scandal

As court documents tied to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein continue to surface, the scandal has become an international embarrassment, exposing how quickly powerful men can turn into reputational liabilities. That discomfort reached New Delhi, where Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates was expected to deliver the keynote address at the AI Impact Summit but ultimately did not attend amid criticism and apparent unease within the Modi government over his past meetings with Epstein. The spectacle was revealing. Public moral outrage travels swiftly when scandal threatens reputations and diplomatic optics. Yet that sensitivity to association sits uneasily beside a domestic reality in which sexual violence against women unfolds with brutal regularity, drawing neither comparable embarrassment nor consequence. The contrast is grotesque. A political culture capable of signalling discomfort towards a global scandal remains strikingly untroubled by the everyday brutality faced by women at home.

Under the Modi administration, the news cycle churns with reports of gang rapes like factory output — steady, relentless, and numbing in repetition. The rapes have become so common that they are reported like the weather. Heatwave deaths. Flash flood. Five-year-old abducted, raped, murdered. And like the weather, only God is responsible. Not the rapist. Not the court. Not the police. Definitely not the prime minister.

Between the time this piece was commissioned and published, a five-year-old was gang-raped in Meerut, a 26-year-old was gang-raped in Faridabad, and a 17-year-old was gang-raped in Odisha. A 42-year-old was gang-raped in Delhi’s suburbs. A 12-year-old girl was kidnapped and gang-raped in Bikaner. There were more gang rapes in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Kanpur. I could give you statistics, but numbers could never convey the larger, all-encompassing terror of living with predators. The threat of sexual violence is as constant as gravity. The cases are gruesome — intestines pulled out, rods inserted, tongues cut out, acid thrown, decapitation, strangulation, and burning. When I look at government data about rape — an average of 86 women are raped every day — it feels as grisly as stumbling upon a mass grave in Excel sheets.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his home minister, Amit Shah, ostensibly obsessed with restoring law and order at any cost, seem entirely unconcerned that India is the gang rape capital of the world on their watch.

The most alarming instance of this was when convicted rapist and Bharatiya Janata Party politician Kuldeep Singh Sengar, found guilty of raping a minor in 2017 and a native of Makhi village in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, was granted bail by a high court, raising the possibility of his reintegration into the very social and political landscape that had once enabled his impunity. A high court granted him bail in December. Thankfully, it was stayed by the Supreme Court, but only after infuriated women gathered in Delhi to protest. Sengar had raped a teenager, who was also gang-raped by his associates. Her father was murdered in police custody. A case was registered only after she threatened to burn herself in front of the chief minister’s residence. Her tragic story showcases how Indian men, like the Modi administration, remain remarkably unembarrassed about the state of affairs.

Sadly, this is not an aberration; it is the system speaking in its mother tongue.

Public memory matters because each new case unfolds against the residue of the ones we were told would change everything. In 2012, I read about the “Nirbhaya” gang rape three days after the incident, on my way from the airport. I had been deliberately avoiding the news until she ended up at Safdarjung Hospital, and my editor needed a health update from me. After I learned all the details of what men had done to this young woman, I thought the world would stand still. A threshold had been crossed. Something told me the world would start anew. There were protests, and people everywhere would know her name, and something like this would never happen again.

All of my naivety was drowned in a chorus of “Not All Men”, as the gang rape was turned into something viral to hang a hashtag on. The refrain did not defend innocence so much as redirect attention away from accountability and back towards male comfort.

It is impossible for me to hear of such cases and not think: What if it were me? My body. That rod. Those men. The suffering and mutilation of women’s bodies is so reliable that there is now a market to help ease our fear. Security apps. Pepper sprays and wearable panic alarms. Every time I write about this subject, I sit with the absolute inadequacy of the written word in the face of men who film the rapes, brag about them, and get rehabilitated nevertheless.

It wouldn’t be out of place to call this moment unprecedented, but it is beyond that. It is existential. Whether it is the United States or India, women are watching the same choreography of power protecting itself, as men of consequence close ranks and wait out the storm. The similarity lies not in scale or context, but in the recurring spectacle of institutions cushioning powerful men while survivors fight alone. For a while now, both countries — allegedly the biggest and the oldest democracies — have been on a trajectory of self-destruction, with men leading the way. Under Modi as well as Trump, rape has become an extension of politics. Women are violated no longer by men alone, but by courts, hospitals, and newsrooms, too. It is the age of monsters. It did not begin with Epstein, Gates, or Sengar, of course, but they are the symbols of it.

While the middle class was busy buying into the dream of upward mobility, careerism, and two bedrooms in a gated suburb, we let thugs cultivate a wholesale misogynist empire that runs on hate for women. I do not know what to do with the rage I feel. What do you do when you are constantly told that your body, your people, your gender are disposable? I don’t know.

What I do know is that the teenager who survived Sengar is still fighting for justice. I know that the survivors of Epstein’s sex trafficking network are fighting for justice, too. These women are fighting with heart and soul and sweat and muscle. I know that I have no right to be despondent while they stand tall, looking every inch the hero they are. I also know that nobody puts up a fight like that unless you love your sisters.

At this dark hour, it feels important to place on record that as the Modi administration recoils theatrically from the shadow of the Epstein scandal at the summit stage, the satire writes itself. A government that cannot, or will not, protect its women should be far more ashamed of what is ordinary than of what is scandalous.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

After the fake video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting went viral, a surge of AI-generated content from Seedance 2.0 flooded the internet.

Some fans were using the new AI video generator, backed by ByteDance, to refashion the finales for shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things.” Others created battle scenes between iconic superheroes like Wolverine and Superman or between a Transformer and Godzilla.

As these Seedance videos amassed millions of views on social media, industry guilds like SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Assn. have criticized the AI platform that was launched last week. Now, many major Hollywood studios are threatening to take legal action against ByteDance, the same Chinese parent that oversees TikTok.

Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Disney have all sent individual cease and desist letters, detailing the unauthorized reproduction of each of the studios’ copyrighted intellectual property.

Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery were the latest studios to send cease and desists letter to ByteDance on Tuesday.

Netflix calls Seedance “a high-speed privacy engine” and says that they “will not stand by and watch ByteDance treat our valued IP as free, public domain clip art,” as stated in the letter. The streamer also cites the illegal use of sets derived from “Squid Game,” costumes from “Bridgerton” and character design from “KPop Demon Hunters.”

Warner Bros. Discovery looks to repurposed content, including characters from the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” franchises, as well as superheroes like Batman, as “ blatant infringement” by ByteDance. The studio argues that it’s clear that their AI technology was trained on Warner Bros. copyrighted material “without authorization.”

“But the users are not the ones at the root cause of the infringement; they are merely building on the foundation of infringement already laid by ByteDance as Seedance comes pre-loaded with Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted characters,” wrote the studios’ legal executive vice president Wayne Smith. “That was a deliberate design choice by ByteDance.”

Disney and Paramount were the first of the studios to call out ByteDance, sending their letters last Friday and Saturday. Disney accuses ByteDance of loading its Seedance service “with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises.”

“Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Disney’s attorney David Singer wrote, per Axios.

Paramount’s cease and desist letter was reviewed by The Times and makes similar assertions about ByteDance’s unapproved use of copyrighted material.

ByteDance has since pledged to implement more safeguards to protect copyrighted material in response to these letters.

“ByteDance respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0,” a company spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNBC. “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.”

But with or without the safeguards, Dan Purcell, chief executive of Midnight Labs, an AI-powered company that specializes in IP protection for high-value entertainment, said these letters might be a bit of a delayed reaction from the studios.

“Once synthetic content is generated, it spreads instantly and at a massive scale. By the time lawyers engage, the damage is done,” said Purcell in a statement. “The only path forward is strict licensing, real-time enforcement, and consequences that actually hurt. Reactive letters won’t fix this. The industry needs to move at the speed of AI — not the speed of litigation.”

“Real Housewives of Potomac” personality Karen Huger says she has turned over a new leaf nearly two years after crashing her Maserati in a drunk-driving accident.

The reality TV star, 62, on Thursday opened up about her 2024 DUI arrest and the six-month county jail sentence that followed in a conversation with Sherri Shepherd. Huger, dubbed the Grand Dame by fans, told the “Sherri” host that she is “so happy and so at peace right now to be on the other side.”

In March 2024, Maryland police arrested Huger for driving under the influence after she crashed her car into a street divider and a tree in Potomac. In addition to the DUI, Huger was also found guilty on negligent driving charges and sentenced in February 2025 to one year in jail. After serving six months in Maryland’s Montgomery County Detention Center, she was released in September.

For her sit-down with Shepherd, Huger was styled in a formfitting burnt orange dress, metallic cuffs and a chic bob. While the daytime host complimented her look, Huger said her exterior is “not a reflection of what God has done for me.”

“I healed myself, so thank you,” she continued, “but the inside is what matters.”

Huger spoke candidly about how the 2024 accident pushed her to confront her struggles with alcohol addiction. At the time of the crash, Huger attributed her drinking to the grief of losing her mother and urged drivers to “understand your emotional state” before driving a car. She said Thursday that the drunk-driving incident was her running away from the reality of grief and addiction and her choice to not listen to God.

Huger told Shepherd that, prior to the accident, she was a “functional addict” who would drink off-screen during her time on “RHOP” — a habit she said she’s now ashamed of.

“I was dead wrong,” she said Thursday of her accident. “I’m so grateful no one was killed, no other person was hurt. I’m so grateful to be alive. I could’ve died.”

The reality TV star said six months in county jail — without cameras and her creature comforts — proved to be a period of self-improvement and empowerment. Huger said she began treatment to address her alcohol addiction and carried that on in prison. She said she led Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings while behind bars.

“I have a responsibility to tell my truth and share it with the world if they’re willing to listen,” she told Shepherd.

Huger previously spoke about the scandal with Andy Cohen, telling the Bravo host earlier this month that she had been in denial about her grief and addiction. She also told Cohen that she was taking her sobriety one day at a time, a sentiment she echoed on “Sherri.” Her two adult children are also major motivators to stay sober, she said.

The “RHOP” star, eager to put her DUI behind her, recalled seeing her two adult children “through a glass window” in jail and recognizing “the pain that put them through.”

“I didn’t think about how they would feel,” she said, underscoring she intends for that to be a onetime experience.

Huger said Thursday that it remains to be seen whether she will return to “RHOP” for future seasons. Huger was absent from the season amid her sentence but appeared in the Season 10 finale. The “RHOP” cast, including Huger, reunited for the series’ three-part reunion, which begins airing on Sunday.

In the fallout of the scandal, Huger told Shepherd she feels like the same “Karen Huger, just clean.” She also isn’t resisting fans’ “Grand Dame” nickname, despite her scandal.

“If they want me to be their Grand Dame, no one else could do it anyway.”

Tim Allan steps down a day after Starmer’s chief of staff, ‍Morgan McSweeney, ⁠quits, adding pressure on the PM.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s communications chief, Tim Allan, has stepped down as the leader of the governing Labour Party faces fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

The move on Monday came a day after Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, also quit.

“I have decided to stand down to allow a new No. 10 team to be built,” Tim Allan said in a short statement.

Starmer has come under criticism for appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his known links to Epstein, a convicted late US sex offender.

The prime minister said on Monday politics should be a force for good ⁠and emphasised the importance of moving forward after the resignations.

“We must prove that ‌politics can be a force ‌for good. I believe it ⁠can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We ‌go with confidence as we continue changing the country,” Starmer told his Downing Street staff.

Mandelson has been under investigation since his name appeared in files on the Epstein investigations released by the US Department of Justice.

He was sacked by Starmer in September over his friendship with Epstein and last week also quit the Labour Party and House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it is reviewing an exit payment made to him after he was fired.