raises

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral race was built on a promise of hope and political change, a message that is resonating loudly with the people in Uganda, where he was born.

The 34-year-old leftist’s decisive win in the United States’ largest metropolis on Wednesday was celebrated by many in Uganda’s capital Kampala, the city where Mamdani was born in 1991.

For many Ugandans, the unlikely rise of Mamdani – a young Muslim with roots in Africa and South Asia – in the world’s most powerful democracy carries an inspirational message in a country where an authoritarian leader has been ruling since even before Mamdani was born.

Uganda’s 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni is seeking a seventh term in January elections as he looks to extend his nearly 40-year rule. He has rejected calls to retire, leading to fears of a volatile political transition.

“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” Joel Ssenyonyi, a 38-year-old opposition leader in the Parliament of Uganda, told The Associated Press.

He said that while Ugandans, who are facing repressive political conditions, had “a long way to get there”, Mamdani’s success “inspires us”.

Mamdani left Uganda when he was five to follow his father, political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, to South Africa, and later moved to the US. He kept his Ugandan citizenship even after he became a naturalised US citizen in 2018, according to AP.

The family maintains a home in Kampala, to which they regularly return and visited earlier this year to celebrate Mamdani’s marriage.

‘We celebrate and draw strength’

While Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has vowed to tackle inequality and push back against the xenophobic rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, opposition politicians in Uganda face different challenges.

Museveni has been cracking down on his opponents ahead of next year’s elections, as he has in the lead-up to previous polls.

In November last year, veteran opposition figure Kizza Besigye, who has stood against Museveni in four elections, and his aide, Obeid Lutale, were abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, before being arraigned in a military court in Kampala on treason charges. The pair have since repeatedly been denied bail, despite concerns raised by the United Nations’ human rights officials.

Other opposition figures have also faced crackdowns.

Tens of supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, led by 43-year-old entertainer Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, have been convicted by Uganda’s military courts for various offences.

“From Uganda, we celebrate and draw strength from your example as we work to build a country where every citizen can realise their grandest dreams regardless of means and background,” Wine wrote on X as he sent his “hearty congratulations” to Mamdani.

Robert Kabushenga, a retired Ugandan media executive who is friendly with the Mamdani family, told AP that Mamdani’s win was “a beacon of hope” for those fighting for change in Uganda, especially the younger generations.

Describing the new mayor-elect as belonging to “a tradition of very honest and clear thinkers who are willing to reimagine … politics”, Kabushenga said Mamdani’s victory underlined that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way”.

Okello Ogwang, an academic who once worked with Mamdani’s father at Kampala’s Makerere University, said his son’s success was an instructive reminder to Uganda “that we should invest in the youth”.

“He’s coming from here,” he said. “If we don’t invest in our youth, we are wasting our time.”

Anthony Kirabo, a 22-year-old psychology student at Makerere University, said Mamdani’s win “makes me feel good and proud of my country because it shows that Uganda can produce some good leaders”.

“Seeing Zohran up there, I feel like I can also make it,” he said.

NASHVILLE — The Chargers won the battle but lost the warrior.

They held off the Tennessee Titans 27-20, but saw their outstanding left tackle Joe Alt go down with the same injured ankle that sidelined him earlier this season.

It was a troubling and ominous blow Sunday to a franchise that’s in a constant state of reshuffling its offensive line and unable to sufficiently protect quarterback Justin Herbert. Before losing Alt, the Chargers lost right tackle Bobby Hart to what they called a groin injury (but looked to be a hurt leg).

On a cool and overcast day, the Chargers had enough to get past the one-win Titans — the Chargers (6-3) were favored by 9½ points — but will face far stiffer competition in the second half of the season. The Titans haven’t won at home since last Nov. 4.

Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh helps offensive tackle Bobby Hart off the field in the first half.

(John Amis / Associated Press)

Herbert, who ran for 62 yards in the Week 8 win over Minnesota, again provided the bulk of the Chargers’ running game. He led all rushers with 57 yards in nine carries, including a one-yard touchdown.

The Titans fired coach Brian Callahan last month after the team got off to a 1-5 start, putting in place interim coach Mike McCoy, who was head coach of the San Diego Chargers from 2013 to 2016.

The Chargers absorbed a huge blow in the second quarter when Alt went down with an ankle injury, the same ankle that caused him to miss three games earlier this season. Alt, the best player on the offensive line, had returned for the Week 8 game against Minnesota and his presence was noticeable in both run blocking and protection of Herbert’s blind side.

Chargers wide receiver Quentin Johnston catches a touchdown pass next to Tennessee Titans cornerback Jalyn Armour-Davis during the first half Sunday.

(John Amis / Associated Press)

But Sunday, he was felled by 285-pound Titans edge rusher Jihad Ward, who was blocked into the back of Alt’s legs. Alt sat on the turf for a few minutes, surrounded by Chargers medical staff, before a cart rolled onto the field to take him off.

It was the latest setback for an offensive line besieged by them this season, and an indication that Herbert will remain the most hit and harassed quarterback in the league this season.

Even though the Titans were without defensive tackle Jeffrey Simmons, their best player, Herbert was still under near-constant pressure.

Herbert threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first half, although his first throw was abysmal. It was straight into the arms of Tennessee linebacker Cody Barton, who turned the visitors’ second play from scrimmage into a 24-yard pick-six.

As he does virtually every week, Herbert picked up some big gains with his feet. He had a 39-yard scramble in the second quarter, and rolled out in the fourth and scored his first rushing touchdown of the season, sliding in from a yard out. That capped a 15-play, nine-minute, 99-yard drive in response to a goal-line stand.

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert is sacked by Tennessee Titans linebacker Jihad Ward during the second half Sunday.

(George Walker IV / Associated Press)

The Titans (1-8), who have had troubles moving the ball in the red zone, scored their second touchdown of the half on a 67-yard punt return by rookie Chimere Dike, who leads the NFL in all-purpose yards.

Those issues in the red zone were on display in the third quarter, when the Titans had four plays inside the 10 and couldn’t score, including third and fourth downs from the one.

Anchoring the middle of the Chargers’ defense was Daiyan Henley, playing two days after his older brother was shot and killed. After a sack in the first half, the third-year linebacker dropped to his knees and turned his palms to the sky and held out his hands in prayer.

Edge rusher Odafe Oweh had a pair of sacks, bringing his total to four in four games since being traded to the Chargers by Baltimore last month.

Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld highly partisan state election maps that permit one party to win most seats, even when most voters cast ballots for the other side.

Partisan gerrymandering has allowed Republicans to control power in several closely divided states. And it has been repeatedly condemned for depriving citizens of a fair vote and letting politicians rig the outcomes.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., speaking for a 5-4 conservative majority, ruled that citizens may not sue in federal court over the issue.

Partisan gerrymandering claims “present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts,” he said, tossing out lower court rulings that North Carolina’s Republicans and Maryland’s Democrats had drawn skewed districts to entrench their party in power.

Although the Supreme Court has repeatedly said racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it has never struck down an election map because it was unfairly partisan, despite four decades of lawsuits over the issue.

Thursday’s decision goes even further, closing the courthouse door to future claims. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions,” he wrote in Rucho vs. Common Cause.

The court’s four liberal justices dissented, warning that new technology has made partisan gerrymandering easier and more precise than ever before.

“These are not your grandfather’s — let alone the framers’ — gerrymanders,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people,” she said, reading her dissent in the court. “Of all the time to abandon the court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.”

The ruling substantially raises the stakes for the 2020 election. In many states, whichever party controls the state legislature and the governor’s office at that time will be in a prime position to gerrymander electoral districts in their favor and lock in political power for years to come.

“This is obviously a deeply disappointing outcome,” said Allison Riggs, a voting rights lawyer who represented the League of Women Voters in the North Carolina case. There, the state’s Republican leaders drew an election map that aimed to lock in 10 of 13 seats for the GOP.

“Unlike citizens in some other states, North Carolinians cannot force redistricting reform upon recalcitrant legislators,” Riggs said. “We must raise our voices even more loudly, demanding change.”

While reform advocates were distraught over the decision — envisioning an era of ruthless, no-holds-barred gerrymandering — there is reason to believe the result may not be as drastic as feared.

Numerous states, including California, have taken the line-drawing process away from politicians and placed it in the hands of independent commissioners charged with drawing fair and competitive political maps.

Roberts appeared to endorse these state reforms, even though he voted in dissent four years ago in an Arizona case to strike down these voter initiatives as improper. He said then the power to draw election districts was reserved to the state legislature alone.

“Where we go from here is where we’ve been,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “Most of the real action has been in state courts or through ballot initiatives. … We are back to a limited set of tools, but tools that are still immensely powerful.”

States are also getting more involved. He noted that state supreme courts in Pennsylvania and Florida have struck down maps as overly partisan. The Supreme Court’s decision blocks federal lawsuits over gerrymandering, but it does not alter the authority of state courts to make rulings based on their own state constitutions. In 2018, voters in five states — Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Utah — overhauled their redistricting processes by creating independent or bipartisan map-drawing commissions.

This year’s cases began with the 2010 midterm elections, in which Republicans won sweeping victories and took full control in politically divided states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Armed with new census data, GOP lawmakers drew election maps that all but guaranteed their candidates would win a majority. In Pennsylvania, Republicans won 13 of 18 congressional seats, and 12 of 16 in Ohio.

Last year, however, political reformers had high hopes that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy would join the four liberals and cast the crucial fifth vote against partisan gerrymandering. He had voiced repeated concern that voters were being cheated if politicians could decide the outcomes in advance.

But those hopes were dashed last June when the chief justice engineered a procedural ruling that scuttled a gerrymandering case from Wisconsin.

Kennedy then retired, and his replacement, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, cast the fifth vote with Roberts on Thursday to close the doors to these claims.

Justices reviewed two cases in reaching the decision.

In North Carolina, Republican leaders flatly admitted they drew an election map for “partisan advantage.” One state leader said he drew a map to give Republicans a 10-to-3 advantage, only because he could not devise a map that would yield an 11-to-2 advantage.

In Maryland, Democratic leaders shifted hundreds of thousands of voters with the aim of ousting a veteran Republican from Congress and creating a reliably Democratic district.

A three-judge court in North Carolina declared the election map unconstitutional and said it deprived Democrats of a fair vote. Another three-judge panel ruled Maryland’s Democrats deprived Republicans of a fair vote and free election.

In January, the justices agreed to hear appeals from both states. Last month, the court also put on hold gerrymandering rulings from Ohio and Michigan.

The chief justice wrote one opinion for the two cases and overturned the rulings from North Carolina and Maryland. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh signed on to the Roberts opinion.

Joining Kagan in dissent were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

More stories from David G. Savage »

Oct. 22 (UPI) — The East Wing of the White House is undergoing a more extensive renovation than initially announced during the $250 million ballroom-construction project.

President Donald Trump in July said the 90,000-square-foot ballroom construction would not affect the East Wing, but a White House spokesperson confirmed the entire East Wing is being “modernized,” ABC News reported on Wednesday.

A 7-foot-tall fence was placed around the East Wing that blocked views of the demolition and eventual construction on Wednesday.

Officials for the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tuesday asked for the demolition to stop in an open letter to the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service, according to USA Today.

“We respectfully urge the administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” the letter said.

The organization’s leaders want a project consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, “both of which have authority to review new construction and the White House and to invite comments from the American people,” the letter said.

A White House official on Wednesday told CBS News the ballroom’s plans will be submitted to the NCPC “at the appropriate time and hoping to do so soon.”

Those whose offices are subject to the renovation have relocated to the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

White House officials on Wednesday called the project a “transformative addition that will significantly increase the White House’s capacity to host major functions honoring world leaders, foreign nations and other dignitaries.”

Workers operating bulldozers on Monday began demolishing much of the East Wing, which houses the office of the first lady, a military office and other facilities.

Private donors are funding the reconstruction project, which includes strengthening the East Wing, and many attended a White House dinner on Thursday.

The East Wing ballroom project is the latest White House improvement planned by the president.

Trump earlier this year paid to install two flagpoles on the White House lawn and had part of the Rose Garden lawn covered with stone to support outdoor events.

Other presidents, likewise, have made changes to the White House and its East Wing.

President Theodore Roosevelt authorized the East Wing’s construction in 1902, which President Franklin Roosevelt rebuilt and expanded in 1942, among other renovation projects done by other presidents.

President Harry Truman also oversaw a complete reconstruction and modernization of the White House interior from 1948 to 1952 due to the building’s extensive state of disrepair.

Federal investigators have determined that the wildfire that leveled much of Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7 was a so-called “holdover” from a smaller fire that was set intentionally on New Year’s Day, about a week earlier.

After Los Angeles firefighters suppressed the Jan. 1 fire known as the Lachman fire, it continued to smolder and burn underground, “unbeknownst to anyone,” according to federal officials. They said heavy winds six days later caused the underground fire to surface and spread above ground in what became one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in city history.

The revelations — unveiled in a criminal complaint and attached affidavit Wednesday charging the alleged arsonist, Jonathan Rinderknecht — raise questions about what the Los Angeles Fire Department could have done to prevent the conflagration in the days leading up to the expected windstorm on Jan. 7 and the extraordinary fire risk that would come with it.

“This affidavit puts the responsibility on the fire department,” said Ed Nordskog, former head of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s arson unit. “There needs to be a commission examining why this rekindled fire was allowed to reignite.”

He added: “The arsonist set the first fire, but the Fire Department proactively has a duty to do certain things.”

A Times investigation found that LAFD officials did not pre-deploy any engines to the Palisades ahead of the Jan. 7 fire, despite warnings about extreme weather. In preparing for the winds, the department staffed up only five of more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force.

Those engines could have been pre-positioned in the Palisades and elsewhere, as had been done in the past during similar weather.

Kenny Cooper, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was involved in the investigation into the Palisades fire’s origin, said the blame for the fire’s re-ignition lies solely with the person who started it.

“That fire burned deep within the ground, in roots and in structure, and remained active for several days,” Cooper said. “No matter how good they are, they can’t see that, right?”

But, he said, wildland firefighters commonly patrol for days or weeks to prevent re-ignitions.

When he worked at a state forestry agency, he said, “we would have a lightning strike, and it would hit a tree, and it would burn for days, sometimes weeks, and then ignite into a forest fire. We would go suppress that, and then every day, for weeks on end, we would patrol those areas to make sure they didn’t reignite,” he said. “If we saw evidence of smoke or heat, then we would provide resources to that. So that, I know that’s a common practice, and it’s just, it’s a very difficult fire burning underground.”

The affidavit provides a window into the firefighting timeline on Jan. 1, when just after midnight, the Lachman fire was ignited near a small clearing near the Temescal Ridge Trail.

12:13 a.m.: An image taken from a UCSD camera, approximately two-tenths of a mile away, shows a bright spot in the upper left — the Lachman fire.

12:20 a.m.: Rinderknecht drives down Palisades Drive, passing fire engines heading up Palisades Drive, responding to the fire.

That night, the LAFD, with help from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, used water drops from aircraft and hose lines, as well as handlines dug by L.A. County crews, to attack the fire, according to the complaint. Firefighters continued suppression efforts during the day on Jan. 1, wetting down areas within the fire perimeter. When the suppression efforts were over, the affidavit said, the fire crews left fire hoses on site, in case they needed to be redeployed.

Jan. 2: LAFD personnel returned to the scene to collect the fire hoses. According to the affidavit, it appeared to them that the fire was fully extinguished.

But investigators determined that during the Lachman fire, a firebrand became seated within the dense vegetation, continuing to smolder and burn within the roots underground. Strong winds brought the embers to the surface, to grow into a deadly conflagration.

Second order this year focuses on UK users; earlier attempt included US user data, but was withdrawn under US pressure.

The British government has ordered Apple to hand over personal data uploaded by its customers to the cloud for the second time this year in an ongoing privacy row that has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners.

The Home Office issued a demand in early September for the tech behemoth to create a so-called back door that would allow the authorities access to private data uploaded by United Kingdom Apple customers after a previous attempt that included customers in the United States failed, according to a report published on Wednesday by The Financial Times.

A previous technical capability notice (TCN) issued early this year led to a major backlash from the US, which frowns upon foreign entities seeking to regulate Silicon Valley. The administration of US President Donald Trump eventually forced the UK to back down.

US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said in August that the administration had wanted to “ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected”.

Civil liberties campaigners in the UK reacted with alarm to the latest order for access to encrypted data. “If this new order isn’t stopped, the UK Government will likely issue similar orders to other companies, too,” said London-based group Privacy International.

It said the UK government, which would be deploying the measure to protect national security, risked “everyone’s security, while claiming to ‘protect’ people”.

If this new order isn’t stopped, the UK Government will likely issue similar orders to other companies, too.

— Privacy International (@privacyint) October 1, 2025

The Home Office was cited by the FT as saying: “We do not comment on operational matters, including, for example, confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”

Privacy through encryption is a major selling point for tech platforms, which have long seen providing access to law enforcement as a red line.

On Wednesday, Apple said it had “never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will”. The company had appealed against the earlier TCN at the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body confirmed in April.

However, it withdrew full end-to-end encryption, known as Advanced Data Protection, for UK users in February. The feature allows iPhone and Mac users to ensure that only they – and not even Apple – can unlock data stored on its cloud.

“Apple is still unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users, and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” the California-based company said on Wednesday.

The company said it was committed to offering users the highest level of security, and it was hopeful it would be able to do so in Britain in the future.

The controversy over official attempts to snoop on Apple users comes amid a growing furore over government plans to issue digital identity cards to curb undocumented immigration and ward off threats from the right-wing Reform UK party.

The move raised hackles among civil liberties groups and citizens in the UK, where the concept of national identity cards has traditionally been unpopular.

Sept. 26 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to complete a deal to keep TikTok active for 170 million U.S. users with U.S. investors owning 80% of the company.

The deal creates a U.S. entity to control TikTok while ByteDance will maintain less than a 20% stake. A board of directors composed chiefly of Americans will oversee the operation of TikTok, including its highly sought-after algorithm.

Data on U.S. users will be stored and managed by Oracle, a technology company based in Nashville. ByteDance partnered with Oracle in 2020 to house U.S. user data in the United States due to concerns about data security from the U.S. government.

During the signing of the executive order at the White House, Trump said the deal was approved by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a phone conversation last week.

“He gave us the go ahead,” Trump said. “I told him what we’re doing and he said go ahead with it.”

Speaking to the details of the deal, Trump named some of the investors, including Rupert Murdoch and Mike Lindell. Vice President J.D. Vance said more information about the other investors will be announced in the coming days.

Vance added that TikTok will be valued at $14 billion.

Asked if TikTok will begin to favor “MAGA” content, Trump said it will be fair.

“If I could make it 100% MAGA I would but it’s not going to work out that way unfortunately,” Trump said. “Everyone is going to be treated fairly. Every group, every philosophy will be treated fairly.”

The executive order says the president will have the authority to determine that TikTok has undergone a “qualified divestiture” through an interagency process. If the president makes this determination, the act’s prohibitions can be removed.

The deal will bring TikTok into compliance with the law passed by U.S. Congress last year requiring it to be owned and operated by a U.S. company. Congress passed the law out of concern that the application posed a national security threat, due to ByteDance being based in China.

There is still more information to come about the agreement between the United States, ByteDance and China. The executive order has been signed but it will take weeks to months for the divestiture and formation of the new TikTok corporate structure to be complete, said Norman Bishara, professor of business law and ethics in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at Michigan.

“The devil is in the details,” Bishara said. “Until we really see this in writing and have all the details it’s hard to fully assess if they are complying with the letter of the law and the spirit of what Congress wanted in the first place.”

The White House stated the federal government will not play a role in selecting members for TikTok’s board, but the president’s role in brokering the agreement is “extraordinary,” Bishara said.

“Even without the direct control of the U.S. government or the ‘golden share’ that’s been discussed, it still seems a safe bet that the folks on the U.S. side like Silver Lake [Technology Management] and Oracle are aligned with the interest of the government and the Trump administration,” he said.

Andrew Verstein, professor of law at UCLA, told UPI the TikTok deal responds to concerns expressed by Congress, localizing operations in the United States. However, the inherent nature of its algorithm will still require data to cross borders.

“We were worried that a Chinese-owned and Chinese-controlled company with a pretty complicated technical architecture was up to bad things. So we passed a law,” Verstein said. “What we got was a compromise. The company is going to be largely owned by Americans and partially controlled by Americans, but not fully owned and controlled by Americans. So this is a compromise between those two visions and in some ways it’s worse than both things.”

Verstein said the new concern that the deal creates is that the perceived “bad things” that Congress and national security experts worried about China doing — surveillance, propaganda campaigns and misinformation — will be continued under American control.

“Granting Americans equity in the company gives them a greater incentive to do whatever is most profitable, including whatever was happening before,” he said. “It tempts them but you’re happy with that if you’re handing money out to your friends.”

TikTok creators, business owners and advertising firms have watched the ongoing saga closely as threats of the application shutting down in America have persisted for five years.

“Everybody will be very happy that the deal is done and things are settling in a final state,” Evan Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of Movers+Shakers, a marketing agency focused on social media, told UPI. “It’s been five years now that TikTok has been in this state of uncertainty and that’s been stressful for people. That’s been stressful for brand assessment, stressful for creators, stressful for consumers, because there’s this constant threat of TikTok going away.”

As Horowitz expresses relief, he remains concerned about whether the application will remain largely as it is.

“The algorithm is the number one key to TikTok’s success,” he said. “So what happens to the algorithm and how they’re able to port that or share that is going to be critical for the long-term viability of TikTok.”

The makeup of the new board also raises questions.

“One of the keys to TikTok’s success is that it’s an open and inclusive platform and that has attracted a very wide and diverse audience over the years,” Horowitz said. “If in the future it seems like TikTok will not be inclusive and open to all people and viewpoints that would present a major challenge for the community.”

As Horowitz’s company has navigated the years of uncertainty around TikTok, he said he has encouraged clients to stay focused on what is known rather than unknown. In the meantime he has monitored alternatives to the platform as social media platforms tend to come and go over time.

“Our expectation is if TikTok were either to vanish or dwindle gradually, the winners are going to be Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts,” he said. “They’re still not quite as good and the audience is not as robust but if people start being dissatisfied with TikTok for any reason, they’re going to be moving to Reels and Shorts.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard detects and detains scores of drug-running vessels in the Caribbean every year in its role as the world’s drug police on the high seas.

Now, that anti-narcotics mission may look vastly different after a U.S. military strike on a vessel off Venezuela. Trump administration officials asserted last week that gang members were smuggling drugs bound for America.

The Trump administration has indicated more military strikes on drug targets could be coming, saying it is seeking to “wage war” on Latin American cartels it accuses of flooding the U.S. with cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs. It is facing mounting questions, however, about the legality of the strike and any such escalation, which upends decades of procedures for interdicting suspected drug vessels.

“This really throws a wrench in the huge investment the U.S. has been making for decades building up a robust legal infrastructure to arrest and prosecute suspected drug smugglers,” said Kendra McSweeney, an Ohio State University geographer who has spent years investigating the legal infrastructure of U.S. drug interdictions at sea.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted while visiting Latin America last week that drug cartels “pose an immediate threat to the United States” and that President Trump “has a right, under exigent circumstances, to eliminate imminent threats to the United States.”

A U.S. official familiar with the reasoning also cited self-defense as legal justification for the strike that the administration says killed 11 members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, which has been dubbed a foreign terrorist organization. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

The administration used a similar argument months prior to justify an intense bombing camping against Houthi rebels in Yemen. However, behind the scenes, the justification for strikes against the cartels appears to be far more complex.

The New York Times reported last month that Trump signed a directive to the Pentagon to start using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels. That reporting was related to the Venezuela strike, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

Touting the strike, but no details on how it happened

Vice President JD Vance celebrated the strike over the weekend, suggesting that the use of force is necessary to protect American families from deadly drugs.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance said on X.

Several Democrats and even some fellow Republicans criticized Vance’s comments. Congressional leaders also have pressed for more information on why the administration took the military action.

The Pentagon has been silent about any details on the strike. Military officials have not divulged what service carried it out, what weapons were used or how it was determined that the vessel was operated by Tren de Aragua or carrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that “foreign terrorist organizations have been designated, we have those authorities, and it’s about keeping the American people safe. There’s no reason for me to give the public or adversaries any more information than that.”

Pentagon officials did not respond to direct questions about the legal justification for the strike and whether the military considered itself at war with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government.

Hegseth traveled Monday to Puerto Rico, where troops deployed for a training exercise and where the U.S. is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets for operations against drug cartels.

‘There’s no authority for this whatsoever’

Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, said “extrajudicial killing” would be a better term to describe the strike. She sees it as an outgrowth of the two-decade blurring of the lines between law enforcement and armed conflict.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. started designating members of foreign terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban, as unlawful combatants, making them vulnerable to U.S. attacks even when not directly engaged in warfare.

Trump has designated several Latin American cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. But that in itself does not make a U.S. strike against suspected members of the group legal, Finkelstein said. Congress has not authorized the use of force against Venezuela nor are there any U.N. resolutions that would justify the U.S. actions.

“There’s no authority for this whatsoever under international law,” she said. “It was not an act of self-defense. It was not in the middle of a war. There was no imminent threat to the United States.”

A pair of armed Venezuelan planes flew by a U.S. warship in the Caribbean days after the strike, and Trump warned Friday that any future flights would be met with gunfire.

The strike “quite arguably is an act of war against Venezuela and they would potentially be justified in responding with the use of force,” Finkelstein said. “Could you imagine what would happen if their navy was 12 miles off the coast of the U.S.?“

Turning to the seas during the drug war

The search and seizures by sea are a routine feature of America’s first “forever war” — the drug war, which President Richard Nixon declared in 1971.

In 1986, at the height of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel, Congress passed the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, which defines drug smuggling in international waters as a crime against the United States and gives the U.S. unique arrest powers.

Usually, authorities stop and board boats, arrest the crew and seize any contraband. The efforts are led by the U.S. Coast Guard with support from the Pentagon, State Department, Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI as well as allies from the U.K., France, Netherlands and across Latin America.

Now, warning operations like the strike “will happen again,” Rubio said Trump “wants to wage war on these groups because they’ve been waging war on us for 30 years and no one has responded.”

Under the maritime drug enforcement law, 127 new prosecutions were brought in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which collects Justice Department data. That compares to 131 for all of 2024.

Since each case involves multiple defendants, the actual number of foreigners detained at sea is likely much higher.

The Coast Guard announced last month what it called its largest drug haul on record from multiple interdictions over two months. Some of those seizures were carried out by a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment aboard a Dutch naval vessel in the Caribbean.

“While no one is sympathetic to the plight of drug dealers, the reason we do this through a judicial process, in partnership with other nations, is so we can collect evidence that allows us to build bigger cases and go after the cartel bosses,” said James Story, who served as ambassador to Venezuela during the first Trump administration.

Story, who ran the State Department’s anti-narcotics bureau in Colombia and Latin America earlier in his career, said 20 nations have liaisons at a multiagency task force based in the Naval Air Station in Key West, Florida, where high seas boardings are coordinated.

“Anything that could potentially jeopardize those relationships would make us less effective in the long run,” he said.

Toropin and Goodman write for the Associated Press. Goodman reported from Miami.

Apple TV+ has implemented an 11% price rise but there are ways to watch hit shows like Severance, Slow Horses and The Morning Show for less.

Apple TV+ has quietly increased the price of a monthly subscription, but there are several ways to get it cheaper if you know where to look. Last month, the streamer upped its subscription fee £8.99 to £9.99 for both new and existing customers.

This 11% rise may not seem like a huge increase, but it makes Apple TV+ one of the more expensive platforms compared to the basic subscription tiers of Netflix (£5.99), Disney+ (£4.99) and Prime Video (£8.99). However, each of these plans has adverts, while Apple TV+ is ad-free.

Apple told the BBC that while the new price applies immediately for new users, existing subscribers have until 30 days after their next renewal before they start paying more. It comes as Apple TV+ is gearing up for the return of hit shows including The Morning Show (September 17) and Slow Horses (September 24).

Also on its 2025 slate is Matthew McConaughey survival drama The Lost Bus (October 3) and Pluribus (November 7), a new sci-fi series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. With this in mind, we’ve pulled together several ways to get an Apple TV+ subscription for less.

Watch for free with a seven-day trial

New Apple TV+ members can watch everything on the platform without paying a penny by signing up for a seven-day free trial. This is ideal for those only wanting to watch a particular series as it allows members to binge every episode in one week, just remember to cancel the trial before it moves to a paid subscription.

However, there is a way to reduce the cost for those happy to stick with the service.

Apple TV+ Annual Plan

£119.88

£89

Apple TV+

Get Apple TV+ here

Apple TV+ members can save £30.88 by paying for a year up front.

Save £31 with an annual plan

Members who have no intention of cancelling their subscription anytime soon may want to consider an Apple TV+ annual plan. Paying for a year’s access up front has not increased so still costs the usual £89, while 12 monthly payments will now end up costing £119.88 on the new rate.

This means those who are loyal to Apple TV+ can save £30.88 if they’re happy to make the commitment.

Get 3 months free with an eligible device

Apple offers three months of Apple TV+ access to shoppers buying an eligible Apple device including iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. They don’t have to be bought from Apple, with new devices bought from retailers including Sky Mobile and Amazon usually eligible for the deal.

One of our favourite options at the moment is Sky Mobile’s iPhone 16e deal, which is down to a record low price of £18 when spreading the cost. The catch with this plan is that it only comes with 100MB of data, but larger allowances are available for those happy to pay a little more.

Sky also offers the new MacBook Air 13” M4 for £20. Other options include Amazon’s £101 discount on an iPhone 16 for £698, or £70 discount on the latest iPad Air M3 for £529.

Save 44% with Apple One

This option is ideal for customers subscribed to multiple Apple services such as Apple TV+, Apple Music and iCloud. An Apple One bundle rolls all of these into one monthly subscription offering discounts up to £28.99 per month compared to paying for each service separately – a saving of 44%.

A subscription can also be shared by up to five people on select plans, perfect for cutting costs for the whole family. Apple One comes in a choice of three plans:

• Individual (£18.95) – TV+, Music, Arcade, iCloud+ 50GB.
• Family (£24.95) – TV+, Music, Arcade, iCloud+ 200GB.
• Premier (£36.95) – TV+, Music, Arcade, iCloud+ 2TB, Fitness+ and News+.

 Tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration on Southeast Asian nations—effective August 7, 2025—are likely to have a significant impact on the economies of the region. The second-quarter growth figures of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam would have brought some relief for all these countries. For long, ASEAN countries have benefited immensely from globalization and reasonable global geopolitical stability—especially stable ties between China and the US—and in recent years even from the China+1 policy of several companies—especially western ones—which sought to reduce their dependence upon China.

In the current economic and geopolitical situation, however, the ASEAN region faces multiple challenges due to the global turbulence, and countries in the region are devising tools to deal with the economic uncertainty.

Apart from diversifying economic relations, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam are all focusing heavily on domestic spending. While Vietnam is focusing on infrastructure, Indonesia, under the leadership of Prabowo Subianto, is focusing heavily on welfare schemes, which include an ambitious free nutritious meal program, setting up of rural cooperatives, free health check-ups, and the construction of three million homes. During his first state of the nation address, the Indonesian president said:

‘Our goal of independence is to be free from poverty, free from hunger, and free from suffering.’

For 2026, Indonesia is likely to raise public spending to $233.92 billion. The free meal program will receive $20.7 billion. Prabowo’s ambitious plan to develop 80,000 rural cooperatives is also likely to incur massive public expenditures.

Focus on welfare and the impact of infrastructure projects in Indonesia.

In the case of Indonesia, the spending on welfare schemes has also resulted in lesser allocation towards Nusantara—the new administrative capital proposed by Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo, referred to as Jokowi. The reason for setting up a new capital was infrastructural and logistical problems in the current Indonesian capital—Jakarta. Nusantara, located in the East Kalimantan region of Indonesia, was chosen due to its geographical location and the fact that it may help in addressing disparities between the eastern and western parts of the country. While Jokowi had committed over $5 billion for the development of Nusantara, between 2022 and 2024, his successor has committed a little more than half the amount for the period between 2025 and 2029.

Unlike Jokowi, who focused heavily on the infrastructure sector, Prabowo Subianto is focused more on welfare. This is a major departure in terms of economic policy. Lesser focus on Nusantara could have several implications. First, according to many observers, it could send the wrong message to investors. Second, it may have domestic political ramifications. The Nusantara project was a brainchild of Jokowi, and it remains to be seen how the former president views the slowing down of the project.

In conclusion, ASEAN countries are being forced to explore new economic approaches and focus more on spending. As mentioned earlier, some ASEAN countries like Vietnam are focusing heavily on infrastructure, while Indonesia is expanding welfare programs. While focusing on the same is important, it remains to be seen what approach the current dispensation adopts vis-à-vis the Nusantara project, which is very important in terms of messaging to investors. It also remains to be seen whether the slowing down of the project will have any impact on Indonesia’s domestic politics.

Rams coach Sean McVay was not talking.

Aubrey Pleasant deferred to McVay. And Stetson Bennett was so busy leading a comeback victory, he said he did not notice.

No one in the Rams’ organization could answer these questions:

How did Matthew Stafford’s scheduled workout on Saturday play out? And was he at the Rams’ 23-22 victory over the Chargers at SoFi Stadium?

A team spokesman declined to comment, saying McVay would address the situation on Monday.

So the Stafford saga plays on, incrementally worsening as the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans draws near.

Stafford, 37, is preparing for his 17th NFL season.

Check that: He would be if not for a back issue that has prevented him from taking a single snap or throwing a single pass during a team practice.

In late July, when the Rams reported to training camp at Loyola Marymount and Stafford’s back issue came to light, the situation was cause for concern.

For everyone, it seemed, but McVay.

The Rams had a plan, he said. He was not concerned. Stafford would not practice for the first week, but he would be out there with teammates in Week 2.

It did not happen.

Nearly a month later, it still hasn’t.

McVay said last week that the Rams were “trying to get our hands around” the situation.

But time is becoming shorter.

The Rams are three weeks away from the season opener at SoFi Stadium.

Jimmy Garoppolo has taken first-team snaps during team workouts and joint practices with the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans Saints. Bennett has started preseason games against the Cowboys and the Chargers.

Garoppolo led the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl. Bennett is playing with the confidence he displayed while leading Georgia to two national titles.

With a physically sound Stafford, the Rams would be regarded as a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

With Garoppolo or Bennett…

How much time Stafford would need to be ready for the opener is an open question.

Three weeks? Two? One?

No one questions Stafford’s toughness or grit. Or his desire to win another Super Bowl.

But for now, his physical condition and availability — and the Rams’ prospects this season and beyond — remain in doubt.

Chinese authorities have summoned domestic companies, including major internet firms Tencent and ByteDance, over their purchases of Nvidia’s H20 chips.

Authorities asked the companies on Tuesday to explain their reasons and expressed concerns over information risks, three people familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and other agencies also held meetings with Baidu and smaller Chinese tech firms in recent weeks, said one of the two people and a third source.

The Chinese officials asked companies why they needed to buy chips made by Nvidia, a US company, when they could purchase from domestic suppliers, the sources said.

Authorities in China expressed concern that the materials Nvidia has asked companies to submit for review with the US government could contain sensitive information, including client data, one of the sources said.

However, the people, who declined to be identified because the meetings were not public, said the companies have not been ordered to stop buying H20 chips.

Nvidia said on Tuesday that the H20 chip was “not a military product or for government infrastructure”.

“China has ample supply of domestic chips to meet its needs. It won’t and never has relied on American chips for government operations, just like the US government would not rely on chips from China,” the statement said.

Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and the CAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Discouraged use

Earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that Chinese authorities have urged domestic companies to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips, particularly for government-related purposes.

Several companies were issued official notices discouraging the use of the H20, a lower-end chip, mainly for any government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

In a separate report, The Information reported that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had been ordered by the CAC in the past two weeks to suspend Nvidia chip purchases altogether, citing data security concerns.

The CAC directive was communicated at a meeting the regulator held with more than a dozen Chinese tech firms, shortly after the administration of United States President Donald Trump reversed the export curbs on H20 chips, according to the Information report.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports, and Alibaba did not respond to a request for comment. Top contract chipmaker SMIC rose 5 percent on Tuesday on expectations of rising demand for locally-produced chips.

But even without an outright ban, the concerns expressed by Chinese authorities could threaten Nvidia’s recently restored access to the Chinese market as Chinese companies look to keep in step with regulators.

Nvidia designed the H20 specifically for China after export restrictions on its more advanced AI chips took effect in late 2023. The H20 has since been the most sophisticated AI chip Nvidia was allowed to sell in China.

Earlier this year, US authorities effectively banned its sale to China, but reversed the decision in July following an agreement between Nvidia and the Trump administration.

Threat to revenue stream

Last month, China’s cyberspace regulator summoned Nvidia representatives, asking the company to explain whether the H20 posed backdoor security risks that could affect Chinese user data and privacy.

State-controlled media have intensified criticism of Nvidia in recent days. Yuyuan Tantian, affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV, published an article on WeChat over the weekend claiming that H20 chips pose security risks and lack technological advancement and environmental friendliness.

The scrutiny threatens a significant revenue stream for Nvidia, which generated $17bn from sales to China in its fiscal year ended January 26, or 13 percent of total revenue.

China has accelerated work on domestic AI chip alternatives, with companies such as Huawei developing processors that rival the H20’s performance, and Beijing urging the technology sector to become more self-sufficient.

However, US sanctions on advanced chipmaking equipment, including lithography machines essential for chip production, have constrained domestic manufacturers’ ability to boost production.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump suggested that he might allow Nvidia to sell a scaled-down version of its advanced Blackwell chip in China, despite deep-seated fears in Washington that Beijing could harness US AI capabilities to supercharge its military.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that it hoped the US would act to maintain the stability and smooth operation of the global chip supply chain.

The Trump administration last week confirmed an unprecedented deal with Nvidia and AMD, which agreed to give the US government 15 percent of revenue from sales of some advanced chips in China.

China’s renewed guidance on avoiding chips also affects AI accelerators from AMD, Bloomberg also reported. It was not clear, however, whether any notices from Chinese authorities specifically mentioned AMD’s MI308 chip.

AMD did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Liverpool’s second youngest ever player Rio Ngumoha shone again in pre-season to get fans wondering if he could be part of the first team this year.

The England Under-17 forward, who turns 17 later this month, scored and assisted in their Anfield return against Athletic Bilbao.

The Reds were playing the Basque side in two pre-season friendlies – at 17:00 and 20:00 BST.

It was a mostly second string XI that started the first game, with Ngumoha on the left wing – and he caught the eye as he has done all summer.

He scored in just the second minute as he ran onto a loose ball in his own half before racing forward and curling a fine effort in from 20 yards out.

Just three minutes later he nodded a Ben Doak cross down for Darwin Nunez to convert from close range.

Liverpool fans were singing his name as Curtis Jones urged them to show their appreciation.

And he caused the La Liga side all kinds of problems with his dribbling and trickery in the 4-1 win.

Doak and Harvey Elliott scored the other goals.

The 16-year-old left to a standing ovation midway through the second half.

“He is such an excellent prospect,” said ex-Reds defender Gary Gillespie on LFC TV.

“The difficult is managing expectations but it’s hard to put a lid on it.”

Ngumoha’s performance came on the back of an assist against AC Milan and goal against Yokohama F. Marinos in Asian friendlies.

He looks a fine talent, if raw, and will be hoping more first-team competitive games are on the way.

In January, Ngumoha became the youngest player to start a match, and the second youngest to play, for Liverpool – aged 16 years and 135 days old – in the 4-0 win over Accrington in the FA Cup.

But that was his only first-team appearance and he never made the bench for a Premier League game.

That could well change this season, especially with so many changes in the Liverpool front line.

The sad death of centre forward Diogo Jota in a car crash has been the main focus of Liverpool’s pre-season. There were tributes to him before and during the game at Anfield.

Winger Luis Diaz was sold to Bayern Munich and Nunez is a target for Saudi Pro League clubs.

An exit for Nunez would mean the Reds’ only really strong frontline options would be Mohamed Salah, new signing Hugo Ekitike and Cody Gakpo – giving a chance for somebody like Ngumoha to break through.

That is unless they managed to sign Newcastle striker Alexander Isak. An initial bid of £110m has been rejected.

“I’m not trying to rush because I’m still only young,” said Ngumoha last week.

“But at the same time, I just want to show the manager what I can do and not get too complacent. I just want to do bigger and better things for me and the club.”

Ngumoha is not actually a Liverpool academy product, having only joined Liverpool from Chelsea’s youth set-up last summer.

At the time Blues legend John Terry wrote “this boy is and will be a top player”.

He’s not looking wrong.

TAMPA, Fla. — The Dodgers didn’t go shopping at the top of the market ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline.

But what they came away with — right-handed relievers Brock Stewart and Paul Gervase to bolster the bullpen, and versatile outfielder Alex Call to round out the lineup — are the kind of moves that “just raises the floor for our ballclub,” manager Dave Roberts said Friday.

“I feel we did get better,” Roberts said, before echoing the front office’s hope that the Dodgers’ biggest improvements over the final two months of the season come from the star-studded, but underperforming, core they already have in place.

“I think we’ve got a pretty dang good team. I think if you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently. That’s something that we’re all counting on … I love our club. I really do. Now it’s up to all of us to go out there and do our jobs.”

The job for the Dodgers’ two biggest acquisitions, Stewart and Call, will be clear from the get-go.

Stewart, a former Dodgers swingman from 2016 to 2019, has reinvented himself in the second half of his career. Unlike his first stint in Los Angeles, when he threw in the low 90s and was a fringe long reliever on the roster, Stewart is now a higher-leverage relief option, with a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and swing-and-miss sweeper he has used to dominate right-handed hitters this season.

“At the end [of his first Dodgers stint], he lost the velocity and was trying to figure out if he could hang on and who he was at that point,” Roberts recalled. “Obviously, he’s put in a ton of work to sort of find himself again. He’s had nothing but success. I’m excited to see this version of him. He certainly shouldn’t lack for confidence.”

Stewart won’t fix the Dodgers’ ninth-inning problems — with their closer role up in the air ever since struggling offseason signing Tanner Scott went on the injured list with an elbow injury — but could get some save situations “in the right situation,” Roberts said — for instance, if a run of right-handed hitters (who are batting just .104 with a .327. OPS against him this year) are up at the end of the game.

“I trust the guy, I trust the player, what he’s become,” Roberts said. “So for me, if the situation calls for it tonight and he’s in the ninth inning, I’ve got all the confidence.”

Gervase, a 6-foot-10 right-hander the Dodgers acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for catcher Hunter Feduccia as part of a three-team trade on Wednesday night, was also on the active roster Friday. He comes with just five previous career MLB appearances, but a deceptive delivery aided by his long-limbed extension on the mound.

“I don’t know a whole lot about him,” Roberts said. “I know he’s got a big arm. He’s got some extension, some rise, but I haven’t seen him.”

The arrival of Stewart and Gervase did coincide with yet another loss in the bullpen. Veteran right-hander Kirby Yates, another offseason signing who has disappointed with a 4.31 ERA this season, was placed on the injured list because of lingering discomfort in his pelvic and lower-back area. He went back to Los Angeles to get further testing.

“In the last, call it, two weeks, he hasn’t felt great,” Roberts said. “Hasn’t been injured, in his words, which is why he kept pitching and competing. But we flew him home this morning to look at the doctor and kind of get some tests to see if there’s something that’s kind of been aggravating him. Something’s just not right, exactly. So we’re trying to suss that out.”

In the lineup, Roberts said Call — a 30-year-old right-handed-hitting journeyman who found a niche with the Washington Nationals the last few seasons as an on-base threat capable of grinding out tough at-bats — would mix in at all three outfield spots.

“[He is] a tough, feisty hitter,” Roberts said. “I certainly see him playing versus left. But I think he’s pretty much a neutral guy. Slugs a little more against left, but gets on base against right. I’m going to try to keep him in there a couple times a week.”

Call said he wasn’t shocked to learn he had been traded on Thursday, and was excited by the “chance to compete in the playoffs and win a World Series” with a first-place Dodgers team.

“For me, I am going to grind out at-bats, put the ball in play, take my walks, make it tough on the pitcher,” said Call, who has hit .297 with the Nationals in 102 games over the last two seasons. “Just really make the [pitchers] work so that hopefully they’re tired when the top of the order comes back around or whatever.”

Roki Sasaki facing hitters

Internally, the Dodgers are hoping rookie Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki can also serve as a de facto late-season addition after missing the last several months with a shoulder injury.

And this week, the right-hander took a key step in his recovery process.

Sasaki faced hitters for the first time since getting hurt in a simulated inning this past week in Arizona, Roberts said, and is scheduled to throw two more simulated innings on Saturday.

The team has been targeting a late-August return for Sasaki, who had a 4.72 ERA in eight starts this season before going on the IL.

July 31 (UPI) — Collaborative design firm Figma Inc. raised $1.2 billion with an initial public offering on Thursday, with shares trading for $33, which increased its market share to $19.3 billion.

The IPO is one of the most closely watched by Wall Street analysts, who say it is a predictor of how much value investors place on tech firms.

The shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the FIG symbol.

The IPO followed a failed Adobe and Figma merger effort that ended when U.S. antitrust regulators denied the merger at the end of 2023.

Adobe had offered to pay $20 billion to acquire Figma.

If the Figma shares price to rise by 4%, the IPO will give Figma more market value than it would have received from Adobe.

Dylan Field and Evan Wallace founded Figma in 2012 to create online design tools that are easy to use with a web browser.

Field is Figma’s chief executive officer and in a prospectus said artificial intelligence is in its infancy and will enable Figma to continue its growth by supporting designers well into the future.

“We’re already investing heavily in AI, and we plan to double down even more in this area,” Field said in the prospectus.

“AI spend will potentially be a drag on our efficiency for several years,” Field said, “but AI is also core to how design workflows will evolve going forward.”

He said there are “many possibilities for how AI can help designers and bring more people into the design process,” and “the impact of AI will extend far beyond the Figma platform.”

“Design is bigger than design,” Field added, “and the world needs more designers in charge.”

He told investors that Figma will acquire other firms and continually improve internally through more investment.

Figma’s collaborative design tools are used by 78% of Forbes 2000 companies and more than 95% of Fortune 500 firms, according to its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Figma reported more $228 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2025 and $749 million in 2024.

It claims more than 13 million active users every month, about two-thirds of whom are not designers.

At a time when it is trying to figure out a way to attract a larger share of moderate whites in presidential elections, the national Democratic Party is facing a tough decision.

Its leading candidate for party chairman is a black man who has been close to two of the party’s liberal icons, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Ron Brown, a 47-year-old Washington lawyer, once served on Kennedy’s Senate staff and last summer managed Jackson’s forces during the Democratic National Convention.

He is vying for the Democratic chairmanship with four other men: Michigan Democratic Chairman Richard Wiener and former U. S. Reps. Michael D. Barnes of Maryland, James R. Jones of Oklahoma and James V. Stanton of Ohio.

The 404 Democratic National Committee members will choose the new chairman in February. Although a political insider’s job, the post is always crucial to the direction of the party and the kind of presidential nominee it chooses at the end of the chairman’s four-year term.

Big Names

Brown’s four competitors have significant support, but it is Brown who is picking up the big names.

Two potential presidential candidates–New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley–have endorsed him, and a major Democratic moderate, former Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, is working hard on his behalf.

Brown also has strong support among organized labor and is popular with the large bloc of Democratic National Committee members from California.

“You’re going to see a consensus building for Ron in the next few weeks,” said a top Los Angeles Democrat who asked not to be identified. “You’re going to see governors coming out for him.”

Even Brown’s opponents cannot find anything bad to say about him and some acknowledge that he is the most qualified person seeking the job. He is a skilled negotiator and communicator and has worked within the party for years.

But some Democrats worry that his selection would send the wrong signal to moderates who have been deserting the party in recent presidential elections.

‘New Direction’

“We have been trying to move the party in a new direction for four years and that is not the direction of Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy,” said Al From, executive director of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats, many of them Southern senators and governors.

“Ron may be in the center of the political spectrum personally,” From said, “but the baggage he carries is that the two politicians he is most associated with are liberals. At some point this party has to recognize the fact that the liberal message is not winning presidential elections.”

Some Democrats also worry that Brown is a stalking horse for Jackson, who may run again for President in 1992. But Babbitt said in an interview that theory was off base.

“I know Ron Brown and I can tell you he is not a stalking horse for Jesse. I made this mistake four years ago when I opposed the selection of (Paul G. Kirk Jr.) for Democratic chair on the ground that he was a stalking horse for Ted Kennedy.

“That not only turned out to be false, (but) Paul Kirk has been an outstanding chairman for the last four years. He has greatly improved the party. Ron Brown will do the same thing.”

Jewish Supporters

Some Democrats also worry that because Brown advised Jackson, if only briefly, his selection to head the Democratic Party could alienate some Jews who are major financial supporters of the party and who have quarreled with Jackson in the past.

Edward Sanders, a former president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, acknowledged that was a problem Brown had to surmount.

“But I am convinced Ron is his own man,” said Sanders, who arranged a meeting for Brown with some Jewish leaders recently in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. John Emerson, a former DNC member, said: “The next chairman of the Democratic Party has to be someone who can deal with Jesse Jackson. Ron is his own man and Jesse really respects him. It’s Ron’s asset not his liability.”

California has 23 votes on the Democratic National Committee and longtime party adviser Mickey Kantor believes “Ron can get 16 to 18 of those votes from what I have been able to determine.”

Brown said in an interview that he finds himself in a strange position: When Democratic leaders were worried about what Jackson would do at the national convention last summer, Brown agreed to help things go smoothly and ultimately won high praise.

“Now,” said Brown, “some people are worried that I am too close to Jesse. But anybody who knows me knows that isn’t so. I think my strongest point, in fact, is that I can be someone all sides can turn to.”

The shocking cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” is a sign that time is running out for one of TV’s most beloved formats.

The late-night talk show was invented in the 1950s as a way for networks to own their own programming rather than have it provided by sponsors. Now, amid shrinking audiences and a politically turbulent climate for free speech, the familiar desk-and-sofa tableau is in serious trouble.

CBS announced Thursday that the upcoming 2025-26 TV season for “The Late Show” will be its last. Executives blamed the cancellation on financial concerns felt across all network late-night shows. Last year, NBC cut “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to four nights a week while “Late Night With Seth Meyers” cut its live band.

Still, industry veterans were bewildered by the timing.

It’s hard to imagine Paramount Global executives did not anticipate blowback from announcing the move days after Colbert blasted the company’s $16-million settlement with President Trump over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Colbert described the deal as a bribe during his Monday monologue.

Every move the company makes is now under a microscope as it tries to get the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump acolyte Brendan Carr, to approve an $8-billion merger with Skydance Media. Canceling the most watched late-night program hosted by one of Trump’s harshest critics will draw even more scrutiny.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), weighed in on X shortly after taping an interview on Colbert’s program.

“If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” Schiff posted.

The Writers Guild of America also raised questions, saying the cancellation appeared to be a case of “sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration.”

One factor contradicting the theory is that Colbert, who has another year on his contract, will remain on the air through May. His commentaries have never been restrained by network executives over his 10-year run and that situation is not expected to change in his final season.

The poor optics may be a matter of contractual timing.

Paramount Global had to complete the deals with writer-producer teams in July for the upcoming “Late Show” season, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to comment.

Those deals typically run for a full year, but with the company’s intention to cancel the program — decided several months ago — the contracts being offered only ran through May, which tipped off the network’s plans.

When Colbert learned of the cancellation decision on Wednesday, he made the call to inform his staff and his audience the next day.

“Late Show” is said to be losing somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars a year as younger viewers have fled. Since 2022, the program has lost 20% of its audience in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 age group, according to Nielsen data.

Ad revenue for “Late Show” in 2024 was $57.7 million, according to iSpot.tv, down from $75.7 million in 2022. “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on NBC and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC have also seen significant declines over that period.

CBS has already given up on one hour of late night due to financial pressure. Two years ago, it canceled its 12:35 a.m. “Late Late Show” program hosted by James Corden because it was losing money.

CBS came up with a lower-cost replacement with “After Midnight,” but that ended after two seasons as its host Taylor Tomlinson decided not to renew her deal. CBS is replacing it with a syndicated program, “Comics Unleashed,” from Byron Allen’s Entertainment Partners in an arrangement that will cost the network nothing.

Still, Paramount Global will find itself facing questions about why CBS did not seek ways to reduce the production costs of the program instead of just pulling the plug.

If CBS decides to continue programming the 11:30 p.m. slot, it will hard-pressed to approach the same audience levels that Colbert attracted.

CBS is giving up a popular culture touchstone, although in the current fragmented media landscape, the days of such hosts having massive sway over a large audience have passed.

Media analyst Rich Greenfield wrote that legacy media companies investing in expensive original programming outside of sports and news may be ill-advised as viewers continue to flock to streaming.

“Ending ‘The Late Show’ is the tip of the iceberg with massive programming and personnel cuts to come,” he said.

For decades, late-night TV served as the brand identity of the broadcast networks.

Jack Paar was the witty conversationalist that made Middle America feel like it was invited to a sophisticated Manhattan cocktail party. His successor, Johnny Carson, became a trendsetter in the 1960s, defining male coolness. He had his own clothing line. His dry monologue was often a gauge of the country’s political mood. An invitation to take a seat next to Carson after a stand-up set turbocharged the careers of many top comedians.

CBS was unable to compete with Carson for decades, trying and failing with the likes of Merv Griffin and Pat Sajak. When David Letterman became available after he was bypassed for the “Tonight” job at NBC, he came to CBS in 1993 and made the network a serious contender.

Letterman’s offbeat, sardonic brand of humor also gave a layer of hipness to CBS, which had long had a reputation for stodginess.

“Late Show With David Letterman” helped make late-night network TV a financial bonanza. While the proliferation of cable networks was cutting into audience share in the 1990s and early 2000s, the late-night habit still thrived, especially with its ability to reach young men, the most elusive demographic for TV advertisers.

As a result, late-night hosts became the highest-paid stars in the business. Letterman and Jay Leno were both earning in the neighborhood of $30 million a year until networks started trimming salaries 10 years ago.

But technology chipped away at the late-night talk show habit. When DVRs reached critical mass, consumers started to catch up with their favorite prime-time shows during the late-night hours.

The most painful blow came from social media. While online clips of the late-night shows draw hundreds of millions of viewing minutes, that doesn’t generate the same kind of ad revenue as TV. They also make showing up at 11:35 p.m. every night pointless.

“The networks cut up all of the best parts of the show, and by the end of the night you can see all of them on social media,” said one former network executive who oversaw late-night programs. “There’s no reason to even DVR it.”

Prime-time programs add millions of viewers through on-demand streaming after they air on the broadcast networks. Topical late-night shows don’t have the same shelf life.

While politics have long been an important element of late-night comedy, the emergence of Trump‘s political career in 2015 — and his ability to drive ratings and the national conversation — made him the dominant topic.

Where Carson, Letterman and Leno skewered both sides of the political spectrum, Trump’s ability to provide endless comedy fodder on a daily basis made him an easy, entertaining and ultimately one-sided target.

For years it worked. Ratings for Colbert — who made his bones on Comedy Central satirizing a reactionary talk show host — languished for the first two years after he replaced Letterman. Audience levels and ad rates surged in 2017 once Trump came into office and became Colbert’s muse.

But the country has become more politically polarized in recent years and the relentless lampooning of Trump has created a lane for “Gutfeld!,” a nightly Fox News talk show with a conservative bent.

While not technically a late-night show (it airs at 10 p.m. Eastern), “Gutfeld!” drew an average of 3 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 according to Nielsen and has grown 20% since 2022.

The young men that used to make late night an advertiser magnet are now turning to podcasters such as Joe Rogan and others who can speak without the restraint of broadcast TV standards.

Indian tax authorities and market regulator are considering widening their probe of United States trading giant Jane Street Group to investigate it for tax evasion in addition to an earlier charge of price rigging in the Bombay Stock Exchange’s benchmark Sensex, according to media reports.

The tax evasion charge comes on the heels of market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), seizing 48.43 billion rupees ($570m) and banning four Jane Street-related entities from operating in the market for alleged price manipulation in the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

SEBI’s order has roiled the Indian markets, raising questions about regulator surveillance and investor protection in the world’s largest options trading market. Trading in India’s weekly equity index options has slumped by a third on the ban on Jane Street, the Reuters news agency reported on Thursday.

Trading of equity options lets investors buy or sell a stock at a predetermined price and date. As the Indian market rapidly grew to handle more than half of all global options trades, retail investors entered the market too.

Questions of price manipulation have dogged this rapid rise but remained vacuous until a New York court case in April 2024, where Jane Street alleged that its rival, Millennium Partners, had stolen its algorithms that helped it make in the Indian options market. A whistleblower, Mayank Bansal, then made presentations to SEBI showing Jane Street’s trading patterns. Bansal had agreed to speak to Al Jazeera about his interaction with SEBI on the matter, but then backtracked.

On July 3, in a detailed interim order, the regulator said that “by preponderance of probability, there is no economic rationale that can account for this sudden burst of large and aggressive activity … other than the intent to manipulate the price of securities and index benchmark”.

SEBI has alleged that Jane Street accumulated large long positions in stocks that are a part of the NSE’s Bank Index and built large short positions in index options at the start of trade. Around market closing time, it would reverse its trades in the cash and futures segments, pushing down the index and earning large profits in the options segment.

This activity was blurred by its offshore entities making some of these trades.

“Lawyers [can] push back with SEBI on jurisdiction-related issues, but when underlying [Indian] securities are issued, SEBI can take action,” Joby Mathew, managing partner at the law firm Joby Mathew and Associates and a former legal officer at SEBI, told Al Jazeera.

Jane Street has disputed SEBI’s findings and has hired lawyers to represent it before SEBI in the case. It has deposited the 48.43 billion rupees ($563m) of allegedly ill-gotten gains in an account pending the investigation and final report.

“Such processes typically take eight to 24 months,” especially in “complex manipulation cases”, Sumit Agarwal, a former SEBI officer and cofounder of Regstreet Law Advisors, told Al Jazeera in an emailed response.

But the investigation can only be part of a broader questioning of Jane Street and the regulator’s role in identifying and curbing such trades sooner and protecting retail investors.

‘Highly speculative and volatile’

As India’s options market grew, retail investors were drawn to it, enticed by the growing volumes, the prospect of quick gains and less fettered trades than the equities market, where a rapidly rising stock could hit circuit breakers, leading to a halt in trading to prevent manipulation.

Mathew says his clients from the options trading segment range from students to award-winning cardiologists who may not have a refined knowledge of the market but were sold on the idea by traders or social media influencers. Most ended up losing money.

Deven Choksey, managing director at the Mumbai-based stock brokerage KR Choksey Shares and Securities, says retail investors form nearly half the Indian options market, while Jane Street and other sophisticated institutions form a little more. “It’s like a bullock cart facing a race car. Their meeting is bound to cause accidents.”

If Jane Street is found to have manipulated the market, its earnings would have come through losses for retail investors.

Bhargavi Zaveri, a financial regulations researcher formerly at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and currently a doctoral researcher at the National University of Singapore, says retail investors have made losses in the options segment, but the total amount is not clear.

Identifying and compensating investors can be hard in such cases. So even if the final order goes against Jane Street and the 48.43 billion rupees fine goes into an investor protection fund, it may be hard to distribute it onwards to retail investors who incurred losses. The best protection may be to stem irregular trades early, experts say.

“SEBI has a surveillance system and they can well monitor the markets in a timely way.,” says Choksey.

SEBI’s interim order is based on trades made by Jane Street between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2025, a period in which retail investors may have incurred substantial losses, going by SEBI’s estimates.

Regstreet’s Agarwal says, “SEBI’s own 2024 consultations flagged expiry day options as highly speculative and volatile.”

India has fortnightly expiry dates for options, which is when they have to be settled. That is when Jane Street allegedly manipulated prices.

In a February 6 letter, SEBI told Jane Street, “The above trading activity prima facie appears to be fraudulent and manipulative.” But it did not issue its order curbing Jane Street until July 3.

SEBI’s recent measures limiting weekly expiries, tightening spreads and higher margins “reflect a push for greater protection” for retail investors, Agarwal says.

But the best way to protect retail investors would be to have them trade separately from proprietary trading firms in the options segment, Choksey points out.

“India is unique … and in no market will you see so many retail investors. So, SEBI must create product differentiation by customer segment.” to protect retail investors Chiksey says.

Challenges in proving manipulation

In an internal email, Jane Street reportedly told employees it was using “basic index arbitrage trading” and called SEBI’s allegations “extremely inflammatory”. It has hired Mumbai-based law firm, Khaitan and Co, to represent it before SEBI.

Proving price manipulation involves showing intent, which can be hard, and experts are divided on whether a SEBI investigation will be able to demonstrate that. “Trading to incur losses makes no sense, and so it indicates manipulation,” says Mathew, the former legal officer.

But NUS’s Zaveri says it is not so clear. “I think three problems are being conflated here. One, the size of the options segment being manifold the underlying cash segment. Two, that retail investors have made losses on the options segment, which I’m not sure have been quantified. Three, Jane Street arbitraged between an illiquid cash and highly liquid options segment.”

According to her, the three occurrences may not prove the intent to manipulate.

Under Indian law, proving manipulation is challenging and “Jane Street can argue its expiry day trades were legitimate index arbitrage recognised by regulators, making a manipulation finding difficult without clear intent evidence,” Regstreet’s Agarwal says.

Any action by SEBI could affect Jane Street’s reputation. Last month, an investigation by Bloomberg found that Jane Street cofounder Robert Granieri was duped into funding weapons for an attempted coup to overthrow the government in South Sudan.

If SEBI’s final order lays out any action against Jane Street, “they may well have to disclose it in their filings, which will affect them elsewhere in the world”, says Mathew.

MILWAUKEE — The Dodgers have been here before.

This time last year, in a season that bore so many similarities to their current one, a first-place and highly touted Dodgers team temporarily lost its way.

Amid a deluge of pitching injuries (sound familiar?) and the absence of one of its hottest early-season hitters (Mookie Betts, who suffered a broken hand close to the same time Max Muncy went down with a knee injury this year), the club stumbled backward into the All-Star break, going 2-8 in its final 10 games of the first half and 1-5 in a Philadelphia/Detroit road trip that exposed undeniable flaws in its star-studded roster.

Twelve months later, another pre-All-Star-break tailspin has struck the now defending champions.

The Dodgers have lost six games in a row, swept in back-to-back series by the Houston Astros and the Milwaukee Brewers. Their romp through June and the first days of July (when they won 20 times in a 30-game stretch) has been stalled by sudden regression lately, with lackluster offense and a worn-down pitching staff contributing to the organization’s longest losing streak since April 2019.

Now, as he did then, manager Dave Roberts has downplayed any alarm.

“I think it is under the ‘it’s just baseball’ type thing,” Roberts said Wednesday after the Dodgers’ most deflating loss of their skid yet. “You never like to lose six in a row. It seems like we’re pitching OK. The defense at times has been really good. It’s just that right now we’re scuffling offensively, to have that big inning or to build an inning and get that big hit.”

But, also like back then, frustration is mounting as the Dodgers approach the trade deadline.

The Dodgers’ Hyeseong Kim looks up while swinging a bat during a game against the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday in Milwaukee.

(Aaron Gash / Associated Press)

“We can’t really feel sorry about ourselves, because there’s a lot of season left, and we know what we’re looking for,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said. “We’re looking to win another championship, and playing this kind of baseball is not gonna get us there.”

By “this kind of baseball,” Rojas means this kind of offense.

During the last week, a Dodgers lineup that leads the majors in scoring on the season has suddenly scored the second-fewest runs (10 total, and more than two in just one of their last six contests) of the league’s 30 teams. In that time, they are batting a paltry .190 with only four home runs, a whopping 61 strikeouts and an on-base percentage of .269.

The root causes of that malaise are easy to identify: The Dodgers have been without several key regulars (Muncy, Teoscar Hernández and, until Wednesday, Tommy Edman) in their starting lineup. Their three healthy superstars (Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman) are hitting a combined .194. Their depth options have offered little reprieve (Michael Conforto, Hyeseong Kim and James Outman have gone five for 38 while receiving increased playing time).

And, they’ve run into two talented pitching staffs, struggling against quality opposing starters such as Framber Valdez, Freddy Peralta and rookie sensation Jacob Misiorowski, and two hard-throwing bullpens from the Astros and Brewers.

Granted, even $400-million payrolls like the Dodgers go through such dips in a season. And while the losses have piled up, the team has maintained the best record in the National League (56-38) and a five-game edge in their division.

“We’ve just got to put some at-bats together, keep playing good defense and it’ll turn,” Roberts promised. “When you’re mired in it, it’s frustrating. But we still have some pretty good players.”

The concern, however, is how quickly the offense has turned in the absence of a few key players.

Freeman and Betts were both slumping in June, but the contributions of Muncy and All-Star catcher Will Smith (the only regular who has also stayed hot during this current losing spell) helped compensate. Ohtani’s numbers at the plate have declined since he returned to pitching, but balance at the bottom of the lineup from younger bats like Kim and Andy Pages made such struggles feel moot.

This week, conversely, has highlighted what can happen when the Dodgers face good pitching at anything less than full strength –– the kind of confluence of events that could quickly derail any postseason campaign if it were to happen again in October.

“You can’t replace All-Stars. You can’t replace guys that have won MVPs in the postseason. You can’t replace those type of things,” Betts said this week. “The next man has to step up and do what he can do. But I mean, you can’t replace those guys. You can only have someone come step up and do their best.”

The good news is, Edman has already returned from a broken pinky toe. Hernández is expected back in the lineup Friday from a foot contusion. And, although Muncy’s knee injury is longer-term, he is expected to return this season.

“It’s one of those things,” Roberts said, “where we’ve got to find a way to weather it.”

Still, the questions this week has raised will loom even if the Dodgers start to heat up again (as they did last year, when they started the second half with a five-game winning streak and 26-13 run overall).

Already, the bullpen was an obvious area of need heading into the trade deadline (especially after Michael Kopech recently underwent a meniscus surgery on his right knee that forced him onto the 60-day IL). The rotation could be, too, although the Dodgers remain confident about having Tyler Glasnow (who returned to action with five solid innings Wednesday) and Blake Snell (who is beginning a minor-league rehab assignment this week) healthy for the second half.

Now, the club will have to decide whether it needs another impact bat as well, potentially adding to a shopping list that has grown much longer than the team had expected after another big offseason of lavish spending.

After all, Freeman and Betts have yet to show signs of life amid career-worst slumps. Ohtani’s workload won’t get any easier as he continues to ramp up on the mound. And there’s no guarantee how Muncy will look once he returns, with Roberts noting his bone bruise will probably linger into next year.

It all leaves the Dodgers in a familiar position: Hopeful its talented, but hardly infallible, roster possesses enough firepower to win another World Series, but knowing that — like last year, when the team acquired Edman, Kopech and starter Jack Flaherty at the deadline — more reinforcements might nonetheless be needed.

“We have to do better,” Rojas said, voicing a recognition that has reverberated throughout the clubhouse of late, as the front office evaluates its options ahead of the July 31 trade deadline. “We gotta find ways to be a complete team that we know we can be.”

The trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has culminated in a verdict, after more than seven weeks of intense media scrutiny and testimony about drug-fuelled celebrity sex parties.

But beneath the salacious details, advocates say there are critical takeaways about how sexual violence is understood – and sometimes tolerated – within the criminal justice system.

On Wednesday, a federal jury in the United States delivered a split decision.

It found Combs guilty of transporting individuals to engage in prostitution, but not guilty of the weightier question of whether he engaged in sex trafficking or racketeering for flying girlfriends and sex workers to the parties he organised.

Prosecutors had described Combs’s activity as a “criminal enterprise” in which he leveraged money, power and physical violence to force former girlfriends into abusive circumstances.

The split ruling has, in turn, divided opinion about what the case means for the beleaguered #MeToo movement, which emerged in the early 2010s to bring accountability to cases of sexual violence.

For Emma Katz, a domestic abuse expert, the jury’s decision indicates there are still yawning gaps in public understanding about sexual violence. That understanding, she maintains, is necessary to assess the behaviours that accompany long-term abuse and coercion, particularly between intimate partners.

“I think a ruling like this would be a good news kind of day for perpetrators,” she told Al Jazeera. “The jury seems to have concluded you can be a victim, a survivor, whose boss beats you in hotel corridors and has control over your life, but that you’re not being coerced by him.”

“So much of what perpetrators do that enables them to get away with their abuse – and what makes their abuse so horrific and so sustained – has not been acknowledged and has disappeared from the picture in this verdict,” she added.

A ‘botched’ decision

How the jury arrived at its decision remains unknown.

But prosecutors had been tasked with proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Combs used “force, fraud, or coercion” to compel his girlfriends into commercial sex acts.

The case was centred largely on the testimony of two women: singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura Fine and a woman identified only by the pseudonym “Jane”. Both were identified as former girlfriends of Combs.

The prosecution argued that Combs had used his financial influence, violence and threats of blackmail to coerce Ventura and the other woman to perform sex acts during parties known as “freak-offs”.

The evidence included surveillance video from March 2016 of Combs beating Ventura in a hotel hallway and then dragging her away. Ventura herself gave harrowing testimony at the trial, saying she felt “trapped” in a cycle of abuse.

She explained that cycle involved regular threats and violence, including Combs “stomping” her on the face in a 2009 incident.

But the defence’s arguments throughout the proceedings appear to have swayed the jury, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor.

The defence blatantly admitted that Combs was abusive towards Ventura, as the surveillance footage had shown. But Combs’s lawyers maintained there was no evidence he coerced Ventura into committing sexual acts against her will.

The Los Angeles Times even quoted defence lawyer Teny Geragos as saying, “Domestic violence is not sex trafficking.”

“The big question in the case is: If you’re sexually abused or assaulted, why did you stay with your abuser for more than a decade?” Rahmani said. “I understand the psychology of abuse, but jurors don’t necessarily buy it”.

Rahmani broadly assessed that prosecutors “botched” the sex-trafficking portion of the case.

That included how prosecutors approached a series of messages from Ventura that indicated affection for Combs and active participation in sexual situations, which Rahmani noted were not revealed until cross-examination by the defence.

According to experts like Katz, such behaviour can be common in abusive relationships, in which an abuser expects a “performance of happiness” to avoid physical, financial or psychological repercussions.

“It would never surprise me to see a victim survivor sending loving texts and enthusiastic texts to somebody who they said was abusing them, because that’s all part and parcel of domestic abuse,” Katz said.

‘Stain on criminal justice’

From Katz’s perspective, the verdict underscores the reality of what has happened since the #MeToo movement emerged.

While #MeToo helped workplace harassment become more widely understood, the general public still struggles with the complexities of intimate partner violence.

“I think that the public has shown more willingness to consider how somebody might be harmed by an acquaintance, a work colleague, somebody who’s hiring them for a job,” Katz said.

By contrast, intimate partner abuse consistently raises victim-blaming questions like: Why did someone remain with an abusive partner?

“There’s still a lot of stigma around when you chose this person,” Katz explained. The thought process, she added, is often: “It can’t have been that bad if you stayed in the relationship.”

But domestic violence experts point to complicating, often unseen factors. Abuse can have psychological consequences, and abusers often attempt to wield power over their victims.

Children, housing and financial circumstances can also prevent survivors from leaving and seeking help. People experiencing such abuse might also fear an escalation of the violence – or retaliation against loved ones – should they leave.

Experts, however, say it can be hard to illustrate those fears in court. Still, on Wednesday, Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, struck a positive tone about the outcome of the Combs trial.

In a statement, he said Ventura’s legal team was “pleased” with the verdict and that her testimony helped to assure that Combs has “finally been held responsible for two federal crimes”.

“He still faces substantial jail time,” Wigdor noted. The prostitution transportation charges each carry a maximum of 10 years.

Several advocacy groups also praised Ventura and others for coming forward with their experiences.

The verdict “shows that even when power tries to silence truth, survivors push it into the light,” Lift Our Voices, a workplace advocacy group, wrote on the social media platform X. “The #MeToo movement hasn’t waned, it’s grown stronger.”

Fatima Goss Graves, head of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), echoed that Ventura’s and Jane’s testimonies were accomplishments in and of themselves.

“Coming forward and seeking accountability took extraordinary bravery and no jury can take that away,” she said.

Others were less optimistic about the jury’s split verdict. Arisha Hatch, interim executive director of UltraViolet, a gender-justice advocacy organisation, called the verdict a “decisive moment for our justice system” – and not in a good way.

“Today’s verdict is not just a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers like Diddy,” Hatch said. “It’s also an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”