allegations

“Get away with it”

Memusi Lochede sits on a bed as her 24-year-old daughter Chaula lies motionless on the floor of their home in Archer’s Post, in the shadow of the training grounds. A donated wheelchair sits in the corner. Her daughter’s right leg is gone; metal rods brace a body so badly injured that she struggles to hold up her head.

“I have so much pain in my heart seeing my daughter in this condition,” 46-year-old Lochede tells Al Jazeera, wiping the drool from her daughter’s chin. “I feel ashamed that she needs so much help, and I don’t know how to help her.”

In 2019, Chaula, then a teenager, says she was hit by a speeding BATUK vehicle while crossing the road. Her leg was amputated and, her mother says, she was left paralysed and spent nearly three years in hospital.

A BATUK representative later came to see Lochede, she says.

“He apologised for what happened and said they don’t want a court case and would take care of my daughter — anything she needs,” she recounts.

The MOD said it “has not located a record of an approach having been made by a BATUK representative to the family.”

When her daughter was discharged, BATUK paid the hospital bills — without receipts or disclosing the amount — and disappeared, Lochede says. For years, Lochede called its community liaison officer, the Kenyan official tasked with receiving complaints like hers, who never answered. Eventually she gave up.

The MOD told Al Jazeera in August that BATUK is aware of the claim that one of its drivers “hit and injured a minor” in 2019, “resulting in permanent injuries”.

It said legal representatives have been in contact with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about the case and that a compensation offer has been made but the commission has not responded.

In late September, Al Jazeera asked the MOD what had been offered, when, and through whom. It did not provide those details, saying instead that BATUK “remains willing to engage with the child’s family, through an appropriate representative and on a without-prejudice basis,” but that “to date, we have been unable to establish contact with the family or an authorised representative”. Any resolution would have to rest on “verified medical and factual information” and, because the claim concerns a minor, be approved by a Kenyan court.

Ruth Getobai Nchagwa, a deputy director at the commission, says it has “never engaged with BATUK directly as our letters to them went unanswered”.

Chaula’s case “has not been addressed to date,” she notes, and the commission is not aware of any discussions about compensation. Lochede similarly says no one has ever approached her about compensation.

Before the accident, Lochede supported her five children by making beaded necklaces and selling them in Nairobi. Now she cannot leave her daughter’s side, and Chaula’s care costs about 30,000 Kenyan shillings ($230) a month — more than Lochede usually earns.

“It’s a shameful feeling to pick up the phone and call so many numbers for help, and no one picks up your call,” she explains, her lips quivering as she fights tears. “In those moments where I can’t provide for my daughter, I just lock myself inside the room and lie in my bed and cry.”

Her daughter, once healthy and active, now barely speaks.

“There are some days she wakes up and says just one word, like ‘food’ or ‘bathroom,’” Lochede says. “Those are the good days. Other days, she refuses to eat. I can see that she’s depressed and lonely. Inside, her soul is shattered.”

“These soldiers do these things because they know they can get away with it,” she adds sharply. “They know we don’t have money. We don’t have power. It’s extremely difficult for us to fight them.”

Cases like Chaula’s are far from isolated. Last year, a landmark two-year inquiry by Kenya’s parliamentary defence committee put decades of alleged BATUK abuses on the official record.

The 94-page report gathered testimony from hearings across Laikipia and Samburu, including a herder allegedly shot by a British sergeant; the alleged gang rape of 30 women at knifepoint in 1997; a boy who lost both arms and an eye to unexploded ordnance; and women with children their British fathers had never acknowledged.

BATUK declined to appear, citing its status and immunities under the defence arrangements. The committee condemned the refusal as contemptuous, calling it “emblematic of institutional contempt for the authority of Parliament and, by extension, the sovereignty of the people of Kenya”.

It concluded that BATUK “is increasingly seen as an occupying presence rather than a development partner”, with affected residents drawing parallels to colonial injustices. Witnesses told the committee that “suspected BATUK abuses are not only unpunished but actively covered up” — that whenever a BATUK member is implicated, police files often “go missing” and complainants are “intimidated into silence.”

An MOD spokesperson told Al Jazeera the UK “deeply” values its relationship with Kenya, “which has long been the UK’s defence partner of choice in East Africa”.

The MOD is “addressing concerns raised by Kenyan authorities and communities, focusing on legal accountability, ethical standards, environmental stewardship, economic benefit and social responsibility,” the spokesperson said.

Regarding road traffic incidents, the spokesperson said BATUK “cooperates fully with the local authorities and Kenyan Police”, that all such incidents are “investigated thoroughly” and that “where claims are made, BATUK submits to the jurisdiction of the Kenyan courts”.

When asked what progress the MOD had made on the concerns raised by the committee, and whether it was investigating any of the specific cases, it referred Al Jazeera to the written statement it submitted to the inquiry, which said it was “not aware of any evidence to support any allegation of collusion with security forces to suppress or dismiss complaints, or intimidate, bribe or coerce victims into silence”, and that any such evidence “would be taken extremely seriously and investigated accordingly”.

For Awino Okech, professor of feminist and security studies at SOAS University of London, the parliamentary report points beyond individual abuses. “This is no longer a case of a few bad apples but reckoning with what many will interpret as accepted militarised institutional culture,” she tells Al Jazeera.

“The fundamental question the British government is being asked to reflect on is their responsibility when there is a documented pattern of malbehaviour by their employees in a foreign country.”

Okech says the pattern cannot be separated from race. “We cannot ignore the racialised element. In this case, it is visible when crimes committed in Kenya are taken less seriously.”

New York lawmakers are renewing a push to change the state’s sexual assault laws after prosecutors in the United States said the current rules made it difficult to bring charges for an alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity house.

At issue is whether someone who willingly becomes intoxicated can be considered mentally incapacitated and therefore unable to consent to sex.

Under current New York law, only someone who was drugged or given alcohol without their knowledge can be considered “mentally incapacitated” because of intoxication and unable to consent. The same does not apply to someone who willingly consumed alcohol or drugs.

State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and State Senator Nathalia Fernandez are sponsoring bills in their respective chambers that would change that.

In the state Senate, the bill is known as S10632, and in the New York Assembly, it is filed as Assembly Bill A101.

In a post on the social media platform X, Dinowitz said the proposed law would allow prosecutors to focus on whether someone was capable of consenting, rather than how they became intoxicated, and whether the accused “knew or should have known” that the person was unable to consent.

He said people who voluntarily drink or take drugs currently face significant barriers in sexual assault cases, particularly if they remain partly conscious or responsive during an alleged assault.

“The fact that someone made the choice to consume alcohol or another intoxicating substance should never be used to undermine their experience or shift responsibility onto the survivor when they’ve been sexually assaulted,” Dinowitz wrote.

The years-long reform effort has gained new momentum after Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said the existing law was one reason his office initially declined to pursue charges against several Cornell students accused of sexually assaulting a woman on October 19, 2024.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was 20 at the time. She has since filed a civil lawsuit against seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, as well as Cornell University and several other defendants.

The lawsuit alleges fraternity members gave her alcohol and ketamine and sexually assaulted her after she became incapacitated.

Doe also reported her allegations to campus police in November 2024.

In a statement explaining why his office did not pursue charges afterwards, Van Houten said Doe never claimed at the time that she had been involuntarily intoxicated, physically forced or unconscious. He also said she did not clearly express that she did not consent.

Any of those circumstances could have provided grounds for prosecutors to pursue rape charges under New York law, according to the district attorney.

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” Van Houten wrote.

“In this case, multiple prosecutors and criminal investigators reviewed Jane Doe’s statement and correctly determined the alleged facts as set forth in the statement do not constitute a crime.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, Van Houten’s office has faced intense scrutiny. It said on Monday that it will reopen the investigation and bring the case before a grand jury, which will consider whether there is enough evidence to indict anyone.

Van Houten also told CBS News on Wednesday that he had not seen a transcript of a campus police interview conducted three weeks after the alleged assault in which the woman said: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”

Cornell has defended its handling of the case, saying it investigated the allegations and disciplined the accused students, with penalties ranging from suspension to expulsion.

On Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the university had agreed to her request to bring in an outside law firm to conduct a new investigation into its handling of the case.

Previous efforts to change New York’s sexual assault laws have foundered in the state legislature. Senate bill S10632 has passed its chamber but has never received a vote on the Assembly floor.

“Rape is the only crime that I’m aware of where, if the victim was drunk, they may not get justice,” Dinowitz, the assembly member, said in an interview with Reuters. “There shouldn’t be any difference in terms of the survivors of sexual assault between the people who are voluntarily intoxicated and who are involuntarily intoxicated.”

New York is one of 19 states where a person can be considered mentally incapacitated because of intoxication only if they did not willingly become intoxicated, according to Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies sexual abuse.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jeglic said. “If you’re incapacitated, you’re incapacitated, regardless of whether you consumed it yourself or somebody else gave it to you without your consent.”

The lawsuit comes two months after the state filed a similar lawsuit against competitor Kalshi.

New York State has filed a lawsuit against prediction market company Polymarket amid allegations that it violated state laws against illegal gambling.

The suit, filed on Thursday by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, comes two months after the state filed a similar lawsuit against competitor Kalshi. That followed the state suing Coinbase and Gemini for offering users the ability to bet on “sports, entertainment, and elections, in violation of New York laws”, according to a release from the attorney general’s office at the time.

The state accused all the companies of operating without licences from the State Gaming Commission.

“Our gambling laws exist to protect New Yorkers, prevent the potential harms of problem gambling, and ensure funding for educational and public benefit programs,” James said in a statement announcing the suit.

“By skirting New York’s laws, Polymarket is targeting the most vulnerable and depriving New York families of critical services and support. My office will never hesitate to take action to defend our laws and keep New Yorkers safe.”

The suit also alleges that the company encouraged gambling among young people. It accuses Polymarket of targeting users as young as 18, while state law requires users to be at least 21 years old to take part in mobile sports betting.

“By running an unlicensed gambling operation, Polymarket has done more than just knowingly violate state law, they have put New Yorkers at risk, especially those underage who are most vulnerable to problem gaming,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.

The more than 30-page lawsuit claims that Polymarket, which is valued at more than $20bn, has advertised sports betting in particular since July 2025. It pointed to a post on X from August 17, 2025, about the launch of its US mobile app that said it was “BAD NEWS (For sportsbooks)”.

Prediction markets allow users to wager on so-called event contracts, covering political events, sports, elections and even award shows. Concerns about the role of prediction markets came to a head earlier this year when wagers were made in the hours before the United States and Israel first struck Iran, prompting widespread backlash in Washington.

Polymarket pushed back on the allegations.

“We chose to engage with them directly on the substance and address their concerns,” chief legal officer Neal Kumar said in a statement.

“They preferred the media hit. Any time the [attorney general’s] office wants to swing by, our door is open for a conversation about how we protect consumers and offer fair, transparent and legal markets.”

Kalshi is facing similar allegations in New York State. Kalshi has been critical of reporting on lawsuits against it and allegations that it is akin to a sports betting or gambling platform.

Polymarket did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Polymarket lawsuit comes days after reporting from the Wall Street Journal that alleged a wave of users had linked stolen bank debit cards and then used them to make wagers, effectively draining the accounts. According to the report, when CEO Shayne Coplan was made aware of the issue, he responded: “Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out.”

Political pressure

New York State’s lawsuit joins a growing list of states that have sued prediction market platforms, including Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada and many others. Those states are at odds with the federal government, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has claimed that the federal agency exerts authority over the regulation of prediction markets.

Polymarket has close ties with the family of US President Donald Trump. The prediction market platform has investment from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm backed by Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, who also serves on the company’s advisory board.

New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson had a “friendly and casual ‘friends with benefits’ sexual relationship” with the woman who is accusing him of raping and abusing her multiple times between 2018 and 2023, according to a court filing by the former Duke standout’s legal team.

A document submitted to Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday states that Williamson denies “each and every allegation” made against him by a Jane Doe in a second amended complaint filed in June.

Williamson’s filing describes the interaction between the former No. 1 overall draft pick and his accuser as “infrequent and sporadic.”

“All interaction among and between the Plaintiff and Defendant was pleasant and entirely consensual, with the Plaintiff initiating and communicating her desire to be intimate with the Defendant,” the document states, “and the Plaintiff herself decided to end the relationship because she became upset when she realized that the Defendant was focusing his time and energy on professional basketball and on being a father, and did not have sufficient time or interest to maintain a relationship with the Plaintiff.”

The second amended complaint lists the causes of action as assault, battery, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, domestic violence and stalking. The response from Williamson’s team states that the statute of limitations has expired on each cause of action.

The initial complaint, filed in May 2025, also included false imprisonment and conversion as causes of action, which are not included in the latest complaint.

The lawsuit provides details of two instances in 2020 during which Williamson allegedly raped his accuser in a Beverly Hills apartment he was renting at the time.

“These two incidents were not isolated,” the lawsuit states. “Defendant continued to abuse, rape, assault, and batter Plaintiff in California and other states, including Louisiana and Texas, until the relationship ended in 2023.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Williamson committed many other acts of violence against his accuser, including strangling her multiple times to the point that she lost consciousness, suffocating or smothering her, striking and kicking her “with great force,” threatening to kill her and her family members, and pointing a loaded firearm to her head.

Williamson “was either drunk or on cocaine” while allegedly committing many of those acts, the lawsuit states.

A jury trial has been scheduled for April 2028.

Israel’s bitter political divisions are particularly sharp before the country’s October elections. But the furious response to a new documentary about the military’s actions in the genocidal war on Gaza has revealed an issue that much of Israel’s political and media establishment appears united on.

Few of the central allegations in NAZA, made by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are new. Reports that the Israeli military was relying on artificial intelligence systems to generate targets in Gaza, often killing the inhabitants of entire buildings to kill just one individual identified by the system, were reported in April 2024.

Other accusations against Israel, such as committing genocide, deliberately causing a famine, and unlawfully killing children, have also not received much attention in Israel.

In contrast, NAZA has unleashed a litany of abuse from across Israel, and brought the allegations to the centre of Israel’s political debate.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar reacted to the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival – where it received a 25-minute standing ovation – by calling for the directors to be stripped of their citizenship and to be investigated by the internal intelligence service for treason.

Army chief Eyal Zamir has dismissed the film as being built on blood libel and ordered a legal probe to hunt down its military and intelligence sources.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also cited the film when advancing legislation to revoke citizenship from anyone deemed to be smearing the country’s soldiers, while in the coastal city of Ashdod, graffiti branding the directors “traitors” has appeared on the walls.

“You can’t really understand the extent of the madness from outside of the country,” Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, which first carried many of the accusations contained in the film, said. “They’re attacking the friends and families of [the filmmakers] Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. They’re talking about revoking their citizenship. They’re asking the Shin Bet to investigate them – for making a film, and it isn’t just the politicians. Journalists, who you might expect to show some kind of solidarity with them, are competing to attack them. It’s scary.”

Denial

In late 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported escalating censorship and harassment in Israel, with Israeli journalists telling the organisation that the media’s approach had become “part of the war effort” and, by extension, significantly shaped Israeli view of their war on Gaza.

In October 2025, a study by the Israeli think tank Molad found that only 3 percent of Channel 12’s coverage of the first six months of the war mentioned Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Of 206 war-related images and video clips broadcast by the network, Israel’s most-watched channel, only two showed Palestinian civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, before the film’s release, polls found that most Israelis believed the coverage they were receiving of the military’s conduct in Gaza was balanced.

“I guess it was because the mainstream media outlets in Israel did not investigate the conduct of the army during the war in Gaza, and hardly covered the war from the Palestinian point of view,” Anat Saragusti, the Israeli jurist and journalist responsible for press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, said of the shock that had accompanied the release of the film. “[The Israeli media] hardly reported on the human toll and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Compounding the gap, Saragusti said, was a deep-seated national narrative: that the war had been imposed on Israel, that Hamas had carried out a massacre on October 7, 2023, and that Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields made mass casualties in Gaza all but unavoidable.

Palestinian deaths, in this telling, were framed less as the product of Israeli conduct than as collateral damage forced on Israel by its enemy’s tactics, she said.

Lynch mobs

“Even journalists that usually support the anti-Netanyahu bloc have criticised the filmmakers,” Israeli political sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal said.

“Israeli Jews deny the genocide,” he continued, “Even all the opposition parties joined the vicious criticism of the filmmakers.”

The language used against the filmmakers has been echoed by some of Netanyahu’s most prominent political rivals.

On Monday, former military chief and one of Netanyahu’s principal rivals Gadi Eisenkot denounced the film for “moral blindness, a detachment from reality, and harm to the State of Israel in a difficult hour”.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also running in October’s election, called the film a “horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters”.

“Everything gets heightened the closer to the election we get,” Noy said. “But I think only now, for those of us who live here, is the extent of the fascism becoming clear. Journalists, politicians and the media are forming some kind of incitement machine.”

“I’ve had anxieties over where Israel had been going for a long time,” she said, “but right now I’m genuinely worried for my friends and colleagues.”

Spanish manager has been appointed South Korea’s interim head coach following a disastrous World Cup campaign.

South Korea’s new interim football coach Robert Moreno has denied allegations that he relied on artificial intelligence during his last coaching role but admitted to using technology in his work.

Addressing his first news conference as the Taegeuk Warriors’ temporary coach on Monday, Moreno promised to make South Korean football fans “happy”.

The Spaniard was appointed as the Asian giants’ temporary coach following a disastrous few months for the team and the country’s football federation, during which on-field results and off-field controversies left the fans bitterly disappointed.

Moreno, who was forced to deny earlier this year that he used ChatGPT to prepare for games, will be in charge for friendly matches in the coming months.

He addressed allegations that he used artificial intelligence during his time in charge of Russian club Sochi, saying “It was a piece of news that is completely false and went viral.”

Moreno left the top-flight side in September 2025 after a poor run of results, and reports said he had heavily relied on ChatGPT in his role, even using it to decide between potential signings.

“Obviously, I use technology,” he said.

“Anyone who spends 10 minutes looking into it can see that everything has been taken out of context and put together to cause harm.”

The Korea Football Association (KFA) said Moreno could stay on for the Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia in January-February, “subject to an evaluation”.

Moreno named captain Son Heung-min in his squad for four upcoming home friendlies and said he wanted to put a smile back on South Korean fans’ faces.

“We’re going to try to do our work honestly and with the aim of making all Korean football fans happy,” said the 48-year-old, who is the first Spaniard to coach South Korea.

“Good matches, and trying to help the players.”

Moreno will lead the team against Ecuador and Uruguay in September and Venezuela and Uzbekistan in October.

South Korea had been without a coach since Hong Myung-bo quit following their shock group-stage exit from the World Cup in North America in June.

Hong’s departure did little to quell public outrage over the disappointing campaign and added fuel to pre-existing questions about how he was hired.

Police raided KFA headquarters last month as part of an investigation into Hong’s 2024 appointment.

The KFA also apologised for allegations that it provided sexual entertainment for foreign referees.

Moreno named striker Son, now in the United States’ Major League Soccer with Los Angeles FC, in his first squad along with Atletico Madrid’s Lee Kang-in and Bayern Munich’s Kim Min-jae.

Hong’s decision to leave Son on the bench in the first half of the decisive match against South Africa at the World Cup baffled and angered many supporters.

“We’re all aware of Son’s versatility,” said Moreno.

“For me, he can play in three positions.”