An Australian cybersecurity expert who served as director of L3Harris Trenchant, a U.S. defense contractor, has pleaded guilty in federal court to selling trade secrets to a Russian broker. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that ‘America’s national security is not for sale.’ File Photo by Will Oliver/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 29 (UPI) — An Australian cybersecurity expert who served as director of L3Harris Trenchant, a U.S. defense contractor, has pleaded guilty in federal court to selling trade secrets to a Russian broker that resells cyber exploits to buyers including the Russian government.
Peter Williams, 39, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft of trade secrets that had been stolen over a three-year period from the defense contractor where he worked, the U.S. Justice Department announced in a news release.
The Justice Department did not name the American company, but British government corporate records showed it to be L3Harris Trenchant, where he was employed as the director from October 2024 until he resigned in August.
Williams admitted as part of his plea deal that he used his access to steal $35 million worth of trade secrets beginning in 2022 until his resignation, the Justice Department said.
Using the alias John Taylor, Williams then entered into “multiple written contracts” with a Russian broker who paid him some $1.3 million in cryptocurrency, and then used the money to buy himself fake Rolexes and high-end jewelry.
Sources told Australia’s ABC broadcaster that Williams previously worked for the Australian Signals Directorate, the country’s equivalent to the U.S. National Security Agency.
Precise details of what was stolen by Williams have not been made public, but the Justice Department said the materials were “national security-focused software that included at least eight sensitive and protected cyber-exploit components.”
“America’s national security is not for sale, especially in an evolving threat landscape where cybercrime poses a serious danger to our citizens,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Williams faces up to 10 years in prison for each count at his sentencing, expected to take place next year. He also faces fines of up to $300,000 and will have to pay restitution of $1.3 million.
Celebrity Traitors stars Kate Garraway and Tom Daley have opened up about their experiences on the BBC show – as the Good Morning Britain star opens up about how healing it was for her
Tom Daley and Kate Garraway were two of the biggest names to sign up for the latest series(Image: ITV)
Celebrity Traitors has kept us on the edge of our seats for weeks with backstabbing, betrayal and Traitor like ways. However, it was quite the healing experience for Kate Garraway.
Kate tragically lost her husband Derek Draper following a lengthy health battle and was instantly launched into being a single mum to their beloved children Darcey and Billy. Whilst many would find Celebrity Traitors difficult and mentally draining, Kate actually found it therapeutic and said it really gave her time to slow down and think.
Speaking about the show, Kate said: “The process was fun, intense and eye-opening. It was a rollercoaster. It was also a wonderful time to do some thinking of my own.
“No phones, access to the internet or live TV were allowed, and my wonderful sister-in-law was with the kids. So I could distract myself from the worries of the past few years and immerse myself in game play but also take stock and let my mind wander and dream about the next chapter of my life.”
Kate is adamant to keep Derek a huge part of her and the kids’ life despite his tragic death. Speaking to Prima, Kate added: “As a family, we think about Derek and I think about him all the time.
“We’ve ended up with this strange conversation that takes place where Derek’s almost there. So, if Darcey is asking to do something or suggesting something, I’ll say, ‘What do you reckon Dad would think about that?’ And she’ll say, ‘Well, I think Dad would think this. But actually, I think he’s wrong because of this.’ I quite like that because it feels as though he’s still constantly involved.”
Olympic diver Tom Daley had a much shorter stint on the show but in the time off screen, he was able to focus on his other passion in life – knitting. He explained: “Yeah, any time I was in the hotel I was just knitting, knitting, knitting.
“You get your phone taken off you, you can’t talk to anyone, you’re just in your room, so I was very glad I had knitting because I think lots of people were bored. We wanted to do a knitting lesson in our downtime, but we never quite got around to it.”
His son Robbie is a huge fan of the show. He told Radio Times: “Robbie is a huge fan of The Traitors, and the boys spent some time on the Game of Wool set. Phoenix is only two! He’s definitely not into it [knitting] yet. He likes grabbing the wool, then running away with it and unravelling everything. Robbie, to be fair, has made a hat with a knitting loom machine and has crocheted a chain.”
The December 2025 issue of Prima is on sale today and Tom’s full interview is available in the new edition of Radio Times.
FORMER Sugababes star Amelle Berrabah has confirmed she’ll “reveal secrets” about the band after being ousted from the reunion.
The popstar, now 41, joined the girl group in December 2005 as a replacement for Mutya Buena and stayed with the band until they went on hiatus at the end of 2011.
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Amelle Berrebah says she’ll ‘reveal secrets’ about the Sugababes in a new BBC documentaryCredit: BBCAmelle joined the group in 2005, replacing MutyaCredit: GettyJade, Amelle and Heidi performing in the group for two years before the original three reunitedCredit: GettyThe original line-up have seen a resurgence over the past few yearsCredit: Getty
When the Sugababes came to end, Amelle was singing alongside Heidi Range, who joined the group in 2001, and last recruit Jade Ewen, who came on board in 2009.
Whilst with Heidi and Jade, Amelle released the Suagbabes seventh album Sweet 7 before the band “fizzled out”.
At the same time, the band’s original line-up, Mutya, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy began performing together again and by 2019 won a legal battle to re-gain the band name Sugababes – essentially preventing the other three from ever reuniting.
Now Amelle is getting her own back on being ousted from the band’s reunion.
Dame Penelope Keith has spilled the secrets of The Good Life as she claimed a sequel would be ‘tedious’ and would not work
Penelope Keith spills the secrets of The Good Life
Dame Penelope Keith has revealed how she turned down the chance to star in a spin-off of The Good Life as she claimed it would be ‘tedious’ and would not work. The actress, who is now 85, became a household name in the 1970s BBC sitcom which drew audiences of up to 20 million viewers.
She starred as the snobbish social climber Margo Leadbetter who was married to the poor hen-pecked husband Jerry (played by the late Paul Eddington).
Every week fans tuned in to see her disapproving sneers as she struggled to deal with her suburban neighbours Tom and Barbara Good (portrayed by the late Richard Briers along with Felicity Kendall) who had swapped the rat race for ‘the good life’ of make-do-and-mend sustainability – trying to grow their own food and keep chickens, pigs and a goat in their garden.
The show – which ran from 1975 until 1978 – ended after four series and a TV special filmed in front of the royal family. However, soon after, the idea was raised about writing a spin-off series for her and Paul featuring just The Leadbetters.
But she explained: “People mentioned ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a Leadbetter spin-off and I said ‘No. It’s a situation comedy and the situation is strong because of the two couples’.
“Can you imagine how tedious it would have been having Margo and Jerry having their own series?”
A year after The Good Life ended, instead Penelope landed another huge BBC hit playing posh Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born from 1979 to 1981. Later she appeared in sitcoms Executive Stress and Next of Kin and No Job For A Lady before embarking on a highly successful theatre career.
The Good Life ran for 30 episodes in total and its 50 th anniversary this year is being marked by a forthcoming TV special called The Good Life: Inside Out fronted by Penelope.
It reveals how, when the show first launched, the TV critics and audience were lukewarm and did not find it that funny.
Penelope even admits that the ‘green theme’ was a brave choice of plot line adding: “It was a sort of fantasy. People weren’t packing up and thinking ‘Oh there must be more to life than this daily grind.’”
One reviewer even risked causing a tense atmosphere on-set by claiming that The Leadbetters ‘stole the show’. Briers, apparently, saw the review but brushed it aside joking that he was the one with the top billing and getting all the money.
But soon viewers fell in love with both couples as The Goods struggled to deal with surviving on growing their own dinners and milking Geraldine the goat for milk in their tea.
Meanwhile posh middle class Margo would look on disdainfully at their antics which she felt brought down the neighbourhood. The plots included a touch of sauce too.
In one episode, both couples get drunk and Jerry admits to fancying Barbara and Tom tells Margo she is a good looking woman.
Penelope says about this: “There was flirting and all those sorts of things but you never felt that there was any wife swapping or anything like that. It was a very strong bond between them and I think that was again in the writing that was so clever.”
In another episode, Margo decides to add some spice to an afternoon by playing the seductress to Jerry – but he is distracted and completely blanks her, leading her to utter the immortal line ‘That’s the last time I play the tart for you, Jerry’.
Penelope loved the script and admits she is shocked that fans come up to her wanting her to say the line.
She said: “When I saw the line ‘That’s the last time I play the tart for you Jerry’ I thought ‘Wow that is a humdinger’.
“I had people coming up to me and saying ‘Will you say that line for me please?’ which I thought was most peculiar – but I said it!”
Penelope salutes the writers of the sitcom John Esmonde and Bob Larbey for creating such wonderful characters – with all their flaws – for the viewers to take to their hearts.
She points out that Tom could be quite beastly and selfish to wife Barbara but he got away with it (‘You love Richard. You adore him. You laugh at him even when he is being an absolute horror because he does with a sense of humour’.)
Barbara was cute and long-suffering but adored Tom and everyone felt nothing but sympathy for poor Jerry. However it was Margo – a Conservative-supporting, Telegraph-reading domineering social climbing wife – who got the most attention and some of the funniest lines.
Penelope explains: “Margo was the prime lady of the avenue with all the dinner parties and whatever she took part in, she had to do it perfectly and had to be top dog and sometimes she was terribly disapproving. She had no sense of humour but she was terribly kind and didn’t want to offend but she engaged mouth before brain so often.
“She had enormous warmth and adored the goods and likewise jerry but he infuriated her. There is a line where she says ‘I am the silent majority’ and she said it dead pan and that is what she felt and that is what half the country felt at the time as well.”
As its popularity grew, so did the laughs especially at the expense of Margo. Fans loved the scene where she tried to help The Goods with planting in the garden and decked in yellow oil skins and boots she slipped over and fell knee deep in mud.
Penelope recalls: “Someone actually asked me the other day – ‘Was it a mistake?’ and I said ‘No. I did five times’. I couldn’t walk for about three days afterwards because of my back and of course every time I fell over I was covered in mud and so I had to be hosed down afterwards.”
And another of her favourite scenes was when one of The Good’s pigs was in labour and Tom asked Margo to go and fetch some brandy as ‘a stimulant’.
The actress recalls: “I walked out of shot and then back into shot and asked Tom ‘Remy Martin or VSOP?’ I mean what a wonderful line. It was so witty and so funny. It is one of my favourites.”
It seems Margo also got the most attention when it came to wardrobe. Since The Goods always wore the same clothes and Jerry was always in a suit, it did not take a genius to work out where the majority of the clothes budget went.
Fans loved seeing what dress or gown Margo would be sporting during each episode. They usually came from Harrods and some were even the high end fashion label Frank Usher.
Penelope said: “There was a budget I remember and the person who got the most spent on them as far as clothes were concerned was me. I don’t think I would have worn any of those dresses but Margo loved them.
“Everybody wanted to see what Margo was going to wear next. Monday used to be my one day off but I used to spend it in Harrods occasionally Harvey Nicks looking for beautiful clothes. Silk gowns in such lovely vibrant colours.”
In the TV special, Penelope visits a replica of Margo and Jerry’s drawing room which has been painstakingly recreated by designers.
She laughs: “I remember the sofa being so low. That was alright 50 years ago but I don’t know if I can get up today.”
And she revisits the garden in Northwood in west London which was used for all of the outside filming shots for Tom and Barbara’s farm and allotment.
She comments: “What a garden! It’s all trees now but back then it was all dug up. It looks a totally different place now. Must be good soil here – all that animal excrement because we had pigs and chickens and Geraldine the goat! But we loved it here – being released into the open air was freedom after working in the studio.”
One little known secret which Penelope does uncover delving back into the archives is that when the BBC planned a special to be filmed in front of the royals called When I’m Sixty Five, they asked playwright Alan Bennett to have a cameo role in the episode as a bank manager.
However he turned them down. He told them he was too ‘worn out’ and needed a holiday having committed to making a series of plays for ITV.
Instead an actor called George Cole got the role – just weeks before he was cast as Arthur Daley in Minder. The Good Life ended in 1978 and all the main stars thought it was the right time to bow out.
Penelope confessed: “I remember saying to Paul ‘I don’t think we can do any more. I think we have squeezed this orange to the pips really’ and I know Richard felt like that and Felicity too.”
But fans expecting a finale which ended on a high with a load of laughs were in for a shock. The episode ended with burglars ransacking The Goods’ home and turning it upside down and leaving everything in tatters.
Jerry tells Tom he must now give up ‘the good life’ and go back to work – but it is Barbara who says they must carry on and not be beaten. Penelope called the episode a stroke of genius.
She added: “When we got the script for the last episode we were all amazed, but in wonder, what a brilliant way to finish. When we came to the studio we did the beginning and then they had curtains which they drew across the set and then they sprayed (paint) all over the set and then the floor manager talked to the audience but said nothing about what was going on behind the curtains.
“Then the curtain went up and the audience gasped, absolutely gasped. It was extraordinary. People were in tears at the end.”
Asked about her time on the show, she now says: “I look back on it as one of the happiest times. It was of its time at the right time.
“It was as good as it was because of everything else behind it. Everybody cared. The laughter, the joy it brought and the fact that people liked it so much and believed in it so much is reward.”
After starring in the BBC sitcom for four years, Richard Briers continued his TV career, landing a lead part in another BBC sitcom a few years later. He played the unsympathetic Martin Bryce on Ever Decreasing Circles from 1984 to 1989. His character Martin was the polar opposite of Tom from The Good Life. He died in 2013.
Felicity Kendal has enjoyed a varied career on stage and screen including on TV a starring role in the thriller Rosemary and Thyme from 2003 to 2006, to guest appearances in Doctor Who in 2008 and Pennyworth in 2019. Paul Eddington played Jerry, who worked with Tom until he and his wife decided to make this life change.
Just two years after The Good Life he took on the title role of Jim Hacker in the comedy series Yes, Minister. He starred in the series until 1984, before taking on a main role in its spin-off Yes, Prime Minister.
Paul later reunited with his co-stars from The Good Life, starring opposite Felicity in The Camomile Lawn in 1992, and then alongside Richard in the play Home in 1994. The actor sadly passed away at the age of 68 in 1995 after a cancer battle.
* The Good Life: Inside Out airs on U&Gold on Tuesday October 28 at 9pm.
A presenter has revealed he is the recognisable voice behind the Channel 4 programme introductions we see most days – and shared what a day in the life looks like
You may recognise this presenter’s voice from Channel 4(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
When sitting down to watch television on a night, we get used to seeing repeated adverts, familiar channel logos, and presenters. One voiceover artists has shared what really happens before you hear programme introductions on Channel 4.
Sam Darlastone works as a presenter on Kiss radio and has his own podcast called Embarrassing For No Reason. He also works as a voiceover artist, whose voice you may recognise in between programmes on Channel 4. Now he opened up about how it works. On Instagram, he shared a video of him introducing what was on. Sam said: “If you’ve heard this sort of thing on TV, this is how it comes together. So you may have heard that or something similar on TV before that is called a trending menu.”
Explaining, the presenter added: “So trending menus actually start way before they reach the voice overs here at Channel 4, the team will pick three shows to focus on, some will be old some will be new, well most will be new.”
He noted there will be a mix of genres included in the announcement. He shared: “When I finally get there [to the Channel 4 studios] my job is to spend the afternoon scripting, which sometimes surprises people because in certain voiceover rolls you wouldn’t write your own script, but for these we do.”
Sam added he will be giving a brief with a time slot, typically around 20 seconds, and three programmes to talk about.
He noted: “Then we head down to the recording booth – or some people call it the dungeon.”
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He claimed he records with the video of the show in front of him. He also previously admitted that sometimes he makes mistakes and doesn’t always get it perfect on the first try.
“Great to put a face to the voice,” commented one. “I love this geeky stuff,” said another. One called Sam “the coolest guy for the coolest channel”.
“Love a good insight into some art being made,” wrote a third. Another added: “Love listening to your voice.”
Another wrote: “You’re the Channel 4 voiceover! I’ve heard your voice loads while watching Friday Night Dinner and Channel 4 Player.”
One other said: “I will never hear your channel 4 voice overs the same again.”
“I’ve often thought about this – and no can see the face to the voice,” one other added.
THEY were lovers from opposite ends of society — a runaway aristocrat and a convicted rapist who sparked a nationwide manhunt when they went on the run to hide their secret newborn baby from social services.
Now, in a dramatic twist, Mark Gordon’s sister has lifted the lid on her convict brother’s twisted past that led him on the path to a toxic “Romeo and Juliet” romance – culminating in the tragic death of their child.
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Mark started life as a shy ‘mummy’s boy’, according to his sisterCredit: PA
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Mark Gordon’s half sister Karen Satchell said he was nicknamed “The Preacher” in jailCredit: Louis Wood News Group Newspapers Ltd
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Mark met Constance Marten in an incense shop in Tottenham, north London, in 2014Credit: PA
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Karen believes Marten was the ‘boss’ in their marriageCredit: PA
Gordon got an extended four-year licence as he met the threshold for dangerousness, meaning he has a high risk of reoffending.
It means after serving his sentence, he will remain under state supervision and have certain restrictions.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Karen Satchell, 54, from North London, reveals for the first time how her jailbird brother dreamed of a new life – and fathered another child before vanishing off-grid with Marten.
And he became increasingly paranoid in what Karen has called a “Romeo and Juliet” style relationship, with lovers from two wildly different families.
It is understood Gordon met Marten’s relatives shortly after they began dating around 2014, and even went to their house before Marten became estranged from them.
Moment cops arrest and ask Constance Marten ‘where is your child?’ after she killed newborn baby while on the run with rapist partner
With Constance, 38, Gordon had five children – four of whom were taken off them after concerns over their caring abilities, and the fifth, Victoria.
Gordon grew up as a “shy” lad in Birmingham, attending the state comprehensive Yardley Primary School.
While future-wife Marten – the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II’s former page – reminisced about childhood picnics and naked siestas in hay bales at her country mansion in Dorset, Gordon, the youngest of seven, was digging up dirt in his yard and chasing his sisters around with worms.
Half-sister Karen remembers him as a “good kid”, adding: “A proper naughty little brother but more mischievous than anything bad.”
He went to church weekly with his tight-knit family, and his mum Sylvia was a licensed pastor.
He totally shut down and was in a daze. He wasn’t aware of what was really going on. He looked younger than he was. To think of him with felonies is unbelievable.
Karen Satchell on Mark Gordon’s rape arrest
And while Marten’s family had annual skiing holidays, Gordon’s went to Butlins each year, where he once won some money and flowers in a mother-and-son competition.
Karen said: “They were standing on the stage and Mark was asked a few questions about his mum.
“They thought they were the most bonded.”
But he was described as “a bit of a loner” and preferring instead to play by himself, or hang out with Karen and her friends, following them around and threatening to snitch on her to his mum if she was ever up to no good.
When he was still young, Sylvia moved to America to try to build a better life for them, while Mark and Karen stayed in Britain with a nanny.
They were excited when, aged 11 and 15, they joined Sylvia in New York – but it was a culture shock.
They started off at a run-down school in the Bronx, plagued by bad behaviour and knives. Then moved to a better school, but had to catch two trains and two buses to get there.
A year later, the family relocated to a three-bed, single-storey home in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Florida while their mum studied to be a nurse.
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Moment cops ask Constance Marten ‘where is your child?’ as she is arrestedCredit: Metropolitan Police
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CCTV footage of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon in Flower and Dean Walk in Whitchapel, LondonCredit: PA
Karen said: “We became popular – everybody wanted to hear us talk because of our accent.
“The girls loved Mark. They knew where he lived and followed him home.
“They would knock on the door, and he was hiding. He didn’t want to talk to them. He was really shy. I never saw him with a girlfriend.
“When I got to the age when I had a boyfriend, he tended to stay home in his room. I was like ‘come out of your room, talk to some girls’. He said ‘get out, leave me alone’.”
‘He shut down’ after rape arrest
Their happy family life turned upside down, however, when he was arrested for rape in 1989.
They panicked when he failed to return home and spent all evening searching the neighbourhood for him, fearing for his safety.
Mum Sylvia, who was training to be a nurse, was away in Jamaica at the time but flew back in a panic as Mark’s siblings phoned the police to make a missing persons report.
But when Sylvia turned up at the police station, she was devastated to hear her last-born son had made a taped confession to rape.
Karen said: “We were devastated. He never spoke. He stopped speaking.
“He totally shut down and was in a daze. He wasn’t aware of what was really going on.
“He looked younger than he was. To think of him with felonies is unbelievable.”
He was convicted of armed kidnapping, multiple counts of armed sexual battery and other charges in 1994.
His family visited him frequently in prison, but he never spoke about any hardships inside.
He had been nicknamed ‘The Preacher’, thought to have been because he was often quoting the bible to get through.
But Karen said he also became incredibly studious.
He got a degree after studying electrical engineering, IT and business management – and built up the life he wanted to lead in his head.
‘He’s somebody you don’t want to cross’
When he returned to Britain in 2010, Karen says he was different – much more philosophical and a “proper naturalist” who worked out and was into healthy eating.
She often saw him having blended vegetables or raw eggs, and was into herbal tea and holistic healing.
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Bodycam footage issued by the Met showing officers before they discovered the body of baby Victoria in a Lidl bagCredit: PA
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A shed in Lower Roedale Allotments, East Sussex, where the Lidl bag was foundCredit: PA
Karen also described him as cunning, charming, but still incredibly private.
She threw a welcome home party for him at her flat in Palmers Green, but he never went.
In fact, she didn’t hear from him for six months after he landed.
Karen said: “He went quiet and we didn’t know where he was.
“I was ringing, trying to go to prisons and agencies, trying to find out where he went. I had been waiting for him.
“When he was on his feet, he showed up. I was like ‘Where have you been?’.
“He was smiling and laughing, saying: ‘I’m alright, sis.’
There’s a look in his eyes that would make you shut up. You shut up and agree with him. He does these weird stares.
Karen Satchellon her brother’s chilling look
He would often turn up to see his sister wearing smart suits, he went to business conventions and became interested in investments, stocks and bonds. She said he was articulate and productive.
He “never drank, never smoked, never swore, never raised his voice” and told his family he always had different ventures and sales meetings going on.
But she also remembered he sometimes had a strange look in his eyes.
She said: “This is what got him through his jail time. There’s a look in his eyes that would make you shut up.
“You shut up and agree with him. He does these weird stares.
“He’s not a person who had to do anything action-wise. You would look at him and go ‘leave that man alone’.
“He looks like somebody you don’t want to cross with. But when you get past that, he’s quite shy. I think that’s his defence mechanism.”
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CCTV shows Constance Marten, Mark Gordon and baby Victoria in a German doner kebab shopCredit: PA
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Footage of Constance Marten with baby Victoria and Mark Gordon (obscured in car)Credit: PA
He also never told her exactly where he lived, nor exactly what he did.
Within the first year of coming back to Britain, he had his first daughter, who Karen never found out about until she was two.
She went to meet her for the first time when she was three, when Mark was living with her and her mother in Ilford, East London.
Karen said: “We were shocked. We didn’t know he had a daughter. He was a private guy.
“When I met the girl, they had been together for a little while. She was lovely. So beautiful. He took care of his kids really well.”
She added: “I think he always wanted to be a dad.”
They broke up shortly after for unknown reasons, just before Mark met Constance Marten in an incense shop in Tottenham, North London, in 2014.
Paranoid he was being followed
After this, Karen says he became noticeably more paranoid, often talking about people following or tracking him.
He moved around after dark, whispered on the phone and asked to meet his sister in parks at strange hours.
When he visited Karen, he would stay for a few minutes, ask about them and just laugh if asked where he was staying.
He would say: “It’s alright, sis, you don’t need to know.”
He stayed with her in 2015 for around a month, coming in and out regularly at night, before suddenly leaving without a fuss.
Karen remembered: “I’d say Where do you live? Where are you going?
“I want to help like a big sister would. He just said it’s okay, I don’t need it, I’m good.
“They went travelling a lot. I asked him how he could go to all these places.
“He just did a little smirk and said: ‘Don’t worry, you will get there one day.’”
Gordon and Marten’s troubles escalated shortly after they got married in Peru, in a ceremony that is not recognised in the UK.
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Constance Marten being questioned by her barrister Francis FitzGibbon KC at the Old BaileyCredit: PA
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The shed in Brighton where baby Victoria was foundCredit: PA
They then had their first baby in 2017 after living in a tent together in Wales to escape Marten’s family and their private investigators.
Karen said: “He called me once from Wales and asked me to help him out, and if he could stay at my address.
“He called and said, ‘What are you doing? ‘ but said he couldn’t talk right now because ‘they are listening’. It was weird.
“He said, ‘You can’t help me’. He said he had gone to see his wife. He was hiding out, whispering.
“He said I’m visiting my wife. I asked what was wrong, and he just said ‘Long story, something to do with the baby’.
“He said he was trying to get his wife moved out. He wanted to come back to London.”
His family only knew about his first two babies with Constance.
They never met her, and don’t even know the gender of the second two children and were never told anything about their battle with social services.
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CCTV shows Constance Marten holding baby Victoria under her coatCredit: PA
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The burnt-out Peugeot 206 on the side of the M61Credit: PA
The couple were supposed to spend Christmas 2019 with Karen, but Mark arrived without her, saying she was away and that “It’s complicated”.
Karen said: “I said, ‘Why, who is she? The Queen? Then it turned out she was linked to the Queen!”
She reckons Marten was the “boss” in their marriage, while Mark would have guided her decision-making.
And she insisted the couple just “wanted to be naturalists”.
She last spoke to Mark about a year before he went on the run, which would have been during the time he and Constance were trying to keep the latest pregnancy hidden from everyone.
How does it feel to get played by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce? Turns out the couple didn’t get engaged this week after all, according to Swift’s FFIL — future father-in-law — Ed Kelce.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end actually popped the question “not quite two weeks ago,” his dad told News 5 Cleveland on Tuesday.
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“He was going to put it off till this week. I think she was getting maybe a little antsy, but he was going to put her off till this week, to, you know, make some grand thing, to make it a big special event,” Ed Kelce said. “And I told him repeatedly, you know, you could do it on the side of the road, do it any place that makes it a special event … when you get down on one knee and ask her to marry you.”
Apparently it happened at Travis Kelce’s home in Lee’s Summit, Mo., Ed Kelce said, before the two headed out for dinner. Before they left, Travis told Taylor, “‘Let’s go out and have a glass of wine.’ … They got out there, and that’s when he asked her, and it was beautiful.” No word on whether they made it to a restaurant after all that.
Interesting that Ed Kelce described the proposal as beautiful, given that he wasn’t actually there to see it — he said he was taking in a Philadelphia Eagles preseason football practice that was open to the public. His younger son called him on FaceTime to share the news while he was watching the team that his older son Jason Kelce played with for years.
“I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say, but I don’t care!” Ed Kelce said with a happy shrug.
Travis Kelce, on the other hand, knew exactly how much tea he could spill in public without his future wife’s OK: nada. The KC Chief told his dad the announcement would happen “whenever Taylor says so.” Of course, Swift and her beau announced Tuesday, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift announced their engagement Tuesday.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
(KillaTrav seemed equally “Excited to finally share what we’ve been cookin’ up!!” on Wednesday when he launched his new AE x Tru Kolors clothing collaboration on social media. For those who are interested, the collection looks like a preppy, a jock and a member of the “Duck Dynasty” cast got together and brainstormed. In other words, kinda like something Travis Kelce would wear to the stadium on game day.)
Meanwhile, the rest of the Kelce clan is just delighted, delighted, delighted by recent events, because, according to a People source, Swift is still the bomb.
“She goes out of her way to show the whole family how much she cares for not just Travis, but all of them, down to Jason’s kids,” the source said Tuesday. That entails “sweet, thoughtful gifts,” flowers and baked goods for everyone.
“Taylor gets along so well with the family and they’re just her biggest fan,” said the source, who apparently is “close to the newly engaged couple” and whose first name might be Brittany or Kylie — just a guess, of course, on that last part.
No one recalls the road to Wawa. New detainees are blindfolded several kilometres ahead. Inmates are also blindfolded and driven out before release.
It was July 27, 2021. Eleven people returning to South East Nigeria after the trial of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), at the Federal High Court, Abuja, were intercepted by the Department of State Services (DSS) along Lokoja. (IPOB has been fighting to secede the southeastern region to the independent nation of Biafra.) Labelled members of IPOB’s armed wing, known as Eastern Security Network, the travellers were taken into a dark, underground DSS cell in Abuja. A few weeks later, they were paired out before daybreak and chained ahead of a “military investigation.”
Nonso and Pius Awoke landed in the Wawa prison, a military detention facility in North Central Nigeria.
Nonso, in his final year, was studying computer science at the Ebonyi State University, and Pius practised law in Akwa Ibom State. On the night they arrived in prison, they said they were first stripped by soldiers and beaten with cables. Nonso got the registration number 3220, and Pius, 3218.
Located in Niger State, the Wawa prison complex is shrouded in mystery. Except for an October 22 attack by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), almost nothing is public about it. Even the specific location of its housing facility, the Wawa Cantonment, is a subject of disagreement. Some reports trace it to Wawa town, others say it’s in Kainji or New Bussa, which, though geographically related, are different communities in the state.
HumAngle combined Open-Source Intelligence and satellite imagery to locate it. It is situated along the Kainji-Wawa highway, roughly 3 – 4 km east of Wawa town and another 3 –4 km west of the Nigerian Air Force Base in New Bussa. It is accessible from both towns within 4 to 6 minutes by vehicle, depending on road conditions.
Far left into the sizable military installation on Wawa-Wakwa Road, between Wawa town and Tamanai village in the Borgu Local Government Area (LGA), is a collection of buildings that closely match the description of two sources. The nine two-storey blocks separated by double walls are the prison complex, designated ‘A’ to ‘I’.
“Each floor contains 10 cells,” Pius said. “In every cell, there are 15 inmates, making approximately 450 per block.”
Yellow arrow points to the Wawa military prison. Photo: Google Earth, captured by Damilola Ayeni/HumAngle.
The military prison primarily holds suspected members of Boko Haram, which has terrorised Northern Nigeria for 16 years and killed at least 20,000 people. In 2017, a court set up in the cantonment tried 1669 suspects behind closed doors, convicted some and awarded prison terms ranging from three to 60 years. ISWAP’s attack on the facility later was to liberate their incarcerated members, but they lost eight more men instead, including a commander, to a joint force of local vigilantes and soldiers.
United by fate
The largest groups in Wawa are tied to terrorism in the north, militancy in the middle belt, and secession threats in the South East. Most of the Igbo inmates were picked up after the nationwide #EndSARS protests of October 2020, sources said. During the protest, which started as a peaceful demonstration against police brutality, there were reports of IPOB-sponsored attacks on security personnel in Obigbo, Rivers State, which led to the declaration of a curfew and the invitation of the military by the then-governor Nyesom Wike. The soldiers, however, embarked ondoor-to-door raids, torture, rape, executions, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances of locals, especially men.
“Thirty-four of them were taken to Wawa,” said Nonso. “Some of them were conductors and drivers going about their businesses. One of them was arrested for having a tattoo. They said he was an unknown gunman. One was even arrested for having a beard. One of my brothers from Rivers State, his offence was that he greeted a soldier.”
The rest came from Anambra and other southeastern states. Emeka Umeagbasi, whose organisation, Intersociety, sent an undercover agent to Wawa while compiling a report in 2024, confirmed this.
“In our recent report, there’s a declassified document showing a request by the Nigerian Army for the transfer of so-called Boko Haram and IPOB terrorist suspects from the police headquarters to Wawa Military Cantonment,” he told HumAngle. “What else is more evidential?”
The events that culminated in the incarceration of a large number of Tivs in Wawa began with a peace meeting in the Katsina-Ala LGA of Benue State on July 29, 2020. Politicians, chiefs, and religious leaders gathered in Tor-Donga, the Tiv people’s capital, to settle years of “armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, rape, and other criminal acts” connected to Terwase Akwaza, also known as Gana, a notorious militia leader who had been in hiding. The team requested amnesty for Gana and his gang members and offered an apology to Samuel Ortom, the governor at the time.
Though a known criminal, Gana was also a messiah in Sankera, the senatorial district covering Katsina-Ala, Logo, and Ukum LGAs. When the federal government appeared to be ignoring deadly armed herder incursions, it was Gana and his men who protected the people and their vibrant agricultural economy. Sankera, the location of Zaki Biam, the world’s biggest yam market, accounts for 70 per cent of Nigeria’s annual yam production.
“Gana was employed by community leaders to defend the people against herders,” Jeremiah John*, a Sankera native, told HumAngle.
The militia leader bowed to pressure from traditional authority after the Tor-Donga summit. On September 8, 2020, he and his gang members publicly gave up their weapons and joined a convoy heading to Makurdi, the state capital, to conclude a peace deal with the governor. The military, however, intercepted the convoy, which included clergymen and community leaders, and took Gana and his gang members. News of his death would spread a few hours later.
In a picture of his dead body later circulated on social media and seen by HumAngle, his body was bullet-ridden, and his right arm had been severed from his body.
On Facebook, HumAngle saw a petition addressed to the National Human Rights Commission in November 2020, seeking the release of 76 surrendered militants arrested with Gana. Tor Gowon Yaro, the Benue State native who signed the petition, told HumAngle that the men were still in military detention.
“None of them has been released,” he said. “None that I’m aware of.”
Suspected terrorists are the largest single group in Wawa. About a decade ago, Boko Haram took over communities in the Banki axis of Borno State and held residents hostage. Upon a counter-operation by the military, the terrorists fled. However, soldiers claimed that the villagers were complicit and drove hundreds of them to the Bama IDP Camp, where they separated the men and took them to military detention. This happened in several other villages, and residents who also tried to escape their terrorised villages to Maiduguri, the capital city, were often intercepted and detained.
Illustration by Akila Jibrin/HumAngle.
“Half of Borno youths, especially the Kanuris, are in detention,” Pius cried.
Other demographics in the facility are Fulani men detained over kidnapping, underage boys, and even some mentally-challenged people arrested in Maiduguri and accused of being Boko Haram members, sources said.
HumAngle has extensively documented this arbitrary detention problem in Borno, involving thousands of men who have been detained for about a decade now, prompting their female relatives to form the Knifar Movement to advocate for their release. Though they are periodically released in batches, many are still in detention. HumAngle has confirmed the release of at least 1009 men from the Wawa prison and the infamous Giwa barracks in Maiduguri.
Details of some of the inmates held in the Wawa military prison (source: ex-inmates)
Behind the prison walls
“Once you’re inside, you’re inside,” said Onyibe Nonso, an undergraduate who spent nearly three years in the facility. The cell door quickly shuts after letting in food, and the special day when inmates step out for sunning may not come in a whole year. To survive, you must first accept every cellmate, no matter their tendency or ideology, including terrorists and mentally ill people.
Every day is a routine, Pius said – wake up, pray, sit down. Sometimes, you gist with fellow inmates. Other times, cellmates play the Ludo board game among themselves. Some cells have Hausa literature supplied by the Red Cross, where one could read. Since no single meal in the facility can satisfy an adult, many have formed the habit of fasting every day until evening, when they combine the meals and drink the little water available.
“If they gave us beans, you would not see a single seed, only water,” said Pius. He also recalled having no water to bathe for a whole month.
The toilet and bathroom carved out of each cell, the same cell that is smaller than the average bedroom and still accommodates belongings like jerricans, has no door.
“We shared the rest of the space,” said Nonso. “To sleep, each person would place their blanket on top of their mat and leave a small space in-between.”
You stand and sit in your small portion. On the evenings when inmates squabble over space, they quickly resolve before soldiers return in the morning. It must not escalate lest they all suffer the following day.
Conditions generally improve when the Red Cross visits, but soldiers assure inmates of a return to the old ways.
“And truly, things would return,” said Pius. “For over a year before I was released, the Red Cross did not come. We heard that it was because the military authorities mismanaged the things they brought.”
An information blackout tops Wawa’s many woes, according to Pius.
“I didn’t know they changed money,” he said, referring to the time when Nigeria redesigned the naira note. “I didn’t know whether a relative was dead or not. We didn’t know Tinubu was running. We didn’t know who was going to be sworn in – just like I was completely excommunicated.”
Back home, families were struggling to move on. When Nonso’s mother heard his voice for the first time in three years, she called back to make sure it wasn’t just another fantasy. It was on June 21, 2024, the day he was released. After two months in the hospital, 20 bags of drips and a lot of prayer, she was already making peace with her only son’s death.
And death is truly cheap in the military prison. From beatings, starvation, and complications arising from inadequate healthcare, inmates die randomly. When the undercover agent from Intersociety arrived at the facility in September 2024, at least 10 inmates had just died within the week.
“A Muslim lieutenant colonel from the north, who provided us with 10 names of people who had just died in the detention that week, told our undercover, ‘Look at how your people are dying here,’” Umeagbasi told HumAngle.
Nonso saw at least two dead bodies himself. Despite being rarely allowed to speak with inmates from other cells, Pius knew of at least 10 deaths. Earnest, one of those brought in from Port Harcourt shortly after the #EndSARS protests, died of complications related to diabetes.
“I know him in person,” Pius told me. “We met one day.”
The more inmates die, the more new ones arrive. The total number, which Pius said matched his registration number on arrival, had climbed to over 5000 by his release in June 2024. As the number grows, so does the intensity of abuse.
“Some of those who got there before us said there was no such thing as beatings when they were brought in. We met it during our own time, and those who came after us had even tougher experiences. They sustained serious injuries and weren’t given adequate treatment,” Nonso said. An inmate who was released from the prison last year after 11 years in detention had an account similar to this. She told HumAngle that though the physical abuse was intense at the beginning of her stay there, it stopped at some point. Shortly before she was released, however, it resumed.
Many of the Tiv inmates arrested alongside Gana couldn’t survive the abuse they were subjected to, Pius revealed. “They beat them in a way that when they got to that detention [Wawa], most of them died.”
Until their release over media pressure and advocacy efforts by the Nigerian Bar Association, neither Nonso nor Pius set foot in court, raising questions about why they were arrested in the first place.
The Red Cross and the Nigerian Army have not responded to inquiries sent to them.
*Jeremiah John is a pseudonym we have used to protect the source’s identity.
July 11 (UPI) — A retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army has pleaded guilty to transmitting classified national defense information concerning Russia’s war in Ukraine via a foreign dating app to a person claiming to be a woman living in the war-torn country.
The Justice Department said David Slater, 64, of Nebraska pleaded guilty Thursday and faces up to 10 years’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000 on Oct. 8 when he is scheduled for sentencing.
“David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing national defense information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person’s motives,” U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods of the District of Nebraska said in a statement.
According to federal prosecutors, after retiring from the Army, Slater was hired as a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force assigned to the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base and held a Top Secret security clearance from August 2021 to April 2022.
Court documents state that in his position, Slater attended top-secret classified briefings on the Russia-Ukraine war and conspired to transmit information he learned over an unnamed foreign dating app to a person who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine.
The purported woman called Slater her “secret informant lover” and her “secret agent” and asked him to send her sensitive classified information.
The quantity and the frequency with which information was exchanged was not revealed, but the Justice Department did confirm that “Slater did, in fact, transmit classified national defense information to her, including regarding military targets and Russian military capabilities relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, rising on what used to be a parking lot in Exposition Park in downtown L.A., is devoted to visual storytelling: the comics of Charles M. Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Alex Raymond (“Flash Gordon”), movie concept art by Neal Adams (“Batman”) and Ralph McQuarrie (“Star Wars”), paintings by Frida Kahlo and Jacob Lawrence, photography by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange, illustrations by Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth.
So when George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson chose Mia Lehrer and her L.A. firm, Studio-MLA, to design the 11 acres of landscape around — and on top of — MAD Architects’ swirling, otherworldly, billion-dollar building, the driving forces behind the Lucas Museum made it clear that the landscape had to tell a story too.
Lehrer and her team studied how directors, illustrators and painters use topography to help amplify, among other things, emotion, sequence and storyline.
A long stretch of park space extends from the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which sits next to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“We looked at the landscapes of myths and movies,” said Kush Parekh, a principal at Studio-MLA. “How do you take someone on a journey through space? How does the terrain change the story — and how can it be the story?”
The result — which feels surprisingly grown-in even though the museum won’t open until next year — is a sinuous, eclectic landscape that unfolds in discrete vignettes, all promoting exploration and distinct experience. Each zone contains varied textures, colors, scales and often framed views. A shaded walkway curls along a meandering meadow and lifts you toward a hilly canyon. A footbridge carries you above a developing conifer thicket. A plant-covered trellis, known as “the hanging garden,” provides a more compressed moment of pause. The environment, like a good story, continually shifts tone and tempo.
“It’s episodic,” Parekh said. “Each biome reveals something new, each path hints at what’s ahead without giving it away.”
A key theme of the story is the diverse terrain of California — a place that, in Lehrer’s words, “contains more varied environments in a single day’s drive than most countries do in a week.” Foothills and valleys, groves and canyons, even the mesas, plateaus and plains of the Sierra and the Central Valley — Lehrer calls all of it a “choreography of place.”
Lucas Museum staff and design team stand under the trellis of “the hanging garden.”
Another, more subtle, layer of this narrative is time. Plantings were laid out to bloom in different seasons and in different places. Bright yellow “Safari Goldstrike” leucadendron, edging the meadow and canyon, come alive in late winter and early spring. Tall jacarandas, spied from a foothills overlook, emerge then quickly disappear. “Bee’s Bliss” sage, lying low in the oak woodland, turn lavender blue in the early summer. Something is always emerging, something else fading.
“Every month, every visit, feels different,” Parekh said.
Even the alpine-inspired plantings cladding the museum’s roof — colorful wildflowers, long sweeping grasses and coarse scrubs, all chosen for their hardiness, lightness and shallow roots — follow this rhythm.
“They’re alive. They change. They move with the climate,” Lehrer said.
The landscape creates the illusion that some plantings run right up to the museum. Here, the black void on the underside of the building is the opening for a giant waterfall that will cascade to a pool below.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The grounds include the terraced seating of an amphitheater.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The plant palette includes low-water selections.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Amazingly, the rest of the landscape is a kind of green roof as well, sitting atop a 2,400-spot underground parking structure — available to those visiting the Lucas or any of Expo Park’s other institutions. Wedged between the greenery and the parking are thousands of foam blocks, mixed with soil and sculpted to form the landscape while minimizing weight on the building below.
“I wish I had invested in foam before we started this,” joked Angelo Garcia, president of Lucas Real Estate Holdings. “It’s everywhere. These mountains were created with foam.”
“It’s full-scale ecology sitting on top of a structural system,” noted Michael Siegel, senior principal at Stantec, the museum’s architect of record, responsible for its technical oversight and implementation.
“That’s how the best storytelling works,” Lehrer added. “You don’t see the mechanics. You just feel the effect.”
Foam blocks buried in the soil shape the terrain while minimizing weight on the parking structure below.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
As you make your way through the rolling landscape, it becomes clear that it’s also crafted to meld with MAD’s sculptural design — a hovering, eroded form, itself inspired by the clouds, hills and other natural forms of Los Angeles.
“There’s a dialogue,” Garcia said.
Paths bend instead of cut; curving benches — cast in smooth, gently tapering concrete — echo the museum’s fiber-reinforced cement roofline. Bridges arc gently over bioswales and berms. Ramps rise like extensions of the building’s base. Paving stones reflect the color and texture of the museum’s facade.
“It was never landscape next to building,” Lehrer said. “It was building as landscape, and landscape as structure. One continuous form.”
Closer to the building, where a perimeter mass damper system that the design team has nicknamed the “moat” protects the museum from seismic activity, landscape nestles against, and seemingly under, the structure’s edges, further blurring the barrier between the two. Rows of mature trees being planted now will help soften the flanks. Vines will hang from the Lucas’ floating oculus, right above its entry court.
The building’s oculus eventually will have vines hanging from it.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rises in Exposition Park, its rooftop clad with solar panels and gardens, the skyline of downtown Los Angeles rising behind it.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A worker on the green rooftop of the museum.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The topography was designed to minimize environmental impact. Hundreds of plants, mostly native to the region, are drought-tolerant (or at least require little watering). A rain-harvesting system captures water for irrigation. And on the north edge of the museum will be “The Rain,” a waterfall that doubles as a passive cooling system, replacing traditional air-conditioning infrastructure. (Dozens of underground geothermal wells provide additional cooling.)
In this part of South L.A., park space is egregiously scarce, a remnant of redlining and disinvestment. This space — set to be open to the public without a ticket, from dawn to dusk — is a game changer, as is a massive green space on Expo Park’s south side that also replaces a surface parking lot and tops an underground garage. (That latter project has been delayed until after the 2028 Olympics.)
“It’s hotter, it’s denser and it’s long been overlooked. We wanted to change that,” Lehrer said of the area.
What was once a walled-off asphalt lot is a porous public space, linking Expo Park to the rest of the neighborhood via its four east-west pathways and opening connections on the north side to Jesse Brewer Jr. Park, which the Lucas Museum has paid to upgrade. The museum also funded the creation to the south of the new Soboroff Sports Field, which replaces a field that was adjacent to the site’s parking lot. The Lucas’ circular plaza and amphitheater with seating for hundreds, have the potential not only to host museum events but also to become popular community gathering spots.
Kush Parekh, left, and Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Treetops rising along the museum’s curvaceous silhouette.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
For Lehrer, the landscape is a convergence of civic and ecological ideas that she’s developed throughout her career — really ever since a chance encounter with the intricate original drawings for Central Park while she was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design spurred her to pivot from planning to landscape architecture. At this point, she’s created arguably more major new public spaces in Los Angeles than any other designer, including two vibrantly didactic landscapes at the adjacent Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, downtown’s 10-acre Vista Hermosa Park and the artfully layered grounds and lake surrounding SoFi Stadium.
“This brings everything together,” she said. “Design, ecology, storytelling, infrastructure, community. It’s the fullest expression of what landscape can be.”
Lehrer credits Lucas with not just permitting her to explore these ideas but encouraging her to push them further. Lucas supported the rare — and costly — installation of mature plantings. Usually the landscape is the last part of a building to emerge.
The progress in the grounds is a bright spot for the museum, which has been grappling with construction delays, the surprise departure of its executive director and, most recently, the layoffs of 15 full-time and seven part-time employees, part of a restructuring that a museum official said was “to ensure we open on time next year.”
As the new building accelerates toward that opening, the vision outside is becoming more clear.
George Lucas, center, wife Mellody Hobson and then-Mayor Eric Garcetti as the Lucas Museum began construction in 2019.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“To have an open-minded client, who gets landscape and also appreciates creativity, it’s rare,” Lehrer said. Lucas, who grew up on a farm in Modesto, has been developing the vineyards, gardens and olive groves of his Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for decades.
“I have always wanted to be surrounded by trees and nature,” Lucas said. “The museum’s backyard is meant to provide a respite in a hectic world.”
