trial

The experiment of using Kookaburra cricket balls in some rounds of the County Championship has been scrapped.

Kookaburras have been used in some rounds for each of the past three seasons, but the move was largely unpopular due to the trend of bat dominating ball.

Directors of cricket from the 18 first-class counties expressed their desire to end the experiment in October.

And the decision was confirmed by a meeting of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s professional game committee (PGC) earlier this week.

It means all 14 rounds of the 2026 County Championship season will be played with balls manufactured by Dukes.

Dukes are the traditional supplier of cricket balls for first-class cricket played in England. Dukes balls are hand-stitched and, in general, offer more assistance to bowlers.

Kookaburra balls are machine made and are mainly used in countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The Kookaburra ball was introduced into the County Championship with the idea of preparing English players for overseas conditions. The theory was that it would encourage bowlers of higher pace and lead to spin having an enhanced role.

It was used for two rounds of matches in 2023, and expanded to four rounds for 2024 and 2025.

Two rounds of Kookaburra matches earlier this summer, played in June, resulted in a lot of dull cricket. The average first-innings total across the Championship was 430, 59 individual scores of 100 or more were made and Surrey racked up 820-9 declared against Durham at The Oval.

The ECB’s high performance arm – those involved in the England teams rather than the county game – still stands by the decision to use the Kookaburra, however, which points to the conflicts within the game.

Speaking last month before the decision was confirmed, ECB men’s performance director Ed Barney said: “We valued the Kookaburra ball. Has it achieved what we intended to? Yes, 100%.

“To be most effective with the Kookaburra ball you have to bowl at a higher speed. Has it drawn more spin bowling into the domestic game? Yes it has.”

Statistics from the past three County Championship seasons shows the optimal bowling speeds with the Kookaburra were around 85mph, but 75-79mph with the Dukes.

Forty per cent of deliveries were bowled by spinners during Kookaburra rounds but only 25% when using the Dukes.

“Ultimately the domestic game has a decision to make of whether it wants its core purpose to be about producing and developing players for international cricket or whether its core purpose is about a product that is competitive and appealing to the domestic context,” added Barney.

“That is the choice the domestic game and ECB has to make, and it is quite difficult for it to co-exist together.”

The move to return to the Dukes for the entire Championship season comes after counties rejected proposals to restructure the competition.

A new set-up of 12 teams in the top flight and six in the bottom tier, with each side playing 13 matches, was turned down in favour of the current system.

The Championship will remain with 10 teams in Division One, eight in Division Two, all playing 14 matches.

Movies that depict the history of war criminals on trial will almost always be worth making and watching. These films are edifying (and cathartic) in a way that could almost be considered a public servic and that’s what works best in James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” about the international tribunal that tried the Nazi high command in the immediate wake of World War II. It’s a drama that is well-intentioned and elucidating despite some missteps.

For his second directorial effort, Vanderbilt, a journeyman writer best known for his “Zodiac” screenplay for David Fincher, adapts “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai, about the curious clinical relationship between Dr. Douglas Kelley, an Army psychiatrist, and former German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the lead-up to the Nuremberg trials.

The film is a two-hander shared by Oscar winners: a formidable Russell Crowe as Göring and a squirrely Rami Malek as Kelley. At the end of the war, Kelley is summoned to an ad-hoc Nazi prison in Luxembourg to evaluate the Nazi commandants. Immediately, he’s intrigued at the thought of sampling so many flavors of narcissism.

It becomes clear that the doctor has his own interests in mind with this unique task as well. At one point while recording notes, in a moment of particularly on-the-nose screenwriting, Kelley verbalizes “Someone could write a book” and off he dashes to the library with his German interpreter, a baby-faced U.S. Army officer named Howie (Leo Woodall), in tow. That book would eventually be published in 1947 as “22 Cells in Nuremberg,” a warning about the possibilities of Nazism in our own country, but no one wants to believe our neighbors can be Nazis until our neighbors are Nazis.

One of the lessons of the Nuremberg trials — and of “Nuremberg” the film — is that Nazis are people too, with the lesson being that human beings are indeed capable of such horrors (the film grinds to an appropriate halt in a crucial moment to simply let the characters and the audience take in devastating concentration camp footage). Human beings, not monsters, were the architects of the Final Solution.

But human beings can also fight against this if they choose to, and the rule of law can prevail if people make the choice to uphold it. The Nuremberg trials start because Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) doesn’t let anything so inconvenient as a logistical international legal nightmare stop him from doing what’s right.

Kelley’s motivations are less altruistic. He is fascinated by these men and their pathologies, particularly the disarming Göring, and in the name of science the doctor dives headlong into a deeper relationship with his patient than he should, eventually ferrying letters back and forth between Göring and his wife and daughter, still in hiding. He finds that Göring is just a man — a megalomaniacal, arrogant and manipulative man, but just a man. That makes the genocide that he helped to plan and execute that much harder to swallow.

Crowe has a planet-sized gravitational force on screen that he lends to the outsize Göring and Shannon possesses the same weight. A climactic scene between these two actors in which Jackson cross-examines Göring is a riveting piece of courtroom drama. Malek’s energy is unsettled, his character always unpredictable. He and Crowe are interesting but unbalanced together.

Vanderbilt strives to imbue “Nuremberg” with a retro appeal that sometimes feels misplaced. John Slattery, as the colonel in charge of the prison, throws some sauce on his snappy patter that harks back to old movies from the 1940s, but the film has been color-corrected into a dull, desaturated gray. It’s a stylistic choice to give the film the essence of a faded vintage photograph, but it’s also ugly as sin.

Vanderbilt struggles to find a tone and clutters the film with extra story lines to diminishing results. Howie’s personal history (based on a true story) is deeply affecting and Woodall sells it beautifully. But then there are the underwritten female characters: a saucy journalist (Lydia Peckham) who gets Kelley drunk to draw out his secrets for a scoop, and Justice Jackson’s legal clerk (Wrenn Schmidt) who clucks and tsks her way through the trial, serving only as the person to whom Jackson can articulate his thoughts. Their names are scarcely uttered during the film and their barely-there inclusion feels almost offensive.

So while the subject matter makes “Nuremberg” worth the watch, the film itself is a mixed bag, with some towering performances (Crowe and Shannon) and some poor ones. It manages to eke out its message in the eleventh hour, but it feels too little too late in our cultural moment, despite its evergreen importance. If the film is intended to be a canary in a coal mine, that bird has long since expired.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

WASHINGTON — Hurling a sandwich at a federal agent was an act of protest for Washington, D.C., resident Sean Charles Dunn. A jury must decide if it was also a federal crime.

“No matter who you are, you can’t just go around throwing stuff at people because you’re mad,” Assistant U.S. Atty. John Parron told jurors Tuesday at the start of Dunn’s trial on a misdemeanor assault charge.

Dunn doesn’t dispute that he threw his submarine-style sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. It was an “exclamation point” for Dunn as he expressed his opposition to President Trump’s law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital, defense attorney Julia Gatto said during the trial’s opening statements.

“It was a harmless gesture at the end of him exercising his right to speak out,” Gatto said. “He is overwhelmingly not guilty.”

A bystander’s cellphone video of the confrontation went viral on social media, turning Dunn into a symbol of resistance against Trump’s months-long federal takeover. Murals depicting him mid-throw popped up in the city virtually overnight.

“He did it. He threw the sandwich,” Gatto told jurors. “And now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has turned that moment — a thrown sandwich — into a criminal case, a federal criminal case charging a federal offense.”

A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count, part of a pattern of pushback against the Justice Department’s prosecution of surge-related criminal cases. After the rare rebuke from the grand jury, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office charged Dunn instead with a misdemeanor.

Customs and Border Protection Agent Gregory Lairmore, the government’s first witness, said the sandwich “exploded” when it struck his chest hard enough that he could feel it through his ballistic vest.

“You could smell the onions and the mustard,” he recalled.

Lairmore and other agents were standing in front of a club hosting a “Latin Night” when Dunn approached and shouted profanities at them, calling them “fascists” and “racists” and chanting “shame.”

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Lairmore testified that he and the other agents tried to de-escalate the situation.

“He was red-faced. Enraged. Calling me and my colleagues all kinds of names,” he said. “I didn’t respond. That’s his constitutional right to express his opinion.”

After throwing the sandwich, Dunn ran away but was apprehended about a block away.

Later, Lairmore’s colleagues jokingly gave him gifts making light of the incident, including a subway sandwich-shaped plush toy and a patch that said “felony footlong.” Defense attorney Sabrina Schroff pointed to those as proof that the agents recognize this case is “overblown” and “worthy of a joke.”

Parron told jurors that everybody is entitled to their views about Trump’s federal surge. But “respectfully, that’s not what this case is about,” the prosecutor said. “You just can’t do what the defendant did here. He crossed a line.”

Dunn was a Justice Department employee who worked as an international affairs specialist in its criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”

Dunn was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said.

Dunn’s lawyers have argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House show Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech. They urged U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to dismiss the case, calling it a vindictive and selective prosecution. Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t rule on that request before the trial started Monday.

Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Throwing a sandwich at a federal agent turned Sean Charles Dunn into a symbol of resistance against President Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital. This week, federal prosecutors are trying to persuade a jury of fellow Washington, D.C., residents that Dunn simply broke the law.

That could be a tough sell for the government in a city that has chafed against Trump’s federal takeover, which is entering its third month. A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count before U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office opted to charge him instead with a misdemeanor.

Securing a trial conviction could prove to be equally challenging for Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, where murals glorifying Dunn’s sandwich toss popped up virtually overnight.

Before jury selection started Monday, the judge presiding over Dunn’s trial seemed to acknowledge how unusual it is for a case like this to be heard in federal court. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, said he expects the trial to last no more than two days “because it’s the simplest case in the world.”

A video that went viral on social media captured Dunn hurling his subway-style sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. That same weekend, Trump announced his deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to assist with police patrols in Washington.

When Dunn approached a group of CBP agents who were in front of the club, which was hosting a “Latin Night,” he called them “fascists” and “racists” and chanted “shame” toward them. An observer’s video captured Dunn throwing a sandwich at an agent’s chest.

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Dunn ran away but was apprehended. He was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said. They noted that Dunn had offered to surrender to police before the raid.

Dunn worked as an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”

Before trial, Dunn’s lawyers urged the judge to dismiss the case for what they allege is a vindictive and selective prosecution. They argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House prove Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech.

Julia Gatto, one of Dunn’s lawyers, questioned why Trump’s Justice Department is prosecuting Dunn after the Republican president issued pardons and ordered the dismissal of assault cases stemming from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“It’s an obvious answer,” Gatto said during a hearing last Thursday. “The answer is they have different politics. And that’s selective prosecution.”

Prosecutors countered that Dunn’s political expressions don’t make him immune from prosecution for assaulting the agent.

“The defendant is being prosecuted for the obvious reason that he was recorded throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range,” they wrote.

Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — President Trump’s lawyers have asked a New York state appeals court to toss out his hush money criminal conviction, saying federal law preempts state law and there was no intent to commit a crime.

The lawyers filed their written arguments with the state’s mid-level appeals court just before midnight Monday.

In June, the lawyers asked a federal appeals court to move the case to federal court, where the Republican president can challenge the conviction on presidential immunity grounds. The appeals court has not yet ruled.

Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denies her claim and said he did nothing wrong. It was the only one of the four criminal cases against him to go to trial.

Trump was sentenced in January to what’s known as an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction on the books but sparing him jail, probation, a fine or other punishment.

Appearing by video at his sentencing, Trump called the case a “political witch hunt,” “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, will have a chance to respond to the appeals arguments in court papers. A message seeking comment was left with the office Tuesday.

At trial, prosecutors said Trump mislabeled payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen as legal fees to conceal that he was actually reimbursing the $130,000 that Cohen paid Daniels to keep her quiet in the final weeks of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential run.

At the time, Daniels was considering going public with a claim that she and the married Trump had a 2006 sexual encounter that Trump has consistently denied.

In their arguments to the New York state appeals court, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the prosecution of Trump was “the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history.”

They said Trump was the victim of a Democratic district attorney in Manhattan who “concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory” during a contentious presidential election in which Trump was the leading Republican candidate.

They wrote that federal law preempts the “misdemeanor-turned-felony charges” because the charges rely on an alleged violation of federal campaign regulations that states cannot enforce.

They said the trial was also spoiled when prosecutors introduced official presidential acts that the Supreme Court has made clear cannot be used as evidence against a U.S. president.

“Beyond these fatal flaws, the evidence was clearly insufficient to convict,” the lawyers wrote.

The lawyers also attacked the conviction on the grounds that “pure, evidence-free speculation” was behind the effort by prosecutors to persuade jurors that Trump was thinking about the 2020 election when he allegedly decided to reimburse Cohen.

Neumeister writes for the Associated Press.

As the trial about whether the Angels should be held at least partially liable for the death of Tyler Skaggs enters its third week, major league officials are closely monitoring the proceedings.

The trial is scheduled to last several more weeks, and it would be premature for the league to determine what action it might take against the Angels — if any — until all evidence is revealed in court and a verdict or a settlement is reached.

However, it is considered highly unlikely that the league would compel Angels owner Arte Moreno to sell the team.

Consideration of any action probably would be deferred until the league could conduct its own investigation and until a jury verdict, if there is one, is fully reviewed by an appeals court.

The Skaggs family is seeking $785 million in damages, as first reported by the Athletic, based on the allegation the Angels knew or should have known that former staffer Eric Kay was using illegal drugs, including the pills he provided to Skaggs on the night the pitcher died in 2019. The Angels deny the allegations.

The jury would not have to decide whether to award all of that money or none of it. The jury first would have to determine who was liable: the Angels, Kay, Skaggs and any other parties. Then the jury would decide what percentage of liability each of those parties should assume and what the financial compensation should be.

As an example, a jury could decide the damages should be $210 million — the amount the family listed as a minimum in a court filing — and the Angels should be held one-third responsible. Under that example, they would be assessed $70 million.

In 1943, Philadelphia Phillies owner William Cox was banned for life for betting on baseball.

If history is any indication, if the league believes an owner merits discipline, an owner would be more likely to be suspended than banned. In 1993, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was suspended one year for racist and insensitive comments.

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was suspended three times: two years for illegal contributions to President Nixon’s 1972 campaign; one week after publicly criticizing umpires; and two years and five months for paying a gambler to dig up disparaging information on All-Star outfielder Dave Winfield. That last suspension originally was announced as a lifetime ban; Steinbrenner was later reinstated.

Kay, who provided Skaggs with counterfeit oxycodone pills that were laced with fentanyl, is serving a 22-year sentence in federal prison. Skaggs died in his hotel room in Texas of asphyxiation, according to an autopsy, choking on his own vomit while under the influence of oxycodone, fentanyl and alcohol.

A British soldier charged with murder over the Bloody Sunday massacre has been acquitted by a Belfast court, in a verdict condemned by victims’ relatives and Northern Ireland’s political leader.

The former British paratrooper, known as Soldier F under a court anonymity order, was accused of murdering James Wray and William McKinney and attempting to murder five others when soldiers opened fire on unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Derry more than 50 years ago.

Belfast Crown Court was silent on Thursday as Judge Patrick Lynch read the verdict acquitting Soldier F of two charges of murder and five of attempted murder. Soldier F listened to the verdict from behind a thick blue curtain, hidden from view in the packed courtroom.

On January 30, 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on unarmed civil rights protesters as more than 10,000 people marched in Derry. British soldiers shot at least 26 unarmed civilians. Thirteen people were killed, while another man died from his injuries four months later.

The massacre became a pivotal moment in the Troubles, helping to fuel nearly three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking civil rights and a united Ireland, pro-British unionists wanting Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, and the British Army. A 1998 peace deal largely ended the bloodshed.

Lynch said in his verdict that he was satisfied that soldiers had lost all sense of military discipline and opened fire with intent to kill and that “those responsible should hang their heads in shame”.

But he said the case fell short of the burden of proof.

“Delay has, in my view, seriously hampered the capacity of the defence to test the veracity and accuracy of the hearsay statements,” he said.

An initial investigation into the massacre — the Widgery Tribunal, an investigation held in 1972 — largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of responsibility.

A second investigation, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry, found in June 2010 that there had been no justification for any of the shootings and found that paratroopers had fired at fleeing unarmed civilians.

Following the Saville Inquiry, police in Northern Ireland launched a murder investigation, with prosecutors finding that one former soldier would face trial for two murders and five attempted murders.

Prosecutors have previously ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge 16 other former British soldiers.

Soldier F was not called to give evidence during the one-month trial that was heard without a jury. He had previously told investigators he no longer had a reliable recollection of the massacre.

Mickey McKinney, brother of William McKinney, one of the two victims named in the case, denounced the verdict outside the courtroom on Thursday.

“Soldier F has been discharged from the defendant’s criminal dock, but it is one million miles away from being an honourable discharge,” McKinney said. “Soldier F created two young widows on Bloody Sunday, he orphaned 12 children, and he deprived dozens of siblings of a loving brother,”

McKinney said he “firmly” blamed the British government for the trial’s outcome.

“The blame lies firmly with the British state, with the RUC [the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Irish police], who failed to investigate the murders on Bloody Sunday properly, or indeed at all,” McKinney said.

Following Thursday’s verdict, a spokesperson for the UK government said the UK is “committed to finding a way forward that acknowledges the past, whilst supporting those who served their country during an incredibly difficult period in Northern Ireland’s history”.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who is vice president of the Sinn Fein pro-Irish unity party, called the verdict “deeply disappointing”.

“The continued denial of justice for the Bloody Sunday families is deeply disappointing,” she wrote on X. “Not one British soldier or their military and political superiors has ever been held to account. That is an affront to justice.”

Angels star Mike Trout is planning to testify Tuesday in a lawsuit over whether the MLB team should be held responsible for the drug overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

Trout, a three-time American League most valuable player who hit his 400th career home run this year, is expected to take the stand in a Southern California courtroom and speak about his friendship with Skaggs, who died on a team trip to Texas in 2019 after taking a fentanyl-laced pill he got from Angels communication director Eric Kay. Trout could also be asked about what he knew of Kay’s drug use at the time.

The testimony will come in the trial for a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ wife, Carli, and his parents seeking to hold the Angels’ responsible for his death. The family contends the Angels made a series of reckless decisions that gave Kay access to MLB players when he was addicted to drugs and dealing them; the team has countered that Skaggs was also drinking heavily and his actions occurred on his own time and in the privacy of his hotel room when he died.

During opening statements, a lawyer for the Skaggs family said Trout was aware of Kay’s drug problem and had offered to pay for him to attend rehab. Other players, including former Angels pitcher Wade Miley, who currently plays for the Cincinnati Reds, could also testify during what is expected to be a weeks-long trial in Santa Ana.

The civil case comes more than six years after 27-year-old Skaggs was found dead in the suburban Dallas hotel room where he was staying as the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers. A coroner’s report says Skaggs choked to death on his vomit and that a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.

Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing Skaggs with an oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl and sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five MLB players who said they received oxycodone from Kay at various times from 2017 to 2019, the years he was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to Angels players.

Angels outfielder Mike Trout catches a fly ball in front of graphic honoring the life of Tyler Skaggs at Angel Stadium in 2019.

(John McCoy / Getty Images)

The family is seeking $118 million for Skaggs’ lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.

Skaggs had been a regular in the Angels’ starting rotation since late 2016 and struggled with injuries repeatedly during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

After Skaggs’ death, the MLB reached a deal with the players association to start testing for opioids and to refer those who test positive to the treatment board.

Taxin writes for the Associated Press.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in court to testify in his corruption trial, days after U.S. President Trump called for him to be pardoned. Protesters outside the court demanded the trial continue as a test of Israel’s democracy. Netanyahu denies all charges.

ROME — The Vatican took the unusual step on Monday of announcing that it had named judges to decide the fate of a famous ex-Jesuit artist, whose mosaics decorate basilicas around the world and who was accused by more than two dozen women of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse.

The case of the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik badly tarnished the legacy of Pope Francis, given suggestions that the Jesuit pope, the Jesuit religious order and the Jesuit-headed Vatican sex abuse office protected one of their own over decades by dismissing allegations of misconduct against him.

The Vatican office that manages clergy sex abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the five judges named to hear the Rupnik case in a canonical court include women and priests who don’t hold jobs in the Vatican bureaucracy.

It said that such a composition was “done in order to better guarantee, as in any judicial process, the autonomy and independence of the aforementioned court.”

The statement suggested an implicit recognition that prior to now, the Vatican’s handling of the Rupnik file had been anything but autonomous or independent.

Famous artist accused

Rupnik’s mosaics grace some of the Catholic Church’s most-visited shrines and sanctuaries around the world, including at the shrine in Lourdes, France, in the Vatican, a new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil, and the chapel of Pope Leo XIV’s own Augustinian religious order in Rome.

The Rupnik scandal first exploded publicly in late 2022 when Italian blogs started reporting the claims of nuns and other women who said they had been sexually, spiritually and psychologically abused by him, including during the production of his artwork.

Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order soon admitted that he had been excommunicated briefly in 2020 for having committed one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes — using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. But he continued working and preaching.

The case continued to create problems for the Jesuits and Francis, though, since more women came forward saying they too had been victimized by Rupnik, with some of their claims dating back to the 1990s.

The Jesuits eventually kicked him out of the order after he refused to respond to allegations by about 20 women, most of whom were members of a Jesuit-inspired religious community that he co-founded in his native Slovenia, which has since been suppressed.

The Vatican initially refused to prosecute, arguing the women’s claims were too old. The stall exposed both the Vatican’s legal shortcomings, where sex crimes against women are rarely prosecuted, and the suggestion that a famous artist like Rupnik had received favorable treatment.

Trial about to start

While Francis denied interfering in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press, he eventually caved to public pressure and waived the statute of limitations so that the Vatican could open a proper canonical trial.

Two years later, the Vatican statement on Monday indicated that the trial was about to start. The judges, appointed on Oct. 9, will use the church’s in-house canon law to determine Rupnik’s fate, though it’s still not even clear what alleged canonical crimes he is accused of committing. The Vatican statement didn’t say. He hasn’t been charged criminally.

To date, Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations and refused to respond to his Jesuit superiors during their investigation. His supporters at his Centro Aletti art studio have denounced what they have called a media “lynching.”

Some of Rupnik’s victims have gone public to demand justice, including in a documentary “Nuns vs. The Vatican” that premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. They welcomed word on Monday that the trial would finally start, attorney Laura Sgro said.

“My five clients requested 18 months ago to be recognized as injured parties in the proceedings, so we hope that their position will be established as soon as possible,” Sgro said in a statement. “They have been waiting for justice for too many years, and justice will be good not only for them but also for the church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s internal legal system doesn’t recognize victims of abuse as parties to a canonical trial but merely third-party witnesses. Victims have no right to participate in any proceedings or have access to any documentation.

At most, they are entitled to learn the judges’ verdict. Unlike a regular court, where jail time is possible, canonical penalties can include sanctions such as restrictions from celebrating Mass or even presenting oneself as a priest, if the judges determine a canonical crime has occurred.

Legal hurdles to justice

But it’s not even clear whether the Vatican considers the women to be abuse “victims” in a legal sense. While the Holy See over the last 25 years has refined the canonical rules to prosecute priests who sexually abuse minors, it has rarely prosecuted sex-related abuse cases involving women, contending that any sexual activity between adults is consensual.

The Rupnik case, though, also involves allegations of spiritual and psychological abuse in relations where there was an imbalance of power. It’s one of many such #MeToo cases in the church where women have said they fell prey to revered spiritual gurus who used their power and authority to manipulate them for sexual and other ends.

The Vatican, though, has generally refused to prosecute such cases or address this type of abuse in any canonical revisions, though Francis authorized a study group to look into allegations of “false mysticism” before he died.

Leo has expressed concern in general that accused priests receive due process. But he had firsthand experience dealing with an abusive group in Peru that targeted adults as well as minors, including through spiritual abuse and abuse of conscience.

In a letter earlier this year to a Peruvian journalist who exposed the group’s crimes, Leo called for a culture of prevention in the church “that does not tolerate any form of abuse — whether of power or authority, conscience or spiritual, or sexual.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Europe’s years-long “dieselgate” scandal is set to begin court proceedings Monday in Britain’s high court that potentially could impact over one million car owners and a handful of manufacturers.

The landmark trial described as the largest class action lawsuit in English and Welsh history is the culmination in a decade-long legal battle over allegations at least five major car manufacturers utilized software that allowed new cars to reduce its emissions under testing conditions.

It pointed to Mercedes, Ford, Peugeot/Citroen, Renault and Nissan as its named defendants. But the global car producers proclaim innocence.

“A decade after the ‘dieselgate’ scandal first came to light, 1.6 million (British) motorists now get their chance to establish at trial whether their vehicles contained technology designed to cheat emissions tests,” attorney Martyn Day, part of 22 law firms representing drivers, told the BBC and the Independent.

Scores of other car makers — including Opel, Hyundai/Kia, Porsche, Volkswagon, BMW, Suzuki, Toyota, Volvo, Mazda and Jaguar Land Rover — may face similar action depending on outcome.

The “dieselgate” emissions scandal was exposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 following the revelation that a number of diesel-powered VW models contained deceptive emissions-monitoring devices.

On Monday, Day said if the court ruled on the side of consumers that it would “demonstrate one of the most egregious breaches of corporate trust in modern times.”

“It would also mean that people across (Britain) have been breathing in far more harmful emissions from these vehicles than they were told about, potentially putting the health of millions at risk,” Day added.

However, the companies have attempted to push back against allegations of wrongdoing.

A Mercedes spokesperson said its test mechanisms were “justifiable from a technical and legal standpoint,” while Ford stated the claims had “no merit.”

According to Nissan, it was “committed to compliance in all markets in which we operate.”

In May, a German court convicted four ex-Volkswagen officials of fraud years after “Dieselgate” got exposed.

Australia’s high court in 2019 fined Volkswagen a record $86 million in the emissions scandal.

It arrived as the British commonwealth nation preps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% by 2035 along with more than 100 other nations that agreed to reduce maritime emissions in opposition to U.S President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, a judgment in Britain’s “dieselgate” case is not expected until sometime mid-next year. A later hearing to determine compensation could follow if Britain rules against the carmakers.

At its core, a civil suit is about money. Nobody pleads guilty. Nobody goes to prison. Somebody either pays somebody else or doesn’t.

That’s why roughly 95% of civil suits nationwide reach a settlement ahead of or during trial, legal experts say. Pretrial discovery is usually comprehensive and mediation can produce agreements. Trials are costly, and plaintiffs and defendants alike overwhelmingly prefer to eliminate the risk of an all-or-nothing jury verdict by agreeing on a compromise dollar figure.

That’s also why the case brought by the family of deceased Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs against the Angels has surprised some legal experts. A recent one-day settlement conference between lawyers went nowhere, and both sides are focused on a trial, which begins Monday in Orange County Superior Court with opening statements and witness testimony.

Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, before the Angels were scheduled to start a series against the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County medical examiner conducted an autopsy and found that in addition to the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12. The autopsy determined he died from asphyxia after aspirating his own vomit, and that his death was accidental.

Former Angels communications director Eric Kay was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison Tuesday after being convicted of providing the counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that led to the Skaggs’ overdose.

Prosecutors alleged Kay sold opioids to Skaggs and at least five other professional baseball players from 2017 to 2019. Several players testified during the trial about obtaining illicit oxycodone pills from Kay.

The Skaggs family filed their lawsuit in June 2021, alleging the Angels knew, or should have known, that Kay was supplying drugs to Skaggs and other players. Testimony established that Kay was also a longtime user of oxycodone and that the Angels knew it.

The Angels responded by saying that a former federal prosecutor the team hired to conduct an independent investigation into the circumstances that led to Skaggs’ death determined no team executives were aware or informed of any employee providing opioids to any player.

“The lawsuits are entirely without merit and the allegations are baseless and irresponsible,” the Angels said in a statement shortly after the lawsuit was filed. “The Angels organization strongly disagrees with the claims made by the Skaggs family and we will vigorously defend these lawsuits in court.”

The team has not budged from that position even after years of discovery that included more than 50 depositions, a pretrial ruling by the judge that Kay’s conviction cannot be questioned during the civil trial and Judge H. Shaina Colover denying the Angels’ motion for summary judgment by saying, “There is evidence that … Angels baseball had knowledge that Kay was distributing drugs to players and failed to take measures to get him to stop.”

The settlement conference held between lawyers for the Angels and the plaintiffs — which include Skaggs’ widow Carli, mother Debra Hetman and father Darrell Skaggs — merely underscored that the two sides see the case very differently, according to people close to the negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Settlement conferences are confidential and the California Evidence Code protects statements and conduct during conferences from being used to prove liability. However, legal experts said it is clear the two sides remain far apart in assessing the value of the case.

“They definitely could have been talking settlement all along,” said Edson K. McClellan, an Irvine lawyer who specializes in high-stakes civil and employment litigation. “I would be surprised if they haven’t engaged in some settlement negotiations.”

Damages sought by the Skaggs family include his projected future earnings and compensation for the pain and anguish the family suffered.

Lawyers for the Skaggs family originally said they were seeking $210 million, although that number has risen during four years of pretrial litigation. A claim by Angels lawyer Todd Theodora in a hearing this summer that the plaintiffs were asking for $1 billion was shot down last week by a person in the Skaggs camp who said “we are not asking anywhere remotely close to that. My god, the whole world would turn upside down.”

Skaggs had unquestionable earning potential. The left-handed former first-round draft pick was only 27 and an established member of the Angels starting rotation when he died. He was making $3.7 million in 2019 and likely would have made at least $5 million in his final year of arbitration before becoming a free agent after the 2020 season.

Although Skaggs posted average statistics — his earned-run average was over 4.00 in each of his seven seasons and his career won-loss record was 28-38 — free-agent contracts for starters under 30 range from three to six years for $15,000 to $25,000 a year. And he could have merited another contract in his mid-30s.

Assuming he remained healthy — Skaggs missed the 2015 season because of Tommy John surgery and had other injuries during his career — experts said a reasonable prediction of future earnings could exceed $100 million. However, his established history of drug use could dampen the projections.

“Speculative projections, making the assumption that he played another 10 years, push an award into nine figures, but honestly, looking at the level of drug abuse, jurors could have doubts,” said Lauren Johnson-Norris, an Orange County-based defense lawyer.

Pain, suffering and mental anguish damages could add to an award either by jury verdict or settlement. Legal experts expect Skaggs’ lawyers — who include nationally renowned Rusty Hardin and Shawn Holley — to point out that losing a husband or a son that your life centered around is worth an award.

Opening statements this week should illustrate why the two sides aren’t close to a settlement.

Skaggs’ lawyers will say the Angels are responsible for his death because they knew Kay was a habitual drug user that procured opioids for players, pointing to evidence that Angels team physician Craig Milhouse prescribed Kay with hydrocodone 15 times from 2009 to 2012.

Also likely to be mentioned will be Angels star Mike Trout who, according to the deposition of former Angels clubhouse attendant Kris Constanti, offered to pay for Kay’s drug rehabilitation in 2018.

The Angels will counter by telling the jury that prosecutors in Kay’s criminal trial concluded he was not acting as an employee when he gave Skaggs the fentanyl-laced oxycodone. Kay was charged and convicted, not the team.

Skaggs and Kay, the Angels will contend, were two men engaging in criminal misconduct on their own time and they concealed it from the team. The Angels lawyers will tell the jury that taking opioids prescribed by a physician during recovery from surgery is vastly different than Skaggs chopping up and snorting counterfeit pills that were not prescribed for him.

Witness testimony will begin after the opening statements, and current and former Angels executives Tim Mead, Tom Taylor and John Carpino are expected to be the first called.

And as the lawyers make their best arguments and witnesses provide testimony in a trial expected to take more than two months, both sides will be silently evaluating whether pursuing a settlement is in their best interest.

An agreement could be reached at any time, abruptly ending court proceedings.

“Sometimes what triggers a settlement is a court ruling or a witness performing well or poorly,” McClellan said. “As the trial unfolds and evidence is actually coming in, risk is brought into focus and makes plaintiffs and defendants evaluate their case in a more clear light.”

Reporting from Washington — By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court kept in place Wednesday its order blocking video coverage of the trial of California’s Proposition 8, with a conservative majority ruling that defenders of the ban on same-sex marriage would likely face “irreparable harm” if the proceedings were broadcast to the public.

“It would be difficult — if not impossible — to reverse the harm of those broadcasts,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion. The witnesses, including paid experts, could suffer “harassment,” and they “might be less likely to cooperate in any future proceedings.” The high court also faulted U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker for changing the rules “at the eleventh hour” to “allow the broadcasting of this high-profile trial” that will decide whether gays and lesbians have a right to marry in California.

The unsigned opinion clearly speaks for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The four liberal justices dissented and accused their colleagues of changing the court’s rules so as to “micromanage” a trial judge.

“The Court today issues an order that will prevent the transmission of proceedings in a nonjury civil case of great public interest to five other federal courthouses,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer. “The majority’s action today is unusual. It grants a stay in order . . . to intervene in a matter of local court administration that it would not (and should not) consider. It cites no precedent for doing so. It identifies no real harm, let alone ‘irreparable harm’. . . . And the public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts.”

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor agreed.

The court’s order means that the trial can be seen only inside the courthouse in San Francisco.

Last week, Walker said the trial would be taped each day and posted on YouTube each evening. On Monday, he revised that plan somewhat and said the video coverage would appear on the court’s website. He also planned to have the proceedings streamed live to several courthouses around the country.

But the high court issued a temporary order Monday morning to stop the video coverage. The extent of the split became apparent Wednesday afternoon when the court issued the 17-page opinion and 10-page dissent.

The majority cited newspaper accounts from the last year to bolster its contention that opponents of same-sex marriage have been “subject to harassment,” including “confrontational phone calls and e-mail messages” and even “death threats.” Under the court’s rules, the justices do not intervene in pending cases unless they are convinced that the appealing side has a strong legal claim as well as evidence of “an irreparable harm” if the court fails to act.

Breyer scoffed at the notion that the witnesses in this case would face harm, because they have gone on television in the past to advocate their views. “They are all experts or advocates who have either already appeared on television or Internet broadcasts, already toured the state advocating a ‘yes’ vote on Proposition 8,” he said.

Advocates for equal marriage rights lambasted the decision. “The Supreme Court just struck a huge blow against transparency and accountability,” said Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign in Los Angeles. “The five conservative justices are enabling Prop. 8 supporters to mask their radical views. This historic trial will remain largely hidden from public view.”

Edward Whelan, a conservative critic of Walker, praised the majority for acting to rebuke him. He accused Walker of seeking a “show trial” in San Francisco to intimidate and embarrass the defenders of California’s voter initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage.

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More than four years after the family of deceased Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs filed a wrongful death suit against the Angels, jury selection will begin Monday in Orange County Superior Court.

Skaggs’ widow Carli Skaggs and parents Debra Hetman and Darrell Skaggs stated in a court filing that they seek at least $210 million in lost earnings and damages. A lawyer for the Angels said in a pretrial hearing that the plaintiffs now seek a judgment of $1 billion, although the lead attorney representing the family said the number is an exaggeration.

The trial is expected to last several weeks. Pretrial discovery included more than 50 depositions and the witness list contains nearly 80 names.

Lawyers for the Skaggs family aim to establish that the Angels were responsible for the death of the 27-year-old left-handed pitcher on July 1, 2019, after he snorted crushed pills that contained fentanyl in a hotel room during a team road trip in Texas.

An autopsy concluded Skaggs accidentally died of asphyxia after aspirating his own vomit while under the influence of fentanyl, oxycodone and alcohol.

Angels communications director Eric Kay provided Skaggs with counterfeit oxycodone pills that turned out to be laced with fentanyl and is serving 22 years in federal prison for his role in the death. Skaggs’ lawyers will try to prove that other Angels employees knew Kay was providing opioids to Skaggs.

“The Angels owed Tyler Skaggs a duty to provide a safe place to work and play baseball,” the lawsuit said. “The Angels breached their duty when they allowed Kay, a drug addict, complete access to Tyler. The Angels also breached their duty when they allowed Kay to provide Tyler with dangerous illegal drugs. The Angels should have known Kay was dealing drugs to players. Tyler died as a result of the Angels’ breach of their duties.”

The Skaggs family planned to call numerous current and former Angels players as witnesses, including future Hall of Famers Mike Trout and Albert Pujols as well as pitcher Andrew Heaney — Skaggs’ best friend on the team — in an attempt to show that Skaggs was a fully functioning major league pitcher and not an addict.

Pretrial filings and hearings indicated that the Angels were attempting to show that Skaggs was a longtime drug user who acquired pills from sources other than Kay. Skaggs’ mother, Debbie Hetman, testified during Kay’s 2022 criminal trial that her son admitted he had an “issue” with oxycodone as far back as 2013.

Hetman said her son quit “cold turkey” but she testified the addiction remained enough of a concern that Skaggs wasn’t prescribed opioids after undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2014.

Judge H. Shaina Colover dashed a key Angels defense strategy when she ruled that Kay’s criminal conviction could not be disputed during the civil trial. Angels attorney Todd Theodora contended that new evidence indicated Skaggs died of a “cardiac arrhythmia, second to the fact that Tyler had 10 to 15 drinks in him, coupled with the oxycodone, for which Angels baseball is not responsible.”

Theodora said that if the Angels could prove Kay was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, neither Kay nor the team would be culpable in Skaggs’ death. Colover, however, ruled that Kay’s “conviction, based on applicable law and facts, was final.” Kay’s appeal was denied in federal court in November 2023.

Pretrial depositions of Angels players and support personnel provided a rare glimpse into the rowdy, often profane culture of a major league clubhouse.

Angels clubhouse attendants testified that Kay participated in stunts such as purposely taking an 85-mph fastball off his knee in the batting cage, having a pitcher throw a football at his face from short range, eating a bug and eating pimples off the back of Trout.

Tim Mead, the Angels longtime vice president of communication and Kay’s supervisor, acknowledged as much in his deposition, saying, “If you try to describe a clubhouse or a locker room in professional sports, or even college, and probably even the military in terms, and try to equate it to how we see — how this law firm is run or a corporation is run, you know, unfortunately, there’s not lot of comparison…. There’s a lot of fun, there’s a lot of release.”

And a lot of painkillers. Former Angels players Matt Harvey, C.J. Cron, Mike Morin and Cam Bedrosian testified at Kay’s trial that he distributed blue 30 milligram oxycodone pills to them at Angel Stadium. Skaggs, testimony revealed, was a particularly frequent customer.

Testimony established that Kay was also a longtime user of oxycodone and that the Angels knew it. In a filing, the Skaggs family showed evidence that Angels team physician Craig Milhouse prescribed Kay Hydrocodone 15 times from 2009 to 2012. The Skaggs family also plans to call Trout, who according to the deposition of former Angels clubhouse attendant Kris Constanti, offered to pay for Kay’s drug rehabilitation in 2018.

Skaggs was a top prospect coming out of Santa Monica High in 2009, and the Angels made him their first-round draft pick. He was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks a year later and made his major league debut with them in 2012.

Traded back to the Angels in 2014, Skaggs made the starting rotation, where he remained when not battling injuries until his death. His numbers were rather ordinary, a 28-38 win-loss record with a 4.41 earned-run average in 96 career starts, but his lawyers pointed to his youth and the escalating salaries given to starting pitchers in asking for a jury award of at least $210 million and as much as $785 million.

Skaggs earned $9.2 million — including $3.7 million in 2019 — and would have become a free agent after the 2020 season. Effective starting pitchers at a similar age and comparable performance can command multi-year contracts of $100 million or more.

Skaggs’ death prompted MLB to begin testing for opioids and cocaine in 2020, but only players who do not cooperate with their treatment plans are subject to discipline. Marijuana was removed from the list of drugs of abuse and is treated the same as alcohol.

MLB emergency medical procedures now require that naloxone be stored in clubhouses, weight rooms, dugouts and umpire dressing rooms at all ballparks. Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, is an antidote for opioid poisoning.

BOSTON — The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted non-U.S. citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel, a federal judged said Tuesday in a scathing ruling directly and sharply criticizing President Trump and his policies as serious threats to free speech.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston agreed with several university associations that the policy they described as ideological deportation violates the 1st Amendment as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, a law governing how federal agencies develop and issue regulations. Young also found the policy was “arbitrary or capricious because it reverses prior policy without reasoned explanation.”

“This case — perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court — squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in [the] United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do,’” Young, a nominee of Republican President Reagan, wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Plaintiffs in the case welcomed the ruling.

“The Trump administration’s attempt to deport students for their political views is an assault on the Constitution and a betrayal of American values,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Assn. of University Professors union. “This trial exposed their true aim: to intimidate and silence anyone who dares oppose them. If we fail to fight back, Trump’s thought police won’t stop at pro-Palestinian voices—they will come for anyone who speaks out.”

The ruling came after a trial during which lawyers for the associations presented witnesses who testified that the Trump administration had launched a coordinated effort to target students and scholars who had criticized Israel or showed sympathy for Palestinians.

“Not since the McCarthy era have immigrants been the target of such intense repression for lawful political speech,” Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told the court. “The policy creates a cloud of fear over university communities, and it is at war with the First Amendment.”

The student detentions, primarily on the East Coast, had caused widespread concern at California universities, which host the largest international student population in the nation and were home to major pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024. At UCLA, faculty earlier this year set up a 24-hour hotline for students who feared being potentially detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — although there were no high-profile targeted removals of international student activists.

In separate actions this year, the government also temporarily revoked visas and immigration statuses for students across the UC system and at other U.S. campuses based on minor violations such as traffic tickets. Revocations were reversed nationwide after a federal suit was filed.

In the Boston case, lawyers for the Trump administration put up witnesses who testified there was no ideological deportation policy as the plaintiffs contended.

“There is no policy to revoke visas on the basis of protected speech,” Victoria Santora told the court. “The evidence presented at this trial will show that plaintiffs are challenging nothing more than government enforcement of immigration laws.”

John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, testified that visa revocations were based on long-standing immigration law. Armstrong acknowledged he played a role in the visa revocation of several high-profile activists, including Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, and was shown memos endorsing their removal.

Armstrong also insisted that visa revocations were not based on protected speech and rejected accusations that there was a policy of targeting someone for their ideology.

One witness testified that the campaign targeted more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian protesters. Out of the 5,000 names reviewed, investigators wrote reports on about 200 who had potentially violated U.S. law, Peter Hatch of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit testified. Until this year, Hatch said, he could not recall a student protester being referred for a visa revocation.

Among the report subjects was Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Khalil, who was released last month after 104 days in federal immigration detention. Khalil has become a symbol of Trump’s clampdown on the protests.

Another was Tufts University student Ozturk, who was released in May from six weeks in detention after being arrested on a suburban Boston street. She said she was illegally detained after an op-ed she co-wrote last year criticizing her school’s response to the war in Gaza.

Casey writes for the Associated Press. Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.

Over the past five years, Eli Lilly (LLY 1.43%) has outperformed the broader market, largely thanks to its progress in the GLP-1 arena. Its major breakthroughs in the field are already leading to incredible commercial success.

But Lilly isn’t done just yet. Recent clinical developments may set the stage for further stock-market gains, and potentially allow the drugmaker to maintain that momentum through the end of the decade. Let’s find out what Eli Lilly has been up to, and what that means for investors.

The next generation of GLP-1 medicines

Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide, marketed under the brands Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight management, is highly effective — and generating billions of dollars in sales per quarter already. However, the medicine is administered subcutaneously once a week. This route has several drawbacks compared to oral pills.

First, the latter are often cheaper to manufacture. With an oral GLP-1 medicine, drugmakers might be able to pass cost savings onto consumers, making them more accessible than their subcutaneous counterparts.

Image source: Getty Images.

Second, oral pills are easier on patients who abhor needles and injections. That’s why Lilly and other companies in the field have been racing to develop novel oral GLP-1 therapies. There is already one such treatment on the market: Novo Nordisk‘s Rybelsus, which was first approved in the U.S. in 2019 and is indicated for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

But Eli Lilly is on the verge of launching its own oral option. The company’s orforglipron performed well in a series of phase 3 studies in diabetes and obesity. What’s more, Lilly recently released results from a 52-week study in diabetes patients that pitted orforglipron and Rybelsus head-to-head. During the trial, the highest dose of orforglipron resulted in an average blood-sugar reduction of 1.9%, compared to 1.5% for Rybelsus. Additionally, orforglipron induced an average weight loss of 8.2%, versus 5.3% for Rybelsus.

Once again, Lilly is showing its dominance in this area, even against the company with a first-mover advantage. And if orforglipron is approved by year-end, Eli Lilly’s shares could soar. Although the pharmaceutical giant has yet to complete regulatory submissions for orforglipron, some Wall Street analysts believe that the medicine is an excellent candidate for a new program launched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which reduces the 10-month review time for drug applications to a mere one or two months.

Is Lilly overvalued?

No one would question that Eli Lilly is performing extremely well. In the past couple of years, it has arguably produced more positive clinical data in the rapidly growing field of weight management than the rest of the industry combined. And the drugmaker is reaping the rewards of a job well done; its financial results speak for themselves. Second-quarter revenue jumped by 38% year over year to $15.6 billion, while non-GAAP (adjusted) net earnings per share grew 61% to $6.31. Lilly even increased its guidance for the full year 2025.

However, the stock was recently trading at 24.7 times forward earnings estimates, while the average for the healthcare industry is 16.5.

That said, Eli Lilly is worth a hefty premium. Its revenue and earnings are already growing faster than those of its peers. And there are good reasons to believe the pharmaceutical leader will keep that up through the next few years (at the very least), as it continues to benefit from its groundbreaking work in the GLP-1 market. According to some analysts, orforglipron could generate as much as $12.7 billion in revenue by 2030.

Will this medicine cannibalize sales from Lilly’s other GLP-1 products? Not at all. Tirzepatide is still growing strongly and could generate nearly $62 billion in revenue by 2030, a figure unheard-of in the industry. A few years ago, some analysts predicted that tirzepatide would peak at $25 billion, which would have been pretty impressive. It’s already set to eclipse that number this year, just three years after it first hit the market. Lilly’s success in the GLP-1 market has been remarkable and should continue driving solid top-line growth.

Furthermore, several other products will contribute. Lilly’s Alzheimer’s disease medicine Kisunla has grabbed barely any headlines, but it could also achieve blockbuster status, as could Ebglyss, a new treatment for eczema.

Eli Lilly’s outstanding results and prospects justify its valuation, leaving plenty of upside for the company. The stock might not soar based on the recent clinical trial data for orforglipron showing its superiority to Rybelsus unless it leads to regulatory approval by year-end. But Lilly still looks likely to deliver market-beating returns over the next five years.

Britain’s Zoe Backstedt claimed a dominant victory in the under-23 time trial at the Road World Championships in Rwanda.

Backstedt, 20, took the winner’s rainbow jersey and gold medal, finishing one minute 51 seconds ahead of Viktoria Chladonova of Slovakia, with Italy’s Federica Venturelli third on a hilly 22.6km course around the capital Kigali.

The favourite for victory set a blistering pace in the final section of a course which consisted of two big climbs – the second being a punishing cobbled ascent which seemed to completely drain many competitors’ energy.

“It’s brutal climbing here, but I really like it,” said Backstedt afterwards. “The climb at the end – your legs are tired and you look up and you think ‘this one’s going to hurt’. It took so much energy out of your arms, legs and body on all of those bumps.”

Backstedt, who is from Wales, crossed the line and immediately had icy water poured over the back of her neck as she gasped for breath in hot and humid conditions, with temperatures about 26C.

This is the first time the Road Worlds, which began in 1921, have been held in Africa.

Backstedt, who rides for the Canyon-Sram Zondacrypto team, is the daughter of Swede and 2004 Paris-Roubaix winner Magnus, and sister of Elynor who competes for UAE-ADQ.

The men’s U23 time trial will take place on Monday afternoon.

The latest break between the two foremost military and political leaders risks igniting civil war again for the embattled nation.

South Sudan has started holding a trial for First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been sacked by his decades-long rival, President Salva Kiir, and charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in relation to rebellion and an attack by a militia linked with ethnic tensions.

Machar and seven others who have been charged alongside him, including Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, were seen sitting inside a barred cage in the court on Monday during a live broadcast on national television.

Machar has been held in house arrest at his residence in the capital, Juba, for months following investigations by the government of his allies.

The Trial of Dr. Riek Machar Teny https://t.co/3T7CVp2ZDR

— South Sudan Eagles Media (@ssemtv) September 22, 2025

Earlier this month, a decree read on state radio said Kiir suspended the first vice president due to charges stemming from his alleged involvement in attacks by the White Army against federal forces in March.

The White Army, a loose band of armed youths, attacked a military base in Nasir, northeastern South Sudan, and killed more than 250 soldiers on Machar’s orders, according to the government.

Edmund Yakani, executive director of South Sudan activist group Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, told local media that the trial must be transparent and fair to build up trust in the judicial system.

He urged both leaders and their parties to “adhere to the principle of resolving political misunderstanding through dialogue” rather than violence, which would benefit no one.

Machar’s party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in Opposition (SPLM/IO), has called the charges “fabricated” and said its members were arrested illegally. Machar’s lawyer on Monday said “an incompetent court” that lacks jurisdiction is judging him.

Fears of a return to ruinous civil war

After the vice president’s arrest, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) called on all parties to exercise restraint and warned that they risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years” and returning to a state of civil war.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and also one of its most impoverished.

In 2013, two years after the country gained independence from Sudan following decades of war, oil-producing South Sudan descended into a civil war.

The devastating conflict, which scarred the country and left some 400,000 people killed, pitted Kiir and his allies from the ethnic Dinka group against Machar, who is from the Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group in South Sudan.

More than four million people, or about one-third of the population, were displaced from their homes before a 2018 peace deal saw the pair form a “national unity” government.

But they never fully saw eye-to-eye, leaving the country in a state of limbo.

Both leaders held on to their armed factions that were never fully integrated and unified despite agreements, while reforms were delayed, and presidential elections were repeatedly postponed.

Armed clashes have erupted in several parts of the country over the past months, with both sides accusing each other of breaking ceasefire agreements.

Authorities in South Sudan are, in the meantime, plundering billions of dollars in public funds as the impoverished country also deals with a deepening food crisis, according to the UN.

“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said last week.

U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino — the brash agent who led a phalanx of military personnel into MacArthur Park this summer — was called as a witness Wednesday in a misdemeanor assault case against a protester, who allegedly struck a federal agent.

Bovino, one of the faces of President Trump’s immigration crackdown that began in Los Angeles and is now underway in Chicago, took the stand to testify that he witnessed an assault committed by Brayan Ramos-Brito in Paramount on June 7.

Outfitted in his green Border Patrol uniform, Bovino testified that he witnessed Ramos-Brito drag his arm back and strike an agent with an open palm in the chest.

The incident occurred during a skirmish outside a federal building between federal law enforcement agents and locals frustrated by Trump’s immigration policies.

On a cross-examination, federal public defender Cuauhtemoc Ortega questioned Bovino about being the subject of a misconduct investigation a few years ago and receiving a reprimand for referring to undocumented immigrants as “scum, filth and trash.”

Bovino denied referring to undocumented immigrants that way and said he was referring to “a specific criminal illegal alien” — a Honduran national who he said had raped a child and reentered the United States and had been caught at or near the Baton Rouge Border Patrol station.

“I said that about a specific individual, not about undocumented peoples, that’s not correct,” he said.

Ortega pushed back, reading from the reprimand, which Bovino signed, stating that he was describing “illegal aliens.”

“They did not say one illegal alien,” Ortega said. “They said you describing illegal aliens, and or criminals, as scum, trash and filth is misconduct. Isn’t that correct?”

“The report states that,” Bovino said.

Ortega said that Bovino was warned if he committed any instance of misconduct again, “you could be fired.”

More than 40 people have been charged with a range of federal offenses, including assaulting officers and interfering with immigration enforcement, at either downtown protests or the scene of immigration raids throughout the region this summer, the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. said this week.

Ramos-Brito’s case is the first to go to trial.

The case centers around a protest outside the Paramount Business Center, across the street from Home Depot.

Already tensions were high, with federal officials raiding a retail and distribution warehouse in downtown L.A. in early June, arresting dozens of workers and a top union official.

At the Paramount complex, which houses Homeland Security Investigation offices, protesters began arriving around 10 a.m on June 7. Among them was Ramos-Brito.

Several videos played in court Tuesday showed Ramos-Brito and another man cursing at Border Patrol agents and stepping inches from their faces with balled fists. At one point, Ramos-Brito approached multiple Border Patrol agents who appeared to be Latino and said “you’re a f—ing disgrace if you’re Mexican.”

Asst. U.S. Atty. Patrick Kibbe said that while many protesters were “passionately” demonstrating, Ramos-Brito crossed a line by striking U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jonathan Morales.

“There’s a constitutional right to protest peacefully. It is a crime to hit a federal officer,” Kibbe said.

Federal public defender M. Bo Griffith, however, said Ramos-Brito was the victim of an assault, not the other way around.

Both social media and body-worn camera footage played in court clearly show Morales shove Ramos-Brito first, sending him flying backward into the busy intersection of Alondra Blvd. While footage shows Morales marching back toward the agent with his fists balled, no angle clearly captures the alleged assault.

Aside from Morales, three other agents took the stand Tuesday, but none said they saw Ramos-Brito hit Morales. None of the agents who testified were outfitted with body-worn cameras that day, according to Border Patrol Asst. Chief Jorge Rivera-Navarro, who serves as chief of staff for “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles.

Some of the Border Patrol agents swarming L.A. in recent months come from stations that don’t normally wear body-worn cameras, according to Navarro. He testified that he has since issued an order that led to cameras being distributed to agents working in L.A.

The clash that led to the assault charge started when Ramos-Brito stepped to U.S. Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Mejorado, who said he repeatedly asked Ramos-Brito to move to the sidewalk as the protest was blocking traffic. Video shows Mejorado place his hand on Ramos-Brito’s shoulder twice, and the defendant swatting it away.

At that point, Morales, a 24-year veteran of the Border Patrol, said he thought he needed to step in and de-escalate the situation between his fellow agent and Ramos-Brito. He did so by shoving Ramos-Brito backward into the intersection, according to video played in court. Morales said Ramos-Brito then charged at him while cursing and threw a punch at the upper part of his chest and throat.

On cross-examination, Griffith confronted Morales and Mejorado with inconsistencies between descriptions of the event they previously gave to a Homeland Security Investigations officer and their testimony in court. It was not the first time such a discrepancy affected the case.

Federal prosecutors previously dropped charges against Jose Mojica, another protester who was arrested alongside Ramos-Brito, after video footage called into question the testimony of an immigration enforcement agent.

According to an investigation summary of Mojica’s arrest previously reviewed by The Times, Mejorado claimed a man was screaming in his face that he was going to “shoot him,” then punched him at the Paramount protest. The officer said he and other agents started chasing the man, but were “stopped by two other males,” later identified as Mojica and Ramos-Brito.

Video played in court Tuesday and previously reported by The Times shows that sequence of events did not happen. Ramos-Brito and Mojica were arrested in a dogpile of agents after Ramos-Brito allegedly struck Mojica. There was no chase.

Questioned about Mojica’s case in July, a Homeland Security spokesperson said they were unable to comment on cases “under active litigation.”

Defense attorneys said Ramos-Brito sustained multiple contusions on his face, neck and back and had cuts and scrapes on his body from being dragged across the pavement later.

According to his attorneys, Ramos-Brito’s only prior interaction with law enforcement was for driving without a license.

The case could prove to be a bellwether for other immigration protest charges filed by Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli in a region where many potential jurors have negative views of immigration enforcement, or may be immigrants themselves.

On Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson had to remove 21 potential jurors from the pool, several of whom said they could not be impartial due to their views on immigration policy.

Many of the potential jurors said they were first or second generation immigrants from the Philippines, Colombia, Bulgaria, Jamaica and Canada.

“I believe that immigrants are part of this country and I’m kind of partial with the defendant,” said one man, a landscaper from Lancaster.

Sept. 11 (UPI) — The trial is underway for a man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump on his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Ryan Routh, who is defending himself in the case, was interrupted by Judge Aileen Cannon minutes into Routh’s opening remarks when he began veering off topic Thursday.

“Modern trials seem to eliminate all that is human,” Routh intoned in his opening statement.

Cannon excused the jury, then chided Routh, directing him to keep his comments relevant to the case. Routh apologized but continued on a tangent, discussing the “history” of human existence.

Canon then told Routh his opening remarks were over.

In court, Secret Service agent Robert Fercano identified Routh as the man hiding behind a shrub-covered fence near the sixth hole of the lush golf course, aiming an AK-style assault weapon at Trump. Fercano was the first government witness to take the stand in the trial.

Prosecuting attorney John Shipley Jr. said during his testimony that Routh “decided to take the choice away from the American people.”

Routh was found with a handwritten note stating his intention to assassinate Trump. Eyewitness accounts, cellphone data and security footage prove the case against Routh beyond a reasonable doubt, Shipley said.

Fercano said he noticed the muzzle of a gun protruding from the shrubbery and called out to Routh, then proceeded to call for law enforcement backup. “Hey, sir!” Fercano said he yelled.

The court then played audio of Fercano discharging his weapon in Routh’s direction and radioing colleagues. “Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired!” Fercano yelled. The agent testified that he believed he came within five feet of Routh.

Fercano testified that the barrel of the assault rifle was pointed directly at his face and that he feared Trump’s life was in danger. He said he initially did not think Routh was a threat until he saw the gun muzzle.

During the trial, Fercano presented a Russian-designed SKS semiautomatic weapon officials believe Routh obtained illegally and used in the assassination attempt.

Routh, a 59-year old construction worker, does not have any formal legal training.