Investigation

Clippers star Kawhi Leonard had a second lucrative undisclosed sponsorship agreement with a company doing business with the team, Pablo Torre reported Thursday night on his podcast.

Scoreboard manufacturer Daktronics, which built the $100 million video board at the Clippers’ Intuit Dome, hired Leonard to a multi-million dollar endorsement deal, according to Torre. The podcast host found no evidence that the All-NBA forward did any work for the company.

The details are similar to the $28 million endorsement deal Leonard had with Aspiration, a now-defunct environmental banking company that had a 23-year, $300 million sponsorship deal with Clippers. Steve Ballmer, the team’s owner, invested $60 million into Aspiration, triggering allegations that the payment to Leonard circumvented the NBA salary cap.

That deal is at the center off an ongoing, almost year-long NBA investigation. Requests on Friday for comment from Leonard’s agent and the Clippers were not immediately answered.

The salary cap limits what teams can spend on player payroll to ensure parity and prevent the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller-market teams to acquire the best players. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has called attempts to circumvent it a “cardinal sin.”

The topic was raised on Torre’s podcast by a person identified as an “anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome.” The person alleged in an interview that the sponsorship deal was “1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi.”

The investigation into the Aspiration allegations has grown in scope, the Athletic reported three weeks ago. In addition to attempting to determine whether Aspiration’s payment to Leonard violated NBA salary-cap rules, the probe conducted by high-powered New York law firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz is examining Leonard’s deal with Daktronics.

If the NBA determines that a salary-cap violation occurred, the Clippers could be fined and stripped of first-round picks. Ballmer also could be penalized and Leonard’s contract could be voided. He has one year and $50.3 million left on a three-year, $149.5 million deal he signed before the 2024-25 season.

The endorsement deal with Daktronics raised suspicion because the company doesn’t do business with the general public and doesn’t need prominent athletes or celebrities to pitch its products.

“Daktronics was conservative to a fault for the 20+ years I was there,” a former employee told Torre. “I remember asking early on why we didn’t do more traditional advertising and promotion to increase brand recognition. I was told that since it’s B2B and not a consumer product, it didn’t make sense to advertise that way.”

Asked whether Leonard had an endorsement deal, Daktronics pointed Torre to a crisis management firm whose spokesman said, “My understanding is Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now.” Asked for clarification, the spokesman said, “I don’t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that.”

Daktronics is a leader in designing, engineering and manufacturing digital LED display technology and audio systems. Nearly 600 clients are listed on the company website, including numerous NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL teams. Other clients include several airports, and Daktronics built the LAX Time Tower, a 72-foot, four-sided interactive digital media structure located in the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

The Clippers traded Leonard to the Toronto Raptors on June 30 for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick and a slew of draft picks, but the teams put deal was put on hold pending the outcome of the investigation.

Leonard would not talk about the allegations during the 2025-26 NBA season because the investigation was ongoing. He brushed it off during media day in September.

“None of us did … wrongdoing and, yeah, that’s it,” he said. “We invite the investigation.”

Almost a year later, the investigation continues. Silver has expressed a desire for a resolution, saying in June that it “needs to be wrapped up before next season.” The NBA regular season will begin in October.

Salary-cap circumvention first surfaced with Leonard during his free agency in 2019 after he led the Raptors to the NBA championship. Negotiations with the Lakers ceased when Leonard’s uncle, Dennis Robertson, requested a house, the use of private aircraft, guaranteed off-court earnings and an ownership stake in the team, according to Dan Woike of the Athletic. The Lakers informed Leonard’s representatives that those requests violated the NBA collective bargaining agreement and Leonard eventually signed with the Clippers, where he played the last seven seasons.

At least eight people, including students and teachers, were killed and 15 others injured after a student opened fire inside a school in Thailand. Police said the gunman later died by suicide.

The federal law enforcement probe into the financial affairs of the Dodgers’ controlling owner, Mark Walter, seems to focus on what looks like an obscure financial maneuver: related-party transactions.

They are deals between entities with business or personal ties, including loans, sales and other transactions, that can have legitimate reasons but pose potential conflicts of interest and typically require extra scrutiny.

Walter tapped insurers he controlled to provide most of the financing for the $2.15-billion acquisition of the Dodgers in 2012, The Times has reported — a deal later vetted by state insurance regulators.

Now, regulators reportedly are investigating whether billions of dollars’ worth of similar loans made by Walter’s companies were properly disclosed.

There are examples in which related-party transactions led to trouble, including the 2001 bankruptcy of Enron Corp., the largest at the time in Wall Street history. Bernie Madoff profited from his Ponzi scheme through related-party loans.

At issue with Walter is $21 billion in loans not disclosed to state insurance regulators that were made by two Delaware insurers he owns, according to ratings agency Fitch. The loans reportedly were made to companies with ties to Walter or his TWG Global holdings company.

The seriousness of the investigation has been highlighted by subpoenas served on the insurers and the reported seizure of Walter’s cellphone and laptop by federal authorities. Still, investigations by prosecutors and securities regulators can result in no action.

Here are more details on the risk presented by related-party transactions and why they require disclosure and extra regulatory scrutiny.

What do the investigations mean for his ownership of his sport teams?

The 66-year-old billionaire also took a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers last year and owns the Chelsea soccer team in the English Premier League. There is no indication yet that any of this has affected his ownership stakes, but the probe has yet to be completed.

What is the problem with related-party transactions?

Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant who worked on the Enron and Madoff cases, says the issue comes down to the motivation of the parties and can be explained through an analogy.

Sell a car to a stranger and you both research its worth and come to an agreed “fair market value,” he said. Sell it to your brother, you might cut the price to “give him a deal,” and later even forgive the payments.

“That’s why, from an audit standpoint, there should be more scrutiny if you’re doing business with the left hand and the right hand, because it’s easier to manipulate things,” Dubinsky said. “Repayments can be delayed indefinitely. They are always more suspect to fraud.”

How does that play out in the insurance industry?

Insurance is one of the most regulated industries, since the companies hold premium dollars from policyholders for future claims payouts — and regulators want to ensure the money is there when it’s needed. Related-party transactions can threaten that.

“There is a conflict of interest between the policyholders’ interest in the company being profitable and the owner’s interest in getting the least expensive financing that is available,” said Jim Donelon, who served as Louisiana insurance commissioner for 18 years before stepping down in 2024.

“It potentially threatens the solvency of the company, which then threatens the welfare of the policyholders,” Donelon said.

The National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners, for whom Donelon served as president, provides guidance to regulators on how to review related-party transactions.

What are some of the most notable examples of related-party transactions turning into financial disasters?

The failure of Enron was a prime lesson in how related-party transactions can lead to a company’s downfall.

As the Houston energy trader struggled and racked up $30 billion in debt, chief financial officer Andrew Fastow thought he found a way to keep it off Enron’s books. He created off-balance sheet entities to unload the debt and took personal stakes in them, allowing him to sit on both sides of the negotiation and pocket millions.

They were “transactions with related parties that were not at arm’s length,” Dubinsky said.

The debacle was a driving force in the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which tightened regulations over governance, accounting and related-party transactions.

What about the Madoff fraud?

The Madoff scandal, in which investors lost $17.5 billion in invested principal, operated like a typical Ponzi scheme with returns to older investors paid by money from new investors.

However, related-party transactions were key too, and some literally involved family members. Madoff’s brother, Peter, pleaded guilty to receiving $15.7 million in sham loans and giving $9.9 million in sham loans to family members. What’s more, the auditor was a related party.

“In Madoff, what were called ‘related‑party loans’ were just sham transactions — there was no real economic substance. It was simply Madoff taking money out of his own firm,” said Dubinsky, an expert witness for the government.

Is there anything comparable with the Walter probe?

The three situations appear entirely different, but the investigation into the related-party loans made by Walter’s Delaware Life and its affiliate, Clear Spring Life and Annuity, involves vast sums of money.

After receiving the subpoenas, the firms conducted internal investigations. They had reported having $1 billion in related-party loans but, after the review, they reclassified $21 billion worth of loans as related, including $4.6 billion held by Clear Spring, said Fitch analyst Jamie Tucker, senior director of North American insurance ratings.

Executives said they were unaware the loans were going to an affiliated company.

Is there any indication what the money was used for?

“Unclear at this stage,” Tucker said. “This a developing situation with ongoing investigations.”

One clue may be a report that Walter tapped insurers to fund more deals than the Dodgers acquisition. The Wall Street Journal said five insurers had provided more than $10 billion in deal funding since Walter’s financial services company, Guggenheim Partners, got into the insurance business after the 2008 financial crisis.

What have been the implications for the insurers owned by Walters?

Fitch said the financial restatement increased the two insurers’ related-party loans from 2% to 40% of their portfolios, the highest exposure among life insurers it rates in North America.

Fitch, A.M. Best and S&P Global also downgraded Delaware Life’s outlook to negative, though they said the insurer maintain a high level of financial strength.

“Our capital position and liquidity remain strong, and our financial strength ratings are unchanged,” said Group 1001, the insurers’ parent company, in a statement.

What has Walter had to say about all this?

He has not publicly commented, but a TWG spokesperson stated that, “Mark Walter and TWG have always acted in good faith, and those who have done business with Mark know him as honest and straightforward. Nothing about these transactions was any different.”

Suspects recruited via encrypted app and offered money for violent acts, Toronto police reveal after arrests.

Toronto police have announced two arrests in connection with the shooting at the US Consulate last month, calling the suspects “criminals for hire.”

Authorities on Thursday said they arrested a 19-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy in the second shooting at the United States Consulate in five months.

The latest shooting in July followed a March 10 attack on the diplomatic mission that also occurred before dawn. Police arrested two people in that case in June.

No one was injured in either event, but police described both as “national security” incidents, and the initial shooting on March 10 prompted beefed-up protection for US and Israeli diplomatic buildings in multiple Canadian cities, as war gripped the Middle East.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also opened a parallel investigation, treating the shooting as a national security incident.

Police on Thursday said they believe the suspects were recruited through an encrypted messaging app and were offered money to open fire on the consulate.

“There has been significant public interest and speculation about who is behind these crimes,” Police Chief Myron Demkiw said. “That remains a key focus of our investigation.”

Police identified the adult suspect as 19-year-old Xen-Ul-Abdeen Syed, who faces multiple firearm, arson and stolen-property charges, as well as a charge of attacking the premises of an internationally protected person. A 15-year-old was also charged but cannot be identified under Canadian law.

Since the first shooting, police have maintained a visible presence outside the consulate. The July 27 shooting occurred despite a marked police cruiser stationed nearby.

Police said a white Honda Accord pulled alongside the consulate at about 4:46am (08:46 GMT) and a single shot was fired, striking the front of the building. A brief police chase followed, but the chase was called off when the driver was travelling at excessive speed.

Toronto Police Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews of Detective Operations said investigators believe shootings, homicides and arsons are increasingly being commissioned through online apps, with suspects offered varying amounts of money depending on the crime.

Individuals are hired to shoot at various targets and record the shootings for payment. The targets the police have mentioned included synagogues, Jewish schools, a waste management company, and the US Consulate.

“In many circumstances we know they are not getting paid,” Matthews said.

Police also allege the two suspects were involved in setting fire to a vehicle in a community outside Toronto three days before the latest consulate shooting.

Two men, aged 18 and 19, were arrested in June as part of the investigation into the March shooting. Police said the men were recruited to carry out violent acts, but did not provide further details.

The announcement comes as Lula warns of foreign interference and polls show a tightening presidential race.

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has named conservative Congressman Alfredo Gaspar as his running mate, ending weeks of speculation over who would join his presidential ticket in October’s election against incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The announcement on Wednesday also highlighted the challenges facing Bolsonaro’s campaign, which has struggled to build alliances beyond his own Liberal Party and failed in an effort to recruit a woman to the ticket in hopes of broadening its appeal.

Gaspar, 55, has represented the northeastern state of Alagoas in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies since 2023 and served as its public security secretary.

Accepting the nomination, he described himself as “a simple person from the northeast” whose life had been defined by “hard work and honour”, saying he would work alongside Bolsonaro “to transform Brazil into a fair and decent place”.

Gaspar led a congressional investigation into Brazil’s National Social Security Institute (INSS), the agency that oversees the country’s public pension and social security system. Fabio Luis Lula da Silva, the president’s son, is under investigation over allegations that he received improper payments linked to an alleged pension fraud scheme involving that agency.

Political analyst Lucas de Aragao, a partner at consultancy Arko Advice, said the choice was surprising but gave Bolsonaro someone well-placed to attack Lula on an issue that has become politically sensitive.

“He has the authority to deal with an issue that is uncomfortable for Lula. He also speaks extensively about public security,” Aragao said.

Gaspar emerged as the Liberal Party’s preferred choice after several higher-profile figures courted by Bolsonaro, including Senator Tereza Cristina of the Progressive Party and former Caixa Economica Federal chief Daniella Marques of the Republicanos, failed to get their own parties to support them in joining the ticket.

Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, has struggled to expand his coalition, with several centre-right parties choosing to either back Lula’s broader coalition or remain neutral in the election in hopes of maximising their representation in Congress and appealing to anti-Bolsonaro voters in the country’s northeast.

A Quaest survey published on Wednesday found Lula leading Bolsonaro 44 percent to 39 percent in a simulated run-off, down from an eight-point lead in mid-July. In a first-round scenario, Lula was on 39 percent support to Bolsonaro’s 30 percent. If no candidate wins more than half the valid votes in the first round, the top two candidates advance to a run-off.

Launching his re-election campaign on Sunday, Lula cast the October vote as a battle to defend Brazil’s sovereignty amid growing concerns over foreign influence.

“Too many people are poking their fingers into our business. Too many people are interfering in our land. And that is going to stop,” he told supporters.

In July, Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who Lula said were being sent to “meddle” in the elections.

The diplomatic rift deepened on Tuesday, when the Trump administration said it was temporarily revoking the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington in response to Brasilia withholding approval for Trump’s ambassadorial nominee.

Lula has pointed to those tensions, along with Trump’s public support for Flavio Bolsonaro and US tariffs imposed on Brazilian goods, as evidence that Brazil’s sovereignty is under pressure.

“As long as I’m president, no one from outside will interfere in Brazilian elections,” Lula said on Wednesday.

An airport employee spotted the drone carrying what authorities described as ‘an unknown explosive device’.

German authorities have launched an investigation after police removed the detonator from an explosive device attached to a drone found at Leipzig/Halle airport.

The airport’s north runway reopened on Wednesday after being closed for about two hours, while the south runway remained out of use due to scheduled maintenance.

Several flights, including a passenger aircraft, were diverted to other airports after a flying object was reported near the airport shortly before midnight. Police deployed an explosives-disposal robot to examine the object.

Authorities later said an airport employee discovered the drone near the runway carrying what they described as “an unknown explosive device”. Police examined it and removed its detonator, but did not provide further details about the nature of the device.

The probe is being led by prosecutors in the eastern state of Saxony who are responsible for politically motivated and “extremist” crimes, although authorities have not identified any suspects or attributed responsibility.

Meanwhile, an apparent second flying object collided with a freight aircraft after it aborted its landing because the runway was closed.

The aircraft diverted to Hannover airport, where officials found slight damage during an inspection. Authorities have not said whether the second object was connected to the drone found near the runway.

Authorities said there was no danger to travellers or airport employees, and flights were operating normally on Wednesday.

Photos from the scene showed police technicians working with an explosives-disposal robot near a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft parked at the airport, although authorities have not indicated the aircraft was the intended target.

In 2011, the Philippines’ government promised to deliver one of the world’s most ambitious regreening projects.

The idea was simple: pay locals to restore forests and cultivate barren land by planting and tending millions of trees.

But 15 years on, a joint investigation by 101 East and Lighthouse Reports reveals how the National Greening Program has failed to meet most of its targets.

Satellite imagery shows that instead of being protected, some forests are being destroyed, while some Indigenous communities fear losing the land their livelihoods depend on.

101 East investigates how the Philippines is failing its forests.

CREDITS

For Al Jazeera

Natashya Gutierrez, reporter

Lee Ali, cinematographer

Badrul Hisham, picture editor

Susan Kim, digital producer

Nicole Revita, local producer

David Boyle, graphics

Liz Gooch, senior producer

Nick Olle, supervising producer

Sharon Roobol, executive producer

For Davao Today

Lucelle Bonzo, reporter/local producer

For Lighthouse Reports

Min Lawi Lun, lead data investigator

Eva Constantaras, data editor

Margot Gibbs, lead supply chain investigator

Viktoriia Maksymova, data fellow

Paul Nicholas Soriano, project manager

After a year and half of research and interviews, the BBC on Wednesday aired an explosive new documentary in which multiple women accused Oscar winner Jared Leto of sexual assault.

Directed by Alice McShane, “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” which debuted Wednesday in the U.K., revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by the 54-year-old actor and musician from four women, including a possible instance of statutory rape in California. In the film, a total of 10 women recount allegations of sexual assault, along with inappropriate text messages, phone calls and behavior that occurred from 2002 to 2016. Leto has denied the allegations.

To ensure the integrity of the documentary, the hour-long program was not announced ahead of time.

“Everything came out at once,” says producer Jessica Sartenaer, speaking from London over Zoom alongside McShane on Friday morning. “That was all very much part of the strategy because we didn’t want to leak anything before the investigation came out.”

McShane began working on the film after Los Angeles-based DJ Allie Teilz reshared in April 2025 her Facebook post from 2012 in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz described the actor as “Hollywood’s most persistent predator.” About 40 women contacted Teilz with their own allegations, according to Sartenaer. In June 2025, weekly newsletter Air Mail published accusations of impropriety against Leto by nine women, which he denied.

“I began ringing around trying to find the women who’d written into Allie,” McShane says. “When I was speaking to women, I realized there were other journalists on the trail. So I did think there was going to be something published relatively quickly, which we can’t compete with because we have a whole different set of considerations. It takes a lot longer to make.”

Social media was the main resource for finding people willing to speak on the record. The filmmakers say they discovered more than 120 separate allegations online.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean these are all women who want to speak about their experiences,” McShane says. “They’ve posted anonymously for a reason. It was a lot of hours spent digging through hundreds of people from across Leto’s life and career — people who had worked with the band, people in his acting life, his fashion life. We had an enormous spreadsheet. It was a really in-depth process.”

Ultimately, 10 women agreed to be interviewed on camera. The filmmakers offered each various options of anonymity depending on their level of comfort. None are completely anonymous, although only three used their real names. All of their real voices are heard, which McShane says is unusual.

Sartenaer adds, “The courage it takes to come forward and come up against a powerful man like Leto is immeasurable. It’s absolutely incredible what these women have done, and the anonymity decision is a very personal one. Right away, [the women had] this gut instinct about the level of anonymity that they would like.”

McShane drew on her past experiences, including making the 2023 Channel 4 documentary “Russell Brand: In Plain Sight,” which investigated comedian Russell Brand’s treatment of women, to guide the interview process.

“You really learn from a duty-of-care perspective how to best look after the women,” she says. “There’s always this balance of wanting to investigate the story, but also understanding these are people who have gone through incredibly painful experiences and they’re sharing very personal things with you. You never want to push. They are in control. You can never make these things happen. It has to come from the women.”

The initial investigation began in London and the filmmakers visited Los Angeles twice in the months that followed. The first interview was with a woman named Alex last fall. In the documentary, the former model recalls being invited to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert at London’s O2 in 2013 (Leto is the band’s frontman). She says his female assistant then brought her to an afterparty at the members’ club Shoreditch House. Although she was 19 at the time, she told Leto she was 17 to protect herself. She says the musician, then 41, replied, “Age is just a number, and, anyway, we’re in Europe.”

Alex was sent by Leto’s assistant to another afterparty at a nearby hotel, but Leto was the only one there, she says. Alex asked for a phone charger and cash for a taxi home, but was denied. When she asked if she could crash on the sofa in the hotel room, she says Leto threatened to rape her.

“Right from when we started investigating and started hearing from these women, [we were] noticing these patterns of behavior,” McShane says. “[Alex] is an extraordinary communicator. The women we were speaking to, all of them, are amazing storytellers, and resolute about telling their stories. Each time we spoke to somebody it reinforced the importance of getting it out.”

An explosive new documentary revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by actor and musician Jared Leto.

(Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images)

Sartenaer says Leto’s seeming fixation with women of a young age was something “we were interested in investigating right off because of the pattern we noticed in the reposts from Allie Teilz.”

“Many of them did mention that they were teenagers at the time of the alleged offenses,” she says. “We knew that was a thread to follow right from the beginning.”

One woman, named Clara in the documentary, spoke about having sex with Leto for the first time when she was 17 and he was 34. The encounter took place at his home in California. In the film, she describes having a conversation with Leto about the age of consent in the state. “He just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn’t a huge concern for him,” she says.

As the documentary points out, the age of consent in California is 18. An adult having sex with someone underage can constitute statutory rape. The filmmakers can’t comment on the law or whether there will be any legal repercussions for Leto. However, Mike Radford, executive producer at BBC Current Affairs, says what distinguishes “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” from prior investigations is that the film showcases alleged criminal conduct.

“That’s a different level of potential wrongdoing,” Radford says, speaking on the phone from London. “From that point of view, it becomes a more serious story, and it goes beyond misunderstanding to something more worrying.”

The filmmakers sent a “lengthy right of reply” letter to Leto and gave him two weeks to respond. They followed up several times with his team to no avail. It wasn’t until after the documentary aired that Leto denied the allegations in a statement, which was shared Wednesday with The Times.

“I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”

The documentary combines the interviews with reenactments and archival footage. Sartenaer says they had a “wealth of material” to pull from.

“There is so much content about him,” McShane adds. “And he’s so overtly sexual on the public stage. We’ve got examples in the film of him, like when he’s in the press room at the Oscars. Everything is packed with innuendo. There are examples where he’s being very inappropriate with young women on the stage. All of that placed next to these interviews can be so chilling and there were countless examples of that available to us.”

The filmmakers worked with a limited budget and a small team of three: McShane, Sartenaer and cinematographer Theo Tennant. In total, they spent a year and half working full time on “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”

Alice McShane, left, and Jessica Sartenaer interview entertainment journalist Maureen Ryan for “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”

(Theo Tennant / BBC)

The biggest challenge was the fact that “Hollywood is an impenetrable world,” Sartenaer says. The documentary features interviews with two people who worked with Leto speaking completely anonymously, but they were difficult to find and get on the record.

“It really took a very, very long time to have a breakthrough on the insider front [and] to actually get people to start talking with us,” Sartenaer says. “Hollywood is such a precarious place and it’s difficult to get into Hollywood, and I think once people are in, it’s probably a terrifying prospect. One foot stepped wrong could see them catapulted out of it again. We saw that nervousness in trying to speak with people. There’s a real culture of secrecy.”

Despite that, there are hopes that “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” will encourage other potential victims to speak out.

“The investigation is ongoing,” Sartenaer says. “What these women have done by coming forward [is commendable]. We think their courage will encourage other women to speak their truth, whoever it is about.”

Radford says the BBC is continuing its investigation into the allegations surrounding Leto.

“We would hope that should our investigation continue we would have enough material to make a subsequent documentary,” he says. “We’re not working on a documentary now because I’m not commissioned to do so. But it is our intention.”

At present, the BBC doesn’t have plans to air “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” in the U.S. It was offered to the U.S. market while in production, according to Radford, but not picked up for distribution.

“There was no legal reason it isn’t airing there,” Radford says. “In fact, the legal threat is much greater in the U.K. because the libel laws are tougher in the U.K. So there was no fear around putting it out in the U.S.”

McShane and Sartenaer have been heartened by the immediate response to the documentary. But they also hope the momentum will continue.

“I hope we keep seeing the reverberations and I hope the conversation doesn’t die,” McShane says. “Ten years ago at the height of #MeToo this would have really punched through. The general outrage has cooled a little bit when stories of this nature are published. But we hope the conversations stay strong because it’s really important people keep talking about this.”

Shon Barnes steps down amid questions over authorities’ handling of the shooting at a popular food festival.

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes has resigned less than a week after a deadly shooting at one of the US city’s largest summer festivals as questions have mounted over the authorities’ handling of its aftermath.

Mayor Katie Wilson announced Barnes’s resignation on Thursday and named Deputy Chief Andre Sayles, a police officer with more than two decades of law enforcement experience, as interim chief.

The move came after three people were killed and four injured, including a two-year-old boy, in a shootout on Sunday at the annual Bite of Seattle food festival.

Dozens of police officers were already providing security at the event, and court documents said at least one officer saw a 15-year-old suspect firing into the crowd and quickly persuaded him to surrender. Police are still searching for at least one other suspect.

The shooting unfolded while Barnes was attending a law enforcement conference outside the city in the northwestern state of Washington.

While Wilson praised officers’ response at the scene, saying it likely saved lives, she said the city’s communication with the public in the hours that followed fell short.

Police posted about the shooting on social media shortly after it began but then went nearly five hours without providing another public update, leaving residents uncertain about whether there was an ongoing threat. The city also failed to send alerts through its emergency notification system while Wilson herself mistakenly announced that two suspects had been taken into custody before later retracting the statement.

“What I did not fully understand in that moment was how little information had reached the public or the press since the incident began,” Wilson said in a video statement on Thursday. “Had I known that, I would have pushed for an immediate briefing rather than waiting for a press conference to be organised.”

Barnes, in a statement released by the mayor’s office, described serving as Seattle’s police chief as “an honor” and said he hoped the transition would allow the department to refocus on “addressing youth gun violence and preventing more tragedies”.

The resignation followed hours of speculation over Barnes’s future with supporters saying he had resisted calls from Wilson to step down. Earlier in the day, Barnes told The Seattle Times that whether he remained chief was “up to the mayor”.

Several Black community organisations, including the Seattle NAACP and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, urged Wilson not to make Barnes, the city’s second Black police chief, “a scapegoat for the complex challenges of public safety”.

They credited him with improving relations between police and the community, reducing gun violence and strengthening the department’s operations. Several City Council members also backed Barnes, pointing out that Seattle has now had four police chiefs in less than three years.

Barnes was appointed in late 2024 by former Mayor Bruce Harrell after leading the Madison Police Department in the northern state of Wisconsin. When Wilson, a democratic socialist who had previously supported defunding the police, took office this year, she kept Barnes in the role, signalling she did not plan to dramatically change the city’s public safety strategy.

Barnes’s resignation was announced as Seattle prepares for another major weekend event with the annual Seafair festival set to begin on Friday.

Ghana is facing an opioid addiction crisis, with a flood of cheap, synthetic drugs destroying lives and communities. In the northern city of Tamale, a group of civilians, frustrated by what they see as the inaction of local authorities, are taking the law into their own hands. The ‘anti-drug task force’ patrols the streets, seeking out dealers and users and meting out its own brand of justice. Some government officials condemn the vigilantes, while others embrace them as a useful tool in the fight against illegal drugs. As word spreads about the success of Tamale’s task force, some question whether civilians can properly replace state services – and warn about the dangers of vigilante justice.

DETROIT — Two people who attended a prestigious Michigan fine arts school reported conduct of a sexual nature by Jeffrey Epstein, a major donor, according to an investigation that also uncovered dozens of allegations spanning decades against nearly 50 other people.

Interlochen Center for the Arts operates a summer camp and performing arts school that draws students from around the world. It hired a law firm in 2024 to investigate reports of sexual abuse by faculty and staff. Subsequently, it expanded the work to include information about Epstein, the 66-year-old financier who killed himself in jail in 2019.

Interlochen removed Epstein’s name from a lodge after he was convicted of sex offenses in Florida in 2008. The building, renamed the Green Lake Lodge, recently was demolished after the U.S. Justice Department released millions of pages about Epstein that had been compiled over the years.

Sanghavi Law Office says it collected 70 accounts from alumni alleging “physical conduct of a sexual nature” by 47 faculty and staff members affiliated with Interlochen from the 1950s through the 2010s, most before 2000.

“The information gathered during this investigation is, simply, devastating,” the 97-page report says, noting that alumni reported grooming, flirting, sexual touching and sex.

Interlochen said it provided names of people accused of misconduct to Grand Traverse County authorities in northern Michigan to determine what steps, if any, might be taken. None are employed at the school and more than a third are dead.

“We are deeply sorry for the harm experienced by members of our community and extend our apologies to those impacted by abuse at Interlochen,” president Trey Davey and board chair Barrett Rollins said in a letter to the community posted online.

“While the vast majority of the incidents described in the investigation took place decades ago, and reports of abuse at Interlochen have significantly decreased over the past 25 years, the passage of time does not diminish the experiences of our alumni,” they said. “Sexual abuse committed by an adult in a position of power or trust against a student is wrong, then and now.”

Interlochen today “is fundamentally different from the institution described in this report,” Davey and Rollins wrote, with comprehensive safety policies and a changed culture.

Epstein, who played the bassoon, was an Interlochen camper in 1967. He donated more than $400,000 to the school between 1990 and 2003.

Two women told investigators that Epstein engaged in conduct of a sexual nature with them, one of them at the Interlochen lodge that bore his name. He brushed against her body “over her clothes, in a manner in which he indicated was accidental,” according to the report.

Epstein also paid for her to visit him in New York while she was a student. She said “every time he was ‘handsy’ with her, she would freeze until he would stop,” the report states.

The other woman said she gave Epstein a massage at his home, according to the report, and he may have asked her to remove her top. She said she had no further contact with Epstein or his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Outside of the school investigation, at least two Interlochen alumnae made allegations of grooming and abuse against Epstein and Maxwell, according to federal records and media reports. Their identities were not made public.

One testified against Maxwell in 2021 when she was convicted of sex trafficking. It’s unclear whether those women spoke to the law firm hired for the Interlochen investigation.

White writes for the Associated Press.

The business empire of Dodgers and Lakers owner Mark Walter reportedly is being probed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and securities regulators over $16 billion in possibly fraudulent loans.

The loans by two Delaware life insurers that Walter owns were made to companies tied to him or his TWG Global holding company but were not disclosed as “related party” transactions as required, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Related party transactions made by insurers are required to be reported to limit conflicts of interest and protect policyholders, who have an interest in the financial strength of their insurers.

Walter, 66, chief executive of Chicago investment firm Guggenheim Partners, led a group that included Todd Boehly — another Guggenheim executive — and Magic Johnson in acquiring the Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012, a record for a pro sports team at the time. Last year, Walter and TWG acquired a controlling stake in the Lakers at a $10 billion valuation, a new record. Walter also owns the Chelsea soccer team in the English Premier League.

Last week, the financial and sports mogul celebrated the Dodgers’ World Series victory at the White House. It was the second time in two years, following back-to-back World Series wins.

The majority of the money used to buy the Dodgers — more than $1 billion — came from insurance companies managed by Guggenheim Partners and controlled by Walter, the Times has reported.

A number of state insurance regulators investigated the purchase in 2014 and found no irregularities, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2020.

Guggenheim Partners got into the insurance business after America’s 2008 financial crisis, spotting investment opportunities. Walter figured he could increase the returns insurers got on their typical purchases of corporate bonds by connecting them to his deal pipeline, according to the Wall Street Journal, which found that five insurers had provided more than $10 billion in deal funding over the years.

The current probe began after an internal whistleblower filed a complaint questioning the way Walter’s asset-management firm, Guggenheim Investments, booked revenue associated with insurers, the Journal reported this week, and FBI agents seized at least one cellphone related to that probe.

The investigation then spread to examining $16 billion in loans, which were passed through a third party before being received by the companies tied to Walter or TWG, the Journal reported, adding that authorities are trying to determine whether that amounted to fraud, citing an unnamed source.

The insurers, Delaware Life Insurance and its affiliate Clear Spring Life and Annuity, disclosed the investigations in June regulatory filings. Delaware Life, which earlier had stated affiliated investments amounted to only about $1 billion, or 3% of its portfolio, increased that number to $16 billion.

Delaware Life executives told one credit rating firm they were unaware the loans were made to entities tied to Walter, the Journal reported. The companies said they received grand jury subpoenas in February related to an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and that the Securities and Exchange Commission also is conducting a parallel investigation.

Investigations conducted by prosecutors and securities regulators often result in no action.

The Dodgers, TWG and Guggenheim did not immediately respond to messages for comment.

A TWG spokesperson told the Journal that “Mark Walter and TWG have always acted in good faith,” are cooperating with authorities and are “confident these matters will be resolved favorably.”

After conducting an internal investigation, Delaware Life said it would restructure some related-party loans, address its internal control deficiencies and moderate its business plan, according to S&P Global. While the ratings agency is maintaining its “A-” financial strength and credit ratings of Delaware Life, it reduced its outlook to “negative” because of possible higher credit risk following changes to the insurer’s portfolio.

“In addition, such outcomes could weaken Delaware Life’s regulatory relationships and damage its reputation, which could erode its competitive position,” S&P said.

“Our capital position and liquidity remain strong, and our financial strength ratings are unchanged,” Group 1001, the insurers’ parent company, said in a statement.

“We remain focused on delivering exceptional value and service to our contract and policyholders and their financial representatives,” the statement added.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

Regulator proposes checks on 453 US-registered jets over seats that may be incorrectly installed.

The US aviation authority has warned that seats on hundreds of Boeing 737 MAX planes could have been installed incorrectly and may require inspection.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday that the issue relates to 453 jets registered in the US and proposed requiring airlines to inspect the seats.

If not installed correctly, the seats could come loose during an emergency landing and “injure passengers and crew members”, the FAA said, adding that they could also “block the aisle and slow an evacuation”.

The proposed order would apply only to US-registered planes because the FAA does not regulate foreign airlines.

Regulators in other countries, however, often follow FAA orders when the issue affects aircraft operating in their markets.

A Boeing spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that the company had issued guidance to operators ‌on the matter in December 2025.

“We support the FAA making that guidance mandatory,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The warning adds to years of scrutiny of Boeing’s safety record.

A cabin panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in January 2024, forcing an emergency landing and prompting the FAA to ground 171 jets.

Investigators later found that the panel was missing four key bolts.

The scrutiny intensified after a spate of other accidents around the world, as well as the death of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett in March 2024 while he was providing evidence for a safety lawsuit against the firm.

In June 2025, the US National Transportation Safety Board said Boeing had failed to provide adequate training, guidance and oversight to prevent the Alaska Airlines incident.

There are nearly 2,300 737 MAX jets operating around the world, including 823 in the US, according to aviation advisory and intelligence firm IBA.

Lawyers for the ICC’s ousted Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan say he is the victim of a political witchhunt, motivated by his decision to go after Israeli leaders for war crimes. Khan was removed from office over sexual assault allegations. Soraya Lennie explains.

Telegram has removed accounts linked to a Hausa-language network that openly sold child sexual abuse material across northern Nigeria, following an inquiry by HumAngle, but the platform has not explained how the network survived repeated suspensions over three months before our investigation was published.

In an email response to HumAngle, a Telegram spokesperson confirmed that moderators had “processed the content reported and removed anything they could identify as breaching our terms.” The platform also provided a formal statement defending its broader moderation record, saying it had removed more than 305,000 groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026 alone.

“The distribution of CSAM  is explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service and we use industry-leading moderation techniques to remove it,” the statement read.

The response came hours after HumAngle published an investigation documenting a network of Hausa-language Telegram channels, X accounts, and TikTok profiles selling access to child sexual abuse material through paid VIP groups priced at up to ₦100,000, distributing non-consensual intimate videos of women, and advertising sexual services using photographs stolen from unsuspecting social media users. The investigation, published on July 23, traced two central operators identified through payment records as Fatima Mahmud, who used the name “Teema” or “TeemaTV,” and Khadijah Adamu, who operated under the identities “Khadeeja Deejah,” “Deejah,” “Nanadady,” and “Deharjah.”

Before publication, HumAngle sent Telegram a detailed request for comment, summarising the findings and posing specific questions about the platform’s moderation of Hausa-language content and its capacity to detect coordinated networks of replacement channels. The reply arrived hours after publication.

Alongside the statement to HumAngle, Telegram said it scans all media uploaded to its public platform against a hash database of previously removed Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), supplemented with datasets from the Internet Watch Foundation and the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre. The platform added that it processes CSAM reports from authorities and NGOs around the world.

Those measures, if applied consistently, should in theory have flagged material within the network HumAngle documented. But the investigation found that administrators avoided posting child sexual abuse material directly on public channels, instead using screen records and screenshots of media catalogues as proof of possession before directing paying customers into private conversations. That structure, common across similar networks documented by investigations in India, Sudan, Malaysia, and Brazil, appears designed to stay one step ahead of hash-matching tools that identify known material rather than advertisements for it.

What was taken down

HumAngle’s own review found that most, although not all, of the accounts and channels documented in the original investigation had been taken down. Fatima Mahmud’s administrator account, @teematv2, was no longer active, along with several of her channels, including @teematv7 and @teematv9, and other successive replacements identified during the monitoring period. 

One channel, @teematv8, remained accessible after the takedowns, however. On X, Fatima’s account also remains active.

Within the wider network, HumAngle also identified accounts tied to Khadijah Adamu, including @Deekano and @realsadiyaharka, as well as channels operating as @arewagidanharka1 and @gidanharkaxx. HumAngle shared these identifiers with Telegram directly, while noting that the ecosystem documented in the original investigation was larger than what could be fully captured during three months of monitoring, and that additional accounts likely remain. At the time of publishing this report, Khadija Adamu remains active.

What the response does not address

Telegram’s statement points to a large-scale, ongoing moderation effort. They sit, however, alongside a specific finding from the original investigation: the network, monitored for three months, rebuilt through replacement accounts faster than individual removals could disrupt it, with no public indication that Telegram’s existing systems had identified it as a coordinated network rather than a series of isolated violations. 

Telegram did not address HumAngle’s questions about what proactive measures exist to detect coordinated replacement networks, the moderation capacity the platform applies to Hausa-language content specifically, whether any of the documented channels had been previously reported before HumAngle’s inquiry, or whether the platform coordinates with Nigerian authorities such as the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) when CSAM-related accounts are removed.

HumAngle’s requests for comment to X and to NAPTIP remain outstanding at the time of publication.

A transcript from an employment discrimination lawsuit filed by former JSerra girls’ basketball coach Chyanne Butler indicates the school could be facing a Southern Section investigation for CIF rules violations.

“We are aware of the transcripts and the trial,” Southern Section spokesman Thom Simmons said Friday.

JSerra has “no comment” while the case continues, a school spokesman said.

Butler alleged employment discrimination after being dismissed in January of 2025. A jury trial earlier this year resulted in a hung jury over an allegation of gender discrimination and a new trial is scheduled for Aug. 24 in Orange County Superior Court with Judge David O Carter presiding. Allegations of race discrimination and a sexual harassment claim against an assistant coach were dismissed.

JSerra has not self-reported any CIF violations even though in the first trial, an assistant coach testified under oath about recruiting a player from another school and then providing family expenses including “medical insurance, medical bills, groceries, toiletries, incidentals, basketball shoes.”

That would be a violation of CIF rules.

The Southern Section usually sends allegations of rules violations back to the school to investigate.

Butler is represented by attorney Tim Lawson, who deposed JSerra officials.

“Top Chef” alum and popular Food Network host Eric Adjepong has been ordered to stay away from his 7-year-old daughter following an investigation into abuse claims.

According to the Washington Post, a Maryland judge found that “there is a preponderance” of evidence to believe Adjepong physically abused his daughter, leading to a protective order that bars the celebrity chef from contacting or being alone with his daughter until he completes parenting courses and reunification therapy with the child.

Adjepong’s former wife, Janell Davis-Mack, posted a screenshot of the case information on Instagram last week, writing that she and her daughter had been quiet long enough.

“My daughter has watched me rebuild our life focused on our safety after I divorced her father four years ago,” she wrote. “I’ve also taught her about body autonomy, consent, boundaries, and to tell the trusted adults around her when she feels unsafe.

“My daughter was just granted a protective order against her father because she was brave enough to speak up against who should have been one of the most trusted adults in her life.

“Unfortunately for him — I’ll never stop believing her, protecting her, or reminding her that her voice matters.”

Judge Maurice C. Frazier issued the protective order against Adjepong on July 10; it will remain in place until July 10, 2027. The James Beard-nominated chef is mandated not to contact, harass, abuse or threaten to abuse his daughter or former wife. While the order is in place, Adjepong can have supervised visits with his daughter.

In May, Davis-Mack filed a petition in Howard County, Maryland, seeking protection for her daughter from Adjepong, citing alleged child abuse. Per the Washington Post, Davis-Mack claimed that a nurse who examined their daughter filed a report with the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, which launched an investigation by D.C. police.

A spokesman for D.C. police told the Washington Post that its Youth Investigations Branch was prompted to investigate claims of “sexual abuse” but that detectives found no probable cause that sexual abuse had taken place and referred the case back to Child and Family Services. On Wednesday, Adjepong posted what appeared to be a screenshot of email correspondence from the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency stating that, on April 29, they received a report of potential neglect or abuse, investigated the claims and found sexual abuse claims “unfounded.”

“I am aware of recent media inquiries concerning a protective order entered on July 10, 2026,” the chef wrote alongside the screenshot. “Because this matter involves my young daughter, whom I love deeply, I intend to protect her privacy and will not discuss the underlying allegations or other sensitive family matters publicly other than to say that these allegations arose in the context of a long running divorce and custody proceeding, which finally concluded on June 2, 2026.

“The Court’s protective order followed careful reviews by law enforcement and the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency (‘CFSA’). The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department closed its investigation without filing charges. CFSA concluded its investigation with an ‘unfounded’ disposition, which its report defines as not true.

“I have the utmost respect for the Circuit Court that issued the protective order and am strictly complying with every facet of the order, which is designed to ensure that my daughter is safe and treated respectfully, and to ensure her reunification with her father. The Judge eloquently described the nature of my relationship with her at the hearing. My foremost concern is my daughter’s well-being. It is my fervent hope that in the future my ex-wife and I can resolve these matters privately and through the proper legal channels, rather than in the press, if only for the well-being of our daughter.”

OpenAI has revealed that one of its artificial intelligence models independently stole login credentials and hacked into another technology company’s system, in what is widely seen as one of the first known incidents of AI systems acting autonomously.

“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” CEO Sam Altman posted on X on Tuesday.

The incident comes as calls mount from technology rights advocates for stricter guardrails on rapidly evolving AI systems.

They have grown so powerful in a short span of time that alarming phenomena such as deepfakes and sophisticated cyberscams are becoming the norm.

Earlier this year, a number of software engineers quit their jobs at top companies such as Anthropic and AI in protest against how the technologies are being built.

“AI is accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities,” OpenAI said in a lengthy statement on Tuesday that detailed the latest incident.

“The primary lesson from this incident is that model security and safety must keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities.”

Here’s what we know about the breach:

What has happened?

OpenAI said two of its models found their way out of an isolated, no-internet access environment – or a sandbox – and hacked into the systems of tech company Hugging Face on their own.

The models involved are the latest GPT-5.6 Sol model and an unreleased model the company said is “even more capable,” than its latest version.

Hugging Face hosts openly sourced AI models and resources. The two OpenAI agents discovered vulnerabilities in Hugging Face’s servers and proceeded to steal login details and then hack into the company’s systems.

The incident occurred during an OpenAI internal testing session designed to assess the models’ cybersecurity capabilities. OpenAI had removed standard safety measures for the test.

Both sought to cheat their way through a problem during the test, OpenAI said. They went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation”.

OpenAI’s security team detected the unusual activity internally, but details of the breach came to light following a joint investigation by both companies.

What has Hugging Face said?

Hugging Face disclosed last Thursday that its servers were hacked by an unknown but sophisticated agent acting on its own. The company discovered the breach through its own AI-assisted detection.

“This one was different from anything we had handled before in one important way: it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system,” the company said.

Following OpenAI’s disclosure that its models were involved in the breach, both sides conducted an ongoing joint investigation this week.

“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent. Turns out it did!” CEO Clement Delangue posted on X on Tuesday.

Hugging Face’s staff “strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part,” Delangue added, referring to OpenAI.

Why does this matter?

Cybersecurity experts have previously sounded the alarm over the potential, extreme capabilities of AI systems and the dangers they pose.

But until now, there have been few real-life cases proving those concerns like this one.

Many warn that incidents like these could become commonplace and that AI systems pose a threat to financial, security and other sensitive data systems.

OpenAI revealed in a separate incident earlier this week that the unreleased, more powerful model had escaped an isolated environment during another test.

Anthropic, OpenAI’s rival, had similar issues with its most powerful agent to date, the Claude Mythos Preview model.

During a stress test of an early version, the model found its way out of a sandbox, gained internet access and emailed the supervising researcher that it had escaped and then wiped evidence of its activity. Anthropic halted a planned public release of the model afterwards.

In April, the US Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department convened a meeting with bank CEOs where officials warned about the cybersecurity risks posed by Mythos. Canada’s federal banking regulator has also warned financial institutions about the model’s capabilities.

The OpenAI breach also appears to make the case for companies like Hugging Face, which rely on open source systems, as opposed to more secretive AI development platforms like OpenAI.

“This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we’ve long believed: AI safety won’t be solved by any single company working in secret,” Hugging Face’s Delangue was quoted as saying in OpenAI’s statement.

“It will be solved in the open, collaboratively, with broad access to AI for every defender, everywhere,” he added.

Police say a possible political motive is under investigation in the killing of the ex-minister.

Prosecutors in the United Kingdom have charged a 28-year-old man with the murder of Ann Widdecombe, a former government minister and member of the far-right Reform UK party.

Joshua Kerry was charged on Monday and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home near Dartmoor National Park in southwest England on July 9, a day after she missed a television interview. Police said she had been deliberately targeted but did not disclose how she died, citing only “serious injuries”.

Kerry, who is from Rotherham in northern England, was arrested on July 11. He was initially held on suspicion of murder until evidence uncovered while he was in custody led to his additional arrest on “terror” charges.

National Counterterrorism Policing head Laurence Taylor said that the exact motive was still being established.

“Given [Widdecombe’s] profile and the targeted nature of the attack, determining the motivation, including any possible political motivation, remains an active avenue of investigation,” Taylor said.

Widdecombe served as a Conservative member of parliament from 1987 until 2010 and was known for her right-wing political stances.

She later joined the Brexit Party, winning a seat in the European Parliament, and moved to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party after the UK left the European Union.

The incident adds to mounting concerns over political violence in the UK. The past decade has seen the murders of two sitting members of parliament. Labour’s Jo Cox, shot and stabbed in 2016 by a far-right nationalist, and Conservative David Amess, stabbed to death in 2021 by a man inspired by ISIL (ISIS).

The United States has attacked Iran for a ninth consecutive night after the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) announced a US soldier had died in northern Iraq in a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone.

Here is what happened over Sunday night and Monday morning and what officials on both sides have said:

Where was Iran attacked?

CENTCOM announced in a statement on X that it completed the ninth wave of attacks against Iran at 02:00 GMT on Monday.

It said it “targeted Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz”.

The US military did not provide details about the actual sites hit in Iran.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two oil tankers “exploded” and were halted in the southern Strait of Hormuz late on Sunday, according to a report by the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency on Monday.

The IRGC stated the vessels were trying to transit through the strategic waterway under what it described as US coercion.

“This passage is unsafe for the transport of chemical fertiliser or even a single drop of oil and gas,” the group warned, adding that the corridor would remain unsafe as long as US military operations in the region continue.

An MQ-9 drone was intercepted and shot down over Eslamabad-e Gharb in western Iran’s Kermanshah province, according to the Mehr News Agency on Monday.

Mehr said the drone was targeted by an advanced air defence system operated by the IRGC aerospace force.

Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim News Agency reported on Monday that US strikes targeted an area in the town of Khormoj in southwestern Iran. It quoted a local official.

Where did Iran strike, and where were warnings issued?

Jordan: The IRGC said on Monday that it launched ballistic missiles at US C-17 transport planes and P-8 aircraft at Aqaba airport, claiming several were heavily damaged. In a statement carried by the state-controlled IRIB broadcaster, the IRGC also said 20 hangars housing US forces in the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq were destroyed.

Bahrain: The US embassy in Bahrain said it has information suggesting Iran may seek to target unspecified locations in central Manama. It urged Americans to remain vigilant, follow instructions from local authorities and immediately seek shelter if warning sirens sound or explosions are heard.

US soldier in Iraq: A US service member was killed in northern Iraq on Saturday during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from an Iranian drone, CENTCOM said.

What happened in the Strait of Hormuz?

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency reported late on Sunday that a vessel about 8 nautical miles (15km) northwest of Kumzar, Oman, had caught fire.

It is unclear whether this happened due to an attack by Iran. The UKMTO said the cause of the fire had not been verified and advised vessels in the area to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity while authorities investigate.

What have Iranian and American leaders said?

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US is hitting Iran to honour American service members who have been killed.

“We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honour of the, probably three, it’s probably three great patriots,” Trump told reporters as he returned to Washington, DC, after the World Cup final in New Jersey. At least two US soldiers were killed in Jordan last week after Iranian missiles struck a US base there, and the third soldier Trump referred to was killed in Iraq during the detonation of the Iranian drone.

“We feel very badly,” he said when asked about the military fatalities, adding that those who died were fighting so “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with state media that Tehran would end the war with the US when it had “the upper hand in the field”, local news reported on Monday.

Talking with the IRNA news agency, Araghchi said the most critical decision in crisis management was identifying the precise moment to halt hostilities and begin negotiations.

“The end of the war is possible either through absolute military victory or through negotiations. The right time to negotiate is precisely when you have achieved a reliable field and strategic achievement on the military front,” Araghchi said.

“You cannot take risks with the lives of the people and the fate of the entire country. Decisions must be made based on accurate and complete calculations,” Araghchi said.

Influencer brothers Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate have been arrested in Miami, in the US state of Florida, after prosecutors in the United Kingdom brought further rape and sex trafficking charges against them.

The brothers were taken into custody on Saturday on a sealed warrant, the United States Marshals Service said, placing the US at the centre of an international legal saga that has stretched from Romania to the UK.

Raised in the UK, the Tate brothers hold dual US and UK citizenship. The UK government says it will seek their extradition to face 38 new charges of rape, sex trafficking and assault.

Here is what we know about the Tate brothers, their arrest and the possibility of extradition:

Who are the Tate Brothers?

Andrew, 39, and Tristan, 38, are former professional kickboxers. They are known for their social media empire promoting wealth, male dominance and misogyny.

Andrew is one of the most prominent proponents of the so-called “manosphere” network of communities, many of them online, that focus on traditional masculinity, antifeminism and self-improvement. He promotes his divisive views, often incorporating alpha-male and aggressively misogynistic themes, to millions on social media, including 10.8 million followers on X.

Andrew has been banned from platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for violating hate speech guidelines. He also runs an online academy where he says he teaches young men how to get rich and attract women.

The brothers are also avid supporters of US President Donald Trump.

What are the new charges against the Tates?

British prosecutors say the 59 new charges – 42 against Andrew and 17 against Tristan – relate to alleged offences that took place between 2010 and 2017.

They said Andrew was charged with seven further counts of rape, three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, three counts of assault, and 19 charges for offences relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography.

Tristan was charged with one count of sexual assault, two counts of rape and three counts of arranging or facilitating sex trafficking.

“We have decided to prosecute Andrew and Tristan Tate for further offences including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation and offences relating to indecent images of a child,” the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a statement.

Since the arrest warrant was sealed, US Marshals did not disclose the charges on which the Tate brothers were arrested.

Their lawyer, Joseph McBride, said the brothers “are innocent”.

“We are confident that once a competent judge sees the facts, and once the Department of Justice confronts this egregious abuse of its own authority, Andrew and Tristan Tate will walk free,” McBride said in a statement.

What are the other charges against the brothers?

Andrew and Tristan already face multiple charges in the UK and Romania, where they moved to in 2016.

Four women have accused Andrew of physical and sexual abuse.

The claimants, who have been granted anonymity, allege the elder Tate subjected them to physical or sexual violence between 2013 and 2015. Two say they were in an intimate relationship with him, while two worked for his online webcam business.

In June, a UK High Court judge threw out a legal bid by the Tates to be told the names of their accusers.

In Romania, the siblings were arrested in late 2022 along with two Romanian women. The four were accused of participating in criminal schemes to lure women for sexual exploitation. They denied the allegations and the Romanian case has not gone forward because of legal and procedural problems. The case has not been closed.

Andrew has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors in Romania have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him.

The Tate brothers are also accused of tax evasion and money laundering in the UK.

The UK CPS said it is seeking their extradition.

“The CPS has requested the extradition of the Tates from the US,” it said, adding that the latest charges stem from receipt of new evidence from Bedfordshire police that brings the total number of alleged victims in the Tates’ case to seven.

The British police previously sought the Tates’ extradition to the UK once their legal proceedings in Romania concluded.

But in February 2025, they were allowed to leave Romania after authorities lifted travel restrictions, and they flew to Florida on a private jet.

Romania’s foreign minister said at the time that a US official in the Trump administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania.

Trump said he knew “nothing about” the case when asked if his administration pressured the Romanian government to release the Tates.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division was created in 1957 with an initial focus on combating racial inequality and protecting voting rights.

But in the first two years of President Trump’s second term, its mission has been reimagined.

Now, the division is focused on combating diversity initiatives, rolling back pro-transgender policies and rooting out allegations of election fraud.

It had for decades investigated police departments for using excessive force. Now it investigates police departments with excessive delays in approving gun permits.

California has served as the division’s laboratory for all of these changes, or, as one former civil rights staffer put it, its “punching bag.”

The civil rights division has been involved in twice as many cases in California as in any other state, according to a Times analysis of cases brought by the Justice Department.

And an examination of press statements by the civil rights division shows that California has accounted for a higher proportion of actions in the second Trump administration than during the same time period in the Biden administration.

The division is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Californian and a conservative legal crusader, who made her name bringing legal challenges against many of the state’s institutions and once served as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party.

More recently, she was a leading legal figure in challenges to COVID-19 mandates and has shown steadfast support for Trump; her firm represented him in his successful 2024 fight to remain on the ballot in Colorado.

The Times spoke with a dozen former attorneys in the division, nearly all of whom said that the division has taken on a more partisan approach under Dhillon’s leadership and that the changes in the second Trump administration are far more dramatic than anything that occurred during Trump’s first term.

“It is an ideological civil rights division in a way that we’ve never seen before,” said Regan Rush, the former chief of the division’s special litigation section, which largely focused on investigations into police departments and prisons.

Rush is now director of the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward, a nonprofit group that tracks the division’s activities.

In response to questions from The Times, Dhillon wrote that the division’s actions aren’t political.

“This Department speaks plainly and directly when we identify violations of federal law. Being clear about violations of federal civil rights law isn’t political or combative — it’s transparent,” Dhillon said. “I stand behind the work we’ve done since I took over the Civil Rights Division.”

While California produced President Reagan — a hero on the right who as governor frequently sparred with UC Berkeley, as Dillon does today — the state has now become, in conservative circles, a symbol of everything wrong in America.

“If there’s any state that is the antithesis of the Trump administration, it’s California,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley.

Dhillon said the division brings cases wherever it sees violations of federal law.

“California is where some of the most significant violations of federal civil rights law have occurred, as our enforcement actions demonstrate,” she said.

Former attorneys in the division said the desire to target California was obvious to them.

As one example, the division has announced more than a dozen actions involving universities in California, largely focused on allegations of antisemitism — the subject of an earlier Trump executive order — at University of California campuses and alleged racial preferences in hiring in the UC system and in the admissions practices at several medical schools in the state.

The division concluded that the medical schools at UC Davis and UCLA racially discriminated against white and Asian applicants and that UCLA failed to adequately respond to complaints of antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students. Other investigations are ongoing.

A pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA in 2024.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

“We were never explicitly told that California institutions are of a particular interest, but it was something that was very easy to notice,” said Ejaz Baluch, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on the employment litigation team that looked into allegations that antisemitism at UC campuses had created a hostile work environment.

Trump’s priorities

Dhillon told podcast host Michael Malice in May that she was in “constant contact” with the White House on a “daily, sometimes several-times-a-day basis.”

That represents a major shift from how the division previously operated, said her predecessor, Kristen Clarke, who was the assistant attorney general overseeing the division during the Biden administration.

“There was a fairly sturdy and necessary wall between the Justice Department and the White House,” Clarke said. “This is a complete 180.”

Dhillon has said she sees her job as enforcing civil rights law through the lens of Trump’s executive orders, which took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, immigration and pro-transgender policies, among other conservative priorities.

She said that while the division “operates within the administration’s law enforcement priorities … investigative and prosecutorial decisions, including which matters to pursue and how, are made by the Division based on the law and the facts.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said that the division’s changes under Dhillon represent a stark shift from how it operated in the past.

“It is now very much the anti-civil rights department,” Schiff said. “We’re living in this upside-down world where departments that were set up for one purpose are acting in a way that’s antithetical to the purpose of the department.”

Dhillon said that under her leadership, the division “enforces federal civil rights laws evenhandedly, on behalf of all Americans.

“That includes protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, standing against illegal race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education.”

Her reorientation of the division led to a mass exodus of career staff — nearly three-quarters of the roughly 400 attorneys who were there at the beginning of 2025, by Dhillon’s telling.

That’s far more departures than in the first Trump administration.

“I said, ‘My way or the highway,’ and my way isn’t my way, it’s President Trump’s way,” Dhillon told Malice.

Dhillon told The Times that the division has added 100 new lawyers and staff in the last 15 months and plans to hire 100 more.

Prisons and police

As the division has shifted its focus to align with the priorities laid out in Trump’s executive orders, it has shut down a number of cases brought during prior administrations.

Former attorneys in the division worry that other preexisting cases are languishing.

In March, the division opened an investigation into two women’s prisons in California — California Institution for Women in Chino and the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, 35 miles northwest of Fresno — over whether they had violated the rights of other female inmates by housing transgender women in the facilities.

“There have been allegations of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of males in the women’s prison,” the Justice Department said in announcing the investigation, misgendering transgender inmates.

Former attorneys in the division said that leadership also sought to open an investigation into the impact of transgender housing policies on juvenile institutions in California, but didn’t find sufficient evidence to warrant opening an investigation.

The investigation into transgender inmates at the women’s prisons came as a prior investigation into the same two prisons remains unresolved over reports from hundreds of women that they had been sexually abused by guards, even as evidence supporting the allegations mounts.

Separate from the civil rights investigation, one of the former guards at the Chowchilla facility was found guilty in January 2025 of more than 60 counts of sexual abuse of inmates and sentenced to 224 years in prison.

“We haven’t seen any kind of relief,” said Megan Marks, former deputy chief in the division’s special litigation section and the deputy director and managing editor for the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward.

Dhillon said both investigations into the two women’s prisons are “being pursued vigorously and simultaneously.”

For the last three decades, the division has investigated allegations of police misconduct, authority it was granted by Congress after the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers.

But in the second Trump administration, the division has closed a number of active police investigations and moved away from what Dhillon characterized to Malice as a “standing order to persecute police departments and impose nonsense restrictions on them.”

Instead, the division has brought actions against law enforcement agencies deemed to have failed to protect the rights of gun owners.

California was the first target.

The division filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in September 2025, alleging that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had systemically denied people their 2nd Amendment rights because of long delays in approving concealed carry permits.

Last month, it filed a second gun rights lawsuit in California, this time against the state and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, over the state’s ban on Glock pistols, which acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche characterized as a “blatant trampling of our rights by the California government.”

Changing tone

Former attorneys in the civil rights division say the pugnacious tone in press releases, such as the one announcing the lawsuit opposing the Glock ban, and in numerous social media posts by Dhillon announcing her intent to open investigations, represents a major shift from how the department has operated in the past.

“What really stands out more than any other civil rights division is how much they demonize and personalize,” said Christy Lopez, a former attorney in the division who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. “We tried to build rapport with the jurisdiction.”

Dhillon defended the approach she and the division have taken.

“Our job is to enforce the law and ensure compliance,” Dhillon said. “That includes public messaging to ensure the public is both aware of what the law requires and knows when others violate the law. We’ve designed our messaging strategy with this goal in mind, and we are pleased with the effect it’s had.”

Numerous former lawyers in the division also said that the current leadership has put its thumb on the scale at the outset of investigations.

“We were basically fed an answer before we conducted an investigation, which is the total antithesis of how these investigations are supposed to be conducted,” said one former Justice Department attorney who worked on the investigation into allegations of antisemitism in the UC system and requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Attorneys visited UC Berkeley and UC Davis, but found enough evidence only at UCLA to bring a lawsuit on claims that antisemitism created a hostile work environment.

One of Dhillon’s early top deputies, former Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates, denied that politics played a role in decision-making in his time in the division.

“We evaluated every case on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “There was nothing about politics that influenced any of that.”

Gates, who left the department in November, is now the Republican candidate challenging Bonta to be state attorney general.

Dhillon said to The Times that she is “proud of the record we’ve built” and believes the division has been “active and effective.”

But its former leaders worry that with the exodus of attorneys and the changing nature of the division’s approach, it has lost the ability to fulfill its mission.

“Where does it leave the division today?” said Clarke, its former leader. “It’s a broken agency not able to adequately stand up and defend the civil rights of all Americans.”