information

The US president has long been unhappy with inside information about his administration being leaked to the media.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that those who leak information to the news media should be shot as punishment.

Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, as he urged supporters to vote in the November 3 midterm elections.

“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told the crowd. “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.”

Trump made the statement in an apparent reference to Operation Midnight Hammer, which saw the US launch a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025 during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

In the aftermath of the attack, several media outlets published findings from a preliminary report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

That report – which had not yet been released to the public – indicated that Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium away from the sites the US had bombed.

It also suggested that the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more modest than what Trump had asserted.

Trump, however, appeared to signal that the timing of the US attacks was among the leaked information. He accused the news media of putting military members in danger, calling out The New York Times and CNN in particular.

“They leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” Trump said, claiming he had to reschedule the bombing campaign two days later as a result.

“Somebody leaked. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.”

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media, and he has previously called for harsh punishment against any official who passes on confidential information to news outlets.

After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report became public, he blamed lawmakers in the Democratic Party for its release.

“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “They should be prosecuted!”

Under Trump, the White House has taken aggressive action to track down the source of leaks.

Staff in his administration, as well as officers in the military, have also been asked to take polygraph tests.

Journalists at several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at determining the sources of internal information made public.

The newspapers had reported on stories such as a botched Navy SEALs raid in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings against launching the Iran war.

Last year, the Department of Defense demanded that journalists who wished to access the Pentagon sign an agreement not to publish unauthorised material.

Much of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree, and a federal court struck down many of the new demands made on journalists at the department.

Trump has long raged against leakers, going back to his first term as president from 2017 to 2021.

Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin told a podcast in 2024 that Trump had called for leakers to be executed, after media outlets reported that he had taken shelter in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020.

Trump appeared to reprise that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms.

“Leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly,” Trump said. “To me, they are the scum of the earth.”

After a concertgoer died in the audience at a Carson music festival on Saturday, an artist is outraged the show continued while the deceased was still on-site.

On Saturday, at Carson’s Anderson Memorial Park, Shari Sanders of Altadena was found unconscious in the VIP section of the city’s annual jazz festival.

Dr. Dionne Leslie, a festival attendee, told KTLA that she performed CPR on Sanders before paramedics arrived. “[I was] just trying to breathe air into that woman and for her to look up in that moment, I just thought that she was going to make it,” Leslie told KTLA.

Sanders was later pronounced dead after what her family described as a heat-related illness. The cause of death is still under investigation.

Representatives for the city of Carson and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Carson station did not immediately return requests for information or comment.

Now Sheila E., a legendary percussionist and frontwoman who headlined the festival, has criticized promoters, she said, for allowing the show to continue before Sanders’ body was removed around 5 p.m.

“I would have never, never gotten onstage if I would have known that her body was still sitting there with her family surrounding her,” Sheila E. said in video statement after the festival. “Production, whoever, the city, the mayor was there. All of you guys should have stopped the festival. I’m sorry. You should have stopped the festival.”

The drummer said she was distressed by the paucity of water stations available, and feared the triple-digit heat was a risk for fans.

“We heard that … there was only one water station, which was unfortunate because there was just not enough water for everyone,” she said. “Carson, you guys have to do better. This was horrible. Horrible. And I’m so sorry that I played because I would not have gotten onstage knowing that she was still there.”

OpenAI has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling information, including work that involved an external organisation that analyses artificial intelligence (AI) models.

“Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work,” a spokesperson told the BBC.

The ChatGPT-maker did not name the sacked workers, but at least two of them were involved in safety research at the firm.

The firings come as the debate over AI safety and the risks the technology may pose to humanity has intensified in recent weeks.

“We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” OpenAI’s spokesperson said.

The BBC understands the former employees were not let go for raising safety concerns but for allegedly mishandling sensitive information.

Concerns over AI safety have made headlines after some researchers and industry executives called for more guardrails around the technology.

OpenAI has come under under intense scrutiny after its models went rogue and hacked several platforms, including Australian government websites.

In an earlier incident an OpenAI system accessed the internet and breached the open-source developer platform Hugging Face.

That incident led OpenAI to conduct a broad review of the activities of its AI models – called agents, which are designed to execute tasks autonomously based on simple instructions.

The AI lab said this week that it has notified more than 100 organisations about incidents involving unauthoritised activity linked to its AI systems.

Being notified “does not mean that any private information was accessed” or that a system was compromised, OpenAI said.

Federal investigators have sent Los Angeles County elections officials at least five grand jury subpoenas for individual voter records as part of a criminal investigation into illegal voting, according to partially redacted records reviewed by The Times.

The subpoenas — released in response to a public records request — appear related to a nationwide effort by the Trump administration to identify noncitizens who have illegally cast ballots in U.S. elections.

The subpoenas were issued in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They were sent to L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan’s office at the request of prosecutors in the office of First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli.

“The enclosed subpoena has been issued in connection with an official criminal investigation being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations,” Assistant. U.S. Atty. Michael Wheat — based out of the district’s Orange County office — wrote in a letter accompanying a Sept. 10 subpoena.

Wheat wrote that a custodian of records from Logan’s office must either appear before the grand jury to present the records or deliver the materials to a special agent from Homeland Security Investigations.

Four of the subpoenas — one issued on July 13 and three on Sept. 10 — request “any and all original and non-redacted voter records” from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present for a list of individual voters stretching across two pages. The lists were redacted by Los Angeles County officials, and it is unclear how many individuals each list contained.

Each of those subpoenas notes that records to be produced include information on individual voters, such as their “registration file” and “addresses listed, history and method of voting, [and] any and all attestation regarding citizenship status.”

A fifth subpoena, issued July 31, appears to request similar information for a single voter, and notes that the voter’s “ballot content or vote selections” should not be included.

Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for Essayli’s office, declined to comment on the investigations Monday.

The Times first reported the existence of the subpoenas, but not details from the records themselves, last week, after Logan confirmed that his office was complying with the federal inquiry despite having concerns that investigators may be using incorrect or outdated information to produce their lists of voters to investigate.

“We’re responding appropriately as directed through a subpoena, but that doesn’t afford the dialogue for us to get the background on what they’re looking for and how they came up with the names that they did,” Logan said. “There’s really no information being provided to us on that.”

President Trump has alleged for years that illegal voting by noncitizens is widespread, though experts say the problem — which they acknowledge occurs — is exceedingly rare. Homeland Security officials have been leading a campaign in recent months to identify such fraud nationwide, and the subpoenas received by L.A. County appear to match others received by elections officials elsewhere in the country.

Essayli — a Trump loyalist who has not been confirmed to lead the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office by the U.S. Senate and whose de facto leadership has been contested in court — has been vocal about his office’s pursuit of voter fraud, including by noncitizens.

His office has announced two voter fraud cases in recent weeks, including one involving the arrest of 30-year-old Honduran national on two felony charges of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and fraudulently registering to vote. That man, Darwin Jonathan Rivera-Flores, has pleaded not guilty and is out on bond pending trial.

Rivera-Flores and his attorney declined to comment.

The Justice Department also recently announced it had charged 16 noncitizens in six other states with illegal voting and other election-related crimes.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly claimed in July — without providing evidence — that there may be more than 190,000 such voters on California rolls, a claim California officials dismissed as baseless.

Three of the five subpoenas received by Logan’s office ask that the voter information be shared with Al Rossi, the acting assistant head of Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles.

Reached by phone, Rossi referred questions to an agency spokesperson, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Wheat had asked that the subpoenas be kept secret, so as not to impede an open investigation. Logan’s office released the records in accordance with California public records law, but redacted the names of voters on the grounds that doing so “protects those individuals from undue attention, harassment, intimidation, or possible harm” and “protects the integrity” of the investigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld Trump’s expanded use of government data to search for noncitizens who are registered to vote. A lower court order had blocked use of the data over concerns — shared by the Supreme Court’s liberal wing — that the data are error-prone.

Voting rights experts have expressed concern that misuse of the data could lead to legitimate voters being purged from rolls.

States across the country, including California, have successfully fought off lawsuits from the Trump administration demanding the states’ complete voter rolls.

It is unclear why a subpoena for a single voter’s information would come between subpoenas for information on longer lists of voters. But it lines up with the case against Rivera-Flores.

In an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint against Rivera-Flores, Special Agent Christopher Kuzma — the same agent listed on the July 31 subpoena requesting a single voter’s information — said he received a series of texts he believed were from Rivera-Flores, who had previously been issued a misdemeanor citation on suspicion of disrupting immigration law enforcement operations at the federal building in Camarillo.

One text sent in April 2026 stated, “Your not the good guy I can’t wait until the mid terms you dont have qualified immunity then we can start and indict all you guys one bye one.”

Kuzma said in his affidavit that he took the message to mean Rivera-Flores “has both an interest in the voting process and an intent to participate in the election process.”

According to the affidavit, Kuzma said he conducted several record checks through public databases, including on the California secretary of state’s website, which “disclosed an online voter registration record” for a “Darwin Rivera” at Rivera-Flores’ address.

In July 2026, Kuzma said in the affidavit, he reviewed records from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office for “Darwin J Rivera,” which showed the applicant had checked a box stating he was a U.S. citizen.

Kuzma’s affidavit said in August 2026 he received certified voter registration records from Los Angeles County.

The spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a question about whether Kuzma’s July 31 subpoena was specific to Rivera-Flores, but the office has previously said Wheat is prosecuting the case.

When Rivera-Flores’ arrest was announced, Essayli said it was “the first of many to come.”

Love is the name. Fraud allegedly was his game. And the list of his victims — several of whom said they became romantically involved with him — continues to grow.

Daejon Labrayae Love, 35, and his accomplice Taylor Jamie Chan, 18, remain in federal custody after their arrest Aug. 24 in Boise, Idaho, on wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges. The FBI charged the two men with scamming at least 26 women in four states out of at least $1.3 million.

Since then many more women have come forward to say they were victims of Love’s schemes, which often involved him impersonating a San Francisco 49ers player. The FBI said it has identified 35 additional women who say they were defrauded, ratcheting up the number of alleged victims to more than 60.

The latest development is especially troubling. A woman told ESPN on Tuesday that she submitted a complaint about Love on the 49ers website eight months ago on Dec. 20, 2025, yet the team apparently did little with the information.

Gwen Herndon submitted a complaint/concern form, writing “there is a federal investigation surrounding a man pretending to be a 49ers player.” She named Love, saying he stole money from women.

“I wanted you to be aware of the situation and are hopefully proactive in denouncing his involvement on your team,” she wrote in the message, which was reviewed by ESPN.

Herndon said the only response she received from the 49ers came from a Levi’s Stadium guest services account a week after her report, encouraging her to contact law enforcement agencies with the information.

“We take reports of individuals misrepresenting themselves as members of the San Francisco 49ers very seriously,” the 49ers response said. “For safety and legal reasons, the team cannot comment on ongoing investigations or specific individuals…. Our internal team will also monitor any instances of impersonation and take action as appropriate to protect fans and the team’s reputation.”

A 49ers spokesperson declined to confirm that Herndon’s email was viewed by team officials, citing the ongoing FBI investigation.

Federal investigators, meanwhile, are working to verify that the 35 women who have come forward in recent days are in fact victims of Love and Chan, Portland FBI Special Agent in Charge Doug Olson said in a news conference.

“We were surprised how many people were victimized in such a short period of time and then to have that many more come forward,” Olson said. “It’s a large volume for just a couple of subjects. Our concern is that this fraud could be replicated by other individuals that are out there victimizing other people in similar schemes.”

The FBI alleges that from February 2022 until they were arrested, Love and Chan fraudulently solicited money from women in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Love portrayed himself on Instagram as a 49ers wide receiver who went undrafted but worked his way onto the roster. He met many of the women through dating apps and developed romantic relationships with several, according to the FBI. Chan falsely posed as Love’s financial adviser.

In an Instagram Story titled “NFL Journey,” Love held a 49ers helmet while driving and said, “I’m on my way to get my mom. I know I get a lot of fans who want to know how football works or how I got involved in the league…. If you know me and see me in person I’ll explain.”

Experts on interpersonal relationships say that a person can instantly assume someone is trustworthy who exudes warmth and confidence as a first impression — especially if they find the person attractive.

“When we meet someone for the first time, our brains are quietly trying to answer two big questions: Can I trust this person, and do they seem capable and confident?,” said Tammi Pickle, an executive at the personalized matchmaking agency Elite Connections. “Someone who comes across as confident might suddenly seem smarter, kinder, more successful and even more trustworthy simply because of the way they carry themselves.

“When we are attracted to someone, our brains have a tendency to fill in the blanks with positive assumptions. The catch? Those assumptions aren’t always accurate.”

Love quickly gained the trust of dozens of women, allegedly convincing them to give him large sums of money. The FBI said Love instructed several women who did not have cash to invest to take out personal loans, assuring them they would quickly be repaid.

“The scheme relied on Love’s creation of fictitious personas and display of a lavish lifestyle which Love presented to victims both in person and on social media websites,” federal authorities said in a press release.

“Chan and Love also hosted three-way FaceTime calls in which they showed victims falsified investment gains and encouraged victims to part with their money. Victims sent Love and Chan money due to their belief that their money would be invested in legitimate investment vehicles on the victims’ behalf.”

One women who didn’t fall for Love’s scheme told KPTV in Oregon that she went on a 2024 date with him in 2024 after meeting on a dating app. He told her his name was John Prince and claimed he was a Swiss real estate developer.

Anderson said his behavior during their first date raised suspicion.

“He said, ‘I’m very intentional and efficient when it comes to dating, and if I pursue you, you will be the only one I pursue. I need someone who has been around money, who understands that, you know, these things aren’t luxuries to me. This is just my normal life.’

“Within five minutes, I decided I wasn’t gonna see him again.”

Love also manipulated AI. Search engines and AI rely on web scraping and frequency of mentions, and the sheer volume of his fake posts caused AI to mistakenly identify him as an NFL wide receiver. He showed screenshots of erroneous AI search summaries to alleged victims, convincing them he was worthy of their trust.

On an Instagram story, he posted a one screenshot of a webpage AI Overview that says “Daejon Love is a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers and information about his position, contract and teammate texting habits is available online. He is also associated with the team in various social media content and articles.”

Love then turns the camera on himself and says, “That’s Google. That’s not me, that’s Google.”

He goes on to explain why he isn’t currently playing, lifting a crooked finger to the camera and saying he is injured. He concludes the story by again saying he wants “full transparency” because “people ask, what do I do? How can I afford a $500,000 car? How can I afford a $300,000 [Lamborghini] Urus? “

He says that he is driving to pick up his mother, then concludes by inviting those watching to reach out to him in person.

In the month before his arrest, Love traveled to New Mexico, California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah and Idaho to meet with women, according to investigators. He allegedly used several fictitious names, including Jon Love, Avril Lyto Love and Jordan Love.

The romp abruptly ended at the Boise airport when Love and Chan were removed from a white sports car by federal agents, according to a video obtained by TMZ. Love appears to be wearing red Niners gear as he is handcuffed.

“Victims were encouraged to take out personal loans and make life-altering financial decisions based on the belief they were building a future with someone they cared about,” said Olson, the FBI special agent. “Once the money was taken, the victims were cut off, left without answers, without funds, and often without closure. Many lost not only their savings, but their sense of security and confidence.”

A three-part series following investigative reporters and police investigators who were instrumental in holding Gary Glitter accountable for his sex abuse crimes has been paused

Netflix has paused the release of an investigative docuseries into disgraced Gary Glitter’s history of sexually abusing minors.

The streaming giant has issued a statement confirming that the three-part series will no longer be released on October 14 as they originally announced.

A spokesperson for Netflix said: “We have made the decision to pause the release of Hunting Gary Glitter originally due to launch on October 14.

“This follows new legal information we recently became aware of. We’re not able to share further detail at this time, but we’ll provide an update as soon as we’re in a position to do so.”

The synopsis for the series states: “A string of dogged journalists chases fugitive pop star Gary Glitter across the globe — from Cuba to Cambodia to Vietnam — determined to expose the child sexual abuse he concealed behind decades of chart-topping fame.

“This documentary follows their pursuit alongside the survivors who speak out, charting Glitter’s 1997 conviction, through to his years on the run, and eventual incarceration.”

The rocker, real name Paul Gadd, was a popular British glam rocker in the 1970s and sang numerous hits like Do You Wanna Touch Me and I Love You Love Me Love.

In 1999, his popularity was derailed by numerous allegations of child sexual abuse and subsequent conviction for possession of child pornography.

Later, in 2006, he was jailed in Vietnam for the sexual abuse of two girls. In 2015, he was convicted of sexually abusing three additional young girls.

In 2023, Gadd was released for a short time on probation before being reincarcerated. Police did not publicly say how he violated the terms of his release.

Featured in the trailer of Hunting Gary Glitter, the docuseries uses first-person interviews to detail Gladd’s original convictions and years hopping from country to country, including Vietnam, Cuba, and Cambodia to avoid prosecution and jail time.

The advert was released alongside the initial announcement but has now been pulled as has all the other assets from Netflix’s media website.

Hunting Gary Glitter was due to be released on Netflix on October 14 but has been paused

It remains illegal in California for a school district to force teachers and other staff to alert parents about their child’s gender identity, but parents must be told when they ask about it, a judge ruled Tuesday in a widely watched case dealing with parental rights.

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs, weighing both state law and a Supreme Court order, rejected an attempt by the Chino Valley Unified School District to reinstate its mandatory parent-notification policy.

“There is no requirement that the school district, on its own, after learning of transgender issues, contact parents and let the parents know of them,” Sachs said in court. At the same time, “in the event a parent makes an affirmative inquiry of a minor child regarding their status, whether transgender or not, that will trigger an obligation by the school district to respond.”

Under the Chino Valley policy, approved in July 2023, a school would have to notify parents of any request by a student “to use pronouns that do not align with the student’s biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or other official records.” The same notification rules applied to the use of bathrooms or participation in sports.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately challenged that policy in court and it was put on hold. In October 2024, Sachs had ruled that most of the policy was discriminatory — and therefore illegal — because it singled out a group of students for treatment that was different than the treatment of other students.

As an example, he cited the possibility that a student would come out confidentially to a school counselor — and then that counselor would immediately be required to alert the parents, even against the student’s wishes.

A policy that could result in mandated actions by a school employee continues to conflict with the intent of a 2025 California law that barred a school system from forcing teachers to tell parents about a student’s gender, Sachs concluded.

“That’s inappropriate and it’s still inappropriate,” Sachs said Tuesday.

New rules, new rulings

What has changed in the legal landscape, he added, is what happens when a parent requests information about their child’s gender status or sexual orientation or any number of other issues affecting that child.

Trial court rulings — affirmed by a Supreme Court majority in March — said that parents have the right to demand information about their child’s gender identity at school. School staff cannot lie to parents — including matters that a student wishes to conceal from their parents.

Attorney Emily Rae, representing Chino Valley, said Sachs was correct to acknowledge that parents had the right to information about their child, but that his ruling did not go nearly far enough — and that parent notification should be mandatory statewide.

Chino Valley also has a separate pending court challenge to the 2025 California law, contending it is at odds with the direction of the Supreme Court, which should take precedence.

Dept. Attorney General Delbert Tran, representing the state, declined to be interviewed Tuesday, but in his exchanges with Sachs, it was clear that he saw the ruling as about as much of a win as would be possible, given the Supreme Court’s recent directives.

He also said that supporters of parent-notification policies misstate or misunderstand the parent-teacher relationship that exists in practice and under state law. Parents, he said, have the legal right to observe classes and meet with teachers, and the expectation is that teachers will communicate freely and often with parents about a child’s needs and progress.

Chino Valley champions its view of parent rights

Chino Valley, a school district of 26,000 students in San Bernardino County, has adopted and defended a series of policies favored by parent activists, religious conservatives and President Trump under the leadership of school board President Sonja Shaw, a Republican currently running for the office of state superintendent of public instruction.

Under her leadership, the school system has taken a stand for a flag-ban policy in schools and classrooms, widely viewed as targeting gay pride flags; for removing school library books with passages deemed to be sexually obscene, and for working to ban trans athletes from girls sports and girls locker rooms.

Shaw attended Tuesday’s hearing and criticized Sachs’ reasoning.

“When he talks about a parent has a right to know now only if they ask, how do you know you’re being lied to or secrets being kept?,” Shaw said after the hearing. “That absolutely makes no sense.”

Shaw said the judge should have done “what’s right: Upheld parents’ constitutional right to the upbringing of their own child.”

In anticipation of Sachs’ ruling against the original policy, the Chino Valley school board revised the policy, expanding it to all students. Under the current policy, if any student “requests a change to their official or unofficial records, parents/guardians shall be notified to ensure that parents/guardians are informed and involved in all aspects of their child’s education.”

In other words, if a straight male student named William suddenly decided he wanted to be referred to as Robert on the class roll sheet — an official record — his parents would be notified.

In 2024, Sachs accepted this version of notification because students were not singled out for different treatment on the basis of their gender.

That form of the policy remains in effect.

Since that time, Shaw said, the district has been “transparent” with parents regarding important issues in the lives of their children. And Tuesday’s ruling would not change that.

Moving forward, she added, the district could assertively ask parents if they want to be informed about their child’s gender issues and that permission — if given — would continue to apply as the student proceeds through grade school.