chairman

Manchester City are understood to be ready to appeal any guilty verdict, but could face ‘severe penalty’ says ex-chair.

Former Manchester City chairman David Bernstein said the club could face potentially “drastic” sanctions after reportedly being found guilty on all but one of 115 charges for breaching Premier League financial rules.

The Premier League has not made an official announcement over the case and there is no indication of any possible punishment.

Abu Dhabi-backed City have always strenuously denied the charges and a club spokesperson said the position had not changed.

It is understood City will appeal should the charges be upheld.

“The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence,” the spokesperson said.

City were charged by the Premier League in 2023 following an investigation into alleged breaches of rules between 2009 and 2018.

The club were accused of failing to provide accurate financial information and details of payments to players and coaches, as well as breaches of financial sustainability rules.

They were also charged with failing to cooperate with an investigation.

A hearing by an independent commission started in September 2024.

Man City face ‘severe penalty’

Bernstein, who was City chairman between 1998 and 2003, told Times Radio that “money is not sufficient” in terms of a potential punishment, urging a swift appeal process.

“The appeal process cannot go on for year after year, I think that would be a disaster,” he said, “not just for this particular case but for English football generally. The timing is crucial.

“I can’t give a view on the punishment. If they are found, after the appeal, guilty of [the] charges, my beloved club is going to face a very severe penalty.

“All I would say is that money is not sufficient, it would have to be something, unfortunately, more drastic than that.”

Oasis star and City fan Noel Gallagher described his “shock” at the developments.

Speaking on the Let Me Talk podcast, he said: “Surprised because only that the club have assured us all along that they vehemently denied any of these charges.

“So it was a bit of a shock to find out that we’ve been found guilty of all but one. But really overall just quite sad really. Sad for the fans and for the players.”

UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy described the case as “unsettling” for football fans and called for a swift resolution.

In 2020, UEFA imposed a two-year European ban on City as well as a fine for breaking financial fair-play rules, though that ban was later overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

If the reported guilty verdicts are confirmed, sanctions could include a severe points deduction and possibly even expulsion from the Premier League.

Everton and Nottingham Forest were both hit by points deductions in the 2023/24 season for single breaches of profit and sustainability rules.

Other Premier League clubs are understood to be taking legal advice about compensation relating to the charges.

Under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour, whose Abu Dhabi United Group acquired the club in 2008, City have become the dominant force in English football.

They have won eight Premier League titles, a Champions League crown and multiple other trophies over the past 15 years.

The latest developments in the case come just months after former City manager Pep Guardiola left the club following a golden decade in charge at the Etihad.

Guardiola always backed the club’s stance on the charges but threatened to walk away if he felt he had been lied to and they were proven to be true.

The U.S. military’s top officer on Wednesday talked about how AI is changing the character of warfare and offered two examples to illustrate his points. His comments included new insights into how two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crew members were rescued after being shot down by an Iranian drone near the coast of Oman in June. The recovery effort involved America’s first known use of an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) executing a personnel recovery action as part of a military search and rescue operation.

“Information moves so fast that leader decision times have compressed from weeks down to days down to seconds,” explained Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending. “In the future fight, advantage will go to the side who can see first, who can understand first, decide first, and act first, and along the way, be a learning organization, and no factor is accelerating change as fast as artificial intelligence and advancing cyber capabilities.”

“AI is here now, and it’s already changing the way militaries see, sense, decide, and act across the joint force,” the chairman proclaimed.

The first example Caine used to highlight these changes took place on June 8. After the Apache went down, “U.S. CENTCOM launched a rapid, responsive joint search and rescue effort to recover the crew. That response drew on the totality of the joint force, and ultimately was required to use enabled unmanned vessels to participate in the rescue of downed U.S. service members for the first time ever.”

As we noted in our previous coverage, CENTCOM deployed “a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel,” the command’s spokesman told us at the time.

The ability to pull off that rescue mission “did not appear overnight,” Caine pointed out. “It came from the men and women of Task Force 59, CENTCOM’s forward-leaning unmanned joint maritime unit who spent the last several years testing, integrating, and operationalizing unmanned systems and AI in one of the most demanding and kinetic environments on Earth right now.”

“What helped make this possible was not a bunch of general officers and flag officers,” Caine continued. “What made this possible was a bunch of entrepreneurial sailors and members of the joint force on watch floors, at piers, managing networks of unmanned systems across thousands of miles of water, and using AI to turn massive amounts of data into a crisp, clear, perfect maritime picture that allowed us to go grab those two soldiers in the water.”

The second example Caine shared about the use of AI “points in the other direction, not how quickly we are using these tools, but how quickly these tools are changing the threat.”

In Ukraine, “we see first-person view drones operating in heavily contested EMI [electromagnetic interference] environments. Some now using AI-enabled computer vision to continue to drive towards targets, even when there’s no GPS or the links are cut. That gives small units affordable precision and shows how quickly software and autonomy are changing what is possible at the tactical edge, and the results are stark.”

The use of AI to enable lower-end drone warfare is a topic TWZ has been among the first to point out.

“In certain locations on the front line of troops right now, the life expectancy of a new Russian recruit arriving on the front lines is as little as 20 to 30 minutes,” Caine added. “Think about that. This is what happens when low-cost precision is fielded fast, adapted quickly, and scaled across the battlefield.”

“The price of lethal exchange is decreasing day over day,” the chairman noted. “One wonders what the future of close air support looks like, but I am comforted by the fact that each and every one of you are in this room thinking about that. Taken together, these examples from the Straits of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine show how quickly technology is changing the character of war, and this means our joint force needs to do two things at one time.”

“[W]e need to prepare the joint force to win in this kind of conflict,” the general stated. “We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum, and tracked in real time, and we have to transition the joint force to be prepared to fight and win our future war by generating and delivering lethality at scale with an agile, optimized, high-low mix of combat capabilities to give the young members of the 2.8-million member all volunteer joint force the tools that they need before they need them.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com 

A federal film and television tax credit could boost U.S. production spending by $125 billion and add more than 143,000 jobs by 2035, according to a new study commissioned by the Motion Picture Assn.

The analysis, released Tuesday morning, is expected to bolster Hollywood’s push for a federal production incentive, which the industry says is necessary to compete with the generous credits offered abroad. Sixty-five nations now offer them, the study said.

The effort has been quietly building for more than a year. It got a major boost last month when President Trump posted on Truth Social backing a proposed credit.

Details are still being worked out,, but the study assumed a transferable credit with a minimum rate of 20% on qualified spending for U.S. resident labor — broadly what industry groups have supported. It also assumed add-ons of 5% for independent production companies and 5% for labor costs in areas the Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared disasters.

If the incentive took effect Jan. 1, 2027, U.S. production spending would reach $277.5 billion through 2035, the study said, compared with $152.2 billion without it.

A coalition that includes the Motion Picture Assn., industry unions, producers’ groups and small production businesses, along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, is expected to press the case at a virtual news conference Tuesday.

“A federal incentive would be a gamechanger for our industry,” Charles Rivkin, chairman and chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., said in a statement. “This study tells us that we can bring more opportunities to life for people in all 50 states who bring great stories to life.”

WASHINGTON — Nearly a quarter century after a day “etched forever into the memories of Americans,” President Trump honored the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday by vowing to “never forget.”

The event at the Ellipse was spearheaded by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and showcased a massive, 21-foot, nearly 17,000-pound steel beam recovered from the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, which had traveled for months across the country as part of the Steel Across America tour.

The steel beam will make its way through New York in a procession on Friday by retracing the steps of fallen New York City firefighter Stephen Siller. Trump’s presence at the event on Tuesday just outside the White House began a week of commemorations that will culminate in several events on Friday, including one at the Pentagon that Trump will attend.

“This battered piece of steel here today on the Ellipse is a reminder that America is blessed with a strength no fire can consume, no evil can conquer and no terror can destroy,” Trump said.

Trump noted that the Sept. 11 attacks were one of few moments in history that “divide time into really what came before” and after.

His remarks briefly dipped into the political, as Trump warned of people turning a “communistic way” — a reference to his frequent attacks on Democrats as more democratic socialists gain influence in the party.

During his remarks, Trump paid particular tribute to two men who died in the attacks: Jeffrey Palazzo, a New York City firefighter, and Welles Crowther, a young equities trader who became known as the “man in the red bandanna” after rescuing several people in the attacks.

Trump said the U.S. Coast Guard will commission a new fast-response cutter this weekend in New York in honor of Palazzo, a Coast Guard reservist who was working out of Staten Island’s Rescue Squad 5 when he responded to the attacks 25 years ago.

And the president recognized Crowther, also a volunteer firefighter, by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Crowther’s mother, Alison, and sister, Paige, accepted the award, which is considered the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In attendance were a smattering of top Cabinet officials and members of Congress, including Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Dan Meuser, whose Pennsylvania district is near Shanksville, where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Trump praised at length Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial firm that had been housed at the World Trade Center. Lutnick lost his younger brother, Gary, as well as more than 650 employees in the attacks.

“He’s done an amazing job,” Trump said of Lutnick. “He’s rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald, and he’s given much of the profits to some of the families or the families of people who perished.”

About 150 first responders from New York, as well as some from Washington and Pennsylvania, were in attendance, Trump said.

“This steel beam represents the best of our country,” said Frank Siller, the foundation’s chairman and CEO who is the brother of Stephen Siller. “It’s important to recognize that the heroism that was exhibited that fateful day was nothing short of incredible.”

Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.