Courts

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested a formal pardon from President Isaac Herzog in his long-running corruption cases, for the sake of ‘national unity’. Israel’s opposition says Netanyahu must admit guilt and resign.

CELEBRITY psychic Sally Morgan has threatened a rival with legal action — for using the stage name Psychic Sal.

The TV medium’s lawyers have warned Sally Cudmore to stop using the title or face court action.

They claim Sally, 74, dubbed Britain’s best-loved psychic, has trademarked Psychic Sally, Psychic Sal and Sally Psychic.

But mum-of-three Sally, 54, told The Sun last night: “To be honest, I didn’t see this coming.

“My name is Sally. It has been since birth. I didn’t borrow it, steal it, trademark it, or contact Sally Morgan for permission.”

She said her family had been doing readings for four generations and jokingly blamed her mum for her name, saying if she had foreseen it “perhaps she would have chosen Janet”.

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Sally, from Eltham, South London, has appeared on Loose Women and This Morning.

She calls herself Psychic Medium Sally Cudmore and uses the handle @psychicsal100 on TikTok.

She said: “How can anyone confuse me with Sally Morgan?

“She is years older than me and looks nothing like me.”

Sally Morgan’s lawyers want her to stop using names such as Psychic Sally, Psychic Sal or similar and make a public statement over the confusion.

And her spokeswoman said: “She is acting in the best interest of her loyal followers to prevent further confusion caused by Sally Cudmore. She is protecting her professional name.”

Judges are reviewing the UK government’s decision to ban the activist group Palestine Action under counter-terror laws. Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego was at the court where police were arresting people for displaying pro-PA signs.

IS SHE a crusader or a Rebel without a cause?

That’s the question surrounding Rebel Wilson this week, as she stares down the barrel of yet another legal wrangling — while passionately claiming she’s a “whistleblower” fighting for justice.

This week, in a bombshell TV interview, the 45-year-old broke her silence on the legal battle she is fighting surrounding her feature film directorial debut.

The star, who was born and raised in Sydney, told 60 Minutes Australia she had been the target of “incessant . . . bullying and harassment” by the producers of her comedy musical, The Deb.

The producers are suing her for defamation, breach of contract and sabotage and the lead actress has also launched a lawsuit against her.

It comes just 18 months after Rebel accused Sacha Baron Cohen of inappropriate behaviour on the set of another production — which he denies — and eight years after a landmark defamation battle.

Now, with her star showing signs of waning Down Under, have the endless litigations and allegations destroyed Rebel’s career?

In the latest real-life drama, the producers of The Deb — Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron and Vince Holden — launched their legal action after Rebel claimed they had embezzled film funds.

She also accused Amanda of sexually harassing lead actress Charlotte MacInnes on set.

Charlotte, who denies she made claims of sexual harassment, is suing Rebel for defamation after the latter implied she had “changed her story” and was backtracking to save her career.

Rebel says the producers’ complaints against her are “an attempt to sling mud at [her] reputation”, and that all the muck and mess surrounding the project has been her “worst nightmare”.

‘Smear campaign’

She is now countersuing the producers, accusing them of financial misdeeds, misconduct and coercion.

She claims she had been subjected to suppressive measures, saying: “They locked me in a room and forced me to sign documents. I was like, ‘This is like the KGB.’ ”

The producers vehemently deny Rebel’s allegations, which she initially highlighted in an Instagram video in July 2024.

In the original clip, Rebel accused them of “bad behaviour”, “embezzling funds” and of perpetrating “inappropriate behaviour towards the lead actress”.

She subsequently claimed it was Amanda Ghost who had taken things too far with Charlotte. Rebel alleged Amanda had “asked [Charlotte] to have a bath and shower with her and it made her feel uncomfortable”.

In an extra layer to the mudslinging, both Charlotte and the producers have also accused Rebel of being behind several websites allegedly created as a smear campaign, which have since been taken down.

What is very clear is that she is not as loved here in recent years as I think she expected to be

Eleanor Sprawson, a journalist based in Australia, on Rebel Wilson

These websites accused Amanda, who is of Indo–Trinidadian heritage, of being akin to “the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” and referred to her as a “full pimp” who was “procuring young women for the pleasure of the extremely wealthy”.

Rebel has denied any involvement in a smear campaign or the creation of websites against her legal foes, claiming she was heavily involved in getting them removed.

The cases rumble on and Rebel remains undeterred.

Not only does she stand by her story and appears willing to fight to the end, she is also loudly promoting new projects on Instagram and is looking forward to seeing The Deb finally hit screens in Australia in January.

Rebel’s history suggests she is not someone to be provoked.

In 2016, Rebel — who found global fame in 2011 comedy Bridesmaids, before her scene-stealing turn as Fat Amy in 2012’s Pitch Perfect — set fire to the media landscape in Australia after launching a legal battle against Bauer Media.

In a landmark defamation case, Rebel sued the publisher over a series of articles published in 2015, that accused her of lying about her age, real name, and details of her upbringing, to advance her career.

Rebel said these stories had painted her as a serial liar and fraud, and had caused her to lose major film roles in Hollywood. She added that they had been perfectly timed to harm her as her career peaked post-Pitch Perfect.

Initially, the judge ruled in her favour, granting her $4.5million (£2.3million) — the largest defamation payout in Australian history — which she vowed to donate to charity and film projects.

But a later appeal saw the damages reduced to $600,000 — and Rebel was also ordered to pay 80 per cent of Bauer’s appeal costs.

While the appeal court upheld the initial verdict, it found the actress had not proved she had lost specific Hollywood roles solely because of the articles written about her. Another appeal followed — this time from Rebel — but the courts didn’t budge on the reduced payout.

Standing outside the High Court of Australia in November 2018, the actress told reporters: “To me, it was never about the money, but about standing up to a bully and I have done that successfully.”

Such a stance — pushing back against oppressors — is what Rebel has always argued she is doing. More so, perhaps, than the average celebrity — because, as time has passed, Rebel has continued to set the cat among the pigeons.

Last year, she hit the headlines again, as she released her  autobiography Rebel Rising — taking to Instagram to identify Sacha Baron Cohen as the unnamed “massive a**hole” that a controversial chapter of the book centres on.

The Borat actor had directed and starred opposite Rebel in their 2016 movie Grimsby.

Rebel claimed she had been pressured to perform a “lewd act” that was never in a script.

Reflecting on the filming process, Rebel alleged Sacha made repeated, inappropriate requests to her, like: “Just go naked, it will be funny”.

She said she had felt “bullied, humiliated and compromised”.

‘The boy who cried wolf’

While no legal action was taken by either side, Sacha slammed the claims as “demonstrably false” and argued that all evidence — including film footage, production notes and eyewitness statements — contradicted her account.

The book was published in its entirety in the US, but was partially redacted in the UK and Australia — with any mention of Rebel’s allegations against Sacha blacked out due to the legal risk of defamation.

In March 2024, Rebel railed against her suppressors, writing on social media that she would not be “bullied or silenced by high-priced lawyers or crisis PR managers”.

And now she is doubling down on that promise, thanks to her latest public battle.

So, where does that leave Rebel, who, ten years ago was considered to be one of Hollywood’s funniest women.

Eleanor Sprawson, a journalist based in Australia, where Rebel initially found fame, says the temperature has changed towards the actress in recent years.

“What is very clear is that she is not as loved here in recent years as I think she expected to be,” Eleanor explains.

“She was loved, way back 20 or more years ago when she was in a comedy series called Pizza, and I think people were excited for her when she took off in Hollywood.

“So when she presented a local show called Pooch Perfect, TV executives definitely thought they were on to a huge winner: ‘Local girl turned Hollywood star returning to do humble Australian TV’-type thing.

“But in fact the show bombed — and it bombed literally when people were locked in their houses because of the pandemic, with nothing to do EXCEPT watch TV. I think it proves that Australians have not taken her to their hearts.”

She adds: “She certainly did herself no favours by slagging off that old show Pizza in her memoirs. This show is very fondly remembered about a kind of class of people who don’t get much exposure on Australian TV in general.”

No one in the industry will want to work with her in the future if this behaviour is kept up. They’d be scared of legal issues or defamatory language

PR expert Quincy Dash

Meanwhile, Rebel could be seen as fighting causes that matter. In 2021, she donated $1million to the Australian Theatre for Young People.

She’s certainly combative, but has needed to be. In 2022, she came out as gay by posting an Instagram photo of her and her then girlfriend, now wife, Ramona Agruma.

Rebel revealed she’d had to “rush” her coming out after The Sydney Morning Herald contacted her representatives for comment on the new relationship

The actress also had to face constant scrutiny over her fluctuating weight, which — while she previously said made her the go-to funny girl.

But, as PR expert Quincy Dash tells The Sun, her litigious and provocative behaviour sometimes makes her seem like “the boy who cried wolf”.

He warns that “no one in the industry will want to work with her in the future if this behaviour is kept up. They’d be scared of legal issues or defamatory language.”

As it stands, Rebel is pushing ahead, and will next be seen in the Sky Original festive film Tinsel Town next month.

But as for her once-glistening career, she’s going to have to really ask herself: Does she really have a cause worth fighting for?

International Rights Advocates also sued Tesla for a similar issue, but that case was dismissed.

A United States-based advocacy group has filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC, accusing Apple of using minerals linked to conflict and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda despite the iPhone maker’s denials.

International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) has previously sued Tesla, Apple and other tech firms over cobalt sourcing, but US courts dismissed that case last year.

French prosecutors in December also dropped a case filed by the DRC against Apple subsidiaries over conflict minerals, citing lack of evidence. A related criminal complaint in Belgium is still under investigation.

Apple denied any wrongdoing in response to the DRC’s legal cases, saying it had instructed its suppliers to halt the sourcing of material from the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda.

It did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest complaint.

IRAdvocates, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that tries to use litigation to curtail rights abuses, said in the complaint filed on Tuesday in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that Apple’s supply chain still includes cobalt, tin, tantalum and tungsten linked to child and forced labour as well as armed groups in the DRC and Rwanda.

The lawsuit seeks a determination by the court that Apple’s conduct violates consumer protection law, an injunction to halt alleged deceptive marketing and reimbursement of legal costs but does not seek monetary damages or class certification.

The lawsuit alleges that three Chinese smelters – Ningxia Orient, JiuJiang JinXin and Jiujiang Tanbre – processed coltan that United Nations and Global Witness investigators alleged was smuggled through Rwanda after armed groups seized mines in the eastern DRC and linked the material to Apple’s supply chain.

A University of Nottingham study published in 2025 found forced and child labour at DRC sites linked to Apple suppliers, the lawsuit said.

Ningxia Orient, JiuJiang JinXin and Jiujiang Tanbre did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The DRC – which supplies about 70 percent of the world’s cobalt and significant volumes of tin, tantalum and tungsten used in phones, batteries and computers – did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rwanda also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple has repeatedly denied sourcing minerals from conflict zones or using forced labour, citing audits and its supplier code of conduct. It said in December that there was “no reasonable basis” to conclude any smelters or refiners in its supply chain financed armed groups in the DRC or neighbouring countries.

Congolese authorities said armed groups in the eastern part of the country use mineral profits to fund a conflict that has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. The authorities have tightened controls on minerals to choke off funding, squeezing global supplies.

Apple says 76 percent of the cobalt in its devices was recycled in 2024, but the IRAdvocates lawsuit alleged its accounting method allows mixing with ore from conflict zones.

On Wall Street, Apple’s stock was up 0.8 percent.

Bogota, Colombia – Santiago Uribe, the brother of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, has been sentenced to 28 years and three months in prison for aggravated homicide and conspiracy to commit a crime while leading a paramilitary group.

In Tuesday’s verdict, a three-judge panel in the northwestern province of Antioquia ruled that, in the early 1990s, Uribe “formed and led an illegal armed group”.

Under Uribe’s leadership, the group allegedly “carried out a plan to systematically murder and exterminate people considered undesirable”.

Uribe has denied having any associations with paramilitary groups. His defence team plans to appeal.

The ruling reverses a lower court’s acquittal last year. The case will now pass to Colombia’s Supreme Court for a final verdict.

The conviction is the latest twist in a longstanding criminal investigation into the Uribe family and its alleged paramilitary ties.

Critics have accused Uribe and his brother, the former president, of maintaining ties to groups involved in grave human rights abuses during Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict.

Tuesday’s conviction relates to activities that took place on and around the Uribe family’s La Carolina cattle ranch, located in Antioquia.

In its 307-page ruling, the court detailed how the ranch was used as a base for The 12 Apostles, a far-right paramilitary group formed by ranchers in the early 1990s to combat leftist rebels, notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The court described The 12 Apostles as a “death squad”, saying it performed “social cleansing” by killing “undesirables” including sex workers, drug users, people with mental illnesses and suspected leftist sympathisers.

Not only did the paramilitary group hold meetings at La Carolina, but training and weapons distribution were also carried out on site, according to the ruling.

Those were “acts with which crimes against humanity were committed”, the judges wrote.

Describing Uribe as the leader of The 12 Apostles, the court found him responsible for ordering the murder of Camilo Barrientos, a bus driver who was shot near La Carolina in 1994 for being a suspected rebel collaborator.

Tuesday’s ruling also highlighted collusion between paramilitaries and state security forces, saying the militia “enjoyed the cooperation, through action and inaction, of agents of the State”.

Uribe was first investigated for his involvement with The 12 Apostles in the late 1990s, but the investigation was dropped in 1999 due to a lack of evidence.

Colombian authorities resumed their investigation in 2010, detaining Uribe in 2016 on charges of homicide.

While the trial ended in 2020, the lower court announced its verdict years later, in November 2024. The judge overseeing the case at the time, Jaime Herrera Nino, ruled there was insufficient evidence and acquitted Uribe.

Tuesday’s decision overturns that verdict. Human rights advocates applauded the ruling as a step towards accountability, even at the highest levels of power.

“The sentence is extremely important,” said Laura Bonilla, a deputy director at Colombia’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares). “It shows the level of penetration that paramilitarism had in Colombian society.”

Gerson Arias, a conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank, said the complexity of the case reflects the power structures involved.

“Paramilitarism was deeply rooted in the upper echelons of society, and therefore clarifying what happened takes years,” he said.

“It is therefore likely that many of the collective things we know about paramilitarism are still pending resolution and discovery.”

The defendant’s brother, former President Alvaro Uribe, led Colombia from 2002 to 2010.

The ex-president himself was found guilty earlier this year of bribing former paramilitary members not to testify to his involvement with them.

The ruling was overturned in October, after a court ruled the evidence was gathered through an unlawful wiretap. It also cited “structural deficiencies” in the prosecution’s arguments.

The former president remains a powerful figure in right-wing politics in Colombia, and he has pledged to form a coalition to oppose a left-wing government in the 2026 elections.

“I feel deep pain over the sentence against my brother. May God help him,” the ex-president wrote on the social media platform X following Tuesday’s ruling.

AN AUSSIE superfan who lunged at Ariana Grande on the red carpet has been kicked out of Singapore and banned from returning to the country for life.

Johnson Wen, 26, was jailed for nine days for being a public nuisance and has now been officially “barred from re-entering Singapore”, the country’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority confirmed.

Wen sparked chaos at the Asian premiere of Wicked: For Good on 13 November when he shoved past photographers and charged straight at Grande as she arrived at Universal Studios Singapore.

Her co-star Cynthia Erivo immediately rushed in and physically wrestled him away.

The prankster has a history of disrupting concerts and celebrity appearances, including jumping on stage at Katy Perry’s Sydney concert in June.

Fans online accused Wen of re-traumatising Grande, who has spoken about suffering PTSD after the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, which killed 22 concertgoers and injured hundreds more.

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The court heard Wen had tried twice to force his way into the premiere.

After being removed the first time, he made a second attempt to jump the barricades before security pinned him to the ground.

He later posted bizarre videos thanking Grande “for letting him on the carpet” and declaring he was “free”, only to be arrested the next day.

Wen pleaded guilty to the public-nuisance charge.

Judge Christopher Goh said Wen was “attention seeking” and foolish to believe he wouldn’t face consequences.

Grande has not commented, but Erivo later told NBC she stepped in instinctively: “I just wanted to make sure my friend was safe … You never know with those things.”

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza during an Oval Office meeting with US President Donald Trump on Friday. Trump dodged a question on whether he’d intervene if Mamdani tried to have Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu arrested in New York.

The right-wing leader has sought to appeal his 27-year sentence for allegedly fomenting a coup after his 2022 defeat.

Lawyers for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have asked Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to allow him to serve his 27-year sentence under house arrest, citing health concerns.

According to a document reviewed by the Reuters news agency on Friday, Bolsonaro’s lawyers said the 70-year-old former president’s recurring intestinal issues would make imprisonment life-threatening.

He had been stabbed in the stomach while campaigning in the state of Minas Gerais in 2018.

“It is certain that keeping the petitioner in a prison environment would pose a concrete and immediate risk to his physical integrity and even his life,” the document said. It asked for house arrest on humanitarian grounds.

In September, Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison by a five-judge panel from Brazil’s Supreme Court. He was convicted of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The former right-wing leader has already been under house arrest for violating precautionary measures in a separate case, in which he allegedly courted United States interference to halt the criminal proceedings against him.

Court sources said Bolsonaro’s arrest appeared imminent after the Supreme Court panel earlier this month unanimously rejected an appeal filed by the former president’s legal team.

His lawyers said they would file a new appeal, but they argued that, if it is also rejected, Bolsonaro should begin serving his sentence under house arrest once all appeals are exhausted.

They noted that, earlier this year, the top court let 76-year-old former President Fernando Collor de Mello serve house arrest due to his age and health issues, including Parkinson’s disease, after he was sentenced to almost nine years in prison on corruption and money laundering charges.

Recent medical tests on Bolsonaro show that “a serious or sudden illness is not a question of ‘if’, but of ‘when’,” his legal team said.

One of Bolsonaro’s sons, Carlos, said on Friday that the former president was facing severe hiccups and vomiting constantly. “I’ve never seen him like this,” he wrote on the social media platform X.

Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil between 2019 and 2022, was convicted of five crimes, including participating in an armed criminal organisation, attempting to violently abolish democracy and organising a coup.

On Friday, the former president made a brief appearance in the doorway of his house while receiving a visit from federal lawmaker Nikolas Ferreira.

US President Donald Trump said on social media that six Democratic lawmakers — all veterans and service members — should be arrested and put to ‘death’ for a video they published urging armed forces members to disobey ‘illegal orders’ from the administration.

US president’s controversial deployment of soldiers to US cities has raised alarm and a series of legal challenges.

A United States federal judge has said the Trump administration must pause its deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, a setback for the president’s push to send the military into cities across the country.

US District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily suspended the deployment in a ruling on Thursday, responding to a lawsuit filed by city officials who said Trump had usurped policing powers and was using the military for domestic law enforcement.

The federal government has unique powers in Washington, DC. But the Trump administration has taken the controversial step to deploy soldiers in a growing list of Democrat-led cities, despite frequent protests from state and local officials and a lack of any emergency conditions.

Cobb, who said in her decision that the president cannot deploy soldiers for “whatever reason” he wants, gave the Trump administration 21 days to appeal the order before it goes into effect.

Lawyers for the government slammed the lawsuit that challenged the military deployment as a “frivolous stunt”.

“There is no sensible reason for an injunction unwinding this arrangement now, particularly since the District’s claims have no merit,” Department of Justice lawyers wrote.

Trump has also deployed troops to cities such as Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois, in what he depicts as an effort to tackle crime and round up undocumented immigrants.

Residents and civil liberties groups have documented aggressive raids and what they say are widespread rights violations and racial profiling by federal agents during those crackdowns, in which US citizens have sometimes been swept up.

Trump has threatened to imprison local and state officials who criticise his deployment of the military.

A legal challenge filed in September by Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb said that US democracy would “never be the same if these occupations are permitted to stand”.

Trump ordered the first deployment in August, involving about 2,300 National Guard members from various states and hundreds of federal agents from various agencies.

Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) wants a swathe of the southeast, the homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, to split from Nigeria.

A Nigerian court has convicted separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu on charges related to “terrorism” after a years-long trial.

In his ruling on Thursday, Nigerian Judge James Omotosho said prosecutors proved that Kanu’s broadcasts and orders to his now-banned Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group incited deadly attacks on security forces and citizens in the southeast.

The violence was part of his push for an independent Biafra state for the ethnic Igbo-dominated region.

“His intention was quite clear, as he believed in violence. These threats of violence were nothing but terrorist acts,” Omotosho said.

Kanu, who has been in custody since his controversial re-arrest in Kenya in 2021, shouted angrily in objection to the proceedings and was ejected from court ahead of the ruling. He had argued that his unlawful extradition from Kenya undermined any chance of a fair trial.

Kanu pleaded not guilty in 2021 to seven charges that included “terrorism”, treason and perpetuating falsehoods against Nigeria’s former President Muhammadu Buhari.

Kanu was first arrested in 2015, but fled the country while on bail. His social media posts during his absence and his Radio Biafra broadcasts outraged the government, which said they encouraged attacks on security forces.

Ultimately, security agents brought Kanu to court in Abuja in June 2021 after detaining him in Kenya, where his lawyer alleged he was mistreated. Kenya has denied involvement.

In October 2021, Kanu’s lawyers argued that his statements on Radio Biafra shouldn’t be admissible in a Nigerian court since they were made in London.

“I can’t see how someone would make a statement in London and it becomes a triable offence in this country,” Kanu’s lawyer Ifeanyi Ejiofor told reporters at the time.

Kanu, a dual Nigerian-British citizen, started Radio Biafra – an obscure, London-based radio station – in 2009 after he left Nigeria to study economics and politics at the London Metropolitan University.

In one broadcast, Kanu said: “We have one thing in common, all of us that believe in Biafra, one thing we have in common, a pathological hatred for Nigeria. I cannot begin to put into words how much I hate Nigeria.”

IPOB wants a swathe of the southeast, the homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, to split from Nigeria. An attempt to secede in 1967 as the Republic of Biafra triggered a three-year civil war that killed more than one million people.

The United States Department of Justice has acknowledged that the grand jury reviewing the case against James Comey, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), did not receive a copy of the final indictment against him.

That revelation on Wednesday came as lawyers for Comey sought to have the indictment thrown out of court.

At a 90-minute hearing in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Comey’s lawyers argued that the case should be dismissed outright, not only for the prosecutorial missteps but also due to the interventions of President Donald Trump.

Comey is one of three prominent Trump critics to be indicted between late September and mid-October.

The hearing took place before US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, and Comey’s defence team alleged that Trump was using the legal system as a tool for political retribution.

“This is an extraordinary case and it merits an extraordinary remedy,” defence lawyer Michael Dreeben said, calling the indictment “a blatant use of criminal justice to achieve political ends”.

The Justice Department, represented by prosecutor Tyler Lemons, maintained that the indictment met the legal threshold to be heard at trial.

But Lemons did admit, under questioning, that the grand jury that approved the indictment had not seen its final draft.

When Judge Nachmanoff asked Lemons if the grand jury had never seen the final version, the prosecutor conceded, “That is my understanding.”

It was the latest stumble in the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute Comey for allegedly obstructing a congressional investigation and lying to senators while under oath.

Comey has pleaded not guilty to the two charges, and his defence team has led a multipronged effort to see the case nixed over its multiple irregularities.

Scrutiny over grand jury proceedings

Questions over the indictment — and what the grand jury had or had not seen — had been brewing since last week.

On November 13, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie raised questions about a span of time when it appeared that there appeared to be “no court reporter present” during the grand jury proceedings.

Then, on Tuesday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick took the extraordinary step of calling for the grand jury materials to be released to the Comey defence team, citing “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps”.

They included misleading statements from prosecutors, the use of search warrants pertaining to a separate case, and the fact that the grand jury likely did not review the final indictment in full.

Separately, in Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Nachmanoff pressed acting US Attorney Lindsey Halligan about who saw the final indictment.

After repeated questions, she, too, admitted that only the foreperson of the grand jury and a second grand juror were present for the returning of the indictment.

Halligan oversaw the three indictments against the Trump critics: Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

All three have denied wrongdoing, and all three have argued that their prosecution is part of a campaign of political vengeance.

Spotlight on Trump-Comey feud

Wednesday’s hearing focused primarily on establishing that argument, with Comey’s lawyers pointing to statements Trump made pushing for the indictments.

Comey’s defence team pointed to the tense relationship between their client and Trump, stretching back to the president’s decision to fire Comey from his job as FBI director in 2017.

Comey had faced bipartisan criticism for FBI investigations into the 2016 election, which Trump ultimately won.

Trump, for example, accused the ex-FBI leader of going easy on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, calling him a “slime ball”, a “phony” and “a real nut job”.

“FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds,” Trump wrote on social media in May 2017.

Comey, meanwhile, quickly established himself as a prominent critic of the Trump administration.

“I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president,” Comey told ABC News in 2018.

He added that a president must “embody respect” and adhere to basic values like truth-telling. “This president is not able to do that,” Comey said.

In Wednesday’s hearing, Comey’s defence also pointed to the series of events leading up to the former FBI director’s indictment.

Last September, Trump posted on social media a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling Comey and James “guilty as hell” and encouraging her not to “delay any longer” in seeking their indictments.

That message was “effectively an admission that this is a political prosecution”, according to Dreeben, Comey’s lawyer.

Shortly after the message was posted online, Halligan was appointed as acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia

She replaced a prosecutor, Erik Siebert, who had reportedly declined to indict Comey and others for lack of evidence. Trump had denounced him as a “woke RINO”, an acronym that stands for “Republican in name only”.

Dreeben argued that switcheroo also signalled Trump’s vindictive intent and his spearheading of the Comey indictment.

But Lemons, representing the Justice Department, told Judge Nachmanoff that Comey “was not indicted at the direction of the president of the United States or any other government official”.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Shahina Begum broke down in tears the moment a special court in capital Dhaka sentenced deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her close aide, former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, to death for crimes against humanity.

Begum’s 20-year-old son Sajjat Hosen Sojal was shot and his body burned by the police on August 5, 2024, hours before a student-led uprising forced Hasina to resign and flee the country she had ruled with an iron first for 15 years.

Prosecutors allege that six student protesters were killed that day in Ashulia, a readymade garments hub on the outskirts of Dhaka: five shot and their bodies burned, while another was allegedly burned alive inside the police station.

The killings, allegedly ordered by Hasina in a desperate bid to hang on to power, were part of a brutal crackdown by security forces on what is referred to in Bangladesh as the July Uprising, during which more than 1,400 protesters were killed, according to the United Nations.

After a months-long trial held in absentia as Hasina and Khan had fled to neighbouring India, Dhaka’s International Crimes Tribunal on Monday sentenced the two to death, while a third accused – former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah al-Mamun – was given a five-year jail term because he had turned a state witness.

“I cannot be calm until she [Hasina] is brought back and hanged in this country,” Begum told Al Jazeera on Monday night, as the historic verdict triggered a surge of emotions across the country of 170 million people.

“My son screamed for help inside that police station. No one saved him. I will not rest until those who burned him can never harm another mother’s child again.”

But as hundreds of families who lost their loved ones during last year’s uprising come to terms with Monday’s landmark sentencing, many wonder if Hasina will actually face justice.

There are questions around whether India, a close ally of Hasina during her 15 years of rule, would extradite her and Khan, or whether it might instead help them escape justice.

“They took five minutes to burn my son alive, but it took almost a year and a half to deliver this verdict,” said Begum from her ancestral home in Shyampur village in the northern Gaibandha district.

“Can this government really bring her back from India? What happens if the government changes and the next one protects Hasina and her collaborators? Who will guarantee that these killers won’t escape?”

‘Sentence must be carried out’

As hundreds gathered outside the tribunal building in Dhaka on Monday, Mir Mahbubur Rahman Snigdho – whose brother Mir Mugdho was shot dead during the uprising – said Hasina “deserves the maximum penalty many times over,” urging the authorities to bring her back to Bangladesh to enforce the judgement.

Standing close to him was Syed Gazi Rahman, father of killed protester Mutasir Rahman. He called for the sentence to be carried out “swiftly and publicly,” accusing Hasina of “emptying the hearts of thousands of families”.

Some 300km (186 miles) away, at Bhabnapur Jaforpara village in the northern district of Rangpur, family members of Abu Sayeed also welcomed the death sentence against the former prime minister.

Sayeed was the first casualty of the July Uprising, which started with mainly student-led protests against a controversial quota system for government jobs that disproportionately favoured the children of people who fought in the 1971 war for independence from Pakistan.

On July 16, 2024, Sayeed, a student leader, was shot dead by the police while demonstrating in Rangpur.

“My heart has finally cooled down. I am satisfied. She must be brought back from India and executed in Bangladesh without delay,” said his father, Mokbul Hossain.

“My son is gone. It pains me. The sentence must be carried out,” added his mother, Monowara Begum. She said the family distributed sweets to those visiting them after the verdict.

Sanjida Khan Dipti, mother of Shahriar Khan Anas, a 10th-grade student who was shot dead in Dhaka’s Chankharpul neighbourhood on August 5, 2024, told Al Jazeera the verdict is “only a consolation”.

“Justice will be served the day it is executed,” she said.

“As a mother, even 1,400 death sentences would be insufficient for someone who emptied the hearts of thousands of mothers. The world must see the consequences when a ruler unleashes mass killing to cling to power. God may grant you time, but He does not spare.”

Dipti said she was not satisfied with the verdict against former police chief al-Mamun.

“Abdullah al-Mamun should have received a longer sentence because, as part of the nation’s security force, he became a killer of our children,” she said.

‘No dictator should rise again’

Several processions were taken out in Dhaka and other parts of the country on Monday after Hasina was sentenced to death.

During a march inside the campus of the Dhaka University, Ar Rafi, a second-year undergraduate student, said they will rally to demand Hasina’s extradition from India.

“We are happy for now. But we want Hasina brought back from India and executed. We, the students, will remain on the streets until her sentence is carried out,” he told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, a group called Maulik Bangla staged a symbolic enactment of Hasina’s execution at Dhaka’s Shahbagh intersection area after the tribunal’s verdict.

“This is a message that no dictator should rise again,” said Sharif Osman bin Hadi, spokesperson for Inquilab Manch (Revolution Front), a non-partisan cultural organisation inspired by the July Uprising.

Political parties, including the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, also welcomed the verdict.

“This judgement proves that no matter how powerful a fascist or autocrat becomes, they will one day have to stand in the dock,” BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed told reporters on Monday.

Jamaat leader Mia Golam Porwar said the ruling proves that “no head of government or powerful political leader is above the law”, and that the verdict offers “some measure of comfort” to families of those killed during the uprising.

The United Nations human rights office said while it considered the verdict was “an important moment for the victims”, it stressed that a trial held in absentia and resulting in a death sentence may not have followed due process and fair trial standards, as it reiterated its opposition to capital punishment.

Rights group Amnesty International also raised concerns about the fairness of the trial, saying the victims “deserve far better” and warning that rushed proceedings in absentia risk undermining justice.

“Victims need justice and accountability, yet the death penalty simply compounds human rights violations. It’s the ultimate cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment and has no place in any justice process,” it said.

But the families of the victims say the verdict was a recognition of the brutality of the crackdown, and raises hopes for a closure.

“This verdict sends a message: justice is inevitable,” said Atikul Gazi, a 21-year-old TikToker from Dhaka’s Uttara area who survived being shot at point-blank range on August 5, 2024, but ended up losing his left arm.

A selfie video of him smiling – despite missing an arm – went viral last year, making him a symbol of resilience. “It feels like the souls of the July martyrs will now find some peace,” Gazi told Al Jazeera.

The majority on a federal court in El Paso, Texas, found that the new map used race to redraw congressional districts.

A panel of federal judges has ruled that Texas’s newly redrawn congressional districts cannot be used in next year’s 2026 midterm elections, striking a blow to Republican efforts to tilt races in their favour.

On Tuesday, a two-to-one majority at the US District Court for western Texas blocked the map, on the basis that there was “substantial evidence” to show “that Texas racially gerrymandered” the districts.

Partisan gerrymandering has generally been considered legal under court precedent, but dividing congressional maps along racial lines is considered a violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” the court’s majority wrote in the opening of its 160-page opinion.

The ruling marked a major setback to efforts to redraw congressional districts ahead of the critically important midterms, which decide the composition of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs in that election. With Republicans holding a narrow 219-seat majority, analysts speculate that control of the chamber could potentially switch parties.

Texas, a Republican stronghold, had kicked off a nationwide race to redesign congressional districts in favour of one party or the other.

In June, news reports emerged that the administration of President Donald Trump had reached out to state officials to redraw the red state’s map, in order to gain five additional House seats for Republicans.

Despite hesitations and a walkout by state Democrats, the Texas legislature passed a new, gerrymandered map in August.

That inspired other right-leaning states, notably North Carolina and Missouri, to similarly redraw their districts. North Carolina and Missouri each passed a map that would gain Republicans one additional House seat.

Texas’s actions also sparked a Democratic backlash. California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded a ballot campaign in his heavily blue state to pass a proposition in November that would suspend an independent districting commission and instead pass a partisan map, skewed in favour of Democrats.

Voters passed the ballot initiative overwhelmingly in November, teeing up Democrats to gain five extra seats in California next year.

The state redistricting battle has sparked myriad legal challenges, including the one decided in Texas on Tuesday.

In that case, civil rights groups accused the Texas government of attempting to dilute the power of Black and Hispanic voters.

Judges David Guaderrama, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Jeffrey V Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority decision in favour of the plaintiffs.

A third judge — Jerry Smith, appointed under Ronald Reagan — dissented from their decision.

Writing for the majority, Brown said that Trump official Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four congressional districts in the state were “unconstitutional” because they had non-white majorities.

The letter Dhillon sent containing that assertion helped prompt the Texas redistricting fight, Brown argued.

The judge also pointed to statements Texas Governor Greg Abbott made, seeming to reference the racial composition of the districts. If the new map’s aims were purely partisan and not racial, Brown indicated that it was curious no majority-white districts were targeted.

Tuesday’s ruling restores the 2021 map of Texas congressional districts. Currently, the state is represented by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the US House.

Already, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the ruling before the US Supreme Court.

“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton wrote in a statement posted to social media.

He expressed optimism about his odds before the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. “I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

California’s new congressional map likewise faces a legal challenge, with the Trump administration suing alongside state Republicans.

The attacks in March killed thousands, many from the Alawite religious minority.

Syria has launched the trial of the first of hundreds of suspects for their role in deadly clashes earlier this year that killed hundreds in the country’s coastal provinces.

Syrian state media reported on Tuesday that 14 people were brought before Aleppo’s Palace of Justice following a months-long, government-led investigation.

Hundreds of people from the Alawite religious minority, to which ousted President Bashar al-Assad belonged, were killed in the massacres in March.

The violence erupted after attacks on the new government’s security forces by armed groups aligned with the deposed autocrat. Counterattacks soon spiralled out of control to target civilians in the coastal regions that host the Alawite population.

Seven of the defendants in the court on Tuesday were al-Assad loyalists, while the other seven were members of the new government’s security forces.

Charges against the suspects could include sedition, inciting civil war, attacking security forces, murder, looting and leading armed gangs, according to state media.

The seven accused from government forces are being prosecuted for “premeditated murder”.

The public and the international community have put pressure on the country’s new rulers to commit to judicial reform.

“The court is sovereign and independent,” said Judge Zakaria Bakkar as the trial opened.

The proceedings are important for President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of forces that formerly had links to al-Qaeda, who since coming to power in December has scrambled to step out from diplomatic isolation. He is working to convince the United States to drop more of its crippling sanctions against Syria and to boost trade to rebuild the war-torn country.

However, despite initial reports by the state media that charges could quickly be brought against the defendants, the judge adjourned the session and rescheduled the next hearing for December.

The National Commission of Inquiry said in July that it had verified serious violations leading to the deaths of at least 1,426 people, most of them civilians, and identified 298 suspects.

It claimed 238 members of the security forces and army had been killed in attacks attributed to al-Assad’s supporters. The authorities then sent reinforcements to the region, with the commission estimating their number at 200,000 fighters.

The commission said there was no evidence that Syria’s new military leaders had ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

A United Nations probe, however, found that violence targeting civilians by government-aligned factions had been “widespread and systematic.”

A UN commission said that during the violence, homes in Alawite-majority areas were raided and civilians were asked “whether they were Sunni or Alawite.”

It said: ”Alawite men and boys were then taken away to be executed.”

A magistrate judge in the United States has issued a stern rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, criticising its handling of the indictment against a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey.

On Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick of Alexandria, Virginia, made the unusual decision to order the release of all grand jury materials related to the indictment.

Normally, grand jury materials are kept secret to protect witnesses, defendants and jurors in cases of grave federal crimes.

But in Comey’s case, Fitzpatrick ruled there was “a reasonable basis to question whether the government’s conduct was willful or in reckless disregard of the law”, and that greater transparency was therefore required.

He cited several irregularities in the case, ranging from how evidence was obtained to alleged misstatements from prosecutors that could have swayed the grand jury.

“The procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his 24-page decision.

Fitzpatrick clarified that his decision does not render the grand jury materials public. But they will be provided to Comey’s defence team, as the former FBI director seeks to have the indictment tossed.

“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote, underscoring the unusual nature of the proceedings.

“However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”

Scrutiny of US Attorney Halligan

The decision is the latest stumble for interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Trump whom he then appointed as a top federal prosecutor.

A specialist in insurance law with no prosecutorial background, Halligan was tapped earlier this year to replace acting US Attorney Erik Siebert in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Trump has indicated he fired Siebert over disagreements about Justice Department investigations.

According to media reports, Siebert had refrained from seeking indictments against prominent Trump critics, such as Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, citing insufficient evidence.

But that appears to have frustrated the president. Trump went so far as to call for Comey’s and James’s prosecutions on social media, as well as that of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote in a post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”

Halligan took up her post as acting US attorney on September 22. By September 25, she had filed her first major indictment, against Comey.

It charged Comey with making a “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to the US Senate, thereby obstructing a congressional inquiry.

A second indictment, against James, was issued on October 9. And a third came on October 16, targeting former national security adviser John Bolton, another prominent Trump critic.

All three individuals have denied wrongdoing and have sought to have their cases dismissed. Each has also accused President Trump of using the legal system for political retribution against perceived adversaries.

Monday’s court ruling is not the first time Halligan’s indictments have come under scrutiny, though.

Just last week, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie heard petitions from James and Comey questioning whether Halligan’s appointment as US attorney was legal.

As she weighed the petitions last Thursday, she questioned why there was a gap in the grand jury record for Comey’s indictment, where no court reporter appeared to be present.

Inside Fitzpatrick’s ruling

Fitzpatrick raised the same issue in his ruling on Monday. He questioned whether the transcript and audio recording of the grand jury deliberations were, in fact, complete.

He pointed out that the grand jury in Comey’s case was originally presented with a three-count indictment, which it rejected. Those deliberations started at about 4:28pm local time.

But by 6:40pm, the grand jury had allegedly weighed a second indictment and found that there was probable cause for two of the three counts.

Fitzpatrick said that the span of time between those two points was not “sufficient” to “draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate”.

Either the court record was incomplete, Fitzpatrick said, or the grand jury weighed an indictment that had not been fully presented in court.

The judge also acknowledged questions about how evidence had been obtained in the Comey case.

The Trump administration was facing a five-year statute of limitations in the Comey case, expiring on September 30. The indictment pertains to statements Comey made before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.

To quickly find evidence for the indictment, Fitzpatrick said that federal prosecutors appear to have used warrants that were issued for a different case.

Those warrants, however, were limited to an investigation into Daniel Richman, an associate of Comey who was probed for the alleged theft of government property and the unlawful gathering of national security information.

No charges were filed in the Richman case, and the investigation was closed in 2021.

“The Richman materials sat dormant with the FBI until the summer of 2025, when the Bureau chose to rummage through them again,” Fitzpatrick said.

He said the federal government’s use of the warrants could violate the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the unreasonable search and seizure of evidence. He described the Justice Department’s actions as “cavalier” and asserted that no precautions were taken to protect privileged information.

“Inexplicably, the government elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person, was exploring a fundamentally different legal theory, and was predicated on an entirely different set of criminal offenses,” Fitzpatrick wrote.

He speculated that prosecutors may not have sought a new warrant because the delay would have allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the Comey case.

“The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual,” he said.

Fitzpatrick also raised concerns that statements federal prosecutors made to the grand jury may have been misleading.

Many of those statements were redacted in Fitzpatrick’s ruling. But he described them as “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the grand jury process”.

One statement, he said, “may have reasonably set an expectation in the minds of the grand jury that rather than the government bear the burden to prove Mr. Comey’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the burden shifts to Mr. Comey to explain away the government’s evidence”.

Another appeared to suggest that the grand jury “did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause” — and that more evidence would be presented later on.

Calling for the release of the grand jury records on Monday was an “extraordinary remedy” for these issues, Fitzpatrick conceded.

But it was necessary, given “the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings”, he ultimately decided.

ARIANA Grande returns to the red carpet — as a man who attacked her is jailed.

The actress, 32, was at an awards bash in Los Angeles days after prankster Johnson Wen accosted her at Thursday’s premiere of Wicked: For Good in Singapore.

Prosecutors said the 26-year-old, locked up for nine days, was a “serial intruder”.

We recently told how Cynthia Erivo and security immediately stepped in to stop the fan after he lunged at the actress, 32, on the red carpet.

Ariana gasped as she was grabbed around the shoulder by Johnson Wen – known on social media as Pyjama Man.

She had been meeting fans while at Universal Studios in Singapore for the premiere of her new film Wicked: For Good.

Read more on Ariana Grande

VIRAL BOND

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s ‘ridiculous’ red carpet moment resurfaces

YOU SCOLD WITCH

Moment fan grabs Ariana Grande before Wicked co-star Cynthia rescues her

Posting the video on his Instagram, he wrote: “Dear Ariana Grande Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You.”

In the shocking clip, Wen is shown climbing over the barrier before sprinting down the red carpet.

He barges past security and knocks into a cameraman before holding onto Ariana – who appears shaken by the exchange.

Wen jumps up and down and smiles as he points at the No Tears Left To Cry singer.

Cynthia, 38, is then shown bravely putting herself between Ariana and the fan as he pulls her from side-to-side.

Fans were quick to slam the “sick” red-carpet crasher, who previously said it was his “dream” to meet the Wicked star.

Cook’s lawyer says the criminal referrals against her ‘fail on even the most cursory look at the facts’.

United States Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawyer has offered the first detailed defence of mortgage applications that gave rise to President Donald Trump’s move to fire her, saying apparent discrepancies in loan documents were either accurate at the time or an “inadvertent notation” that couldn’t constitute fraud given other disclosures to her lenders.

Cook has denied wrongdoing, but until Monday, neither she nor her legal team had responded in any detail to the fraud accusations first made in August by Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte.

She has challenged her removal in court, and the US Supreme Court has for now blocked Trump’s firing attempt and will hear arguments in the case in January.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the department “does not comment on current or prospective litigation, including matters that may be an investigation”.

In a letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi seen by the Reuters news agency, Cook’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said the criminal referrals Pulte made against her “fail on even the most cursory look at the facts”.

The two separate criminal referrals Pulte made fail to establish any evidence that Cook intentionally deceived her lenders when she obtained mortgage loans for three properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts, the letter said.

Lowell also accused Pulte of selectively targeting Trump’s political enemies while ignoring similar allegations against Republican officials, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Lowell said other recent conduct by Pulte “undercut his criminal referrals concerning Governor Cook”. That behaviour includes the recent dismissal of the FHFA’s acting inspector general and several internal watchdogs at Fannie Mae, one of the mortgage-finance giants under FHFA control.

The letter also cited a recent article by Reuters that said the White House ousted FHFA acting Inspector General Joe Allen right after he tried to provide key discovery material to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who are pursuing an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James was charged with bank fraud and lying to her lender also after Pulte made a referral to the Justice Department. She has pleaded not guilty, and she is seeking a dismissal of the case on multiple grounds, including vindictive and selective prosecution.

Cook’s case is being handled in part by Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, whom Bondi named as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud probes into public figures.

The case is still being investigated, and no criminal charges have been brought. The department is also separately investigating Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff, also at Pulte’s request.