOC filed its request for a court order for information on the matter in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri, which is located in St. Louis.

“When there are compelling indications, including corporate admissions in extensive public materials, that an employer’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion-related programs may violate federal prohibitions against race discrimination or other forms of unlawful discrimination, the EEOC will take all necessary steps — including subpoena enforcement actions — to ensure the opportunity to fully and comprehensively investigate,” said EEOC Chairwoman Andrea Lucas.

“Title VII’s prohibition of race-based employment discrimination is colorblind and requires the EEOC to protect employees of all races from unlawful employment practices,” Lucas said.

The federal agency is investigating claims that accuse Nike of engaging in a “pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white employees, applicants and training program participants in hiring, promotion, demotion or separation decisions,” the EEOC said in a news release.

The alleged discrimination includes selections for layoffs, internship programs and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs, according to the EEOC.

The agency’s investigation and subsequent subpoena seek information involving allegations dating back to 2018, including the criteria used when choosing which workers would be laid off and the company’s tracking and use of worker race and ethnicity data.

The EEOC wants information on 16 Nike programs that are said to have provided race-restricted mentoring, leadership and career development opportunities.

Agency officials initially sought voluntary cooperation from Nike while undertaking the investigation.

Lacking cooperation, the EEOC filed the legal action seeking a federal court subpoena that compels Nike officials to provide the sought-after information.

MEXICO CITY — Historians and observers accused the Trump administration of trying to rewrite American history to justify its own foreign policy decisions toward Latin America by posting a “historically inaccurate” version of the Mexican-American war.

The Monday statement from the White House commemorating the anniversary of the war described the conflict as a “legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, reasserted American sovereignty, and expanded the promise of American independence across our majestic continent.” The statement drew parallels between the period in U.S. history and its own increasingly aggressive policies toward Latin America, which it said would “ensure the Hemisphere remains safe.”

“Guided by our victory on the fields of Mexico 178 years ago, I have spared no effort in defending our southern border against invasion, upholding the rule of law, and protecting our homeland from forces of evil, violence, and destruction,” the statement said, though it was unsigned.

In the post, the White House makes no mention of the key role slavery played in the war and glorifies the wider “Manifest Destiny” period, which resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from their land.

Sparking criticism

Alexander Aviña, Latin American history professor at Arizona State University, said the White House statement “underplays the massive amounts of violence that it took to expand” the U.S. to the Pacific shore at a time when the Trump administration has stuck its hand in Latin American affairs in a way not seen in decades, deposing Venezuela’s president, meddling in elections and threatening military action in Mexico and other countries.

“U.S. political leaders since then have seen this as an ugly aspect of U.S. history, this is a pretty clear instance of U.S. imperialism against its southern neighbor,” Aviña said. “The Trump administration is actually embracing this as a positive in U.S. history and framing it – inaccurately historically – as some sort of defensive measure to prevent the Mexico from invading them.”

On Tuesday, criticisms of the White House statement quickly rippled across social media.

Asked about the statement in her morning news briefing, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum guffawed, quipping and noting “we have to defend sovereignty.” Sheinbaum, who has walked a tight rope with the Trump administration, has responded to Trump with a balanced tone and occasionally with sarcasm, like when Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Historical sticking point

The Mexican-American war (1846–1848) was triggered by long-running border disputes between the U.S. and Mexico and the United States’ annexation of Texas in 1845. For years leading up to the war, Americans had gradually moved into the then-Mexican territory. Mexico had banned slavery and U.S. abolitionists feared the U.S. land grab was in part an attempt to add slave states.

After fighting broke out and successive U.S. victories, Mexico ceded more than 525,000 square miles of territory — including what now comprises Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah — to the U.S.

The moment turned Texas into a key chess piece during the U.S. Civil War and led former President Ulysses S. Grant to write later that the conflict with Mexico was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”

The Associated Press was formed when five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War — as it is sometimes known in the U.S. — north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.

The war continues to be a historical sticking point between the two countries, particularly as Sheinbaum repeatedly reminds Trump that her country is a sovereign nation whenever Trump openly weighs taking military action against Mexican cartels and pressures Mexico to bend to its will.

Rewriting history

The White House statement falls in line with wider actions taken by the Trump administration to mold the federal government’s language around its own creed, said Albert Camarillo, history professor at Stanford University, who described the statement as a “distorted, ahistorical, imperialist version” of the war.

Aviña said the statement serves “to assert rhetorically that the U.S. is justified in establishing its so-called ‘America First’ policy throughout the Americas,” regardless of the historical accuracy.

The Trump administration has ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution, saying it was “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”

The administration has scrubbed government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. Trump also ordered the government to remove any signs that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” including those making reference to slavery, destruction of Native American cultures and climate change.

“This statement is consistent with so many others that attempt to whitewash and reframe U.S. history and erase generations of historical scholarship,” Camarillo said.

Janetsky writes for the Associated Press.

Social media influencer Sammy Yahood is known to spread Islamophobic content online.

Australia has cancelled the visa of an Israeli social media influencer who has campaigned against Islam, saying it will not accept visitors to the country who come to spread hatred.

Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke said in a statement on Tuesday that “spreading hatred is not a good reason to come” to Australia, hours after influencer Sammy Yahood announced that his visa was cancelled three hours before his flight departed from Israel.

People who want to visit Australia should apply for the correct visa and come for the right reasons, Burke said in a statement to the AFP news agency.

Just hours before his visa was cancelled, Yahood had written on X, “Islam ACCORDING TO ISLAM does not tolerate non-believers, apostates, women’s rights, children’s rights, or gay rights.”

He also referred to Islam as a “disgusting ideology” and an “aggressor”.

Australia tightened its hate crime laws earlier this month in response to a mass shooting at a Jewish celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left 15 people dead.

In a recent post, Yahood, a native of the UK and a recent citizen of Israel, had also advocated for the deportation of United States Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American, who is Muslim.

In another, he ridiculed the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which is responsible for coordinating relief for Palestinians and Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Israel began bulldozing UNRWA’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem last week, a move strongly condemned by the world body and Palestinian leaders, who said the flattening of the site marked a “barbaric new era” of unchecked defiance of international law by Israeli authorities.

Despite the cancellation of his visa to Australia, Yahood said he flew from Israel to Abu Dhabi, but was blocked from getting his connecting flight to Melbourne.

“I have been unlawfully banned from Australia, and I will be taking action,” he wrote on X.

“This is a story about tyranny, censorship and control,” he added in another post.

Yahood’s visa was reportedly cancelled under the same legislation that has been used in the past to reject people’s visas on the grounds of disseminating hatred.

Sky News Australia reported that Minister Burke previously revoked the visitor visa of Israeli-American activist and tech entrepreneur Hillel Fuld over his “Islamophobic rhetoric”, as well as the visa of Simcha Rothman, a lawmaker with Israel’s far-right Mafdal-Religious Zionism party and a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that his planned speaking tour in the country would “spread division”.

The conservative Australian Jewish Association, which had invited Yahood to speak at events in Sydney and Melbourne, said it “strongly condemned” the visa decision by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government.