fight

California has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, but state lawmakers are concerned that a new technology is allowing criminals to obtain firearms by building them from scratch. By using 3-D printers, they warn, lawbreakers are able to make key components of untraceable “ghost guns” with the press of a button.

Ghost guns, which authorities say make it more difficult to investigate shootings because they lack serial numbers, have been a growing problem for law enforcement nationwide. According to federal data, the number of privately made firearms recovered in crimes surged from more than 1,600 in 2017 to nearly 27,500 in 2023. California leads the nation in recoveries over that period.

In response, legislators are seeking to mandate that all 3-D printers sold in the state come equipped with software that prohibits users from making triggers and other gun parts. A bill passed the Assembly in May and is advancing through the Senate.

But the proposal has drawn opposition from a diverse coalition, which includes civil liberties groups, tech companies and 3-D printing enthusiasts as well as Hollywood effects studios, who argue that “firearm blocking software” will also prohibit legitimate designs and expose makers to government or corporate surveillance.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Inside a San Fernando workshop, Samuel McBride makes movie monsters come to life for the camera. One of his latest creations, an animatronic hand, clutches when he pulls a trigger that he built using a 3-D printer.

McBride says the technology has transformed the work at Legacy Effects, where he is a lab manager, but he’s worried it will soon be off-limits because of a proposed change in California law.

McBride fears the law would interfere with the making of devices like the one that activates his lifelike hand.

“If I just took apart this trigger and put it on a printer, how is anyone, computer or human, going to tell me how I intend to use it?” he asked.

Backers of the proposed law say it has the potential to help save lives.

“As gun violence continues to devastate our communities, we cannot allow 3-D printing technology to become a new pipeline for untraceable weapons,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, the bill’s author.

Critics of the proposed California law note that 3-D printed guns represent a small subset of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement at crime scenes. According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, most “privately made firearms” recovered by police are assembled from mail-order kits or unfinished parts rather than printed at home.

Jorge Perez of Monster City Studios holds a sculpture made with a large, industrial 3-D printer.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

“This fight is not over whether ghost guns are dangerous,” said David Tobin, an independent creator leading the coalition. “It is over whether the state can or should require a consumer tool to surveil a person’s designs before they are allowed to make something.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, a national nonprofit that advocates for gun control and has pushed for the passage of California’s bill, pointed to rising 3-D printed firearm recoveries across 20 major cities and warned that homemade plastic parts can help people bypass background checks or turn handguns into automatic weapons.

Krystal LoPilato, who advocates for policy at Everytown, said the group has successfully guided a similar bill through the New York state Legislature.

A handgun frame made using a 3-D printer is held for display at the office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

LoPilato said the policy aims to be proactive, rather than allowing more violence to take place before regulating the problem. Opponents counter that California already bars unlawful firearm manufacturing with 3-D printers, and that ghost gun recoveries have declined since the state adopted a series of new laws and enforcement efforts.

A June 1 letter to lawmakers, signed by a group of 3-D printing companies, stagecraft and prop-making studios and industry stakeholders, argued that AB 2047 raises 1st Amendment concerns and would harm businesses. The letter was signed by a wide variety of companies and individuals, including Prusa Research, a prominent 3-D printer manufacturer.

“To an algorithm, a gun barrel and a piece of pipe are the same grooved cylinder,” Jakub Kmošek, head of public affairs at Prusa, said in a statement to The Times. “This bill will only make it harder to build, repair, experiment, and innovate in California.”

Alan Scott, Legacy Effects’ co-founder, said 3-D printing has become central to the company’s survival in an industry where budgets are tighter and deadlines are shorter.

“Everything’s just got to be done faster these days. You don’t get to reduce the quality. We couldn’t stay in business if we weren’t 3-D printing,” Scott said.

To solve this problem, Bauer-Kahan put an entertainment industry exception in the bill, exempting “printers manufactured for and sold exclusively to entertainment industry stagecraft and propmaking studios” from the software requirement.

McBride, Legacy’s 3-D lab manager, said those printers do not really exist.

Legacy uses the same general-purpose machines available to other businesses willing to invest in the equipment, and no printers are marketed exclusively for Hollywood, he said.

1

2

1. A 3-D printed sculpture concept at Monster City, a special effects studio in Santa Clarita. (Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times) 2. 3-D printing advocate David Tobin showcases a robotics kit at Monster City. (Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Legacy also worries about privacy. Major studios require strict secrecy before a movie or show is released. To accommodate this, the company shares design files through encrypted servers and protected internal systems.

“We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring all that technology here under the umbrella of our NDAs and our IP protection,” McBride said.

Bauer-Kahan noted at a Senate hearing that she is working to address concerns raised by 3-D printing users and industries that rely on the technology.

Paul Powers, chief executive of Physna, a company whose technology could be used to block gun parts on 3-D printers, said the strongest criticisms of AB 2047 “misunderstand how the software works.”

“Something that vaguely looks like a gun part is not considered to be a match,” he said.

Powers also responded to surveillance concerns by clarifying that his company’s software only blocks the printer from making prohibited parts — it doesn’t flag them to authorities or log users’ intellectual property.

“There’s no communication with anyone; it doesn’t go anywhere,” he said.

But Marleen Vogelaar, chief executive of Thangs3D, a platform for independent creators to share and sell 3-D printable designs, said that answer does not resolve her broader concerns about how AB 2047 would work in practice.

“These databases will always lag behind innovation and can be easily circumvented and generate false positives that block legal designs and wrongly flag everyday makers,” she said at a Senate hearing this month. “The bill also creates serious privacy and security risks by giving third parties access to analyze designer’s files. That threatens intellectual property and adds digital surveillance in a state that values data privacy.”

If the bill passes, the state’s Department of Justice would publish a roster of compliant printers. Printers not on the list would be banned from sale or transfer in California beginning in December 2029.

Aubrey Rodriguez, a legislative advocate with American Civil Liberties Union California Action, an advocacy organization formed by the ACLU’s three affiliates in the state, said the bill would ask ordinary users, schools and businesses to accept a new layer of control based on software they still do not trust.

Rodriguez said the proposal risks creating “a permanent back door into the privacy of our own homes, ripe for exploitation.”

“Once this new infrastructure exists, it is a simple software update away from tracking political dissent or preventing 3-D printing designs deemed inappropriate,” Rodriguez said.

As renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran has entered a seventh day with no signs of letting up, the Pentagon appears to be sending more forces to the region. The move comes as the conflict took a sharp turn overnight, with both sides carrying through on threats to hit infrastructure targets. That marks a major change from the previous tit-for-tat barrages as the two sides continue to struggle for control over the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Trump administration notified Israel it is sending dozens more refueling planes to the country ahead of a potential expansion of military operations against Iran,” Axios reported, citing three U.S. and Israeli officials.

“Israeli officials say the U.S. wants to send several dozen more refueling planes in the coming days, bringing the number of planes to the same level it had at the beginning of the war,” Axios added. “Israeli officials say the U.S. military prefers operating the refueling planes from Ben Gurion Airport, because other air bases in the region are more exposed to Iranian attacks and less safe for U.S. planes. At the moment, the Iranians are still deterred from launching attacks on Israel, because it will likely trigger a massive retaliation.”

This move comes after Israel placed a limit of 20 on the number of tankers at Ben Gurion Airport due to the impact all those jets were having on passenger air service operations. There are currently about 30 KC-46 Pegasus and KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling jets at the airport. There had been about 75 refuelers and cargo planes there during the height of Operation Epic Fury.

It remains unclear how that issue will be resolved, however, boosting the number of tankers in Israel will certainly give the U.S. greater flexibility in being able to refuel aircraft attacking and surveilling Iran. As we noted yesterday, there was a concern that moving aircraft around to other bases farther away could cause sortie rates and durations for receiver aircraft missions to suffer in a sudden crisis.

In addition, more combat jets appear to be headed back to the Middle East. According to online open-source flight trackers, at least 12 F-16 Fighting Falcons are heading to Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan from Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. Whether this is a plus-up or a routine rotation is unclear, but either way it shows that the U.S. is continuing to add assets to the region.

Meanwhile, as we have noted in earlier reporting, the U.S. has already returned F-22 Raptors that were flying out of Ovda Air Base in Israel back to the United States. Other aircraft, such as A-10s and F-15Es, have also returned home from or have been replaced in the CENTCOM region. So clearly there is a lot of shifting of aviation assets taking place even amid current operations.

Friday afternoon, CENTCOM announced a new wave of strikes on Iran.

“CENTCOM launched a round of strikes against Iran at 3 p.m. ET today for the seventh consecutive night,” the command stated on X. “The strikes are designed to continue degrading Iranian military capabilities at the Commander in Chief’s direction.”

Last night, American forces struck several bridges and energy plants in the southern part of the country, according to Iranian media. In retaliation, Iran hit several targets across the region, including what Kuwait says is a desalination plant, another step up the escalation ladder. In this arid part of the world, countries rely heavily on desalination plants to provide potable water.

Officials in Hormozgan province, where Bandar Abbas is the capital, say six bridges were hit in the latest attacks, along key transport routes linking the city with surrounding towns, Al Jazeera reported. Bandar Abbas, which has a key naval base on the Strait of Hormuz and is frequently targeted, was also reportedly struck again.

The attacks appear to be isolating Bandar Abbas and other parts of the south along the Strait, which has been a key flash-point. Iran claims control of the strategic chokepoint while the U.S. says it remains under international auspices.

Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel told us that while it “may be possible” that the U.S. is preparing for a ground invasion of southern Iran, “I don’t really think that is what this is about. I think our kinetic targeting is principally focused on elimination of IRGC capacity to influence the Strait of Hormuz or attack our partners in the region.”

Friday morning, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) declined to comment on the claims that it struck bridges, referring us to its X post from the previous night.

“U.S. forces, including fighter jets, aerial drones, and warships, launched precision munitions that hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure, and maritime capabilities,” the command wrote. “This was the sixth consecutive night of U.S. strikes against Iran. At the Commander in Chief’s direction, CENTCOM is further degrading Iranian military capabilities and holding Iran accountable for recent attacks on commercial shipping.”

Several videos emerged on social media showing the destroyed and damaged bridges.

July 17 (UPI) — Iran early Friday said it struck a U.S. special operations command center in southeastern Syria, escalating the war over the Strait of Hormuz, as the United States attacked bridges and other urban infrastructure in Iran.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described the strike in a statement as a “surprise attack” conducted in retaliation for the seven soldiers killed early Wednesday in a U.S. attack on Bampur, near Iranshahr in southeastern Iran.

The elite military unit claimed to have destroyed a U.S. radar system and several special-operations helicopters. It claimed to have killed “a large number” of Americans.

State-run media reported Iran also attacked U.S. bases and assets in Kuwait and Bahrain in retaliation for the U.S. attacks hours earlier. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting claimed the United States destroyed five bridges around Bandar Abbas near the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Central Command said it had completed a “major wave” of attacks on Iran at 9:40 p.m. EDT Thursday. It said it hit dozens of Iranian military targets, including coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure and maritime capabilities.

Though CENTCOM made no mention of civilian infrastructure, President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that the U.S. military would be ramping up its attacks through the week and would include civilian targets, but explicitly stating, “Next week comes the bridges.”

While the war began in late February, with the Trump administration seeking to dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program and encourage regime change, this latest chapter is centered on the vital shipping lane of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration is seeking to restore freedom of navigation through the chokepoint, while Iran is fighting to maintain the leverage afforded by its ability to restrict passage.

Early Friday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said a tanker had been struck by an unknown projectile, causing minor damage to its port side.

“All crew are safe and accounted for,” it said.

The strike is at least the eighth attack on a commercial ship to attack in the Strait of Hormuz in a little over a week.

July 15 (UPI) — The United States attacked Iran on Wednesday, and Iran struck U.S. assets across the region into Thursday morning, marking the fifth straight day of strikes between the two nations as they fight over the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Central Command launched two waves of attacks seeking to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten vessels transiting the vital chokepoint between Iran and Oman.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said early Thursday that it was conducting missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. assets at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

“Once again, we remind the honorable people of Kuwait that the United States is committing these crimes against Muslim Iran from your soil,” the elite military unit responsible for protecting Iran’s Islamic regime said in a statement.

The IRGC-aligned Fars News Agency reported early Thursday that U.S. bases and facilities in Bahrain, as well as in Kuwait, were being struck. It separately said it was attacking U.S. assets at the Al-Azraq Base in Jordan.

The extent of potential damage could not be independently verified. However, the Kuwait Army said its air defenses were confronting drone attacks, and the Jordanian Armed Forces said they downed eight Iranian missiles early Thursday. Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior urged residents to find shelter as sirens blared, suggesting an incoming attack.

CENTCOM said in a statement that its second wave ended at 9 p.m. EDT, hitting command centers, air defense sites, coastal surveillance facilities and missile ad drone capabilities.

In announcing the strikes hours earlier, CENTCOM had said they were “targeting Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels freely transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.”

“The U.S. military is holding Iran accountable at the commander in chief’s direction,” the post said.

The U.S. attacks followed earlier strikes on Greater Tunb Island in the Strait of Hormuz, a key site for Iran’s coastal defenses and missile storage, during a 90-minute wave. The U.S. military also said it fired on the Curacao-flagged Belma vessel transiting international waters toward Iran.

CENTCOM accused it of violating a military blockade of Iran’s coast that Trump reimposed Tuesday afternoon to deny Iran maritime trade.

The IRGC said Ahvaz, a southwestern Iranian city, had come under U.S. attack, with missiles reportedly hitting near Baghaei Hospital, which treats children with cancer, requiring all but the most ill patients to be transferred to another medical facility.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf told state media that Iran had “no reason” to abide by any deal with the United States if it did not benefit from it, but he left the door open for possible diplomacy, stating: “We must utilize diplomacy and negotiation to achieve and stabilize our national interests.”

While the war began in late February with President Donald Trump seeking to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs while encouraging regime change, the current chapter of the war is over the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. President Donald Trump is fighting to restore freedom of navigation through the waterway, down which about one-fifth of global energy supplies flow. Tehran is fighting to preserve its ability to restrict passage through the chokepoint as leverage and has previously suggested it could charge vessels that transit it.

The U.S. attacks came as Trump told reporters that Iran’s leaders “better behave” on Wednesday, one day after he threatened that the United States would strike bridges and power plants if Iran did not return to the negotiating table.

“They want to settle so badly,” Trump said later Wednesday at a defense summit in Pennsylvania. “They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them or we just finish it off.”

HILARY Duff’s Los Angeles concert took an unexpected turn when two fans were caught on camera launching into a shocking fight in the middle of the crowd.

The dramatic altercation unfolded as the actress and singer performed on stage, leaving fellow concertgoers stunned as the footage quickly spread across social media.

The viral video showed the two fans shoving and throwing punches at each other as the band carried on performing behind them.

One fan, dressed in a shining, shimmering crop top, appeared to have their hair yanked by another concertgoer dressed in black as security rushed in and attempted to pull the pair apart.

Other concertgoers looked on in shock, with many pulling out their phones to capture the dramatic moment.

Dressed head-to-toe in sparkling sequins, the pair appeared to be devoted Hilary Duff fans before the shocking altercation unfolded.

BUFF DUFF

Hilary Duff, 38, flashes rock-hard abs and perky bum for sweaty new gym photos

It’s unclear exactly when the altercation broke out, as Hilary Duff is not visible in the footage.

However, members of her band can be seen on stage, suggesting the fight erupted during a transition between songs.

Hilary recently wrapped up two sold-out shows at The Forum on Wednesday and Thursday, with a host of famous faces spotted in the crowd.

Among those in attendance were Mandy Moore, Meghan Trainor and Demi Lovato, who all turned out to support the singer’s long-awaited return to the stage.

The singer is currently on the road for her first tour in nearly two decades, and fans couldn’t be happier to see her back on stage.

Hilary began her career playing the titular character on the Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire before transitioning into music.

She took an extended break from singing to focus on acting, writing, and raising her family.

Hilary sang both her older classics and new tracks from her sixth studio album, luck… or something, released in February.

At the beginning of her concert, the passionately packed crowd sang along to her hit tracks, including Wake Up and So Yesterday, from her debut album Metamorphosis, which she released in August 2003.

She also belted out the slightly raunchier lyrics to her new single, Roommates, while rolling around on the stage.

The singer put on an impressive showing at the famed Los Angeles venue, stopping the show at several times to express her gratitude to the 20,000 screaming fans.

At one point, the former child star even teared up when discussing how much it meant to her to have people in the crowd who have followed her life for decades.

Also in the crowd was her family, including husband Matthew Koma – whom she created her latest album with.

Hilary has spoken about the lyrics of her newer songs reflecting her vulnerability and personal challenges during her 18-year hiatus from singing.

Joe Joyce’s comeback fight ended in bizarre fashion as the veteran British heavyweight lost to Artem Suslenkov in Moscow.

The 40-year-old was facing undefeated Russian Suslenkov in his first fight since losing to Filip Hrgovic in April 2025.

But after looking lethargic and lacking power throughout, Joyce appeared to signal that he no longer wanted to fight in the 11th round and stepped backwards.

Joyce offered little defence as Suslenkov, 30, landed a few more blows before the referee stepped in to stop the fight.

Joyce, a silver medallist at the 2016 Olympics, now has a professional record of 16 wins and five losses, with all of those defeats coming in his last six fights.

The highlight of Joyce’s professional career came in 2022, when he beat Joseph Parker to win the vacant WBO interim heavyweight title.

Joyce then faced Zhilei Zhang twice in 2023, but lost his unbeaten record in the first meeting and was stopped in the rematch.

After losing to Hrgovic, Joyce’s promoter Frank Warren said his man needed to have a “real serious think about the future”.

Despite Joyce having said he spent 12 months preparing to fight again and that he was “excited for the opportunity” to face Suslenkov, who improved his record to 15-0, some now fear this could be the end of his boxing career.

Anthony Fowler, a Great Britain team-mate at Rio 2016, said on X: “What a sad end to Joe’s career. It’s a shame to see him go out like that.”

Joyce’s fight was on the undercard of Russian Murat Gassiev’s first defence of the WBA heavyweight title.

Gassiev, who was elevated to WBA champion after Oleksandr Usyk vacated his three heavyweight belts last month, was scheduled to face Tony Yoka.

Joyce was touted as a possible stand-in after the Frenchman pulled out with injury, but Peter Kadiru was confirmed last week and Gassiev stopped the German in the sixth round to improve to 34 wins and two losses.

EXCLUSIVE: After Sarah-Jane Doherty found out she had a brain tumour the size of a golf ball in her brain, she got in touch with loveholidays to cancel a £1,100 upcoming trip – but claims they initially ‘didn’t want to know’

A young woman who is awaiting brain surgery for a tumour the size of a golf ball watched her mum sob while fighting for her holiday to be refunded after being told she was unfit to fly. Sarah-Jane Doherty, 24, from Doncaster in Yorkshire, was told she had a brain tumour in June 2026 after one year of being misdiagnosed.

She first noticed she was ill in July 2025 when she found herself being overly exhausted, to the point where she could not stand up for long periods of time. Other symptoms included depressive episodes, psychosis, hallucinations, manic episodes, and issues with her mood being up and down, which led professionals to believe she was displaying symptoms of bipolar disorder.

This meant she was put onto anti-psychotic medications which masked what would have been one of her major symptoms, seizures, as an electric shock-type of feeling down her left side. She also suffered issues with her vision before being rushed to A&E after having a severe headache that caused her so much pain that she sobbed on her bed.

After having a CT scan at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, Sarah-Jane was told doctors thought she had a bleed on her brain, and that she would need to be admitted and have an MRI scan. The next morning, Sarah-Jane’s life changed forever after being told she had a brain tumour around the size of a golf ball.

Medication masked a golf ball-sized brain tumour

She said: “They told me in a bay of four people by myself that I had a brain tumour, and that they think is a glioma. I was just distraught, I was absolutely hysterical.

“I rang my mum straight away, and she came into the hospital. She rang my dad and he came home from work to see me. I feel a bit like I’m in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, like it just doesn’t feel like it’s actually me.

“I was upset, I was stressed thinking, ‘what if it’s not removable?’ I didn’t know what grade it was. What if it’s spread somewhere else in my body? And I just had so many what-ifs in my mind that I just kept crying.”

Before being diagnosed with a suspected grade 2 glioma, Sarah-Jane had booked a £1,100 holiday to Ayia Napa with one of her friends through loveholidays, with flight bookings through British Airways.

Loveholidays booking dispute after Sarah-Jane’s cancer diagnosis

Sarah-Jane said: “I went to Ayia Napa last year and it was really good so we were set on [going] there. But it was last minute because it’s just finding time for us to be together and book holiday.

“I hadn’t been on holiday this year yet, we just wanted to get away so I’d not really had any annual leave or anything like that.

“Just wanted a break and plus because I would be starting a new training programme in September. I wanted to find a decompress before that.”

The day Sarah-Jane was diagnosed with cancer, she contacted loveholidays to make them aware and asked for a refund of her package. At the same time she realised her yearly travel insurance cover had not renewed as she thought it had.

She said: “The first time that we called they didn’t want to know at all. They didn’t even express empathy or anything like that. And then I got an email just saying I can get £62 back.”

Sarah-Jane then sent two letters from medical professionals, one from a consultant at the hospital, and a second from her GP, which were both rejected by loveholidays due to her first letter being a “statement for fitness for Work (SSP)” and the second being a letter that “outlined that it had been issued to support a travel insurance claim”.

Sarah-Jane’s TikTok video prompts action from loveholidays CEO office

After receiving pushback from loveholidays the 24-year-old made a video about her experience on TikTok, with a member of the CEO office at the company reaching out shortly after.

Sarah-Jane continued: “So it was just calls back and forth. They said you need to get in touch with British Airways. British Airways said it has to all be done through loveholidays.

“I asked them to speak to my mum, I just couldn’t deal with speaking to them. I couldn’t keep hearing no and saying, ‘there’s nothing we can do’.

“Then the person from the CEO office said ‘we wish Sarah the best and stuff’ which just shows that there’s no compassion.”

The company then offered Sarah-Jane a £300 refund, which her mum refused, before offering £600, which they also rejected. The following day, however, the loveholiday’s team confirmed they would offer Sarah-Jane a full refund.

She said: “She spent over eight hours on the phone, backwards and forwards, to loveholidays and British Airways because they just kept sending each other to each other. She started crying on the phone because the way people were speaking to her was just… It’s not what she needed to hear.

“She was unnecessarily sent between two different companies that both didn’t want to know. I think that just shows that more protection is needed in the event of major health diagnoses, because if it wasn’t for the TikTok then nothing would have been done.”

Loveholidays and British Airways issue official statements

A loveholidays spokesperson said: “We are deeply sorry to hear about Sarah’s diagnosis and the difficult circumstances she is facing. We wish her all the very best with her treatment and recovery.

“To support Sarah during this difficult time, we have refunded her in full for her holiday, and we have also explained how she can request a refund for the seat purchase she made directly with her airline.

“While we always do everything we can to support customers in difficult circumstances, as a travel agent we are bound by the cancellation policies of our airline and hotel partners, many of which do not provide refunds when customers are unable to travel due to illness.

“For this reason, we always strongly recommend that customers take out travel insurance to help protect them if unforeseen circumstances prevent them from travelling.”

A spokesperson from British Airways said: “We’re very sorry to hear of our customer’s experience and our teams have been in touch.”

The spokesperson also said that the airline had “resolved this matter”, however Sarah-Jane told us that she has yet to receive the refund or, indeed, any further communication from British Airways customer service.

Progressive Democratic politicians who refuse to take donations from pro-Israel groups have won several party primary elections across the United States.

Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern tells host Steve Clemons that the left is rising because Americans “want more from Democrats”.

“Right now, we’re doing a lot of bad things all around the world, and people need to protest,” McGovern says. On US policy ranging from Cuba to Israel, he argues that Congress has become “just a rubber stamp on whatever this president wants to do”.

“We need to fight for the soul of this country,” McGovern adds.

Garoua and Tiko, Cameroon – A year ago, Oumarou Sanda, mayor of Garoua 2 in northern Cameroon, raised a trophy above his head after his municipality was named Cameroon’s Citizenship Champion for its efforts to expand birth registration.

The recognition, awarded through UNICEF-supported initiatives in partnership with the Cameroonian government, marked months of work to address one of the country’s most persistent but often invisible child protection gaps: the absence of legal identity for thousands of children.

Under Cameroon’s civil status law, every child has the right to a birth certificate. Parents are expected to register births within 90 days at no cost. After that period, registration becomes more complex, and after one year, families must go through court procedures that are often costly, time-consuming, and difficult to navigate.

For many parents, that system remains out of reach.

“One of my eldest children was sent home years ago from school because we didn’t have his official papers,” says Aissatou Bouba, a mother of four living in Garoua 2.

That changed in 2024 when she brought her youngest child to a local health facility where staff registered the birth immediately after delivery, issuing the documents needed to establish his legal identity.

Her experience reflects a wider reality. According to Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education, more than 1.5 million children, about 30 percent of primary school pupils, are enrolled without birth certificates.

Without that documentation, the consequences often emerge later in life.

“If a child stays without a birth certificate, the child will not have admission into secondary school,” says Anna Enanga epse Itoe, head of the civil status bureau at the Tiko Council in Cameroon’s southwest region.

“It will be impossible to sit for public examinations. It will also be impossible to obtain a national identity card, which is needed to access many services,” she told Al Jazeera.

UNICEF estimates that, of the 560,000 births recorded in health facilities in 2023, only 43.77 percent were officially registered. The gap leaves many children exposed to risks that extend beyond education.

“Children without documentation are harder to trace, monitor, or protect,” says Alexis Mayang, a UNICEF child protection specialist based in Yaounde. “They can be moved across borders with fewer checks,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that in conflict-affected areas, the lack of identification increases vulnerability to exploitation, including recruitment into armed groups.

A response to a protection gap

The push to address these gaps gained momentum after the first Mayors’ Forum on Birth Registration in April 2024, where local authorities signed a charter committing to strengthen civil registration systems in their municipalities.

Following the forum, UNICEF, working with the government and local partners, supported the rollout of the “My Name” campaign, aimed at identifying and registering children without legal documentation across Cameroon’s 360 councils and 14 cities.

Since its launch, officials involved in the programme say more than 17,000 children have been registered.

Municipalities were assessed based on how effectively they improved registration systems, including setting up civil registration services within health facilities and identifying out-of-school children without documentation.

In Tiko, in the southwest, officials brought registration services closer to remote communities, working with traditional leaders to collect birth declarations from rural areas.

“In Tiko, people are coming every day to register their children and obtain birth certificates,” says Enanga. “We have issued documents to thousands of children.”

To manage demand, local chiefs played a central role in documenting births in hard-to-reach areas before forwarding records to council offices.

In Garoua 2, authorities took a different approach. Faced with delays caused by handwritten registers, the municipality shifted to digital civil status systems, allowing certificates to be issued within minutes.

Barriers that remain

Despite these gains, officials say significant challenges remain.

In many communities, birth registration is still not prioritised, with some parents only engaging with the system when children are denied access to schooling or barred from sitting national examinations.

Schools often become the first point of enforcement, particularly at primary level, where pupils without documentation are turned away from key assessments.

Deeper social barriers also remain. Child protection workers say that in some rural communities, harmful norms persist, including beliefs that girls do not require formal documentation or education. These practices contribute to undocumented children and increase the risk of early or forced marriage.

Officials and community workers say traditional and religious leaders are increasingly being engaged in awareness campaigns aimed at changing these perceptions and encouraging earlier registration of births.

Globally, UNICEF estimates that 166 million children under the age of five remain unregistered. In Cameroon, officials say closing that gap will depend not only on administrative reform, but also on shifting how communities define a child’s legal existence.

“I was happy knowing that my son could get educated without any hindrance,” Bouba told Al Jazeera.

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana’s attorney general has been indicted over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.

The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance.

At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.

Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional.” Late Thursday, Murrill said she had filed for an emergency stay with the Louisiana Supreme Court.

“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do,” she wrote on X.

For months, political tensions intensified between Louisiana Republicans and New Orleans officials over a new law that abolished a court clerk office won by an exoneree, Calvin Duncan, who spent nearly three decades in prison. The change consolidated that job with another clerk’s office, which Republican supporters said would make the local judicial system more efficient.

The change was staunchly opposed by New Orleans leaders, and in May, the City Council set a special election that would have given Duncan a chance to win the newly combined job. Murrill responded by warning local officials in letters that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.

“We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way,” special prosecutor Laurie White told reporters.

Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records.

Landry said he was ordering state police to investigate what he called “alleged improprieties” of the grand jury and those who ran it.

“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.

The Republican Attorneys General Assn. said that making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”

Moreno, who was elected in January and was defiant after Murrill sent the letters, on Thursday called it a “matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations.

“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.

Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Republicans have said the change was not personal and supporters have noted that the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.

Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.

Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.

The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.

In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.

Riddle and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Associated Press reporter Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed.

Published on
02/07/2026 – 15:24 GMT+2

European car suppliers and manufacturers are divided over Brussels’ “Made in Europe” strategy, an effort to shield the EU market from Chinese competition.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The EU car industry is facing fierce competition from China, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs across the bloc. To address the issue, the EU is preparing the so-called Industrial Accelerator Act, which is designed to favour electric vehicles constructed mostly with European components in public procurement and public support schemes.

However, EU car suppliers and manufacturers disagree over the proposed law, currently under discussion by EU countries and the European Parliament, which sets a 70 percent local content threshold for electric vehicles.

According to the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), the Commission’s proposal is a step in the right direction. Based on a study commissioned from management consultancy Roland Berger that Euronews has seen, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery-electric vehicles manufactured in Europe already contain between 80 percent and 90 percent made-in-Europe components.

Consequently, it considers the Commission’s 70 percent threshold to be achievable.

But the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) is pushing for a different methodology, under which regulators would assess finished vehicles instead of the local content in vehicle components.

“A vehicle is far more than the sum of its parts. Its value also lies in the R&D, advanced engineering and highly skilled workforce behind it,” ACEA said in a position paper published on 1 July.

CLEPA responded that under this methodology, a finished vehicle would require only 50 percent EU-made parts and components, with the remaining 20 percent coming from R&D, design and other activities.

This 20 percentage-point dilution of the requirement for EU-made parts “could result in the loss of 350,000 jobs”, CLEPA warned, saying the Commission’s component-level approach would “safeguard the existing manufacturing base”.

“What we are looking at right now is significant competition from best-cost countries, and the dragon in the room is China,” CLEPA Secretary General Benjamin Krieger told Euronews.

“A ‘Made in Europe’ threshold that ignores where the actual parts are built is a label that ignores the European worker,” he said.

Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.

When they leave home, she reminds her mother to keep a bottle of ice with them to offer it to homeless people, who they sometimes find wilting in the Tucson heat. At first, they press the ice-filled bottles on the homeless folks to help them revive, then they offer the water to drink and hydrate. At her daycare, Jo is taught water-saving habits to combat Tucson’s soaring heat.

It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue.

The group believes these would consume more water and power than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.

“We are in the middle of a 30-year drought, which is now an extreme drought,” says Lisa Shipek, co-executive director of the Watershed Management Group, a Tucson-based nonprofit.

“Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.

Water flows in the Colorado River, which provides much of Tucson’s water through the Central Arizona Project canal system, have dropped by 20 percent since the year 2000 compared with water flows in the 20th century due to climate change, melting snow caps and warmer weather, making water cuts to Tucson imminent as the state could face as much as 77 percent water cuts.

“We say Not One Drop for data centres,” says Herrera, speaking of the campaign’s particularly emotive appeal for residents as water cuts get deeper and temperatures rise, with Tucson recording the warmest weather in 125 years last July and August.

Beale Infrastructure, a San Francisco-based company that is owned by investment management company Blue Owl in New York, had asked the city of Tucson to acquire 290 acres that were outside city limits for Project Blue. That would make it the city’s largest water consumer and among its largest power consumers. Beale did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

But at city council meetings, City Councillor Kevin Dahl began seeing hundreds of residents turn up to express their opposition to the project.

“Not for many issues do we get so much response,” he said. Herrera was among those who went.

Pitting environment against unions

At council meetings, Beale executives proposed that Project Blue could be the economic engine the city needed. It would create a few thousand jobs for construction workers, ironmongers, plumbers and other such workers during the construction of the project and a few hundred after that.

“Sometimes people travel as far as Phoenix for work,” Dahl said about Arizona’s largest city, which is nearly a two-hour drive from Tucson.

The project could bring jobs closer. Beale also expected the project to generate nearly $250m in taxes for the city, county and state in the first 10 years.

This left councillors with a difficult decision to make, weighing the project’s economic benefits against allocating it a share of the city’s increasingly scarce water and power.

Activists also raised concerns about whether Tucson Electric Power (TEP), the power utility, would raise rates for consumers so it could expand capacity to provide power for Project Blue. After raising rates by 10 percent in 2023, TEP proposed a 14 percent rate hike in June 2025 for grid upgrades made in the previous year.

Lee Ziesche, an activist from the Democratic Socialists of America who is campaigning to make TEP a public utility, said Project Blue could “lead to higher temperatures and higher rates” because of the heat island effect of the air conditioners and higher rates for power.

She often hears from residents that a rate hike would make it hard to pay bills or put on air conditioning, even as the number of 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.8 degree-Celsius) days has increased in Tucson, which is among the hottest cities in the United States.

The same concerns of needing ramped-up air conditioning would plague data centres too, experts say.

“The viability of data centres in Arizona will always be subject to climate change and heat risks,” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of California Forward, a think tank that works on a sustainable economy.

“The heat in Arizona makes energy less efficient, and servers heat up, so projects will need higher amounts of water and cooling, which developers have to balance against a possibly lower real estate and labour cost,” she said. “I am always amazed at how climate does not figure in business plans.”

Dahl and Andres Cano, a supervisor in Pima County, in which Tucson is located, had discussions with Beale representatives.

“We thought they would go elsewhere if the city did not acquire the land” for the project, Dahl said. Cano also came away with the same impression.

In August 2025, Tucson councillors voted unanimously not to acquire the land for the project or provide it with water and power. In December, Cano became one of only two supervisors in Pima County to oppose the project, and it was approved for construction in an unincorporated part of the county.

“It will create short-term construction jobs for what will ultimately be a project with few wins,” Cano said. “This pitted the environment and unions, but industry is not for unions. This will have just about 100 jobs when it is done.”

With no access to Tucson’s water supply, Beale decided to cool its servers with air conditioners rather than water and use a closed-loop water system, so it would recycle and reuse water.

But Vivek Bharathan, a spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said using air conditioners would increase power usage.

Nearly half of TEP’s power comes from fracking, he says. Data centre demand will only mean “more fracking somewhere else, climate and health consequences all along the way”.

The state’s largest data centre

Even as Project Blue was making its way through a fraught approval process, Beale announced another data centre project in the neighbouring farming town of Marana. It was to be spread over 600 acres (242 hectares), twice the size of Project Blue. The area was spread over two farm plots, one owned by the Mormon church and the other by a family trust of city council member, Herb Kai.

This project, too, is slated to bring thousands of construction jobs to a farming town as well as tax revenues.

But when Jackie McGuire, a mother of three and former Wall Street banker, heard about it, she and other residents launched a campaign to stop the land from being rezoned for a data centre. Residents wanted Marana to stay a farming town.

McGuire, who works as a research analyst, said the data centres’ servers and large air conditioners that would be installed to keep them running would raise the project’s cost and make Marana unbearably hot.

Temperatures rose by up to 2.2F (1.22C) downwind from data centres in the Phoenix area, a study published in May had found.

“The heat generated will be like one to two million space heaters,” McGuire says. “It can go up to 112 degrees [44.4C] here already. The heat island effect could make Marana uninhabitable.”

The Marana data centre will be provided power by TEP and Trico, which announced a 7.23 percent rate hike in January.

McGuire and other residents campaigned to have a referendum on whether the land could be rezoned for a data centre. Their plea was not successful, and the city council approved the rezoning of the land.

But the experience of the campaign had invigorated McGuire, and she decided to run for city council herself. The central issue of her campaign is to bring transparency to the data centre’s functioning.

Even as the campaigns in Pima County and Marana raged on, La Osa, the state’s largest data centre project, took shape in Tucson’s neighbouring Pinal County. The 3,300-acre project by the Vermaland real estate group was expected to house 59 data centres and two of its own natural gas facilities, as well as a utility-scale battery storage system.

But residents worried about noise pollution from protracted project construction and a possible increase in power costs.

“I’m worried about the constituents in that area, about the power bills going up, even though you’re saying that they’re going to pay for it,” Pinal County Supervisor Rich Vitiello said in a board of supervisors meeting on May 27.

In the face of such opposition, a La Osa lawyer spoke at the meeting to say the project had been scaled down and would now house 11 data centres from the 59 planned earlier.

‘A straw to the aquifer’

Sharing limited water has long been an emotive issue in the state, and the looming Colorado River cuts and data centre projects have brought such concerns to a head.

Arizona fought one of the longest-running cases, stretching more than three decades, in the US Supreme Court over the sharing of Colorado River water with California. Eventually, Congress adjudicated to provide California with a greater share of the water, which turbocharged its economic growth.

“No water can flow into Tucson and Phoenix unless California gets its full share,” says Jason Robison, co-director of the Gina Guy Center for Land and Water Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law.  “Arizona has always been in a tough spot.”

It strengthened the state’s long-held tradition of conservation.

“Arizona communities have been preparing for the drought conditions we see today since 1980,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in an emailed response.

Authorities have curtailed lawns in Tucson, he said, and educational campaigns of the kind Herrera’s daughter underwent are the norm.

It has meant that groundwater reserves go deep, and homeowners are assured of a water supply before it is given to data centres or farms.

“The use by data centres is low compared to farm use, especially alfalfa and hay,” says Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.

However, “data centres are not under the same rules to replenish water” as other industries, says Sharon Medgal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. “So it adds a straw to the aquifer.”

Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, who is up for re-election in November, has represented to the Bureau of Reclamation that the state is home to essential industry, including semiconductors, space and data centres, and so needs a higher share of water from the Colorado River. Water, as well as its use for data centres, has been an important issue in primary races across the state.

Construction began for Project Blue at the end of April. No Desert Data Centers’ activists arrived just after dawn to protest. Within days, they found subcontractors bringing in water to control dust on site from construction. County authorities cited Beale.

Then Beale began digging wells on site after reportedly receiving permits allowing that from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. This is likely for 31,000 gallons  (more than 117,000 litres) a year, which is just enough for toilets and kitchens and will likely be recycled for reuse after.

“This may not yet be a winning story,” Bharathan, the spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said. “But it is a continuing story.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Thursday to crack down on inflated profits stemming from car crash lawsuits, blessing a hard-fought compromise between Uber and the state’s trial attorneys that averts a November showdown between two of California’s most powerful and moneyed lobbying forces.

The deal, the fruit of months of negotiations, takes aim at the lucrative way doctors can charge for procedures on patients referred to them by personal injury lawyers.

If a law firm has a client who was hurt in a car accident, the lawyer will often send them to a doctor who will perform surgery on a “lien” basis, meaning the doctor will be paid from money that comes from a lawsuit settlement rather than through insurance.

Uber contends this arrangement has created an incentive for doctors and attorneys to collude to dramatically inflate medical bills. The more expensive the bill, they say, the bigger the resulting payout.

The law, SB 623, caps how much these doctors can charge when their patient is involved in a lawsuit against a ride-share company, which are frequent targets of litigation due to their top-of-the-line insurance policies. The new law will also require Uber to ramp up background checks of its drivers.

“We’re going to have a much safer state both for medical patients and passengers in Ubers,” said Nicholas Rowley, a prominent Texas attorney who helped bankroll the fight and took a leading role in the negotiations.

The law only applies to cases that involve ride-share accidents that take place after Jan. 1, 2027.

“This legislation puts meaningful guardrails in place to better protect accident victims, increase transparency and accountability in the medical lien system and strengthen safety,” said Ramona Prieto, Uber’s head of public policy for the Western U.S., in a statement.

For months, Uber and lawyers from across the state poured tens of millions into dueling ballot measures that threatened to devastate the profits of whichever side lost.

Uber fired the first shot with a ballot measure that sought to cap how much attorneys can earn in lawsuits involving auto accidents. The company argued attorneys were swindling their own clients, inflating medical bills of car crash victims to increase the value of the settlement and then pocketing a hefty chunk of the payouts.

The state’s trial attorneys countered that the fee cap would make small or difficult cases a money-losing endeavor and block scores of accident victims from the courts. They shot back with their own ballot measure that would increase legal liability for ride-share companies if a passenger or driver is sexually assaulted while on a ride, seizing on investigative reporting that highlighted assaults in Ubers.

“They were waiting for us to blink and we didn’t,” said Douglas Saeltzer, the head of the Consumer Attorneys of California, the lawyer trade group that pushed for the measure against Uber. “Their starting place, I don’t believe, was in the interest of protecting victims — it was in the interest of protecting Uber.”

With the passage of Thursday’s law, both sides have agreed to pull their respective measures from the November ballot, halting campaigns that had both parties amassing tens of millions in funding and blanketing the airwaves with ads.

“Now we can stop seeing all the commercials,” said Assemblymember Blanca Pancheo (D-Downey) at a Tuesday hearing.

The law, put forward by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) and Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana), also caps the amount that can be earned by third-party investors who buy out a doctor’s lien in a personal injury case. These companies will purchase a doctor’s stake in the case at a reduced rate, then pocket a share of the payout if the case settles.

“Private equity and hedge funds buy them at a steep discount, then turn around and collect the full inflated amount,” Saeltzer said at a Tuesday hearing on the bill. “That’s money flowing to Wall Street investors, not patients.”

The law will require annual background checks for ride-share drivers and expand the list of offenses that disqualify someone from the job.

In addition to the ballot battle, has Uber sued two of LA’s most well-known personal injury firms — the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani and Downtown L.A. Law Group — accusing them of inflating medical bills and forcing clients to undergo needless and expensive surgeries to inflate the value of the claim. The firms asked the judge to dismiss the case Wednesday, arguing Uber had failed to prove fraud. Both firms have vehemently denied wrongdoing.

The lawsuit, filed last year, has put the plaintiff lawyers in the unusual position of playing defense. Listening in the audience at Wednesday’s hearings were the partners of Downtown L.A. Law Group and Jacob Emrani.

“Let’s be clear about what this Uber case really is,” said John Hueston, outside counsel for Emrani. “It’s brought by a $150 billion dollar company … to intimidate the plaintiff’s bar, exhaust its resources and chill the suits that hold Uber accountable.”

Michael Huston, one of the lawyers who represents Uber, countered that the case is “not an attack on the plaintiff’s bar.”

“We have brought suit against the two in this state … that are engaged in naked fraud,” he said.

ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, Group 2, Old Trafford

Bangladesh 136-8 (20 overs): Ferdous 33 (31); Yadav 3-28

India 139-5 (16.5 overs): Shafali 53 (34); Ritu 2-29

India won by five wickets

Scorecard, Table

Wins for India and South Africa at the Women’s T20 World Cup ensured the fight for semi-final qualification will go to the final day of the group stage.

India beat Bangladesh by five wickets and face Australia, who are top of Group Two, in the final fixture at Lord’s on Sunday knowing they will likely need to beat the six-time champions to qualify.

South Africa thrashed winless Netherlands by 88 runs and will need to beat Bangladesh in their final game and hope that India lose, otherwise it will go down to net run-rate. Bangladesh also retain a slim chance of progression.

In Thursday’s first game, India chased a below-par 137 at Old Trafford as opener Shafali Verma struck 53 from 34 balls, and they reached their target in 16.5 overs.

But if they are to overcome the unbeaten Australians, India’s fielding will need to improve significantly. A sloppy performance saw them drop four catches in the first five overs and the innings was littered with misfields.

Despite that, there was a glaring difference in quality between the teams as Bangladesh were unable to punish the mistakes as they scraped to 136-8.

Juairiya Ferdous top-scored with 33 while captain Nigar Sultana Joty added 32, but India’s spin-heavy approach prevailed once more as Radha Yadav took 3-28 and Sree Charani 2-21.

India lost Smriti Mandhana early before Shafali took charge and the chase slowed after her dismissal in the ninth over, but Jemimah Rodrigues’ 26 from 15 helped them over the line.

Uruguay could need a win over Spain next weekend to avoid a second consecutive FIFA World Cup group-stage exit.

World Cup debutants Cape Verde scored a second-half equaliser to salvage a 2-2 draw against Uruguay in Miami, backing up their shock opening stalemate with Spain.

Cape Verde took a surprise 21st-minute lead as Kevin Pina scored their first World Cup goal from a free-kick, only for Uruguay to strike twice shortly before half-time through Maxi Araujo and Agustin Canobbio.

But 40-year-old Uruguay goalkeeper Fernando Muslera’s mistake allowed Helio Varela to grab Cape Verde’s second just after the hour mark, and neither side could find a winner on Sunday.

Cape Verde boosted their hopes of reaching the knockout phase with their second point in Group H.

The African island nation face Saudi Arabia, thumped 4-0 by Spain earlier on Sunday, in their final group game next Saturday, knowing that victory would secure a last-32 berth.

Two-time world champions Uruguay’s hopes of progressing are in serious danger, though, after again being held by lower-ranked opposition following their 1-1 draw with the Saudis.

The South Americans may need to beat European champions Spain next weekend to avoid a second consecutive World Cup group-stage exit.

Uruguay coach Marcelo Bielsa made two changes to the team, which were held by Saudi Arabia, with Al Hilal striker Darwin Nunez dropping to the bench.

Bubista opted for three alterations to his Cape Verde team, all in attacking positions.

Cape Verde started with more intent going forward than they were able to show against Spain, but it was still Uruguay who created the first real opening, when Federico Valverde drilled a left-footed shot wide.

But the tournament debutants forged ahead when Pina crashed a long-range free kick through a poor Uruguay wall and past Muslera.

Uruguay were in desperate need of their equaliser when it arrived in the 44th minute.

Cape Verde’s Sidny Lopes Cabral headed the ball against his own post under pressure from Rodrigo Bentancur, and Araujo stooped to nod in the rebound, with Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha stranded.

They completed the turnaround in the sixth minute of first-half added time, as Canobbio turned in Araujo’s header across goal on the volley.

Uruguay appeared in control early in the second half, until Muslera inexplicably raced out of his goal in the 61st minute and Cape Verde substitute Varela took full advantage to roll the ball into an empty net after an excellent first touch.

Vozinha, the hero of Cape Verde’s draw with Spain, fumbled to allow Araujo to tap in, but his blushes were spared by an offside flag.

Real Madrid midfielder Valverde blazed a late free kick over the bar from just outside the box, leaving Uruguay on the brink of a hugely disappointing exit.

On Thursday, U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) stood up a new command to speed up reaction times and sustain operations within the anti-access/area denial environments of the Pacific. To help achieve that goal, the commander of this new unit told TWZ he wants to be able to saturate any future adversary with so many drones they have trouble operating. 

“We have learned, particularly looking at Ukraine, there really is no sanctuary area that is protected from observation and potential targeting,” Maj. Gen. Bernard J. Harrington told us during a media roundtable to introduce his new command. It’s called the 7th Infantry Division Multi-Domain Command – Pacific (7th ID MDC-PAC). Headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, it combines the 7th Infantry Division and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF). The idea is to merge the maneuver capabilities of the 7th ID’s two Stryker brigades with the long-range sensing, fires, cyber, space, electronic warfare, and information capabilities of the MDTF.

The new unit was created as the U.S. still struggles to be on the leading-edge of modern drone warfare, especially when it comes to the lower-end segment of this broad capability set, a deficit we have frequently highlighted. This is a concern top Army officials have acknowledged to us.

US Army Historic Pivot: 7th Infantry Division Becomes Multi-Domain Command – Pacific

“As we look at our employment of drones,” Harrington proffered, “we are looking at a host of not just traditional sense-and-strike drones, but how do we couple that — utilizing an adaptive and agentic C2 [command and control system] — to long-range one-way attack, to be able to overwhelm potential adversarial systems by a volume that is connected from our sensor drone all the way to our long-range one-way attack drone.”

Harrington was referring to an AI-driven system that can make and execute decisions on its own — routing data, repositioning sensors, matching targets to shooters — without requiring a human to manually approve each step. He later described it as being a “soldier-on-the-loop, not in-the-loop” system, meaning that a human monitors and can override the system’s actions.

You can read all about how AI will enable the future of lower-end drone warfare in our deep dive here.

In another lesson from Ukraine, as well as conflicts in the Middle East, Harrington wants to be able to use decoy drones to “confuse and potentially deceive an adversary.” The goal is to “deplete potential magazine depth.”

We saw this play out in Ukraine, where Russian mass barrages typically use decoy drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, confuse its sensors and force the expenditure of valuable air defense munitions. Ukraine eventually responded in kind, with its own decoy drones, to achieve the same effects.

The need for the U.S. to develop a vast arsenal of long-range one-way attack drones that can also serve as decoys to consume enemy effectors is a topic TWZ has addressed in the past.

You can see one of the Russian decoy drones in the image below.

Harrington added that he is also looking at electronic warfare drones “to help isolate, and then enable other drones to be effective. So when we look at the family of systems, it is not just one role for any one of our drones — it’s how do they pair together, and then how do we get sensor to shooter most effectively to target any adversary appropriately.”

Harrington declined to say what kinds of drones the new command aims to field, though it should be noted that U.S. Central Command recently used Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drones, a design reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in the war against Iran. It was the first time those drones were used in combat.

“There are a host of drones that we are using from multiple vendors, and really what we’re looking at is how do we start bridging the gap — because I would say with the multi-domain task force, we got to a point for the first time that I’ve seen where we could now engage farther than we could sense,” he posited. “So we have worked very, very closely with several vendors in order to close that distance.”

A key to making this all work is getting these drones into the hands of troops to see how these systems actually function across the wide range of environments where the Army operates in the Pacific.

“We’ve got Arctic steppe in Alaska and the high north that are going to require a different type of drone and different types of employment than you would have in a jungle environment in Hawaii or Malaysia, which is different than a desert environment in the Australian Outback,” USARPAC commander, Gen. Ronald Clark, told us.

“It’s challenging, but we’re dealing with the best and brightest that we have — our young troopers out there are very comfortable with having technology in their hands, and very comfortable with giving feedback associated with what works and what does not, because their buddies’ lives depend on it,” Clark posited. “It’s literally a responsibility that every soldier takes on and takes very seriously.”

“The other thing I’d add is the distances we have to operate,” Clark noted. “For instance, if you drew a box that was 2,000 nautical miles in each direction and started in Cambodia — went east to the Philippines, south to Indonesia, and then back west to Malaysia, and then back to Cambodia — that box is roughly the same size as the box you would draw if you placed it over Western Europe, from the UK to Finland to Turkey to Spain.”

Interestingly, the officials leading this effort declined to name a specific adversary and there was no mention of China at all, even though that nation is the primary pacing threat of the service and by far the biggest challenge in the region.

“The multi-domain command Pacific is not tied to a specific adversary, and it’s not tied to a specific location,” Clark explained when asked about threats from North Korea. “It’s a capability that we have built to counter any threat from any adversary, so it’s not necessarily focused on a specific part of the region or a specific adversary.”

As we noted earlier in this story, this new command is being set up as the Army has struggled to catch up to drone warfare developments abroad. China has invested heavily in lower-end drone warfare at the infantry level up to long-range one-way attack drones. The country’s capacity to mass produce all types of drones rapidly on gigantic scales remains a real concern, too. This is not lost on U.S. Army leadership.

“We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike,” Maj. Gen. James (Jay) Bartholomees, commanding general of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, told us last year at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium. “We absolutely need to build this capability quickly. We need to test it in our region; we also need to work with our allies and partners to do the same.”

The Army, it seems, is still trying to figure this all out.

Given that 7th ID MDC-PAC is essentially only a day old, there is a long way to go before the Army can draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of this concept. There are still many unknowns regarding what kind of drones the division has and is seeking, how many they need and the timelines for procurement. Regardless, setting up a new unit concentrating on melding drone warfare with the maneuver capabilities of Stryker brigades is a clear indication that the Army realizes it has to change how it operates to succeed in a Pacific fight.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Justin Gaethje waited a long time to become an undisputed UFC champion.

Now the 37-year-old MMA star might have to wait another six months or so before fighting again.

Gaethje upset former two-weight champion Ilia Topuria with a technical knockout in a lightweight unification championship bout at the UFC Freedom 250 event Sunday on the White House South Lawn.

Topuria was a bloody and swollen mess by the time his corner stopped the fight between the fourth and fifth rounds. Gaethje executed a soaring back flip off the cage to celebrate his first undisputed belt, but it turns out that the former two-time interim champion also suffered significant injuries during the bout.

Both Gaethje and Topuria were among the five UFC Freedom 250 fighters who received 180-day medical suspensions from the Association of Boxing and Combative Sports Commissions, according to a list issued by the commissions and viewed by The Times.

Ilia Topuria suffered two broken orbital bones during his loss to Justin Gaethje at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 in Washington.

(Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

Gaethje’s suspension can be shortened if he is cleared with negative MRIs for his right wrist and left knee. Topuria, who suffered two broken orbital bones, can return early if cleared by a an Oral and Maxillofacial Foundation specialist.

Both men also are required to serve mandatory rest days (45 for Gaethje, 60 for Topuria).

Alex Pereira, who lost his interim heavyweight title bout to Ciryl Gane by TKO, was medically suspended for 180 days or until he’s cleared with a negative maxillofacial CT scan. Undercard fighters Aiemann Zahabi and Steve Garcia also received 180-day medical suspensions.

Topuria won the UFC featherweight championship by knocking out Alexander Volkanovski in February 2024. He vacated that title a year later and in June 2025 defeated Charles Oliveira by knockout to claim lightweight belt.

In November, Topuria announced he was temporarily stepping away from fighting. Gaethje earned the interim lightweight title in January by defeating Paddy Pimblett by unanimous decision.

That set up the unification bout between Gaethje and Topuria, which was the final fight of an elaborate event at the White House held on President Trump’s 80th birthday and billed as part of a summer-long celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary.

Today, we discuss political jockeying, litigation and Hail Mary passes.

There’s so much going on these days …

Indeed.

Between the war with Iran, the World Cup and President Trump slapping his filigreed (emphasis greed) name on everything in sight, I’ve completely lost track of the fight for control of Congress.

Well, now that the California gubernatorial primary is in the rear view, let’s catch up. The midterm election is not until November, of course. But a fierce political competition, aimed at skewing the result, has been underway since last summer.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

It started in Texas, where Trump strong-armed Republican lawmakers into redrawing their congressional map in hopes of boosting the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House. That led California voters to pass an eye-for-an-eye measure aimed at boosting Democratic prospects.

Other states joined the skirmishing, capped by Virginia, where voters in April approved new political lines aimed at netting Democrats as many as four additional seats.

For a short time, it looked as though Trump’s move had backfired and Democrats might actually come out ahead, at least on paper, by a seat or two.

And then?

And then the courts stepped in.

In a 4-3 decision in May, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the state’s new congressional map, ruling that the Democratic-run legislature had violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional measure on the ballot.

But the more significant legal decision came a week prior, when the U.S. Supreme Court nullified a major part of the federal Voting Rights Act, freeing several Southern states to hastily redraw a number of congressional districts to Republicans’ advantage.

What’s the bottom line?

It looks as though the GOP has come out ahead, but not by more than a handful of seats, give or take. It’s important to note that all that cartographic competition offers no guarantee of success.

“Cartographic competition?”

Those gerrymandered maps were drawn for the express purpose of helping out one party or the other, but the partisan manipulation doesn’t make all those redrawn districts a lock come November.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation calling for a special election to redraw the state’s congressional map

(Godofredo A. Vasquez / Associated Press)

In California, for instance, the Central Valley seat held by Republican David Valadao — a perennial Democratic target — remains highly competitive. In Texas, GOP lawmakers redrew their map assuming the substantial Latino support that Trump enjoyed in 2024 would carry over to Republican candidates in this year’s midterm election. That seems increasingly less likely, given shifting Latino attitudes, which means at least two of those redrawn Texas seats are more competitive than Republicans would like.

Bottom line, where does that leave things in the fight for control of the House?

There are no certainties …

… Beyond death and taxes. Understood.

It still seems more likely than not that Democrats will win the House in November.

They just need to gain three seats. Going back more than half a century, the out party (which is to say the one not in the White House) has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats in the midterm election. So Democrats have that going for them.

President Trump kicked off a redistricting battle by strong-arming Texas into redrawing its congressional map.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Also, more significantly, Trump’s approval ratings — in a word — stink. There’s a very strong correlation between a president’s standing in polls and his party’s performance, given midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the party in the White House. Since disgruntled voters are more likely to turn out, that means the out party typically gains seats.

“It would be one thing if Republicans were trying to buck a historical trend and they were doing so strengthened by a popular Republican president,” said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst with the authoritative nonpartisan political guide Inside Elections. “But that’s simply not the case. … [Trump] is less popular than any president heading into a midterm election in a very long time.”

What about control of the Senate?

Advantage Republicans.

How so?

Part of it is straight-up math. Democrats need to flip four seats. There are 35 Senate races being decided this fall, but only 10 or so are even remotely competitive. Nearly all are in states that Trump carried.

That said, things are looking up considerably for Democrats from where they were a few months ago.

Oh?

There’s much less correlation between presidential approval and the outcome of Senate races. Still, Trump is putting up some pretty strong headwinds that Republicans will have to overcome this fall, including in battleground states such as Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina. (His gaseous effusions — “I love the inflation,” “Affordability is a con job” — are not helpful, to put it mildly, when gasoline and hamburger are costing hard-pressed voters an arm and a leg, respectively.)

And Democrats have done about as well as they could have hoped in landing their preferred candidates in the Republican-leaning states of Alaska, Ohio and Iowa, making those contests far more competitive than they would have been.

What about Maine?

That started out as Democrats’ top target this election cycle. Five-term incumbent Susan Collins has the distinction of being the only Republican senator running in a state that Kamala Harris won. The race is still considered a toss-up.

But the nomination of Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran with a history that is, um, problematic — a tattoo resembling a Nazi SS symbol he did or did not apprehend; extramarital sexting; coarse online commentary — could turn the race into more of a referendum on the Democrat than either Trump or Collins.

And Texas?

You mean the boneyard of Democratic dreams?

It’s been decades since the party won a statewide race in Texas, despite all manner of attempts. (The “dream team” of a white/Black/Latino slate; the streaking-comet candidacies of Beto O’Rourke and Wendy Davis, who both flamed out short of victory.)

Democrats are giddy again, this time over 37-year-old state Sen. James Talarico, who’s built a national following with his telegenic, Christian-infused progressive platform. More pertinent, he’s running against a singularly flawed Republican nominee, state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, whose dubious resume is muddied with a felony indictment, impeachment by the GOP-run Texas House and allegations of repeated adultery.

Still, it’s Texas. Electing Talarico would be like connecting on one of those last-second, desperation, alley-oop passes in the end zone. Not impossible.

But don’t bet the ranch.

A plan to attack the UFC America 250 event at the White House on June 14 with explosive drones was thwarted by the FBI, according to federal records. Exactly how capable those involved were of actually pulling it off remains unclear. However, the alleged plot amplifies concerns that TWZ has been documenting for years about threats posed by drones to critical facilities in the homeland and how they continue to change the national security picture at home and abroad.

The long-standing potential for a drone attack on the White House was something we recently discussed last month in an examination of President Donald Trump’s plans to fortify the under-construction ballroom. More on that later in this story.

The plot involved a group of individuals who wanted to “attack the UFC event and involved staging a ‘demonstration’ on the north side of the White House,” CBS News reported, citing the court filings. “The group would then fly drones ‘laden with unspecified explosive devices which would detonate over the north side of the UFC arena,’” according to the filing in the case of one of the five people arrested, 19-year-old Tycen Proper.

When the drones exploded, “the group then planned to force attendees of the UFC event and ‘high value targets’ to evacuate to the south,” Proper’s affidavit read. The suspect told investigators that the plan was for group members to “act as snipers and additional shooters,” shooting fight attendees and the “high value targets” as they fled from the explosions.

The affidavit said the “high value targets” were “wealthy people” and politicians, CBS noted. 

Proper allegedly told investigators the goal of the attack was to “jumpstart” a revolution in the U.S. He was interviewed from a hospital, according to the document, where he was admitted on an emergency basis due to “homicidal ideations.”

In addition to Proper, Bryan Omar Roa, 24, of Calimesa, California; Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of Pinon Hills, California; Daniel K. Eskridge, 32, of Kidder, Missouri; and Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, of Omaha, Nebraska were also charged, according to the Justice Department.

Fox News was the first to report details about the plot.

TWZ cannot independently verify any of these details at this time and it remains publicly unclear what capabilities, training, funding and equipment the suspects had to actually carry out a complex attack like the one described. Proper’s mother said her son “began interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who claimed to be ex-military and Christian-based,” according to the court documents. They espoused anti-government and anti-Semitic sentiments.

At the very least, it would have taken unique skills and some level of discipline, coordination and operational security to pull off this kind of a plot. It would have also required funding and time. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies disrupt attack plans long before they get close to becoming operational, and many of those have a low chance they could actually been implemented as dreamed-up. That does not mean the individuals involved or their plans are not still a significant threat. In this case, there is no information available on whether anyone involved had the means and ability to stage an attack like the one described.

Regardless, it is important to note it would be a challenge to stop people simply from bringing weaponized uncrewed aircraft into range of the White House without law enforcement having prior knowledge. Actually employing those drones as weapons successfully is another story. Still, the danger of such an attack looms large and is growing by the day.

As we have frequently highlighted, two incidents last year highlight the alarming danger of near-field drone attacks that raised lingering concerns in the U.S.

On June 1, 2025, Ukraine launched drones hidden in trucks at air bases across Russia, causing severe damage to its strategic aviation fleet. Weeks later, Israel fired drones from deep inside Iran at the country’s air defenses during the 12-Day War.

TWZ raised concerns about just these kinds of attacks for years long before the ones in Russia and Iran took place.

The following video shows one of the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian bombers during Operation Spider Web.

In both Russia and Iran, the drones were set up undetected deep in enemy territory during armed conflict against military targets. The plot on the White House, as characterized in the court documents, is of course different on many levels and was to be planned and executed by citizens, not sponsored by another nation at war with its neighbor. At the same time, both presents a host of challenges to defend against, many of which overlap.

Given the presence of the president, his family and thousands of VIP guests on the White House lawn at the time, as well as the event’s extremely high-profile nature, UFC Freedom 250 was “designated a Special Event Assessment Review 1 event, like the Super Bowl, Indianapolis 500, Kentucky Derby and college football games, according to the Department of Homeland Security,” ABC News reported last week.

Security was also tightened at the Ellipse outside the White House, where thousands more watched the event on large screens.

The increased precautions included concern about drones, said Tara McLeese, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office.

Federal law prohibits flying drones in the airspace over the National Capital Region, so McLeese advised fans ahead of the event to “leave their drones at home.”

“We will have law enforcement drones for overwatch, but just to make it simple for the public, if they see a drone, we want them to report that,” she said, according to ABC.

The Secret Service declined to talk about its concerns over drone threats, instead pointing us to its post on X.

Protective intelligence cases are on the rise, and our teams work tirelessly behind the scenes to investigate threats, identify those responsible, and ensure accountability. Statement from Director Curran on the events of this past weekend: pic.twitter.com/Oca3QVLg9o

— U.S. Secret Service Office of Communications (@SecretSvcSpox) June 16, 2026

While we don’t know the extent of the counter-drone measures deployed by the FBI, Secret Service or even the military, they certainly included devices to detect and, if needed, jam the signals of threatening drones. However, as the war in Ukraine and Israel’s push into Lebanon have proven, the efficacy of these methods is far from assured. This is especially so since the introduction of drones controlled via fiber optic cables, which mitigate the effects of radio frequency passive detection and active jamming with a direct hardwired link between a drone and its operator.

Meanwhile, as we noted in our story about Trump using the ballroom he is building as a kind of defensive fortification, using traditional kinetic protection from drones and other aerial threats in and around the White House is limited and risky. The advent of interceptor drones, many that are hit-to-kill or use electromagnetic pulses and other low collateral damage means instead of explosive warheads, is starting to mitigate some of those concerns.

From the story about Trump’s ballroom:

“Clearly, the drone issue is a massive one and has been for many years. This structure will serve as a secure place to do daily business if needed. Based on Trump’s comments, it will also act as a critical active defense node with its roof hosting air defenses, and apparently ones that are capable of at least a limited degree of area defense, not just highly-localized point defense. This is where drones could come into play. Drone interceptors (drones that intercept other drones) are well suited for the unique challenges of defending the White House and the Mall area as a whole, where collateral damage is a huge concern. Some of these systems use warheads, while others do not, physically smashing into their targets or blasting them with electrical pulses and other non-traditional effects instead. Drone interceptor capabilities are expanding rapidly now, equipping forward bases and warships. They proved critical in defending U.S. interests against Iranian attacks during the recent war. In Ukraine, they have proven indispensable in countering waves of Russian Shaheds.”

Directed energy, such as lasers and high-power microwave weapons are another potential countermeasure, but these systems remain somewhat in their infancy and have very short range. Above all else, using them in dense urban areas, especially those with nearby low-flying air traffic, can be extremely problematic. They are not widely deployed for the counter drone role in the United States and won’t be in the near term.

It’s also worth remembering that the alleged plan did not necessarily rely on the accuracy of the drones or the damage they could inflict. The goal was to induce panic by their very presence and drive people into a field of fire to be attacked by snipers.

Even if counter-drone measures were able to provide a relatively robust protective bubble over UFC 250 at the White House, the plot as described in the documents further highlights the vulnerability large events have from even the lowliest of drone attack attempts.

The U.S. at the moment is protecting several facilities across the country with huge crowds during the World Cup soccer tournament at a time of heightened global tensions. Countering drone attacks was a central component of pre-event security measures as well as ongoing efforts.

This all comes as the U.S. is working to increase authorities to allow the military and law enforcement to better protect against drone threats.

We were the first to report numerous unauthorized drone flights over U.S. military facilities and other sensitive areas. The defensive capabilities have been constrained by a labyrinth of often confusing legal and regulatory hurdles. Incursions by cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border have sharpened the need for reforms, some of which are underway.

As we reported back in February, in advance of the U.S. hosting the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games, the Trump administration pushed to expand counter-drone authorities. Congress granted that when it passed the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Officials have already taken action against drone operators using these new authorities. Last week, FBI Los Angeles said it seized drones and issued citations to pilots near SoFi Stadium for alleged violations of temporary flight restrictions during last Friday’s World Cup match, The Los Angeles Times reported. The bureau “shared photos showing confiscated drones as well as an image of a drone operator being cited,” the newspaper noted. “However, it did not specify how many drones were taken or how many pilots were issued citations. It also did not provide details on the technology used to locate or track the drone operators.”

The bureau did not say if the operators of these drones had nefarious intent or whether they were armed, though neither of those are prerequisites for violating the no-drone-zone rules.

The FBI’s Counter Drone Enforcement Team has been busy around last night’s #WorldCup game and related events ensuring drone pilots aren’t violating @FAA Temporary Flight Restrictions. But some were, and as promised, they were cited and had their drones seized. Meanwhile,… pic.twitter.com/s0vy75E73E

— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) June 13, 2026

While the actual ability of the alleged perpetrators to pull off the combined drone and sniper attack on the White House like what’s described remains unknown, the threats to the homeland from uncrewed aircraft are only growing by the day, as are nefarious actors’ experience and creativity with the technology.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Well, that just happened.

The president held a cage fight on the White House South Lawn, complete with flyovers, fireworks, mini-skirted “octagon girls” and the surrealistic sight of mixed martial arts fighters striding through historic White House rooms flanked by National Medal of Honor winners.

Despite wide public disapproval for Sunday’s event and much scathing commentary about the political and psychological messaging of Donald Trump’s choice of a Vegas-like spectacle to celebrate his 80th birthday, and the country’s 250th, the sky did not fall, the original Constitution in the nearby National Archives did not tear in two and none of the fighters passed out from the heat or bug bites.

Things didn’t even get bloody until the final match in the fifth hour, when Justin Gaethje kicked and punched the crap out of widely favored Ilia Topuria.

Even so, it was impossible to emerge from watching UFC Freedom 250 without feeling punch-drunk.

Not because of the fighting; because of almost everything that was not the fighting.

Beginning with Paramount+, owned by the Trump-friendly Ellison family’s Paramount Skydance, which recently received Justice Department clearance for its highly controversial acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The jarring sight of past UFC matches being seemingly projected onto the Jefferson Memorial and the Capitol gave way to a series of poorly produced “historical” moments in which UFC fighters were cast as inheriting the same “fighting spirit” that motivated this nation’s Founding Fathers, past presidents and war veterans. Down to the inevitable strains of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” (the baffling anthem of MAGA), the event projected a macho-man view of patriotism that was just as ghastly as many feared it would be.

UFC fighters are indeed dedicated and talented athletes who have overcome all manner of personal obstacles. But to compare them with Thomas Jefferson or American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy is absurd and more than a little insulting.

The tens of thousands of UFC and Trump fans who gathered on the South Lawn and the Ellipse, however, were clearly having a very good time. Proceedings were delayed an hour by the threat of storms, but the weather cooperated in the end. “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, and in particular, soloist Staff Sgt. Hannah Davis, gave masterful performances throughout. And while the Claw, the 600-ton steel structure arching above the Octagon, certainly looked like the first stage of an alien attack during the day, it put on a pretty terrific (if more than a little Vegasy) light show at night.

For those watching from home, however, these bright spots were glimpsed and heard infrequently, drowned out by the endless hyperbolic intonations of commentators (including Joe Rogan, who initially criticized the event), the long and invariably self-aggrandizing introductions of the various participants and the onslaught of frequently militaristic commercials, more than a few of which, included ads for Ram, featured UFC President and Chief Executive Dana White.

Which isn’t surprising when you think about it. White’s longtime support for the president culminated in his organization covering the event’s $60 million in production costs, and from the moment a smiling White joined Trump as he made his way through the White House to the front row, the event served as an almost-six-hour ad for the UFC.

Though I am not a UFC fan, I realize that showmanship is key to the sport’s wild and increasingly broad popularity. Championship matches, which rarely last longer than 30 minutes and sometimes much less, are inevitably preceded by hours of participants making all manner of florid claims and trash-talking their opponents. (Which may explain Trump’s fondness for the UFC.)

But when all of this strutting, preening and wild-eyed reaction revolves around what was, for better and worse, a series of rules-free brawls being force-fed into a narrative about this country’s enduring strength, what emerges is not so much a sporting event as it is a piece of naked and nationalistic propaganda.

Which came to a head in the final fight. After the six previous matches concluded rather quickly with bloodless knockouts (a UFC record), the fight between American Gaethje and the German-born, Georgia and Spain-representing Topuria lasted much longer. Gaethje, introduced as “the most violent man in the most violent sport,” left the lightweight champion’s face such a mess that even Rogan was shocked.

By all metrics, including Topuria’s refusal to go down, it was the best fight of the night. But hearing the crowd chant “USA, USA” as the bloody blows fell … well, let’s just say it was not everyone’s notion of a presidential birthday celebration.

Some have suggested that Trump staged the event in the hope of regaining the support of young men who helped him win the last election. Even if that was not the case, it was difficult to view UFC Freedom 250 in any way nonpartisan (especially after British former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury strode out of the White House wearing a “Trump for Prime Minister” hat).

Yes, several of the six non-American participants entered to Spanish or Portuguese songs (why so much fuss then about Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl?) but some of the winners are longtime MAGA supporters and made that very clear — Bo Nickal thanked Trump for being the only one “to have the balls” to stage such an event while Josh Hokit followed up his thanks to “my lord and savior Jesus Christ” with “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Because it was Trump’s birthday after all.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a Trump administration appeal and decide if “criminal aliens” may be held indefinitely while they fight deportation.

The case to be heard in the fall could give the administration more power to arrest and hold immigrants, including green card holders, who have criminal records.

The government’s lawyers say immigration laws call for deporting non-citizens with “aggravated felonies” on their records. And in such cases, they say these people may be held for months or even years while their claims are before the immigration courts.

Judges have been split on whether non-citizens fighting deportation have a right to a bond hearing and a chance to go free if they pose no risk to public safety.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled for a pair of green card holders who faced deportation to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Both had been convicted of assaults that were characterized as aggravated felonies under the immigration laws.

However, the appeals court said their “prolonged detention” was unconstitutional if they were given no bond hearing and no chance to go free.

They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers urged the court to turn down the appeal.

“For the first time in this litigation, the government argues that civil detention ‘does not implicate any fundamental rights’ and so the Due Process Clause affords the detained men no protections—substantive or procedural,” they wrote.

In the past, they said the Supreme Court had accepted the “bedrock principle” that detained persons may have a right to seek their release on bond.

One of the two men had left this country and returned to Jamaica, the ACLU lawyers said. But Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer urged the court to rule on the issue.

The detained men “have no procedural due-process right to a bond hearing on whether they are a flight risk or danger to the community,” he told the court. “Individualized findings about flight risk and danger are irrelevant” under the immigration laws which called for “mandatory detention based on their aggravated-felony convictions alone.”