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Shaquille O’Neal has an issue with a recent ranking of the all-time best NBA players.

On Monday, Bleacher Report released its list of the “top 100 NBA players ever,” based on a compilation of rankings from a “legion of B/R NBA experts, writers and editors.”

O’Neal finished just outside the top five. He didn’t seem to have an issue with that.

Shaq’s beef was with the placement of his former Lakers teammate, the late Kobe Bryant, who landed outside of the top 10.

“Kobe at 11 is criminal,” O’Neal wrote on X in the comments of a Bleacher Report post that revealed the list’s top 20. He left his comment a little more than an hour after the original Bleacher Report post went live.

Here are the 10 players ranked ahead of Bryant, in order from the top: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, O’Neal, Tim Duncan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain and Stephen Curry.

Bryant is followed on the list by Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Durant, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.

O’Neal has made no secret of his feelings on where Bryant ranks among the league’s all-time greats. In 2023, the Diesel told The Times that his “first team” on such a list would be himself, Bryant, Jordan, Johnson and James.

(Coming off the bench for O’Neal on that hypothetical team were Curry, Allen Iverson, Duncan, Karl Malone, Isiah Thomas and Abdul-Jabbar.)

Last month, in connection with the Netflix docuseries “Power Moves with Shaquille O’Neal,” Shaq revealed another personal top 10 list in which he ranked Bryant at No. 2, behind Jordan and just ahead of James.

Bryant ranks fourth in all-time NBA scoring (33,643 points) and his “Mamba Mentality” work ethic is still cited as a major influence on current athletes. He spent the first eight years of his career as Lakers teammates with O’Neal, with L.A. winning three NBA titles during that span.

Those Lakers also lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 NBA Finals. Soon after, O’Neal was traded to the Miami Heat, with tension between the two superstars seen as one of the main reasons for the move. O’Neal won another NBA title with the Heat in 2006. Bryant won two more with the Lakers, in 2009 and 2010.

Over the years, O’Neal and Bryant acknowledged their rocky relationship as teammates but also insisted that they actually were close friends.

“I just want people to know that I don’t hate you, I know you don’t hate me. I call it today a ‘work beef,’ is what we had,” O’Neal told Bryant on “The Big Podcast with Shaq” in 2015.

“We had a lot of disagreements, we had a lot of arguments,” he said later. “But I think it fueled us both.”

Years later, when it appeared their feud might be heating up again, the two NBA greats took to social media to nip that notion in the bud.

“Ain’t nothin but love there,” Bryant wrote of his relationship with O’Neal.

“It’s all good bro,” Shaq responded.

Bryant and his daughter Gianna were among the nine people who died in a Jan. 26, 2020, helicopter crash in Calabasas. O’Neal was one of the speakers at the Feb. 24, 2020, memorial service for “my friend, my little brother Kobe Bryant and my beautiful niece Gigi.”

“Kobe and I pushed one another to play some of the greatest basketball of all time and I am proud that no other team has accomplished what the three-peat Lakers have done since the Shaq and Kobe Lakers did it,” O’Neal said. “And sometimes like immature kids, we argued, we fought, we bantered, we assaulted each other with offhand remarks on the field. Make no mistake, even when folks thought we were on bad terms, when the cameras are turned off, he and I would throw a wink at each other and say let’s go whoop some ass.

“We never took it seriously. In truth, Kobe and I always maintained a deep respect and a love for one another.”

US president attacks John Brennan and James Comey amid reports two men are under investigation over Trump-Russia probe.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that former CIA director John Brennan and ex-FBI chief James Comey may have to “pay a price” amid reports that the two men are under criminal investigation.

Asked about reports on Wednesday that Brennan and Comey are being investigated by the FBI, Trump said he did not know anything other than what he had read in the news, but he viewed both as “very dishonest people”.

“I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with African leaders at the White House.

“I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people, so whatever happens happens.”

Fox News, which first reported on the probe, said the two men were being scrutinised over unspecified “potential wrongdoing” related to investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.

Multiple other outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, confirmed the investigation.

The FBI declined to comment. The US Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with MSNBC, Brennan said he had not been contacted by the authorities, but any investigation was “clearly” politically biased.

“I think this is, unfortunately, a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicisation of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said.

“And quite frankly, I’m really shocked that individuals are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency.”

Comey did not respond to a request for comment sent through his website.

Trump has repeatedly hit out at Brennan and Comey over their role in what he has dubbed the “Russia hoax”.

A 2019 report released by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump, but did not find that his campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Moscow.

July 3 (UPI) — The government of President Dina Boluarte has extended Peru’s small-scale mining formalization program through December, even as doubts persist more than a decade after its launch and experts warn that criminal organizations have exploited the system.

According to official figures from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, just 2,108 of the 86,000 miners enrolled in the Integral Registry for Mining Formalization, or REINFO, had completed the process as of November 2024 — a rate of only 2.4%.

REINFO was launched as part of a government effort to contain the unchecked growth of informal and illegal mining. It gave registered miners a deadline to submit documents, meet environmental and labor standards and transition to legal operations. But after four extensions, the process has failed to deliver lasting results.

Energy and Mines Minister Jorge Montero said the situation could improve in the coming months. He noted that another 5% of registered miners are close to completing the formalization process, and added that the government aims to mediate agreements between concession holders and roughly 15,000 small-scale miners who are working informally on those sites.

But experts say repeated deadline extensions have turned the program into a legal gray area that criminal groups exploit.

“We’re talking about a failed system by every measure,” Mónica Muñoz-Nájar, an economist with the Red de Estudios para el Desarrollo, said in an interview with RPP. She pointed to the low rate of formalization and the expansion of informal mining.

“Forty-four percent of the gold Peru exports comes from illegal mining, which has become more profitable than drug trafficking. It’s estimated that illegal mining generates $12 billion a year,” she said.

One of the strongest criticisms of REINFO comes from the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy. Its president, Julia Torreblanca, said the registry has become a “shield for illegality” and that its indiscriminate extensions distort the market by protecting individuals who have no intention of following the law or meeting formalization requirements.

A growing concern, however, is the infiltration of organized crime into informal mining zones operating under REINFO’s protection. Organizations such as the Observatory of Illegal Mining and advocacy group DAR have warned that criminal networks use the registry to operate unregulated mining fronts, traffic illegal gold, transport chemical supplies and even facilitate human trafficking and forced labor.

These warnings align with reports from the National Police, who have identified criminal networks in regions including Madre de Dios, Puno and La Libertad. Authorities say these groups use informal mining concessions to conceal a range of illegal activities, including fuel smuggling, arms trafficking and the export of gold to international markets.

In early May, police reported the kidnapping and murder of 13 private security guards employed by a contractor linked to the Poderosa mining company in the Pataz region. Authorities said the bodies showed signs of torture and were found bound and unclothed — a sign of the extreme violence used by criminal gangs tied to illegal mining.

The case marked a critical moment in Peru, underscoring the violence and criminal networks that operate alongside illegal mining in the Andes and the direct threat they pose to people working in the region.

A recent report from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru warns that illegal mining is one of the most destructive activities environmentally, socially and economically.

It found that in regions like Madre de Dios, up to 50,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. The state collected about $12,000 in taxes, compared with an estimated $565 million in extracted gold. Estimated tax evasion ranges from $85 million to $168 million.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court Monday again made it harder for Death Row inmates and other criminals to challenge their convictions in a federal court by claiming their constitutional rights were violated by state courts.

The pair of 6-3 rulings, including one in a California case, could speed the pace of executions around the nation. Many inmates have kept their legal cases–and themselves–alive by contesting their convictions in prolonged battles in federal courts.

In one decision, the justices reinstated a death sentence against a Sonoma County man who in 1975 shot and killed his wife. The second ruling involved a Virginia case.

Together, the rulings send a now-familiar message: Convicted criminals should not routinely get a second chance to contest their cases in a federal court.

About 95% of criminal cases nationwide are handled in the state courts. During the 1960s and ‘70s, however, the Supreme Court encouraged federal judges to closely review state cases to make sure that a defendant’s rights under the U.S. Constitution were protected. Inmates took advantage of this protection by filing a petition of habeas corpus to transfer their cases from a state to a federal court.

But under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the high court has stressed the opposite. Federal judges should not casually meddle in state court matters, the conservative majority has said.

The California case concerned whether an inmate should get a second chance to contend that he was unfairly induced to incriminate himself.

The defendant in the case, Owen Duane Nunnemaker, was sentenced to death for the 1975 slaying of his estranged wife, Alice. Nunnemaker went to her home in Sebastopol, Calif., shot her at close range and cut a phone cord to prevent her children from calling for help. She died of her wounds.

He later claimed he loved her, but was temporarily deranged. Prosecutors, however, sent a police psychiatrist to interview Nunnemaker, who found him calm and rational. During the trial, the psychiatrist gave damaging testimony against the defendant, who was convicted and sentenced to death.

In his appeal in state courts, Nunnemaker said his Miranda rights were violated because the psychiatrist never warned him his statements could be used against him. The California appellate courts ruled that it was too late for Nunnemaker to raise this Miranda issue. His lawyer should have objected during the trial, the judges said.

Without giving a reason, the California Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

But he fared better in the federal courts. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit of Court Appeals ruled that Nunnemaker was entitled to a hearing before a federal judge to see whether his constitutional rights had been violated.

The Supreme Court said the 9th Circuit erred in the case, Ylst vs. Nunnemaker, 90-68. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the federal appeals court should have presumed that the California courts declined to hear Nunnemaker’s appeal for procedural reasons, and the federal courts have no power to second-guess those procedural rules.

In their dissent from the ruling, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens said, “The Court today continues its crusade to erect petty procedural barriers” to raising constitutional claims in the federal courts.

Monday’s other death penalty case ruling was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, herself a former state judge. She rejected the claim of a Virginia Death Row inmate that his initial appeal of his conviction still should be considered by that state’s court system, even though his lawyer was three days late in filing it.

The case “concerns the respect the federal courts owe the states,” O’Connor said. Because the state rules forbid the consideration of a late appeal, the federal courts must do the same, she said in Coleman vs. Thompson, 89-7662.

Law enforcement spokesmen praised the rulings for upholding valid criminal convictions. The decisions mean that an old legal challenge “cannot be resuscitated by some sympathetic federal judge,” said Charles Hobson of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. But Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), whose House subcommittee is considering the federal habeas corpus laws, lambasted the court. The decisions “force innocent prisoners to pay the ultimate price for the errors of their lawyers in a state court,” Edwards said.

Ukrainian leader signs an accord with the Council of Europe to set up a special tribunal to one day put top Russian officials on trial.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for the prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he accused of being a “war criminal” for launching Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Zelenskyy issued the call late on Wednesday after he signed an accord with the Council of Europe to set up a special tribunal to prosecute Russian officials, including Putin, for the invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to show clearly, aggression leads to punishment, and we must make it happen together, all of Europe,” said Zelenskyy after signing the accord with Council of Europe Secretary-General Alain Berset.

“It will take strong political and legal courage to make sure every Russian war criminal faces justice, including Putin,” Zelenskyy said.

Putin is already facing an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for the alleged war crime of illegally transporting children out of Ukraine.

The ICC has the jurisdiction to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, but it does not have the jurisdiction to investigate “crimes of aggression” or the use of armed force against another state.

The special tribunal is being established to one day prosecute Russia’s “crime of aggression” for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The tribunal could, in theory, put on trial senior Russian figures, including Putin.

It has not yet been decided where the tribunal would be based, but Zelenskyy said The Hague, the home of the ICC, would be “perfect”.

This is the first time such a tribunal has been set up under the aegis of the Council of Europe, the continent’s top rights body.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, previously said the special tribunal would “give Ukraine a path to justice for the top-level decision to invade its territory – a wrong that no other international court or tribunal can currently address”.

The European Council said the proposed tribunal could potentially be used to prosecute North Korean and Belarusian individuals who assisted Russia in the invasion.

The 46-member Council of Europe is not part of the European Union and members include key non-EU European states such as Turkiye, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Russia was expelled from the body in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

Alongside its arrest warrant for Putin, the ICC is also seeking to arrest four of Russia’s top commanders for targeting civilians.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday the Trump administration may deport criminal migrants to South Sudan or Libya even if those countries are deemed too dangerous for visitors.

By a 6-3 vote, the conservative majority set aside the rulings of a Boston-based judge who said the detained men deserved a “meaningful opportunity” to object to being sent to a strange country where they may be tortured or abused.

The court issued an unsigned order with no explanation.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 19-page dissent and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach,” she said. “I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”

Last month, the government put eight criminal migrants on a military plane bound for South Sudan.

“All of these aliens had committed heinous crimes in the United States, including murder, arson, armed robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault of a mentally handicapped woman, child rape, and more,” Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the court. They also had a “final order of removal” from an immigration judge.

But U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston said the flight may have defied an earlier order because the men were not given a reasonable chance to object. He said the Convention Against Torture gives people protection against being sent to a country where they may be tortured or killed.

He noted the U.S. State Department had warned Americans: “Do not travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.”

Sauer said this case was different from others involving deportations because it dealt with the “worst of the worst” among immigrants in the country without authorization. He said these immigrants were given due process of law because they were convicted of crimes and were given a “final order of removal.”

However, their native country was unwilling to take them.

“Many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” he told the court. “As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the plane landed at a military base in Djibouti.

In April, Murphy said “this presents a simple question: before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there?”

He said the plaintiffs were “seeking a limited and measured remedy … the minimum that comports with due process.”

Reporting from Sacramento — It’s been nearly four decades since a 25-year-old Frank Lindsay landed on California’s sex offender registry after he pleaded no contest to improperly touching a girl under 14.

He has not committed another crime since then, but state law requires Lindsay’s name to remain on the registry, which the public can see on government websites, for the rest of his life.

The listing cost him a business and sustainable livelihood, subjected him to death threats, prevented him from visiting his daughter’s school and resulted in injuries when he was attacked by an angry, hammer-wielding stranger who broke into his home after seeing his name on the registry, according Lindsay, news accounts at the time and his attorney, Janice Bellucci.

“You can’t work where you want. You can’t live where you want. It makes it virtually impossible to live a normal life. It can make you bitter,” said Lindsay, now 64 and a resident of Grover Beach in San Luis Obispo County.

Now, with more than 105,000 people on California’s registry, some criminal justice leaders, including Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, are looking to overhaul the system.

They recently won state Senate approval of a proposal that would allow the names of those who committed lower-level, nonviolent sex crimes or are judged low risks to reoffend to be removed from the registry after 10 or 20 years.

“The state’s sex offender registry has lost significant value over time because it contains so many low-risk offenders with decades-old offenses,” Lacey said. “Our bill will improve public safety by creating a tiered system that will allow investigators to focus on those offenders who pose the greatest risk.”

The proposal has stirred up deep emotions in a state where voters have, in the past, approved initiatives that are tough on sex offenders.

Opponents of the bill include Erin Runnion, who in 2002 founded the Joyful Child Foundation, an Orange County advocacy group for victims, after the abduction, molestation and murder of her 5-year old daughter, Samantha.

“Californians should be able to find out if someone they met is a convicted sex offender before leaving a child in their care, or going with them on a date, or agreeing to tutor them, etc.,” Runnion said in an email.

California is one of only four states that require lifetime registration of sex offenders. The others are Alabama, South Carolina and Florida.

Current law requires people convicted of specific sex offenses in California to register for life when they leave prison, providing addresses, the names of employers, fingerprints, photos and license plate numbers. The law requires the state Department of Justice to make information on most registered sex offenders available to the public on its website. The website does not include the name of juvenile offenders or those convicted of incest to protect the identity of relatives who are victims.

Sex offenders in California are required to re-register annually, filling out extensive paperwork on their activities and locations because there are rules prohibiting them from being close to schools, parks and other locations where children congregate.

Local authorities spend large amounts of time processing the paperwork, much of it from people who have not committed a crime for years and don’t pose a risk, said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced the new proposal to reform the system, Senate Bill 421.

“Right now, the sex offender registry is broken and it undermines public safety,” Wiener said, citing the time spent on paperwork for low-risk offenders and the huge list of names that makes it harder for police investigating new crimes to find potential offenders.

He said many early offenders landed on the list because of discrimination by police who targeted gay men who were having sex in parks or in cars during the 1950s and ‘60s.

“Whether you are a sexual predator or an 80-year-old gay man caught having sex in a park in 1958, you are treated the same. You are on that registry the rest of your life,” Wiener told his colleagues during the recent floor debate on his bill.

The law also affects 18-year-olds convicted of statutory rape for having consensual sex with 17-year-olds, he said.

He said those on the registry face barriers to stable housing and employment, often leading to drug addiction and mental illness.

The legislation would create three tiers for how sexual crimes are treated by the registry.

The first tier, where offenders are eligible for removal from the registry after 10 years, includes those convicted of misdemeanor indecent exposure, felony possession of child pornography with intent to distribute and misdemeanor sexual battery among other crimes.

Updates from Sacramento »

The second tier, which would allow removal from the registry after 20 years, includes those convicted of rape, forceable sodomy and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14, the crime Lindsay committed.

Lifetime registration would still be required in the third tier, for those convicted of repeat felony child molestation, a second offense of a violent and serious sexual crime, kidnapping with intent to commit specific sexual crimes and those deemed “sexually violent predators.”

The latter determination is made by state officials when felons have been convicted of a violent sex offense against one or more victims and are diagnosed with a mental disorder that makes the person a danger to others.

The bill would create a process for sex offenders in the lower tiers to petition for removal from the registry when they became eligible, with cases reviewed by prosecutors.

The measure automatically clears from the registry the names of offenders in the 10- and 20-year tiers if their convictions are 30 years or older, which would include Lindsay.

The bill has drawn bipartisan opposition.

Democratic Sens. Steve Glazer of Stockton and Josh Newman of Fullerton joined eight Republicans in voting against the measure.

“I agree with the goal of the bill to better differentiate the type of offenders, but didn’t feel comfortable reducing the registration requirement for some of the more serious crimes in Tier 2,” Glazer said.

Republican Sen. Jeff Stone of Murrieta opposed any early removal from the registry, saying it is important for residents to know when sex offenders live in their neighborhood.

“Let’s protect victims of sexual predators and maintain the list of sexual registrants to protect the public,” Stone said.

In addition to Lacey, others who support the change include the American Civil Liberties Union of California, the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys, the California Police Chiefs Assn., the Los Angeles Police Protective League and Equality California, a gay rights group.

“By creating a path off for people who are rehabilitated, SB 421 will make our system fairer and more just,” Wiener said.

Lindsay said he paid his debt to society by serving six months in jail for a crime he committed as a young man while he was drunk. He admits he “crossed the line” with the female victim but declined to provide more details.

He is hopeful that the Legislature will end what he said has been the “nightmare” of being kept on the registry for nearly four decades.

“That’s not who I am. It’s what I did approaching 40 years ago,” Lindsay said.

Having his name removed from the list “would be awesome,” he added. “I would be really excited to be able to take my passport and go on a journey somewhere in the world without having to worry about being tagged as a sex offender.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @mcgreevy99

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Updates from Sacramento