What happened

A man in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sunday shot dead his seven children and their cousin and critically wounded his wife and another woman. The gunman, identified as Shamar Elkins, then stole a car and led police on a chase that ended in his death, law enforcement said.

Who said what

Police did not speculate what prompted the murder of the children — five girls and three boys ages 3 to 11 — but detectives were confident it was “entirely a domestic incident,” Shreveport Police Department spokesperson Chris Bordelon told reporters. Elkins, 31, and his wife were separating and due in court Monday, Crystal Brown, a cousin of one of the wounded women, told The Associated Press.

It was the deadliest U.S. mass shooting since January 2024, according to a database from the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University. “Domestic violence shootings generally receive less media attention,” but each of the six other mass killings this year were “carried out by someone who knew the victims,” The Washington Post said. All six “occurred in southern states near Louisiana.”

What next?

“We’re holding the victims, their families” and “our Shreveport community close in our thoughts and prayers,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R), who represents Shreveport in Congress.

A mysterious, shadowy group has been appearing online recently, and it has parents and law enforcement concerned about potential child exploitation. The group, known as 764, is a decentralized network operating across the United States and internationally, and while the FBI has urged parents and kids to be cautious, experts say tracking down the perpetrators is easier said than done.

What is 764?

This is an international online organization that “operates at the intersection of violent extremism, child sexual exploitation and other forms of extreme violence, including animal cruelty, self-harm and assisted suicide,” said the Global Network on Extremism & Technology. The group is part of a “loosely connected network” of similar organizations, including those with ominous names like the Maniac Murder Cult and No Lives Matter.

Those who identify with 764 are classified by experts as nihilistic violent extremists, people who are “characterized by the encouragement, glorification or engagement in acts of extreme violence without a coherent ideological framework,” said the nonpartisan think tank Vision of Humanity. Victims of 764 are often “pressured to send sexually explicit videos and photos, which are later used to blackmail them into extreme and violent acts,” said The Baltimore Banner. Most of them are victimized on online gaming platforms and social media websites.

Many of the victims “may be dealing with one or more vulnerabilities: neurodiversity, eating disorders, social isolation, mental illness, family problems” and are then exploited, said Vision of Humanity. Criminal cases linked to 764 have been opened in numerous states, including Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland and Texas, as well as Canada. The latter has since designated 764 as a terrorist group, and New Zealand did the same.

How is law enforcement fighting back?

The FBI and local police organizations are working to shut down the 764 groups, and “every FBI field office in the country is now involved in tracking the network,” said CBS News. At least 450 cases nationwide “are under investigation, with authorities classifying the activity as domestic terrorism.” The investigations have “documented how multiple perpetrators can become involved in a single victim’s exploitation,” making it harder for the victims to escape.

These investigations have led to some justice for victims of 764. In March 2026, a Maryland man pleaded guilty to federal child sexual abuse charges, and in November 2025, a Texas man pleaded guilty to racketeering and sexual exploitation. Both men were identified as 764 members. In March 2025, a Florida man was “sentenced to serve 84 months in federal prison for possessing child sexual abuse material,” said the Department of Justice. The man, a 764 member, owned devices containing over 8,300 images of child sexual abuse material, including “images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of infants and toddlers.”

In order to protect kids, the FBI is “urging families to look for behavioral changes that could signal a child is being targeted,” said CBS News. Kids who exhibit sudden mood swings or depression, as well as an “obsession with a new online ‘friend,’” could be warning signs that they are being victimized by 764. The FBI is also encouraging parents to “take proactive steps,” including monitoring children’s activity online and reporting suspicious behavior to the authorities.

The tragedy of the Southport murders, in which three young girls were killed and several more injured in a random attack by knifeman Axel Rudakubana, “defies description”, said The Sun. The report on the first stage of the inquiry, released this week, “laid bare” what its chair called an “inappropriate merry-go-round” of public sector agencies handing off responsibility for the increasingly troubled teenager. “Catastrophe was inevitable”, said the newspaper.

The inquiry report highlighted five key factors that prevented an adequate response to the threat posed by Rudakubana: a lack of risk acceptance, poor information sharing, lack of examination of online activity, a “misunderstanding of autism”, as well as “significant parental failures” at home.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement that the government has “already taken action to prevent such an awful tragedy from happening again”, but many are calling for concrete legislation to act on some of the 67 recommendations outlined in the inquiry.

What did the commentators say?

The murder of Bebe King, Alice da Silva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe was “one of the most depraved acts of violence ever seen on these shores”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. “But this did not come out of a clear blue sky.” Rudakubana’s “violent behaviour was known to his parents, his school, the police and to various agencies”. In the years leading up to the killings, he had attacked fellow pupils, been caught with a knife in public, and was referred to the Home Office anti-terror programme Prevent three times. Retired Lord Justice Adrian Fulford, who led the inquiry, said the culture of unaccountability “has to end”. “The trouble is we have heard that before”, said the newspaper, “and it never does”.

The “nightmare” of the July 2024 attacks in Southport “would never have happened if public bodies had done their jobs properly”, said The Guardian. The report did not “single out” any individual police or council officers, but “this does not make them any less culpable”: in fact, the “collective failure” to take responsibility for the events is the “single most disturbing conclusion”. The “grave failures” of those involved, including police, council officers, health professionals and Prevent, revealed the “deadly flaws” of the multi-agency systems linking them, said the paper. “Ministers must not wait for the inquiry’s second phase to explain how they plan to bring this dangerous culture of buck‑passing to an end.”

All those involved with Rudakubana’s case “should hang their heads in shame”, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator. The inquiry uncovered a “comprehensive” and “depressing” catalogue of “missed opportunities and systems of protection that were found wanting”. One such failure was officials using Rudakubana’s autism diagnosis to “excuse” his “increasingly erratic and violent behaviour”, rather than considering that, in this instance, his condition “heightened, rather than lessened, the risk he posed”.

“The Southport inquiry is damning in its clarity,” said The Mirror. “This tragedy was preventable.” But this report also “speaks to something far wider”: the roles and duties of parents. Fulford found Rudakubana’s parents bore “considerable blame for what occurred”, and that if they had “done what they morally ought to have done” by reporting his violent behaviour – including collecting knives and concocting poison at home – it is “almost certain” the attack would not have occurred. Parenting has “never been more consequential” in our age of “online radicalisation”, and children “disappearing into the darkness of their bedrooms”. “The duty to know your child, truly know them, and act on what you find has never mattered more.”

What next?

The next stage of the inquiry will consider the “need for a new mechanism” to manage the “growing threat” of Prevent being “overwhelmed” with referrals of teenagers who are “obsessed with violence” but do not display the “coherent ideology of political extremists”, said The Guardian. It will also consider “tighter regulation of social media use” and the “online sale of weapons”.

Any changes to the law will naturally need to be “carefully considered”, weighing up the risks of “making policy off the back of one case, however tragic”, but this case points to the need for “new policies”, “tighter processes and increased resources”. “The failures went beyond missed communications and overstretched staff.”

Questions of those who will take “organisational and individual accountability” and how government agencies will make meaningful change “remain unanswered”, said Iqbal in The Spectator. “Does anyone involved seriously reflect on their conduct and failures rather than simply seek to avoid blame and consequences?” One thing that the report makes “abundantly clear” is that “this culture must change”. “The tragedy of Southport demands nothing less.”

In 2022, Shan Hanes, the chief executive of the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas, met a friendly investment adviser from Australia on WhatsApp. The adviser persuaded Hanes to invest a few thousand dollars in an online cryptocurrency-trading platform, which generated impressive returns. Hanes ended up investing all his own money, $60,000 from his daughter's college fund, $40,000 from his local church and $47 million from the bank he ran.

The “adviser” was, it transpired, not in Australia but most likely in Asia; the “trading platform” was fake; and Hanes had become the highest-profile US victim of a practice known in Chinese as sha zhu pan, a “pig-butchering scam”. Some money was recovered, but investors lost $9 million, the bank collapsed, and Hanes was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

How do the scams work?

“Long cons” have been around for ever, but these – in which the scammers invest a lot of time in building a relationship with the victim, a process they liken to fattening a pig for slaughter – have distinctive features.

Scammers actively seek out victims on social media: pig-butchering originated on regional Chinese dating sites around 10 years ago, but it has since spread to platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. They create trusting relationships with their victims, sometimes of a romantic nature; one former scammer told The Economist she’d been trained to target people who were “rich but not good-looking”.

They rely heavily on crypto, which is easy to launder and difficult to recover. These and other online scams are increasingly run out of Chinese-linked “scam hubs” or “fraud factories” in Southeast Asia.

How did such operations develop?

Gambling – illegal on mainland China – is one of the main revenue streams for domestic and foreign-based Chinese mafias. Casinos and online gambling hubs for Chinese-speakers, based in Cambodia and Myanmar, were one of their main enterprises until 2019, when Cambodia tightened its regulations; Covid lockdowns then emptied the casinos. The criminal syndicates refitted their properties as centres where teams of workers – often trafficked and coerced – run online scams at scale.

Chinese citizens were their original targets, followed by Chinese communities around the world. But they soon expanded to other nationalities, which also meant expanding their trafficking activities. In the four years from January 2020, at least $75 billion was taken in crypto scams; estimates suggest the industry generates over $500 billion a year, comparable to the global drugs trade.

Why do they traffic people?

Many of the gangs’ voluntary workers went home during Covid; not enough locals had the necessary language and computer skills, and recruiting people into cybercrime isn't always easy. The scammers’ solution was to lure people – typically young graduates from developing countries – to cities such as Bangkok with fake offers of legitimate employment, then drive them to compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia or Laos, and put them to work under threats of torture, organ harvesting and sexual slavery.

A UN report this February found that there is a workforce of at least 300,000 people from 66 countries, about 75% of them in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia. Many live in vast compounds, like self-contained towns – some over 500 acres in size, heavily fortified, with armed guards. It's unlikely that all the workers are coerced, but many of them certainly are; some families have had to pay ransoms in cryptocurrency to get them out.

What are the nations doing about it?

Weak local governance, along with easy access to China, is the reason the gangs set up shop in the Mekong region in the first place. Myanmar's military junta doesn’t control the whole territory; much of it is controlled by insurgent groups and warlords; while Cambodian politics has been dominated by one family since the 1980s. Transparency International ranks both governments among the most corrupt in the world. Analysts calculate that Cambodia’s scam hubs generate earnings worth about 60% of the nation's GDP. According to the US Treasury Department, the Huione Group, a financial conglomerate with ties to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family, has provided the gangs with financial and practical services. Like Latin American “narco-states” before them, these countries are well on the way to becoming “scam states”.

Is there international pressure to close them down?

Influenced partly by stories like the kidnapping of the actor Wang Xing, and even a popular film about scam hubs, “No More Bets”, China has launched an aggressive crackdown. There have been heavily publicised rescues of coerced workers in the Mekong countries; under Chinese pressure, local law enforcement has dismantled notorious scam hubs like the KK Park complex in Myawaddy, Myanmar, thought to have been run by Macau-based triads. Thai forces shelled several other hubs during a border conflict with Cambodia last year. China has arrested hundreds of thousands of people over scams, and in January it executed 11 members of the “Ming family” crime group, who had been extradited from Myanmar.

Is the situation improving?

Experts worry that police raids on compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar are largely for show: the bosses are often tipped off in advance. In any case, they have globalised their operations, popping up as far afield as Peru and the Philippines. Police even closed down an operation targeting Chinese citizens on the Isle of Man in 2024. But developments in AI may mean that the scammers are getting less reliant on human trafficking for language skills. One report on AI-assisted scams found that they rose by 450% in 2024-25 compared with 2023-24. The scammers now often use “deepfakes” of increasingly good quality to groom their victims.

What happened

Rex Heuermann, the Long Island architect long suspected of the so-called Gilgo Beach killings between 1993 and 2010, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to strangling seven women and dismembering some of them. He also confessed to murdering an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, in 1996. Heuermann initially pleaded not guilty following his 2023 arrest. The remains of several of the women were found near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011.

Who said what

Wednesday’s guilty pleas “bring finality to a case that bedeviled investigators, tormented victims’ families and tantalized a true-crime obsessed public for years,” The Associated Press said. The investigation was long “delayed by dysfunction, disarray and corruption,” The New York Times said. It finally ended with Wednesday’s “extraordinary proceeding,” where Heuermann “maintained a normal demeanor, as if having a morning chat,” while confessing to serial murders. He “walked among us play-acting as a normal suburban dad” while “obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said at a post-hearing press conference.

What next?

Heuermann will be sentenced in June to life in prison with no possibility of parole. As part of his plea deal, he also agreed to be interviewed by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Units profilers, potentially helping “investigators hunt down others with similarly violent minds,” the Times said.

West Texas is not the first place you would expect to find a French aristocrat suspected of murdering his family and going on the run for 15 years.

But last week the Sheriff’s Office of Brewster County posted a request for information about Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès on its Facebook page, following a tip-off from an investigative news team that he had been seen in the south of the county in 2020, accompanied by a black Labrador. Ligonnès “had previously travelled to Brewster County and reportedly claimed it was one of his favourite places”, the sheriff said he’d been told.

The post, which included the most recent known images of Ligonnès, was “enough to stir a frenzy” among French “amateur sleuths and crime fans”, said The Times. Their “favourite mystery, involving multiple supposed sightings over the years, is equivalent to” the enduring controversy around the UK’s “elusive Lord Lucan”.

‘Fantasy life’

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was 50 when the bodies of his wife, Agnès, and his children – Arthur, 20, Thomas, 18, Anne, 16, and Benoît, 13 – were discovered under the patio at their home in Nantes in April 2011. They had all been shot, wrapped in sheets, covered in quicklime and buried, along with the two family dogs. The last confirmed sighting of Ligonnès was at a motel near Saint-Tropez two weeks after the bodies were discovered. His car was later found abandoned in the car park.

Initial investigations revealed that, in the days before the killings, Ligonnès had bought cement, digging tools and four bags of lime in various locations in the Nantes area. He also owned a .22 rifle similar to the one used in the killings, had recently bought ammunition and gone to practise at a local shooting club.

Ligonnès, who had an aristocratic lineage, was a “failed businessman”, said The Times. He “lived a fantasy life in which he claimed he was, among other things, a US intelligence agent”. By the time of the murders, he had accrued significant debts and was struggling to maintain his family’s outwardly comfortable lifestyle.

Following his disappearance, reports emerged that Ligonnès had written to friends up to a year before the killings warning that, crippled with debts, he was contemplating “suicide, alone or collective” and “shooting up the house while everyone is sleeping”.

Red herrings and false leads

In the months and years following the murders, hundreds of sightings of Ligonnès were reported to police, “all proving to be false leads”, said France 24.

Then in July 2015, a photo of two of Ligonnès’ sons was sent to an Agence France-Presse journalist, with the words “I am still alive” scrawled on the back, along with his name. Handwriting analysis failed to ascertain if it was genuine.

In 2018, police raided a monastery in Roquebrune-sur-Argens (the Provençal town near Saint-Tropez where his car was abandoned) after a witness reported seeing a man who resembled Ligonnès, but this again proved to be a dead end. A year later, a man was arrested at Glasgow airport and held in custody before tests confirmed it was another case of mistaken identity.

The case then went cold for years, until a new book published earlier this year by Gilles Galloux, a former police investigator on the case. He claimed Ligonnès “boarded a flight from Nice airport using fake ID documents” and has been hiding out in the US, “a place he had long admired”, said The Connexion. It was this lead that drew attention to Brewster County, which Ligonnès visited in the 1990s.

Ligonnès’ sister, Christine, maintains her brother’s innocence, believing the murders “were staged by a foreign intelligence agency, and that the family is living in witness protection in the US”, said The Times. Prosecutors in Nantes remain “sceptical” of such theories. Their somewhat more pedestrian hypothesis is that Ligonnès “probably killed himself in the rocky hinterland of Provence”.

What happened

Minnesota on Tuesday sued the Trump administration for access to evidence related to three federal shootings during ICE’s Operation Metro Surge, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The lawsuit said the federal government’s “arbitrary and capricious” refusal to cooperate or share any evidence with state investigators came from leaders at the Justice Department and Homeland Security Department, and violated Minnesota’s 10th Amendment right to enforce its own laws and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Who said what

“We are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told reporters. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison stressed “how absolutely extraordinary it is, how rare and unprecedented it is, how completely unnecessary it is, if justice is our goal, for us to have to file this lawsuit.”

DHS said in a statement that the federal government is investigating all three shootings. The FBI is leading the Pretti probe, DHS said, while federal prosecutors are investigating two agents for making false statements about their arrest of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis — though not for shooting him in the leg. The Good shooting was “still under investigation,” the statement said, though its claims that the unarmed mother “weaponized her vehicle” and the officer shot her “in self-defense” were “contradicted by video evidence,” The New York Times said. Trump officials previously asserted that the Good killing “was not under investigation,” The Minnesota Star Tribune said.

What next?

Minnesota officials “say they are seeking a court order requiring federal agencies to turn over evidence so the state can determine whether any criminal charges are warranted,” Minnesota Public Radio said.

Many people might think of powdered or injectable drugs as being widespread items in jails and prisons. But now something far simpler has reportedly become ubiquitous. Correctional facilities across the United States have seen an uptick in drug-laced paper being smuggled into their complexes, causing concerns that these maneuvers are leading to deadly overdoses among inmates.

Why has drug-laced paper become a major problem?

At least 16 states have prosecuted individuals for introducing drug-laced paper into correctional facilities, according to The New York Times, with the issue stretching from “New York to Texas to Hawaii.” Paper is often seen as an easy way to bring drugs into these facilities because paper is a “lifeline in jail, a tether to parents, partners and children in the outside world.”

One of the most problematic institutions for this laced paper is Chicago’s Cook County jail. In 2023 alone, at least six inmates “died of overdoses, putting the jail at the vanguard of a new kind of drug war,” said the Times. Drug manufacturers are “churning out a dizzying array of synthetic drugs — not only fentanyl but also hazardous new tranquilizers, stimulants and complex cannabinoids.” These drugs are then “sprayed onto the pages of the most innocuous-seeming items: books, letters, documents, even photographs,” and they are then smoked.

But while Cook County is the epicenter of the problem, cases have been springing up across the country. A librarian in 2025 was “accused of smuggling sheets of paper infused with synthetic marijuana” as part of a “$65,000 drug ring” into a jail in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, said CBS News. This year, an attorney in Houston claimed he was “tricked into smuggling drug-laced paper into the Harris County jail,” said KTRK-TV Houston. Inmates are “taking advantage of lawyers that are trying to build trust with their clients,” Brent Mayr, the president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, told KTRK-TV.

How can this problem be solved?

The drugs themselves make this a difficult task since “as quickly as the authorities ban one substance, narco-chemists drum up novel, more potent variations that have not been outlawed,” said the Times. Simply ridding inmates of their access to paper would “rob them of what they missed most in lockup: human connection.” To “dismissively say we’re going to ban everything from coming in, it was just something that I didn’t want to do,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told the Times.

But there have been efforts to crack down on drug-laced paper. Cook County jail “stepped up random searches and taught inspectors to master the natural touch and smell of paper,” said the Times. In Ohio, officials with the state’s correctional department have “confiscated over 16,000 pieces of synthetic drug-laced paper,” said WOIO-TV Cleveland. Officials in Kansas cited the laced contraband being smuggled into prisons as the “reason for changing print newspaper subscription policies,” said the Kansas Reflector.

This sounds promising, but experts say there is a long way to go to eradicate these drugs. In 2024, Cook County jail officers found a single piece of paper with 10 different chemicals sprayed on it, a “mix of opioids, depressants, cannabinoids and stimulants,” said the Times, “all jumbled together on the same page, like a Rosetta Stone of synthetic drugs.”

What happened

A California jury Monday awarded Donna Motsinger $59.25 million in civil damages after finding comedian Bill Cosby liable for drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1972. Motsinger, a waitress at the time, accused Cosby of giving her pills that incapacitated her as he escorted her to his stand-up comedy show, then raping her while she was unconscious. The jury awarded her $17.5 million in past damages, $1.75 million for future damages and $40 million in punitive damages. Cosby, 88, did not testify.

Who said what

The jury’s decision “further tarnished” Cosby’s reputation, The New York Times said, after his “standing as one of America’s most beloved entertainers dissolved” in the face of dozens of similar sexual assault allegations. Cosby has “denied all allegations involving sex crimes,” USA Today said, but he was the “first Hollywood figure to be convicted following the #MeToo movement.” He served almost three years in prison for drugging and raping protégé Andrea Constand before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out his conviction on a technicality in 2021.

Cosby has “settled some similar lawsuits and has been ordered to pay in others,” The Associated Press said, but Monday’s award is “likely the most he has had to pay in a case.” The money is “icing on the cake,“ Motsinger told reporters after the verdict, but the accountability is more important. “It has been 54 years to get justice, and I know it’s not complete for the rest of the women, but I hope it helps them a little bit.”

What next?

Cosby’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said they were “disappointed in the outcome,” but “we believe we have a strong appeal and we’ll pursue that.”

What happened

Labor leaders and state lawmakers on Wednesday scrambled to cancel or rename upcoming events celebrating United Farm Workers founder César Chavez after The New York Times reported it had “uncovered extensive evidence” he sexually abused multiple underage girls and women, including Dolores Huerta, the union’s co-founder and fellow labor icon. Huerta said in a statement that Chavez, who died in 1993, had pressured her into having sex once and raped her another time, with both encounters resulting in children who were raised by other families.

Who said what

“I am nearly 96 years old,” Huerta said, and “I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here.” She said she had “carried this secret” for 60 years “because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” but Chavez’s “deplorable” actions “do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people.”

For many, Chavez and Huerta “were akin to Martin Luther King. Jr. and Rosa Parks because of their work advocating for racial equality and civil rights,” The Associated Press said. Huerta’s “accusation shatters what was a widely celebrated — and seemingly egalitarian — bond between two of the most influential Hispanic activists in U.S. history,” the Times said. Chavez’s “name should be removed from landmarks, institutions and honors,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said on social media. “We cannot celebrate someone who carried out such disturbing harm.”

What next?

The allegations “have prompted swift fallout,” the AP said. The UFW and AFL-CIO unions both said they will not participate in or endorse any activities for César Chavez Day, celebrated on or around his March 31 birthday. Cities, states and Latino advocates are moving to rename schools, streets and holidays bearing his name.

What happened

A man rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue Thursday, hours after a convicted Islamic State supporter opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University, killing one person and wounding two. Both of the attackers were killed. None of the staff or 140 preschoolers at Temple Israel in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield Township were injured. “The back-to-back outbursts of violence added to rising concerns about the possibility ‌of attacks on U.S. soil amid the tension since U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iran,” Reuters said.

Who said what

The gunman at Old Dominion, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, was a former member of the Army National Guard who was arrested in 2016 for plotting an ISIS-inspired attack. He served eight years in prison. ROTC students in the classroom “rendered him no longer alive” after he started shooting, FBI Special Agent Dominique Evans said, crediting their “extreme bravery and courage” for stopping the attack. Jalloh shouted “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting, Evans told reporters.

In the attack at Temple Israel, the nation’s largest Reform synagogue, Lebanon-born U.S. citizen Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove his truck through the doors and down a hallway before temple security “engaged the individual and neutralized the threat,” West Bloomfield Police Chief Dale Young said. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said “something ignited in the vehicle” after the crash. Ghazali’s vehicle was carrying “mortar-type explosives,” CBS News said, citing two law enforcement officers. It wasn’t clear whether Ghazali was shot by security guards or killed himself.

Investigators are trying to determine the motives in both shootings, but Ghazali was “devastated” after an Israeli airstrike on his family’s village in Lebanon “roughly 10 days prior” killed two of his brothers and two of their children, CBS News said, citing a source in Michigan’s Lebanese American community. “What happens around the world sometimes affects us, so we have to prepare for it,” Bouchard ​said at a news conference.

What next?

The FBI said it was investigating the synagogue attack as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” and the Old Dominion shooting as an act of terrorism.

What happened

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate scheduled for execution Wednesday night for a murder he did not commit or even witness. Charles “Sonny” Burton and five other men robbed an AutoZone in Talladega, Alabama, in 1991, but Burton had left the building before an accomplice, Derrick DeBruce, fatally shot a customer, Doug Battle. DeBruce’s death sentence was overturned on appeal and he died in prison in 2020.

Who said what

Ivey has presided over 25 executions and granted clemency to just one other inmate since taking office in 2017, and she said Tuesday that she strongly supports capital punishment “for society’s most heinous offenders.” But “I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not,” she said in a statement. Burton “will now receive the same punishment as the triggerman” and “rightfully spend the remainder of his life behind bars.”

Ivey had been “facing mounting pressure to intervene in the execution,” USA Today said. Battle’s family and “at least six of the eight living jurors who voted for Burton’s execution” were among those urging clemency. State Attorney General Steve Marshall said he was “very disappointed” with Ivey’s decision. “There has never been any doubt,” he said, that Burton has “Battle’s blood on his hands.”

What next?

Burton’s execution would have been Alabama’s eighth using nitrogen gas, a “method that has drawn controversy for its potential to cause pain and suffering during an execution,” The Washington Post said. “Thank you, governor,” Burton said in a statement issued through his attorneys. “Just saying thank you doesn’t seem like much. But it’s what I can give her.”

What happened

A federal jury in Manhattan on Monday found former star real estate brokers Oren and Tal Alexander and their brother Alon guilty on all 10 counts of sex trafficking and related crimes. During a five-week trial, prosecutors said the Alexander brothers worked together to drug and rape scores of women, including minors, from at least 2008 to 2021. Eleven women testified that one or more of the brothers had sexually assaulted them, and jurors were shown a video Oren Alexander recorded of himself raping an incapacitated 17-year-old girl in 2009.

Who said what

The verdict “caps the downfall” of Tal, 39, and Oren, 38, “the highflying real-estate agents who once brokered some of the country’s priciest transactions in New York, Aspen and Miami,” The Wall Street Journal said. Alon, Oren’s twin, worked at the family’s security business. The victims “testified that they met the brothers at nightclubs, parties and on dating apps,” The Associated Press said, then “were attacked after accepting their invitations to all-expense paid getaways.”

Defense lawyers “argued that the brothers were playboys and womanizers but not criminals,” The New York Times said. They unsuccessfully “cast the victims as a bloc of scorned women, all motivated by shame, regret and greed.” The jurors saw the Alexanders’ conduct “for what it was — calculated, brutal sexual abuse that, unimaginably, the defendants celebrated,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.

What next?

“We believe in our clients’ innocence,” Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Oren Alexander, said after the verdict. “We’re going to keep fighting.” U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni set sentencing for Aug. 6. The brothers, incarcerated since their 2024 arrests, face up to life in prison.

Economic abuse, a form of coercive control, plays a part in 51% of domestic abuse-related deaths in England and Wales. And, every 19 days, a victim of economic abuse loses her life, according to new research.

These findings are a “wake-up call”, said Surviving Economic Abuse, the charity behind the research. “Long overlooked” in standard risk assessments and “misunderstood by agencies that could have intervened”, economic abuse must now be “recognised as a serious and potentially fatal form of domestic abuse”.

What is economic abuse?

It’s a legally recognised form of domestic abuse, where one person – usually a partner or ex-partner – has control over another person’s access to money. This can include taking over the victim’s earnings, spending, bank accounts and credit cards, and often results in the building up of debts in the victim’s name. It can include controlling access to transport, property, food, clothing or technology – restricting the victim’s ability to work and stay connected. In some cases, it can also involve damaging belongings or refusing to contribute to household costs.

Last year, the BBC reported cases of economic abuse that included “crashing a car deliberately, taking control of benefit payments and threatening to share explicit images unless money is handed over”. One in six women in the UK has experienced economic abuse by a current or former partner, according to SEA, but many victims do not recognise it as abuse. Even if they do, they have often become so isolated by their abuser that they don’t feel able to talk about it. “It rarely happens in isolation” and is usually accompanied by physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

The reality of economic abuse can make it even more difficult for women to leave an abusive relationship. “They’re very scared to leave because of the financial side that holds them back,” MSP Pam Gosal told Holyrood magazine. Abused women she has tried to help often didn’t know what was in their name financially, what they could lose or what liabilities they could be left with. “You don’t know anything because you never, ever controlled the finances in a relationship.”

How does it contribute to deaths?

Although it is not a physical form of abuse, economic abuse can trap victims in dangerous situations, and “be an indication of escalating risk from a perpetrator”, said the SEA report.

And yet, the report found, agencies often missed opportunities to spot dangers linked to economic abuse. In over half of the domestic abuse-related deaths analysed in the report, economic abuse “was present”, but many of the women experiencing economic abuse were “failed” by those who “should have been there to help them”. Either because they missed the signs of economic abuse or because they did not understand the risk of this abuse, agencies “did not respond as they could have done”.

This is particularly noteworthy in the cases of victims to went on to take their own lives. Women who had experienced economic abuse from an intimate partner were significantly more likely to commit suicide than other abused women whose cases the report analysed. Risk assessments and safety planning should better recognise that “the nature of post-separation economic abuse (where it may start, continue or escalate after a victim has fled) can leave victims feeling hopeless”.

What can be done?

Economic abuse should be integrated into the government’s new guidance on best practice for domestic abuse risk management, recommends SEA. It also recommends specialist training on economic abuse for professionals involved in combating violence against women and girls.

This form of abuse “must be recognised, understood and acted upon across every agency, every review and every response”, said Sam Smethers, chief executive of SEA. “We cannot wait for another woman’s life to be lost.”

Prosecutors in Taiwan indicted 62 people on Wednesday for their alleged links to the Prince Group, a multinational network accused of running a vast system of scam centres from Cambodia.

Scam centres across Southeast Asia have become so powerful and entrenched that they are now building into “scam states”.

Sprawling, industrial-scale criminal economy

Scam states are similar to narco-states, which are countries where the entire government and economy become profoundly corrupted and controlled by the illegal drug trade.

A “scam state” is a country where an “illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into legitimate institutions, reshaping the economy, corrupting governments and establishing state reliance on an illegal network”, said The Guardian. They’re growing in number because the “multi-billion-dollar global scam industry” has become “so monolithic”.

After beginning as small online fraud rings, scamming has transformed into a sprawling, industrial-scale criminal economy in parts of southeast Asia, an illicit industry has penetrated local economies and institutions to a degree that rivals some of the world’s most entrenched illegal trades.

According to analysts, the growth of scam states has been rapid and systemic, driven by sophisticated technology, weak law enforcement, and political tolerance or complicity.

KK Park in Myanmar’s Myawaddy region was once one of the most notorious scam centres. Ostensibly business complexes, these sites housed tens of thousands of workers – many of them trafficked or coerced – who were forced to defraud victims globally via romance scams, fake investment platforms, and so-called “pig butchering” cons, or investment fraud involving gaining the trust of victims and persuading them to invest in fake opportunities.

When authorities raided and destroyed parts of KK Park, operators had already moved their operations elsewhere, illustrating the adaptability and mobility of the scam networks.

States slow to dismantle networks

The “scale of the compounds” shows “how much the states hosting them have been compromised”, experts told The Guardian. For instance, in Cambodia, it's thought cybercrime operations contribute billions of dollars annually, amounting to a significant portion of the economy. Critics argue that state institutions have been slow to dismantle the networks and that political elites benefit directly or indirectly from their persistence.

The US and UK have launched joint efforts, like the Scam Center Strike Force, to target these networks and the infrastructure supporting them, but dismantling scam states is a complex task.

Analysts warn that without targeting the leadership and financial core of these networks, law enforcement may merely displace the problem rather than eliminate it. The rise of scam states highlights a new frontier of organised crime – one that intertwines digital innovation, exploitation and corruption on a vast scale.

What happened

A jury in Winder, Georgia, Tuesday convicted Colin Gray of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for allowing his son access to a gun he allegedly used to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in September 2024. Prosecutors showed that Gray, 55, gave his son the rifle for Christmas and refused entreaties to lock it up as Colt Gray, then 14, showed signs of deteriorating mental health, including bouts of anger and an obsession with school shooters.

Who said what

“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith told reporters after the verdict. “This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time and, like we said, you just had to do one thing — take that rifle away and this would have been prevented.”

The trial was “one of the first in the nation in which a parent was held accountable for allegedly enabling a child’s access to a gun used in a school shooting,” said The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The “only other case like it to have proceeded to trial” sent the parents of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley to prison for 10 to 15 years. This legal strategy “has gained traction across the country,” The New York Times said, but Gray is the first parent convicted “before the son’s guilt had been determined.”

What next?

Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, unsuccessfully pushed her estranged husband to lock up the rifle after reading about the Crumbley case, “so Michigan was able to move the needle to the point that it almost stopped this tragedy,” Smith said. “We hope we’ve moved the needle a little further.” Colin Gray’s attorneys “are likely to appeal, setting up a lengthy legal battle for Georgia’s higher courts to determine a balance between parental responsibility and criminal negligence,” Georgia Public Broadcasting said.

A scenario often featured in popular culture and hypothetical discussions has come true and left investigators baffled.

A double murder trial in France has reached a “bizarre legal quagmire” because two of the suspects are identical twins and so have the same DNA, said The Connexion.

Open question

The 33-year-old brothers are among five defendants on trial in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris, accused of a double murder and several attempted killings in 2020. They deny the charges. Although both twins are suspected of conspiring to plot the double murder, the DNA on an assault rifle used in one of the later gun battles could only be from one of them.

Identical twins develop from the same sperm and a single fertilised egg that splits during pregnancy, so they have exactly the same DNA, making forensic identification difficult. A police officer told the court that forensic experts weren’t able to tell which of the brothers had been conclusively implicated. “Only their mother can tell them apart,” said an investigator.

Although advanced genetic testing techniques can sometimes help distinguish between identical twins, experts concluded that the amount of blood available in this case is insufficient, so the estimated €60,000 cost may not be justified.

Adding to the sense of confusion, police said that the twins frequently share clothes and use the same phone numbers and ID documents. So prosecutors are being forced to try other methods to establish who fired the gun, including phone tracing, interviews and wiretapping.

But for now the “crucial question” of who fired the recovered weapon “remains an open one”, said Sky News.

Onerous costs

In 2013, French police investigating a series of rapes in Marseille were similarly stymied after they traced DNA evidence to twins but couldn’t establish which one was responsible.

“It’s a rather rare case for the alleged perpetrators to be identical twins,” chief investigator Emmanuel Kiehl told France 24, and the cost of sufficient tests to distinguish the DNA, estimated to be up to €1 million, was too “onerous”.

A breakthrough came when investigators eventually determined that some victims reported that the attacker had a speech impediment, which matched a condition caused by partial deafness in one of the twins, who eventually confessed to all the counts.

No such breakthrough has occurred in the current case, though. The trial continues, with the court expected to reach a decision in late February.

When “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy, was kidnapped on February 1, 2026, it was the first major kidnapping to spark a media frenzy in many years. Such episodes, prior to the ubiquity of surveillance cameras and advances in forensics, were much more common, including these watershed events.

Charles Lindbergh, Jr. (1932)

The abduction and murder of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son on March 1, 1932, was at the time considered the “crime of the century.” Lindbergh’s 1927 journey from New York to Paris was the first successful solo transatlantic flight and made him a household name.

“Awareness of the case was such that anyone seen with a small blonde child was looked at twice,” said Kase Wickman at Vanity Fair. Despite a frantic search that involved more than 100,000 people, the boy had likely been killed the night of the kidnapping, and his body was discovered 72 days later near the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. A German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried, convicted and executed for the crime.

Adolph Coors III (1960)

On February 9, 1960, 44-year-old Adolph Coors III, the grandson of the company’s founder, vanished. His car was found on the Turkey Creek Bridge near Denver, where he had been abducted by an escaped murderer, Joseph Corbett, looking for a quick get-rich scheme.

“The attempt went awry though and ended right there on that bridge” when Corbett shot Coors to death, said Colorado Public Radio. His wife, Mary, received a $500,000 ransom demand the next day, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dispatched an enormous operation to find the beverage heir. Coors’ body was discovered on September 15, 1960, and the FBI later traced a car matching a witness description to Corbett. Corbett was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but released on parole in 1980.

Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1963)

19 year-old Frank Sinatra, Jr., the son of one of the most renowned musicians and actors of his generation, was kidnapped from a hotel in Lake Tahoe, California, on December 8, 1963. Two men, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, tied up Sinatra, Jr.’s friend, John Foss, and spirited the singer to Canoga Park, California, where they contacted his father and issued a demand for a $240,000 ransom, which Sinatra delivered early in the morning on December 11.

A third conspirator, John Irwin, spilled the beans to his brother, who contacted the police. The three men were sentenced to life in prison, though none served even five years. At his trial, Keenan “testified that the crime was a hoax, a publicity stunt coordinated with people tied to the family,” an allegation that was later disproven, said Esquire.

Paul Fronczak (1964)

A woman posed as a nurse at Chicago’s Michael Reese hospital and made off with a 1-day-old infant named Paul Fronczak on April 27, 1964, triggering what was then the largest manhunt in the city’s history. Two years later, the FBI found a child that they believed to be Paul in New Jersey and he was returned to his parents, Dora and Chester Fronczak.

But in 2012, Fronczak took a DNA test that proved he was actually Jack Rosenthal, an Atlantic City child who had vanished in 1965 along with his twin sister, Jill (who has still not been found). In 2019, it was revealed that the real Paul Fronczak had been raised as Kevin Baty by a woman named Lorraine Fountain. By then, both Baty and Fountain had passed away, and the original kidnapper remains unknown. Rosenthal still goes by Paul Fronczak and published a memoir in 2022.

John Paul Getty III (1973)

Getty III, the grandson of petroleum magnate John Paul Getty, was abducted by Italian gangsters in Rome on July 10, 1973, when he was 16. The kidnappers demanded $17 million, but the elder Getty initially refused, suspecting his wayward grandson of complicity and saying “If I pay one penny, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”

He only agreed later to dispatch $2.2 million — after he received his grandson’s ear in the mail — the highest amount that could at the time be considered tax-deductible. Getty III struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and suffered a stroke in 1981 that would leave him disabled for the rest of his life until his death in 2011. The story was made into a 2017 film, “All the Money in the World,” as well as a 2018 FX limited series, “Trust.”

Patricia Hearst (1974)

On February 4, 1974, 19 year-old Patricia Hearst, the heiress to William Randolph Hearst’s media dynasty, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a far-left radical group. Two months later, she participated in a bank robbery, after which she was considered a fugitive until her September 1975 arrest.

Hearst maintained that she was coerced, but she was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. “Hearst’s decision to stay with her kidnappers was a deeply symbolic transgression, one that articulated the anger so many felt against the American establishment,” said Smithsonian Magazine. She was released in 1979 after President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence, and she went on to perform in a number of Hollywood films, including the 1990 film “Cry-Baby.”

Shin Sang-ok (1978)

On January 11, 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee was abducted in Hong Kong by North Korean agents and taken to the North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. Six months later, North Korea succeeded in kidnapping her husband, renowned director Shin Sang-ok, in Hong Kong as well.

Held for eight years at the behest of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung’s son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Il, Shin was forced to make seven films for his captors, including “Pulgasari,” a movie known as the “socialist Godzilla.” Kim “sought to create a film industry that would allow him to sway a world audience to the righteousness of the Workers’ Party of Korea,” said The Guardian. In March 1986, Shin and Choi escaped while in Vienna, Austria, where they were ostensibly seeking funding for a new project.

Aldo Moro (1978)

On March 16, 1978, during Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead,” former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group The Red Brigades while he was trying to broker the inclusion of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in a coalition government. He was executed by the Brigades on May 9, and his body was discovered in the trunk of a car in Rome.

There are still “unanswered questions” about the episode that remains “arguably the darkest episode of Italy's postwar history,” said The Guardian. Widespread revulsion at the assassination led to a crackdown on the Red Brigades and the beginning of the end of the group’s influence.

Abilio Diniz (1989)

Diniz, the co-founder of the Brazilian grocery chain Pão de Açúcar, Diniz was kidnapped on the morning of December 17, 1989, when the country was holding its first democratic presidential election after decades of autocracy. The 52-year-old Diniz was “dragged out of his Mercedes-Benz as he went to work and taken away in a station wagon disguised as an ambulance,” said The New York Times, and then held in a house in São Paulo before he was freed by authorities a week later.

The kidnappers were part of an ongoing abduction ring that had netted around $65 million. The group was connected to and included several members of the Chilean radical group the Movement for the Revolutionary Left.

Jaycee Dugard (1991)

11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was walking to a school bus stop in Lake Tahoe, California, when she was abducted by a couple, Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Phillip, already a convicted sex offender, and Nancy held Dugard for 18 years in a hidden backyard structure.

She was repeatedly raped and forced to carry two of Phillip’s children. The case attracted even greater attention when she was found in 2009. Authorities “discovered a hidden backyard compound made up of ramshackle tents and sheds, including a small, sparsely furnished two-room building” where she and her children were held, said The New York Times. Dugard founded a non-profit to help people recover from similar horrors and has understandably kept her daughters’ identities a secret. The Garridos remain in prison.

Elizabeth Smart (2002)

On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in the family’s Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Mitchell, who had religious delusions, had previously worked as a roofer on the family’s house.

Though the case drew widespread national scrutiny, Smart remained in captivity for nine months, suffering daily sexual assaults, until she was recognized in Sandy, Utah, on March 12, 2003, and rescued by police. “Smart had to summon tremendous physical stamina to survive her captivity,” said Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker. Smart founded a non-profit to combat sexual exploitation and is now married with three children. Mitchell remains in federal prison; Barzee was granted parole in 2018.

To enter the “Epstein Library”, as it is grandly called, you just have to go to the website of the US Department of Justice, and click Yes on a pop-up that asks if you are 18 or over. That is all it takes to become immersed in a deeply disturbing world, said Helen Rumbelow in The Times.

‘Grand facade’

The more than three million documents and photographs related to the late paedophile are in a “careless jumble”; and the FBI warns that they may contain forgeries and false allegations. But after days poring through the Epstein files, I started to see these papers as a “Rosetta Stone through which women might understand male power”. They take us behind the “grand facade” presented by men who run the world, in government, academia, law and business; and they reveal how these figures speak to one another when “pussy” – in their parlance – is “out of the room where it happens”.

In this world, the men hold the cards, said Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian. The women are powerless or peripheral. While Epstein and his male associates joke, network, trade information, swap favours and engage in “light displays of one-upmanship”, women appear mainly only as staff, or providers of sex. Trawling the files, you find yourself eavesdropping on the many female assistants who organise the diaries of these busy men and ensure their lives run seamlessly as they move from Paris to New York, Dubai to Davos.

More often, you hear the men. The word “pussy” comes up hundreds of times. In 2016, a contact promises Epstein “abundant young pussy flesh”; another routinely signs off business emails wishing him “lots of P”. The men speak unguardedly. In 2012, the ex-chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland, tells Epstein about the “extraordinary girls” in Albania. An Emirati businessman complains that when the “Moldavian arrived”, she was a “big disappointment” – “not as attractive as the picture”. In 2019, the left-wing scholar Noam Chomsky laments the “horrible” press Epstein is getting, and bemoans the “hysteria” surrounding the abuse of women.

Meanwhile, in the background of all this, Epstein is constantly managing the women he has imported into his life. “Take a selfie of your pussy and send,” he tells one. It’s your “whore moans”, he suggests to another.

Clever conman

All the people who appear in the files insist they knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes, yet his homes were full of young women – “young girls with no last names”, as the Hollywood publicist Peggy Siegal refers to them in an email. These girls were groomed and abused on an industrial scale, said Janice Turner in The Times: hundreds passed through his doors. Some were from poor families, offered $300 to give Epstein a massage that turned sexual; others were students or artists, lured to his homes by promises of grants or patronage. Still more were young models, flown in from eastern Europe. The pimp-in-chief was Ghislaine Maxwell, but the files suggest there were others, from the model agency boss Jean-Luc Brunel, who killed himself in jail, to the late socialite Annabelle Neilson.

Epstein’s friends seem to have accepted his taste for girls as though it were a hobby, like collecting fine wine. Take Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn, who messages Epstein about a pal with a jewellery business. “I know you have a lot of... young girls, women friends,” she says. “All women, and girls in your case, like jewellery.”

One of Epstein’s strategies was to pay his victims to recruit their friends, said Memphis Barker in The Daily Telegraph. And he pulled a similar trick in his parallel, sometimes overlapping, world of wealth and power – always leveraging his contacts, and the information they gave him, “to gain another, bigger prize”. There are all sorts of theories about how this working-class college dropout joined the elites, but the reality is simply that he was a clever conman.

In the 1970s, he blagged a lucrative Wall Street job, which he used to make contacts and engage in dodgy deals. Once a millionaire, he used his expertise in tax-avoidance and takeovers to gain access to the super-rich, whose fortunes he raided while acting as their adviser. He reportedly made some $200 million by advising the retail billionaire Les Wexner, and stole up to $100 million. With this sort of money, he could use donations to good causes, lavish hospitality and so on, to cultivate powerful people from all over the world, from senior Kremlin officials to Virgin boss Richard Branson to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli PM.

Although there are hints in the files that some of his contacts were drawn into his crimes – leaving them too exposed to turn on him – there is no clear evidence of a criminal conspiracy, said J. Oliver Conroy in The Guardian. What the files do seem to confirm, though, is the conspiracy theorist’s view of an elite stratosphere, where normal rules don’t apply, everyone knows each other, and ideological differences are subsumed to self-interested motives.

What happened

Ghislaine Maxwell, the former Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend and associate serving 20 years for sex trafficking, repeatedly invoked her “Fifth Amendment right to silence” Monday during a virtual deposition with the House Oversight Committee. Maxwell, appearing via video from her minimum-security prison camp in Texas, offered to talk only if she first received a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Who said what

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who first subpoenaed Maxwell in July, said it was “very disappointing” she refused to answer their “many questions” about “the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators.” Maxwell “answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (Calif.), the committee’s top Democrat. “Who is she protecting?”

“Maxwell alone can explain why” Trump and former President Bill Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing,” her lawyer David Oscar Markus said during the hearing, and she is “prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.” Maxwell is “campaigning over and over again to get that pardon,” and Trump “has not ruled it out,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.). “That is why she is continuing to not cooperate with our investigation.”

What next?

Maxwell, who is “seeking to have her conviction overturned” in federal court, had “consistently told the committee that she wouldn’t answer questions,” The Associated Press said. But Comer “came under pressure to hold the deposition as he pressed for the committee to enforce subpoenas on Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” The Clintons are scheduled to be deposed later this month, and Comer reiterated Monday that he would not honor their request for a public hearing.

What happened

A Hong Kong court Monday morning sentenced former media tycoon Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison. The 78-year-old British citizen, who founded the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was found guilty in December of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and publishing seditious materials.

His punishment is the “heaviest penalty yet meted out under a 2020 Beijing-imposed national security law,” said Bloomberg. Eight co-defendants received shorter prison terms.

Who said what

The judges said Lai was “no doubt the mastermind of all three conspiracies charged,” which “warrants a heavier sentence.” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Lai had been jailed “for exercising his right to freedom of expression” and called for his release “on humanitarian grounds.” His heavy sentence “aligns with how the Chinese Communist Party has punished wealthy entrepreneurs and influential academics in the mainland for challenging the state,” said The New York Times.

What next?

President Donald Trump had encouraged Chinese President Xi Jinping to release Lai, so the sentence could “add another sticking point to negotiations between the world’s two largest economies,” scheduled for April, said The Wall Street Journal.

What happened

Former Illinois sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for the 2024 killing of Sonya Massey in her Springfield home. A jury last year found Grayson guilty of second-degree murder.

Who said what

The high-profile case was “defined by graphic police body camera footage shown widely across the nation,” said the Chicago Tribune. The footage showed Grayson, who is white, fatally shooting the 36-year-old Black mother of two after responding to a 911 call about a possible prowler outside her home. Massey “at the time was dealing with mental health challenges,” and Grayson shot her after she picked up a pot of boiling water from the stove.

This case marks a “rare instance of an American law enforcement officer convicted for an on-duty shooting,” The New York Times said, and Grayson’s 20-year sentence was the “maximum allowed in the state for that crime.” Massey’s family and friends “erupted into cheers” when Sangamon County Circuit Judge Ryan Cadagin handed down the sentence, said Chicago Public Media. Cadagin “admonished them for the outburst,” said The Associated Press.

What next?

Grayson, 31, “has been incarcerated since he was charged,” the AP said, and “with a day shaved off his sentence for every day of good behavior, plus credit for nearly 19 months already spent behind bars,” he “could be released in just under 8 1/2 years.”

While many American cities are painted as bastions of murder, a new report has revealed that this is not actually the case. The U.S. logged a more than 20% drop in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025, marking the largest single-year fall on record and possibly the lowest homicide rate in the country in 125 years. But while both Democrats and Republicans are taking credit for this drop in crime, analysts say there’s more to the story than politics.

What did the commentators say?

The study, published by the independent Council on Criminal Justice, analyzed crime data from 40 of the largest American cities. The “rate of reported homicides was 21% lower in 2025 than in 2024 in the 35 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 922 fewer homicides,” said the study. When the data is finalized, there is a “strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents,” which would be the “lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900.”

This marks a significant shift from the Covid-era spikes in crime, and “elected officials at all levels — both Democrats and Republicans — have been claiming credit,” said The Associated Press. But even with this data, experts say it’s “too early to tell what is prompting the change.” There’s “never one reason crime goes up or down,” said Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, to the AP. Analysts are “seeing that broad, very broad social, cultural and economic forces at the national level can assert huge influence on what happens at the local level.”

President Donald Trump has claimed that his deployment of the National Guard in several cities and Washington, D.C., has drastically reduced crime. But homicide rates began falling during former President Joe Biden’s administration, and there’s “little to justify any claim that Trump is responsible for last year’s drop in crime,” said The New York Times. There are “many more cities that didn’t have the National Guard that saw their crime go down than cities that had the National Guard who saw their crime go down,” said Alex Piquero, who served as the Biden administration’s head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to the Times.

But while Republicans may not be responsible for the drop in homicides, Democrats may not be either. Rather than politics, countries with a “stronger market orientation may experience lower rates of homicide,” said a separate study from the University of Georgia. This is a concept that references how a “nation’s economy functions within a framework of legal rights and freedoms.” Researchers found that a “stronger market orientation could decrease murder rates, with even a one-point shift on a market freedom scale leading to a 22% drop in homicides.”

What next?

The drop in homicides could just reflect an up-and-down pattern, as murders had been “steadily dropping since the late 2000s” before the Covid spike, senior research specialist Ernesto López, the study’s lead author, told CBS News. It is “possible that these rates reflect a longer-term downward trend punctuated by periods of elevated homicides.”

In another piece of good news, the study found that other crime rates had fallen, too. Carjackings declined 27% from 2024 to 2025, burglaries fell 18%, larcenies fell 11% and shoplifting dropped 10%.

A new National Police Service dubbed the “British FBI” will be tasked with tackling the most serious crimes, enabling strained local forces to concentrate more resources on everyday offences, the Home Office has announced.

The announcement comes ahead of a series of reforms that will be “the biggest shake-up to the crime-fighting structure” in more than half a century, according to The Telegraph.

How will the new unit work?

The National Police Service will target terrorism, fraud and organised crime. Despite the “British FBI” nickname, the NPS will only operate in England and Wales, as policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The new organisation, set out in a government White Paper, will bring together the responsibilities of existing agencies such as the National Crime Agency, Counter Terrorism Policing, Regional Organised Crime Units and National Road Policing. The NPS will also be in charge of setting professional standards and training requirements and purchasing new equipment for all forces. This includes overseeing the nationwide roll-out of controversial facial recognition software.

The NPS will have its own uniform and a new national police commissioner will be appointed to lead the force, serving as the most senior police officer in the country.

The establishment of the new body will be accompanied by a reduction in the number of police forces in England and Wales, “with some merged to create bigger regional constabularies tackling complex crimes, such as murder, drugs and county lines gangs”.

What is the goal?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has insisted the radical overhaul is urgently needed because the “outdated” and “fragmented” current model is “buckling under the strain” of tackling complex modern crime, leaving “serious offending unpunished”.

“The current policing model was built for a different century,” she said. The “British FBI” will deploy “world-class talent and state-of-the-art technology to track down and catch dangerous criminals”. Ministers claim the NPS will be better placed to tackle criminals whose activities increasingly cross local constabulary and national borders.

Another of the “main aims” of the new service is to “boost the 43 local forces’ ability to spend more time fighting crime in their communities, such as shoplifting, drug dealing, phone theft and anti-social behaviour”, said Sky News.

How have the plans been received?

The establishment of the NPS “reflects a widespread consensus” among law enforcement experts that “more specialised officers are needed to combat threats such as online fraud and international organised crime, and that only larger forces can support the level of expertise required”, said the Financial Times.

The heads of Counter Terrorism Policing, the Metropolitan Police, the College of Policing, the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have all welcomed the move, writing jointly in The Telegraph that the current system is “messy and complex, and neither as efficient nor as coherent as it should be. That is why reform is needed – not as an ideological exercise, but as common sense. National crime demands a national response.”

While the policing world is “almost giddy” about the plans, “amending police structures, processes and institutions won’t affect people’s lives in the short, or even the medium, term”, said crime expert and former BBC journalist Danny Shaw. The White Paper “is not intended as an urgent plan of action to address our immediate concerns about safety on the streets, crime and anti-social behaviour”, but rather “a roadmap towards a more efficient and effective police service in the decades to come”.

What happened

A growing number of Republicans on Sunday joined unified Democratic calls for a thorough, transparent investigation of an immigration agent’s killing Saturday of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street. Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at Minnesota’s Veterans Affairs hospital, was pushed to the ground by a Border Patrol agent after stepping in to shield a woman being hit with pepper spray, then surrounded, beaten and shot in the back several times, multiple bystander videos show. Trump administration officials quickly blamed Pretti, baselessly calling him a “terrorist” intent on shooting federal agents with a legally concealed handgun. Videos show Pretti had a phone in his hand but never touched his gun, which was removed from his waistband by an agent before he was shot.

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the shooting by its own agent, officials said, and it barred Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators from the scene of the shooting on Saturday, despite a signed search warrant. A federal judge late Saturday agreed to Minnesota’s request for a temporary restraining order barring DHS “from destroying or altering evidence related to” Pretti’s shooting.

Who said what

Minnesota’s “extraordinary legal maneuvers” are “meant to counter what state officials and legal experts framed as unprecedented obstruction by federal authorities” into Pretti’s shooting, Axios said. They also “appear geared toward avoiding a repeat of the aftermath of an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of Renee Good.” The FBI blocked state investigators and “briefly opened a civil rights investigation” into Good’s shooting, The Washington Post said, “but closed it and instead focused on investigating Good’s partner and protesters.”

Having DHS investigate Pretti’s killing is “not normal,” a former senior ICE official told CBS News. The Trump administration is “lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes,” urging us to “reject the evidence” of our own “eyes and ears,” The New York Times said in an editorial, so it “will be impossible to trust any federal investigation that it conducts.” Pretti’s killing is the “worst incident to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle for the Trump presidency,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. The president “would be wise to pause ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities” and “consider a less provocative strategy.”

What next?

The “gentle and equivocal” public pushback from a “small but growing number of Republicans” is “increasingly conspicuous” as the political costs rise, Politico said. The “growing fury” among Democrats, “even among moderates,” said The Associated Press, pushed Senate Democrats on Sunday to say they would block a government spending bill unless the DHS funding was removed, raising the odds of a partial government shutdown starting next weekend.

How America has changed, said Molly Olmstead on Slate. When George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, the country was united in horror. Republican commentators expressed their shock at the killing; President Trump called it “sickening” and “revolting”. Compare that with the response to the killing last week of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officer just a mile from where Floyd died.

Shocking lies

Within hours, the administration was slandering her. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed that she’d “weaponised her vehicle” in an attempt to kill Ice officers, in “an act of domestic terrorism”. A Fox News pundit accused Democrat leaders of emboldening “thugs” to attack law enforcers. Vice President J.D. Vance called Good a “deranged Leftist”. All this despite an abundance of video evidence suggesting that Good’s killing was unjustified.

The lies were shocking, said Adam Serwer in The Atlantic. Officials could have pleaded patience while the full facts were established, yet they chose instead to spout falsehoods, such as that there were riots at the scene. “The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public.”

Trump was the worst offender, said Eric Levitz on Vox. He condemned Good on social media as a “professional agitator” who had “violently, wilfully, and viciously” run over the Ice officer who shot her. “Based on the attached clip,” he said, “it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in hospital.” Anyone who has seen footage of the event knows that’s nonsense. While the officer might have been clipped by the bumper of Good’s SUV as she turned to drive off, he clearly wasn’t run over. After firing through the windshield and open driver window, he calmly reholstered his gun and walked away. It’s frightening. “If Ice agents know that they can kill US citizens on video – and still count on the president to lie in support of their freedom – Americans’ most basic liberties will be imperilled.”

Useful distraction

Let’s keep things in perspective, said Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review. To listen to some people, you’d think Ice agents were wandering around randomly executing people. While Good certainly didn’t deserve to die, she did appear to disobey police orders. The agent who fired at her, Jonathan Ross, may well have feared for his life, said The Wall Street Journal. He reportedly received dozens of stitches last year after a fleeing car dragged him about 300 feet.

Both sides need to lower the temperature. It’s not helpful for Mayor Jacob Frey to demand that federal immigration officials “get the f**k out of Minneapolis”. Trump should also tone down his rhetoric and reconsider his aggressive deployment of Ice agents. “His mass deportation policy is already unpopular and will become more so if there are more such violent incidents.”

On the contrary, the row over Ice may serve as a useful distraction for Trump, said Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine. At a time when his ratings have slumped and the Democrats are making headway by relentlessly highlighting cost-of-living issues, shifting the battleground towards immigration, crime and policing puts the Republicans in “more familiar and comfortable” territory. Hence why they were so eager to misrepresent the circumstances of Good’s death. Beyond the desire to show deference to Trump, they recognised that, facts aside, “support for the shooter is good politics for the GOP”.

What happened

Minnesota officials on Thursday said the FBI was barring state and local investigators from participating in the inquiry into an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday. Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement the FBI “had reversed course” on an initial agreement to conduct a joint investigation, and since the BCA will “no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews,” his agency “reluctantly” stepped back.

Who said what

“Minnesota must be part of this investigation,” Gov. Tim Walz (D) told reporters, or “it feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome.” State Attorney General Keith Ellison said he hoped the FBI would “reverse” its “very concerning” decision. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Minnesota officials “have not been out. They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the ICE agent who killed Good, identified in court papers as Jonathan Ross, “is protected by absolute immunity.” Vance’s claim was “quickly met with skepticism by experts,” CNN said. But keeping the investigation in federal hands means the BCA has “few tools available to fully scrutinize the shooting and provide its findings to county prosecutors, who would then determine whether the agent should face state charges.”

What next?

In Oregon, Portland Police Chief Bob Day said Thursday night the FBI was leading the investigation into a Border Patrol agent’s non-fatal shooting of two people in a car yesterday afternoon. DHS said the agent fired a “defensive shot” at an alleged Venezuelan gang member after he fled a “targeted vehicle stop.” In previous cases, including Good’s killing, “video evidence cast doubt on the administration’s descriptions of what prompted the shootings,” The Associated Press said. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said his state’s Department of Justice would conduct its own investigation.

What happened

An unidentified ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, 37, on Wednesday during what federal officials said was an immigration enforcement action on a residential street in Minneapolis. Multiple bystander videos of the shooting show three ICE agents approaching Good’s SUV, which backs up and is turning to drive away when an agent near the front of the car fires three shots into the vehicle. Good’s killing was “at least the fifth death to result from the aggressive U.S. immigration crackdown the Trump administration launched last year,” The Associated Press said, and it “quickly drew hundreds of angry protesters.”

Who said what

President Donald Trump claimed on social media shortly after the shooting that Good “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Good had weaponized her car in an “act of domestic terrorism.” Witnesses and state and local officials disputed those characterizations.

“Don’t believe this propaganda machine,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said, calling the shooting the “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable” result of Trump’s surge of ICE officers to the city. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) called the self-defense “spin” a “garbage narrative” and “bullshit” and told ICE to leave town. The “narrative they’re pushing clearly doesn’t match up with the videos we’re all seeing,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said on social media.

According to eyewitnesses, ICE agents “gave mixed orders” to Good in the moments before opening fire, said Minnesota Public Radio, with one agent “ordering her to drive away from the scene” as another “yelled for her to get out of her car as he reached for the door handle.” The ICE agent who fired into the car “was filmed immediately after the shooting walking without apparent injury,” The Washington Post said.

What next?

Walz said he had issued a “warning order” to prepare the Minnesota National Guard for deployment if violence broke out, but he urged Minnesotans not to “take the bait.” Trump and his team “want a show,” he said. “We can’t give it to them.” The FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the shooting, but Minneapolis prosecutors are “pushing hard for a local investigation,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told Fox 9, “which is the only way to ensure full transparency.”

People are turning their anger toward the security at Brown University following a shooting on the Ivy League campus earlier this month. The incident left two students dead and nine wounded, and questions abound as to whether the school’s response to the shooting violated federal law. As the Education Department pledges to look into the issue, security experts have mixed feelings.

‘May not have been up to appropriate standards’

As the Education Department looks into what role Brown’s security may have played in the matter, the university’s police chief has already been placed on leave. The “surveillance and security system may not have been up to appropriate standards, allowing the suspect to flee while the university seemed unable to provide helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin,” said the Education Department in a press release.

Most of the debate has surrounded the Clery Act, a federal law that “requires colleges and universities to report campus crime data, support victims of violence and publicly outline the policies and procedures they have put into place to improve campus safety,” said the Clery Center. Universities, as part of the act, must release an annual security report and issue “timely warnings in the event of an immediate, significant danger to the campus community,” said The Providence Journal.

If it’s determined that Brown violated the Clery Act, the school could be fined. This has happened before, as Virginia Tech “ultimately paid $32,500 in fines to the Department of Education” for alleged Clery Act violations following its 2007 shooting, said CNN. Brown and other universities have been targeted by the White House before for ideological reasons, and the “fallout from this month’s shooting on campus threatens to once again put the university at odds with the administration.”

‘Clery Act doesn’t touch it’

The federal law is often seen as a key lifeline because its “required reports can help families decide where to send their children to college,” said The Boston Globe. Universities that violate it can also “lose federal student aid if they do not follow their own published procedures.” But there are safety experts who say that in the case of Brown, the Clery Act does not apply.

Much of the scrutiny has been around the alleged lack of surveillance cameras on Brown’s campus, with President Donald Trump even addressing this issue on social media. While an affidavit claims the building where the shooting occurred lacks sufficient interior cameras, the Clery Act “does not require universities to have any specific protocols such as cameras,” campus safety consultant Daniel Carter said to the Globe. “Absent saying something in the annual security report about having surveillance cameras, the Clery Act doesn’t touch it.”

Many safety experts are “puzzled by the mention of cameras because that’s not really what the Clery Act is designed to do,” said Peter Margulies, a national security and criminal law professor at Roger Williams University, to the Globe. But there’s also an understanding that the government “will want to make sure an institution like Brown was dotting its Is and crossing its Ts in the wake of a horrendous crime like this.”

Australia’s government announced plans to strengthen the country’s gun control laws, following Sunday’s terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, in Sydney.

In the 20-minute rampage, a father and son opened fire on a crowd of about 1,000 people who had gathered to celebrate the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The father, Sajid Akram, 50, had licences for six firearms, the number recovered at the scene. He was shot dead by police; his son, Naveed Akram, 24, was arrested and taken to hospital. They appear to have been inspired by Islamic State.

The victims of the attack – Australia’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996 – included two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old girl. Many more might have died had it not been for the heroism of a bystander, Ahmed al-Ahmed, who crept up behind Sajid Akram and seized his rifle. This week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced extra funding for measures to protect the country’s Jewish community.

‘Indelibly stained with tragedy’

This attack on ordinary Jewish people, as they marked the first night of the “Festival of Lights”, was shocking in its malevolence, said The Australian. Bondi is home to many of Australia’s 117,000 Jews; the beach is also a place where people from all creeds and backgrounds congregate. Now, it will be “indelibly stained with tragedy”.

Australia ranks as one of the world’s safest nations, said The Independent. Its gun laws – tightened after the mass shooting in Tasmania 29 years ago – are already among the strictest anywhere. If Jews aren’t safe there, they may now reasonably ask “where in the world they can be safe”.

Australia’s government has suggested that the shooters “weren’t part of a wider cell”, said The Sydney Morning Herald. But the discovery of Islamic State flags in their car, and the revelation that the two men had recently travelled to the Philippines, parts of which are rife with “Islamic extremism”, may be telling.

In 2019, the younger man was actually investigated by Australia’s security services, owing to his links to Islamic State members, said The Times. But he was deemed not to be a threat – an assessment that has “proven to be tragically flawed”.

The global surge in antisemitism

There was a celebratory atmosphere at Bondi on Sunday, said The Economist. “Children wearing face paint crowded a petting zoo. Families held balloons and bubble wands.” Yet as the sun began to dip, two men armed with long-barrelled rifles began firing from a footbridge into the crowd; and the death toll could have been even higher, had they detonated the improvised explosives later found in their car.

It was an appalling tragedy, made worse by its predictability, said Limor Simhony Philpott on UnHerd. Australia’s Jewish community has endured a five-fold surge in antisemitic incidents since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023. Jewish schools, synagogues and homes have been firebombed; protesters have chanted “Fuck the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House. In the summer, Australia’s government kicked out Iran’s ambassador, after accusing Tehran of orchestrating antisemitic attacks on its soil. But it has done little else to curb antisemitism. Instead it has alienated Israel, its former ally, by making the misguided decision to join the UK and others in recognising a Palestinian state.

This attack reflects a broader crisis for the world’s Jewish population, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. In the past two years, there have been murderous attacks on Jews on five continents. This summer, there were two in cities in the US, and on Yom Kippur in October, two people were killed in the attack on the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester.

When it comes to antisemitic terror, violent words can lead to violent actions, said Dave Rich in The Guardian: hence the anger felt by many Jews when they see banners at pro-Palestine marches demanding an “Intifada revolution” or bearing Hamas symbols.

The frightening reality, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, is that calls to “Globalise the intifada” and the like have made Jews the target of “warped killers” who think that, by unleashing terror, they are “doing the world a favour”. I will carry on lighting candles in the days ahead, and singing the Hanukkah songs. “But I admit that this year, for the first time in my life, I do feel just a little fear as I do it.”

What happened

A 48-year-old man believed to have murdered an MIT professor and two Brown University students earlier this week was found dead Thursday in a New Hampshire storage unit, law enforcement officials said Thursday night. The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, was a physics grad student at Brown in 2000 and 2001 after attending the same academic program as the slain MIT professor, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, in their native Portugal, officials said. Valente, a permanent U.S. resident since 2017, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Who said what

In the timeline outlined last night by police and prosecutors in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Valente killed Brown students MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, and shot nine others, during an economics study session on Saturday. He subsequently drove his rental car to Boston and shot Loureiro at his Brookline home on Monday, then drove to the storage unit he rented in Salem, New Hampshire. Loureiro, head of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, died early Tuesday.

“In most mass shootings in the United States, suspects are either killed or captured quickly,” The Washington Post said. In the Brown case, “frustration grew after police briefly detained” the wrong man on Sunday, and daily news conferences grew “more contentious” as police appeared stumped. Ted Docks, the lead FBI agent in Boston, initially said there seemed to be “no connection” between the MIT and Brown shootings.

The alleged killer’s identity was unknown until Wednesday, when a witness in Providence helped “blow the lid” off the case, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said last night. “That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photographs of the person renting the car.” He said authorities are still searching for a motive but “are 100% confident that this is our target and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved.”

What next?

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday night that, at President Donald Trump’s request, she had ordered a pause of the DV1 diversity lottery program that Valente used to enter the U.S. “Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery,” The Associated Press said, and this “latest example” of him “using tragedy” to “limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration” is “almost certain to invite legal challenges,” as the lottery was created by Congress.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese for failing to counter the spread of antisemitism that culminated in Sunday’s deadly mass shooting at Bondi Beach.

At least 15 people were killed and more than 40 injured when two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration in the Sydney suburb.

“Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia,” Netanyahu said, addressing Albanese, as he claimed the Australian government had “let the disease spread”.

What did the commentators say?

It is “highly contestable” to claim the Australian PM could have prevented this attack, said the Australian Financial Review’s political editor Phillip Coorey. But the government has “spent two years falling short” of recommendations to tackle anti-Jewish hate, even those made by “its own handpicked envoy, Jillian Segal”.

That, along with a “palpable lack of moral clarity” when it came to condemning the 7 October attacks on Israel and a “lack of visible leadership” at a time of growing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, has left the government “exposed” to claims it has not done enough to counter antisemitism.

“Elements of the Australian media” have also “made their own contribution to this atmosphere”, said Alexander Downer in The Australian. “Much of the reporting coming out of the Middle East was deeply hostile to Israel”, and the national broadcaster, the ABC, has “frequently taken at face value claims made by Hamas, a terrorist organisation”.

These factors have, according to representatives of the Australian Jewish community, created a “permissive environment, where the warning signs were clear and too often left unchecked”, said the ABC. In recent years there have been “hateful symbols displayed at otherwise peaceful demonstrations and a pattern of targeted attacks on Jewish institutions”, in a nation that is home to the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors outside Israel.

There is also evidence that external agents are exacerbating the hostility. In August, Australia severed diplomatic ties with Iran, whom it accused of paying for arson attacks against a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher cafe in Sydney.

Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies in Israel, told The Telegraph it was “too early to jump to conclusions” about Tehran’s potential involvement in Sunday’s shooting. “They are definitely suspects and high on the priority list,” he said, adding that “Al-Qaeda and IS have also been active in Australia”.

What next?

Albanese has repeatedly vowed to eradicate the “scourge” of antisemitism, and has already suggested an imminent tightening of existing firearms legislation. “But it all sounds so hollow,” said Coorey in the Australian Financial Review, especially in the aftermath of one of Australia’s worst-ever terror attacks. “The Jewish community and its supporters aren’t listening. They stopped listening long ago. Now, they’re openly hostile.”

Australia must also grapple more broadly with the implications of the Bondi attack, said Downer in The Australian. They have long viewed their country “as a model of liberalism” where discrimination is “anathema”. “This self-image of Australia has now been shattered.”

There is growing pressure on the government to formally name an MI5 spy who operated at the heart of the IRA for decades.

Freddie Scappaticci, known by his codename “Stakeknife”, was outed in an investigation into the actions of Britain’s security services during the Troubles.

Scappaticci was recruited by the British Army in the 1970s, working until the 1990s as a mole within the IRA’s internal security unit tasked with identifying and killing informers. The West Belfast man, long suspected of being a British agent, was unmasked by the media in 2003, although he denied the allegations and went into hiding. He died in 2023.

Why is this coming out now?

Scappaticci’s alleged activities and the efforts of MI5 to protect his identity have been set out in the damning 160-page Kenova Final Report. It details the findings of a nine-year, £47.5 million investigation into Stakeknife’s alleged crimes.

The investigation revealed evidence of Stakeknife’s involvement in “serious and unjustifiable criminality, including kidnap, interrogation and murder”, said Kenova. He has been implicated in 14 murders and 15 abductions, while working in a notorious IRA unit known as the “nutting squad”, whose aim, ironically, was to flush out spies within its ranks.

An interim report last year found that Stakeknife’s actions probably “resulted in more lives being lost than saved”. Now the full report says he was “improperly protected by the British security services because they believed him to be a more valuable asset than he was”, said Max Jeffery in The Spectator.

It is “one of the Troubles’ most macabre twists that Scappaticci was secretly working for British security services and that his handlers allowed him to act as executioner to preserve his cover”, said The Guardian.

What did MI5 know?

In the past, MI5 has said its involvement with him was “peripheral” but the report clearly states the security services were “closely involved in his handling”.

“Everything done in respect of Stakeknife was done with MI5’s knowledge and consent; and MI5 had an influential role”, a member of the Army’s agent-handling unit told investigators. They concluded that “MI5 had automatic sight of all Stakeknife intelligence and therefore was aware of his involvement in serious criminality”.

Stakeknife submitted 3,517 intelligence reports during his time under cover. He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for his services and even had a dedicated phone line he could call at any time to contact his handlers. Senior Army figures treated him as the “crown jewel” of British intelligence, and he had a reputation as “the goose that laid the golden eggs”.

Yet the report says protecting his identity became “more important than protecting those who could and should have been saved”.

What have MI5 and the government said?

Despite Scappaticci being outed by the press in 2003 and even telling his family his true identity, the government has “stuck to its routine practice not to identify agents, a principle known as NCND, an acronym for Neither Confirm Nor Deny”, said the BBC.

Iain Livingstone, head of Operation Kenova, has said that Stakeknife should now be named. Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn told the Commons that he would respond to Livingstone’s call at the conclusion of an ongoing case in the Supreme Court, which, Benn said, had implications for NCND. “The government’s first duty is, of course, to protect national security and identifying agents risks jeopardising this.”

This stance was backed by Benn’s Tory counterpart Alex Burghart, who said guarantees would be needed that the naming of Stakeknife would not impact on current security operations.

While Burghart admitted “people within” MI5 and the Army had “absolutely crossed the line in a way that wasn’t acceptable”, ultimately, the murders carried out by Stakeknife would have been signed off by the IRA Army Council. “If one is going to start pointing fingers, the first finger should be pointed in that direction.”

Copper theft may not be the most glamorous crime in the world but it is big business.

It has grown to become a “multi-billion problem worldwide”, said Terry Goldsworthy, associate professor in criminal justice and criminology at Bond University, on The Conversation.

More attractive target

Metal theft is nothing new but it’s “on the rise, largely linked to soaring commodity prices”, said Wired.

This is especially true for copper, “a crucial component in everything from solar panels to electric vehicles and computer chips to plumbing parts”, said The Logic.

Having crashed nearly a decade ago due to factors including a Chinese ban on scrap imports, its price has steadily risen since the pandemic and is now roughly 30% more expensive than it was five years ago. This makes copper a “more attractive target for criminals looking for a quick profit”, said Goldsworthy.

A 2022 systematic review revealed a direct correlation between rising copper prices and an increase in copper theft. And, unlike many other scrap metals, copper “can be recycled again and again, without degrading in the process”.

Huge haul for criminal gangs

A key target in recent years has been copper cabling, even if “the disruption caused is often totally disproportionate to the face value of the stolen material”, said Wired. These are the “conduits that keep people connected, the infrastructure that civilisation depends on” and “as the world electrifies”, this form of theft is getting “ever more serious”.

Take the UK, where the theft of electric vehicle charging cables has exploded in the last two years. “Much like Britain’s shoplifting epidemic, the thefts are widely believed to be linked to organised crime, with the copper from the stolen cables later sold to scrap dealers”, said The Telegraph.

It’s a similar story with the recent spate of copper thefts at England’s onshore windfarms. “From a risk versus reward calculation, stealing copper from a windfarm will be a lot more attractive than dealing drugs, for example. Stealing copper does not come with a class-A penalty,” a source close to the affected windfarm owners told The Guardian.

The profit from each copper cable stolen may be relatively minor but taken together it represents a huge haul for criminal gangs. A 2024 report from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on metal, stone and heritage crime found metal theft was costing the UK economy around £480 million a year.

Like playing Whac-a-Mole

Law enforcement agencies often lack the means and resources to act against this growing market for stolen copper. The APPG report showed sentencing guidelines and prosecution rates were not a sufficient disincentive to criminals, with only 229 prosecutions between 2018 and 2022 for scrap metal dealer offences.

“Problems were compounded by the lack of any single body with ownership and oversight of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013,” said Materials Recycling World.

The problem, said The Logic, is that stopping copper theft “is a little like playing Whac-a-Mole”. That is why some forces have turned to predictive policing, using analytics to try to guess where metal thieves will strike next. Todd Foreman, director of law enforcement outreach at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, uses data analysis to help criminologists anticipate future hot spots of metal-related crime.

Capital punishment has been rarer in recent years, but 2025 has brought a complete reversal. This year has seen the most death row inmates put to death in a decade, a trend that will likely only continue under President Donald Trump, who is a proponent of the death penalty.

How many executions have taken place this year?

There have been 43 prisoners executed across 11 states from January to November, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Identifying a “previous year in which the prevalence of executions in the U.S. rivaled the current one requires looking back at least a decade,” said CBS News. The last time at least 43 people were executed in a single year was 2012.

October was also the “busiest month for the death penalty in nearly 15 years,” said USA Today. Seven people were executed last month, making it the “single busiest month for executions in the U.S. since May 2011.” Florida far and away leads executions by state in 2025, with a Nov. 13 execution of a child killer marking the “record 16th death sentence carried out under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis,” said The Associated Press.

Why are executions on the rise?

There are several reasons, but it is “largely a political effort,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, to CBS. And it is unlikely to change the perception of executions. The number “does represent an increase from where we were in years’ past, but there's absolutely no evidence it represents a change in public support for the death penalty by Americans.”

In fact, the number of people on death row “represents levels of support that are usually decades out of date,” Maher said to PBS NewsHour. Many people currently scheduled for execution “were sentenced to death by juries usually many years, even decades, ago when public support for the death penalty was much higher and there were very different prosecution policies in place.”

The Trump administration has also “talked a lot about the death penalty and has not made any secret about their enthusiasm” over it, Maher said to CBS. Unlike administrations where the president is anti-death penalty, this “environment has made it easier” for states to “schedule executions to curry favor” with Trump. Many states that are “actively executing people are states that have governors who are politically aligned with the president on this,” said John Blume, the director of the Death Penalty Project at Cornell University, to CBS.

The administration has also pushed the death penalty via legislation. Trump in January “signed an executive order reinstating federal executions while encouraging states to expand the use of capital punishment,” said Mother Jones. States have also been forced to look for alternative execution methods during this time, as drug companies have “consistently said that they don’t want their drugs used in these lethal injections,” said Jeff Hood, a death row spiritual adviser, to Mother Jones. What “states have turned to is more novel ways of executing people,” including “firing squads” and a “process called nitrogen hypoxia.” Nobody “really knew what it was going to be like.”

France is marking the 10th anniversary of the attack by Islamist gunmen on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. They opened fire on 1,500 people on a night of co-ordinated terror attacks that also saw explosives detonated at the Stade de France.

The attacks, which left more than 130 people dead, were the “worst assaults” in France’s post-war history, said The New York Times, and they “inflicted lasting damage on the nation”.

What did the commentators say?

The slaughter “forever changed the country and its politics”, said Politico, “tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favour of the latter”. A “slew of laws” were passed, including increasing the state’s “surveillance powers” and its “ability to impose restrictive measures” on its population.

The then president François Hollande called the attacks on 13 November 2015 an “act of war” and declared a nationwide state of emergency. But that “legal framework” gave the government “the power to ban protests and deter other forms of activism”, said France 24. For example, several dozen climate activists were placed under house arrest in 2015 for the duration of the Cop21 conference in December that year.

There will be "grief, poignancy and dignity” across France today, said Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator, but there will also be “delusion” among the “political elite” because France "is not united; it is divided”. Since 2015, France’s security service has “thwarted” 80 Islamist terror plots but there have been 50 attacks, 19 of which were “fatal”.

“Arguably,” said Andrew Hussey on UnHerd, “France has yet to fully reckon with the ideology that underpinned” the attacks. It represents a “shockingly direct challenge” to “Western morality and the West’s conception of justice”. France, “for all its secular earnestness”, has “yet to truly level with this fact”.

The nation could have descended into hate, but it has “held firm”, “clinging” to the slogan “you will not have my hatred”, said l’Opinion. A “litany” of subsequent attacks failed to trigger a witch-hunt against Arabs, just as the 13 November jihadists failed to “unite the Muslim community around them”.

What next?

Although Islamist terror remains a threat in the West, “much has changed” since 2015, said the BBC. The “disappearance” of Islamic State as a “major force” in Syria and Iraq means that the “wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished”.

The intelligence services have “become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation”, said Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, and are able to foil plots that are “often not very sophisticated”.

Milanese prosecutors have launched an investigation into claims Italian citizens paid huge sums of money to the Bosnian Serb army in the mid-1990s to shoot civilians “for fun” during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Snipers killed 225 people, including 60 children, during the four-year siege, Zilha Mastalic Kosuta, of the Institute for Researching Crimes Against Humanity and International Law at Sarajevo University, told DW in 2022. To date, not one sniper has been brought to justice.

‘Weekend snipers’

In July 2025, the Italian media reported that journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni had filed evidence with the Milan prosecutor’s office regarding so-called “weekend snipers”, who allegedly took part in the siege, which lasted from April 1992 to February 1996 and claimed the lives of approximately 11,000 people.

Testimonies gathered from across northern Italy claim far-right sympathisers and gun and hunting enthusiasts met in Trieste before being transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo, where they allegedly fired on civilians after paying what today would be the equivalent of 100,000 euros to Bosnian Serb militias loyal to Radovan Karadzic.

Gavazzeni’s complaint alleges a “price list” for killings, with children reportedly carrying a higher cost per kill, followed by armed men, women and then elderly civilians, who could allegedly be shot at no cost.

It also cites testimony, reported in Italian English-language news outlet ANSA, from former American firefighter John Jordan, who volunteered in Sarajevo during the siege. Given in 2007 during the trial of Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic, it includes references to “tourist shooters”.

“On more than one occasion, I witnessed people who didn’t seem like locals to me because of their clothing, the weapons they carried, the way they were treated, managed, and even led by locals”. He later added that “when a boy shows up with a weapon that seems more suited to wild boar hunting in the Black Forest than to urban combat in the Balkans… When you see him handle it and you realise he’s a novice…”

Prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis is investigating potentcial charges of “voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and abject motives”, based on Gavazzeni’s complaint and a report by former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic.

‘Sarajevo Safari’

“While this phenomenon was little spoken of in the past, it was not unheard of,” said New Lines Magazine.

Among the first to speak out publicly was Luca Leone, an Italian journalist and author, whose 2014 book “The Bastards of Sarajevo” mentions foreign tourists from across Europe paying at checkpoints managed by Serbian paramilitaries in both Croatia and Bosnia to spend a weekend shooting civilians in Sarajevo.

This account corresponds to the 2022 documentary titled “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic. Based on witness testimony from Slovenian and Bosnian intelligence officers, the film sets out how “tourist shooters” from Russia, Canada and America, as well as Italy, came to take part in the siege.

The story “sent shockwaves through the Balkans” said DW, with Zupanic personally experiencing “major backlash and hostile responses from some Bosnian Serb media outlets”.

Veljko Lazic – the president of an organisation for Srpska families of captured or killed fighters and missing civilians – described the claims made in the documentary as “an absolute and heinous lie” and called the film an “insult to Republika Srpska, its army and the Serb victims of the war”.

“I didn’t want to convince anyone of this story”, Zupanic told DW. “Quite simply, the film offers the testimonies of people who claim something – something so incredible that I, as a creator, felt obliged to make it known to the general public.”

“And the public will be the ones to judge.”

What happened

Federal prosecutors Monday announced charges against two Michigan men for allegedly planning a Halloween terrorist attack on LGBTQ+ bars in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale. The criminal complaint alleged that Momed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, both 20, were inspired to violence by the Islamic State group’s extremism.

Who said what

Ali and Mahmoud, arrested Friday along with an unidentified minor, were charged with receiving and transferring guns and ammunition for terrorism. The FBI reported that a search of their homes and a storage unit “turned up tactical vests and backpacks, AR-15-style rifles, ammunition, loaded handguns and GoPro cameras,” The Associated Press said.

The criminal complaint said Ali and Mahmoud were part of a larger group that shared extremist and ISIS-related material in encrypted group chats secretly monitored during a yearlong investigation. They allegedly spent months planning and training for the thwarted attack. “I don’t think there was a planned attack,” their lawyer Amir Makled told the Detroit Free Press yesterday. “These kids are gamers, gamers are weird in the way they talk to each other,” he told the newspaper on Saturday.

What next?

At a brief court hearing Monday, Ali and Mahoud were ordered detained until a Nov. 10 hearing, when “both sides will argue whether they should be released on bond, or remain locked up pending the outcome of their cases,” the Free Press said.

What happened

French police have arrested the first suspects in last week’s brazen daytime theft of royal jewels from the Louvre, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said Sunday. French media reported that two suspects were arrested, but Beccuau confirmed only that “one of the men arrested was preparing to leave the country” from Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday evening. Four people carried out the heist.

Who said what

The theft of more than $100 million worth of historical jewels from the world’s most-visited museum “stunned France,” The New York Times said. The arrests were a “major breakthrough for French investigators, who are racing to find the thieves before the jewelry is dismantled and the rare stones and metals can be sold or melted down.”

The two arrested suspects are in their 30s and “known to police,” and at least one was “identified from DNA traces” recovered from the crime scene, The Associated Press said, citing a police official. Beccuau said she “deeply” regretted the “hasty disclosure” of the arrests, as it “can only harm the investigative efforts of the 100 or so investigators who mobilized in the search for both the stolen jewelry and for all of the criminals.”

What next?

Police can hold the suspects in custody for up to 96 hours before deciding whether to release them or bring preliminary charges. Beccuau said she would “provide additional information at the end of this period.”

What happened

President Donald Trump pardoned billionaire cryptocurrency magnate Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of Binance, the White House said Thursday. Zhao, commonly known as CZ, served four months in prison last year after he and his company pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering by terrorists, drug traffickers, purveyors of child sexual abuse material and other criminals.

Who said what

The pardon followed “months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company,” said The Wall Street Journal. That company, World Liberty Financial, “has generated significantly more income for the Trump family in the past year than their property portfolio ever has annually,” and “Binance has been one of the main drivers of the growth.” A Binance deal earlier this year involving the United Arab Emirates and a World Liberty stablecoin is “poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser,” The New York Times said. But Zhao also “hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration” to push for his pardon.

“I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,” Trump said Thursday. “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Zhao was “prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency.”

What next?

Trump’s pardon “could pave the way” for Zhao to retake the head of the cryptocurrency exchange he cofounded, Reuters said, and “may offer the chance for Binance to expand in the United States.” It’s “unclear what the pardon means” for the $4.3 billion fine Binance agreed to pay the government, The Washington Post said.

What happened

A gang of thieves broke into the Louvre Sunday morning and stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon. The entire heist took less than seven minutes, officials said, and was carried out in broad daylight, shortly after the world’s most-visited museum opened. The eight objects stolen included an emerald necklace and earring that belonged to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon’s second wife, plus jewelry from Empress Eugénie and queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.

Who said what

The thieves used a truck-mounted basket lift to access the second floor of the Louvre’s riverside facade, then broke in through the windows and smashed targeted display cases, officials said. “It was the most brazen — and possibly the most costly — theft ever staged at the Louvre,” The New York Times said. But “the crime, for all its speed, wasn’t without errors,” The Wall Street Journal said. The thieves “attempted but failed to set fire to their truck” and “dropped the crown of Empress Eugénie, with nearly 1,400 diamonds, before they sped away” on motorcycles. The crown was reportedly damaged.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the stolen items were of “inestimable value.” The recovered crown alone is “worth several tens of millions of euros,” Drouot auction house president Alexandre Giquello told Reuters. “And it’s not, in my opinion, the most important item.”

What next?

“We will recover the works, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice,” President Emmanuel Macron vowed on social media. Nuñez, who was Paris police chief until earlier this month, said investigators had a “good hope” of catching the thieves by studying surveillance footage and other evidence from the crime.

What happened

A 38-year-old man Tuesday pleaded guilty to charges including terrorism, arson and attempted murder for breaking into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in April and trying to burn it down as Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and his family slept upstairs.

Under a plea deal, Cody Balmer was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison, “far less than he could have faced if the case went to trial,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

Balmer broke into the official residence carrying a hammer after the Shapiros hosted a Seder on the first night of Passover. Shapiro, who supported the plea deal, told reporters Tuesday that he and his wife “have struggled over the last six months to try and make sense of all of this” and “explain it to our four children” and other family members staying over that night. The attack still “brings with it a real sense of vulnerability our family feels every single day,” he said.

Balmer is “taking full responsibility” for his actions and paying a “hefty price for a man who’s 38 years old,” his attorney Bryan Walk said in court Tuesday. Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo said Balmer had indicated the attack was intended as an “offset” to the deaths in Gaza.

What next?

Prosecutors said Balmer would be eligible for parole when he is 63. Nobody was hurt in the attack but Balmer’s Molotov cocktails “caused millions of dollars in damage” to the governor’s mansion, the AP said, and “work to fix the damage and to bolster its security features continues.”

What happened

Federal officials in Los Angeles Wednesday announced the arrest of a 29-year-old former Uber driver for allegedly sparking the Palisades Fire, which tore through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood and parts of Malibu in January, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people. The suspect, Jonathan Rinderknecht, was arrested at his home in Melbourne, Florida, on Tuesday.

Who said what

“A single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen,” acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. According to authorities, Rinderknecht “appeared to be obsessed with fire” and deliberately ignited an open flame on a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains early Jan. 1, then fled and “called 911 to report it” but returned and “used his phone to take videos of the response,” The New York Times said. Firefighters suppressed that fire after it burned eight acres, but “officials said it continued burning underground until winds ignited what became the Palisades Fire” a week later, Fox News said.

Investigators “went through exhaustive efforts to rule out potential ignition sources,” including “fireworks, cigarettes or downed power lines,” The Wall Street Journal said. California leaders welcomed the arrest as a “significant development in closure and justice for the thousands of people affected by the fire,” which was one of several “unprecedented and disastrous” blazes that ravaged Los Angeles County in January amid “strong and erratic winds.”

What next?

At a brief hearing in Orlando Wednesday, a federal judge ordered Rinderknecht back to court on Oct. 17 to “consider bond and extradition proceedings,” The Associated Press said. If convicted, he faces between five and 20 years in prison.

Police have declared a “terrorist incident” after two people were killed and several others injured in an attack on a synagogue in Manchester on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

A man drove a car at members of the public outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue this morning, before getting out and stabbing others. Three of the injured remain in a serious condition, while the suspect has been shot dead by police.

What did the commentators say?

Shortly after the incident, Greater Manchester Police declared “Plato”, which is the “national code word” for the emergency response to a “marauding terror attack”, said Sky News. The streets outside the synagogue were closed, with police cars and vans, sirens blaring, racing down neighbouring roads.

A large number of people were worshipping inside the building at the time of the attack, but have since been evacuated safely. A police spokesperson praised the “quick response” of a witness, which enabled officers to prevent the suspect from entering the synagogue.

An image circulating online shows a bald, bearded man with dark clothes and “white objects around his waist” just outside the synagogue’s perimeter fence, said BBC Verify. It “matches that of a man seen apparently being shot by police at the same location”. A bomb disposal unit has been at the scene.

Keir Starmer, who is flying home early from a summit of European leaders in Denmark to chair an emergency Cobra meeting, said he was “appalled” and “absolutely shocked”. King Charles said he and Queen Camilla were also “deeply shocked and saddened” to hear about the attack, “especially on such a significant day for the Jewish community”. Yom Kippur is a day for Jews to fast, pray and reflect on the past year and atone for their sins.

Other countries have experienced “violent incidents against Jewish people and synagogues” since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, said Kaya Burgess, religious affairs correspondent for The Times. In the UK, there has been a sharp rise in vandalism and antisemitic abuse. And, “with the loss of life in Manchester, this wave of hate has crossed a threshold in Britain”.

What next?

Police are stepping up patrols at synagogues around the country as specialist counter-terror teams investigate the incident. Two arrests have already been made.

While there is still little information about the suspect and victims, “we can say with certainty that this is a dark day for our kingdom”, said Brendan O’Neill in The Spectator. Britain appears to have been “visited by an apocalyptic form of violence that we normally only read about in the history books”.

What happened

At least four people were killed and eight injured Sunday when a gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, opened fire on the hundreds of congregants and then set the building ablaze, local officials and federal agents said last night. Police killed the suspected gunman minutes after the attack began.

Who said what

Police identified the lone suspect as Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old Marine veteran who grew up in the area and lived in nearby Burton. They said they were still trying to uncover a motive. The FBI said it was treating the shooting as an “act of targeted violence.”

“Violence anywhere, especially in a place of worship, is unacceptable,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor this situation and hold the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc close.” Sunday's assault was the “latest of many shooting attacks on houses of worship in the U.S. over the past 20 years,” The Associated Press said, and the second mass shooting “in less than 24 hours,” after a gunman shot dead three people and injured five at a bar in Southport, North Carolina, on Saturday night.

What next?

Southport shooting suspect Nigel Edge, also a 40-year-old former Marine, faces three murder and five attempted murder charges. Grand Blanc Township police said Sunday night they had not finished searching through the fire-damaged church and could still find victims buried in the rubble.

What happened

Three police officers were shot dead and two others seriously wounded yesterday in rural southeastern Pennsylvania while serving a warrant in a “domestic-related” investigation, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris said at a news conference. The two wounded officers were in critical but stable conditions, he said, and the shooter was killed in the gun battle.

Who said what

The shooting attack, near North Codorus Township in York County, marks “one of the deadliest days for Pennsylvania police this century,” The Associated Press said. It “drew the attention of federal and state officials, and a visit by the governor,” Josh Shapiro (D), said The New York Times, but it “left its deepest mark on the residents of this county of farms,” where a 30-year-old officer was shot dead in February while responding to a hostage situation at a local hospital. 

“This is an absolutely tragic and devastating day,” Shapiro said at the evening news conference. “We need to do better as a society” and “help the people who think that picking up a gun, picking up a weapon is the answer to resolving disputes.” It was Shapiro’s third gun-related event in two days, after he attended a gathering outside Philadelphia earlier in the day to mark progress in reducing gun homicides and delivered a speech on political violence at Tuesday’s Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh.

What next?

Paris did not share the identities of the officers or the slain suspect, nor the motive or the focus of the still-active investigation.

What happened

A New York judge yesterday threw out state terrorism and first-degree murder charges against Luigi Mangione, the man charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year. The dismissal of the two most serious charges means Mangione, if convicted, faces up to life in state prison, but with the possibility of parole. In another high-profile murder case, Utah prosecutors yesterday said they would seek the death penalty for Tyler Robinson for his alleged assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk. 

Who said what

Manhattan Judge Gregory Carro said the prosecutors could pursue the other nine charges against Mangione, including second-degree murder, but the terrorism charge was “legally insufficient.” While Mangione “was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’” Carro said. 

The decision was a “blow to the district attorney,” Alvin Bragg, The New York Times said, but legal experts called the terrorism charge an “overreach.” Bragg’s office said it would not appeal the ruling. Meanwhile, Mangione, a “cause célèbre for people upset with the health insurance industry, appeared in good spirits and raised his eyebrows at supporters” gathered outside the brief hearing, The Associated Press said.

What next?

Mangione also faces federal charges, including an “accusation for which prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty,” and state charges in Pennsylvania, where he was caught, the Times said. Carro scheduled a pretrial hearing for Dec. 1, days before Mangione’s next federal court hearing. Robinson’s next court day was set for Sept. 29.

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police, just days before he is due to be released from a German prison.

Christian Brückner, 49, who denies any involvement in the case, remains the focus of investigations by British, German and Portuguese police nearly two decades on from the three-year-old’s kidnapping, which attracted global attention.

Who is he?

A “drifter and a petty criminal”, Brückner was just a teenager when, in 1994, he was first convicted of sexual abuse of a child, said The i Paper. A year later he fled to Portugal to escape custody before returning to Germany in 1999 to finish his sentence.

He returned intermittently to Portugal after his release in 2000 and is currently serving a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005, two years before McCann disappeared from the same Algarve town.

In October last year, Brückner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

Why is he a suspect?

In 2020, Brückner was named as an official suspect in the McCann case by the German authorities.

The three-year-old disappeared from the Praia da Luz resort in 2007, sparking one of the most high-profile missing persons investigations of recent decades. The Met’s investigation, named Operation Grange, has cost more than £13 million.

Brückner has always denied any involvement in the case and has never been charged, despite evidence he was in the area at the time.

German, Portuguese and British police have carried out a number of searches over the years, most recently in June when officers scoured 120 acres of scrubland east of Praia da Luz where Brückner was known to have spent time. Despite repeated efforts, authorities have found no trace of McCann or evidence directly tying her disappearance to Brückner. But they remain convinced he was involved, a claim backed up by a “former associate”, who told ITV News this week that he was "100% sure" Brückner had a hand in the kidnapping.

He “is not just our number one suspect, he’s the only suspect”, Hans Christian Wolters, the lead German prosecutor investigating the disappearance, told the BBC last month. Wolters claimed there is evidence that indicates Brückner is “responsible” for the toddler’s disappearance and death, but that it is “not strong enough to make a guilty verdict likely” so he hasn’t been arrested or charged.

What happened with the Met?

With Brückner due to be released on Wednesday, the Met Police had requested an interview that “for legal reasons” could only be done via an international letter of request, which he subsequently refused.

DCI Mark Cranwell, the senior investigating officer for Operation Grange, confirmed the German “remains a suspect in the Metropolitan Police’s own investigation” but “in the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry”.

German law enforcement authorities have already voiced concern that Brückner will soon leave prison and could flee the country, with Wolters saying the expectation was that he would “commit further crimes”.

They are known as the victims of Mexico’s long-running “invisible war”.

Since the then president Felipe Calderón launched his "war on drugs" in 2006, more than 130,000 people have gone missing.

“In many cases, those disappeared have been forcibly recruited into the drug cartels – or murdered for resisting,” said the BBC. But “while drug cartels and organised crime groups are the main perpetrators, security forces are also blamed for deaths and disappearances”.

‘Delirium of necrophilia’

Cases of people reported missing or snatched from the street at gunpoint never to be seen again “were once rare in Mexico”, said The Washington Post. This began to change 15 years ago when huge numbers of disappearances “began to flare into global news, with the discovery of mass graves filled with putrefying bodies”.

By 2023 more than 5,600 mass graves had been recorded in Mexico, said A Dónde van los Desaparecidos. In March this year, a cartel training and extermination camp was discovered on a ranch in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, complete with burned human remains and 200 pairs of shoes.

Strikingly, the discovery – labelled “a human tragedy of enormous proportions” by the UN – was not made by state authorities but by informal search teams of family members known as “buscadores”.

These groups “scour the countryside and the deserts of northern Mexico, following tip-offs, often from the cartels themselves, as to the whereabouts of mass graves”, said the BBC. They carry out searches and campaigning for justice “at great personal risk”, with several themselves disappearing in the aftermath of the Jalisco find.

The “official narrative” is that Mexico’s violence is “entirely the fault of drug cartels, period”, said author Belén Fernández on Al Jazeera. “This rationalisation conveniently excises from the equation the Mexican state’s established track record of killing and disappearing – not to mention the lengthy history of collaboration between Mexican police and military personnel and cartel operatives.”

This is perhaps why the authorities have been hesitant to acknowledge the scope and scale of the crisis, with former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador even going as far as to accuse Mexicans involved in the search for the missing of a “delirium of necrophilia”. According to Mexico’s National Register of Missing and Disappeared Persons, for a year while Obrador was in office, between May 2022 and May 2023, an average of 27.6 people went missing per day, or more than one person per hour.

Amnesty International now estimates the rate of disappearances stands at 30 per day.

‘Systematic and widespread’

Last month, thousands of people took to the streets across Mexico in protest at the lack of action on the issue by officials.

“The wide spread of cities, states and municipalities where demonstrations were held illustrated the extent to which the problem of forced disappearances affects communities and families across Mexico,” said the BBC.

For the first time, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances has opened a procedure for the case of Mexico. For the committee’s experts, who have been studying the case for a decade, there are indications of a “systematic and widespread” practice, said openDemocracy.

“As has pretty much been par for the course with all ostensible global anti-narcotic endeavours orchestrated by the US, the Mexican drug war did nothing to curb international drug traffic but much to render the country’s landscape ever more blood-soaked,” said Fernández.

That has not stopped the US government from adopting ever more extreme measures. It has already labelled six Mexican cartels terrorist groups and now the Trump administration is weighing possible military action against them.

“But Mexican cartels aren’t dependent on a handful of high-profile extremists,” said The Washington Post. “They’re among the country’s top employers and often have relationships with local politicians and police. Disappearances are a sign of their hidden control. Killing or capturing a few leaders is unlikely to destroy their structures.”

“As Mexico’s invisible war rages on, disappearance may have already become normalised,” said Fernández.

The four-year manhunt for a fugitive father and his three children living in the New Zealand wilderness came to a tragic end on Monday when Tom Phillips was shot dead by police.

It was the final chapter of a case that has gripped New Zealand and received worldwide attention. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called it a "sombre day" for the country as he paid tribute to a police officer injured in the shoot-out.

'Long-running mystery'

Phillips disappeared with his three children, now aged nine, 10 and 12, in September 2021, prompting a three-week land and sea search that only ended after they emerged from the woods where they had been camping.

Due to appear in court in early 2022 for wasting police resources, Phillips instead fled with his children into the vast Waikato region, south of Auckland, just before Christmas 2021, following an argument with their mother. At the time he did not have legal custody.

Believed to be living "off-grid with the father using his survival skills to feed, shelter and clothe his children", the massive manhunt "gripped the nation", said CNN. The "long-running mystery" over the children's whereabouts "prompted multiple searches, offers of rewards, and pleas for information from family members and the police", said The Guardian. After less than a year, "with the trail cold, the authorities said Phillips and the children might have moved elsewhere in New Zealand and changed their names", said The Independent.

The search resumed in 2023 after several sightings of Phillips. In November that year he was named as the prime suspect in an attempted supermarket robbery. This prompted authorities to issue a reward of NZ$80,000 (£35,000), "large by New Zealand standards", along with an offer of immunity from prosecution for information about the family's whereabouts.

In October last year, the family were seen again, caught on video by pig farmers trekking through a forest, while Phillips was last seen on CCTV in August this year when he robbed a grocery store, accompanied by one of his children.

'A sombre day' for New Zealand

His time on the run finally came to an end on Monday, when he was shot dead by police who had responded to a break-in at a remote farm shop. Pursuing the two suspects – now known to be Phillips and one of his children – on their quad bike, a police officer was wounded after being shot in the head with a rifle. Police returned fire, fatally injuring Phillips.

What followed was described by CNN as a "massive and urgent search operation involving helicopters" to try to find the remaining two children. With the help of their sibling, they were eventually located at a remote campsite in the dense bush near the tiny rural town of Marokopa, on the west coast of Waikato.

In a statement to Radio New Zealand, the children's mother said that while she was "deeply relieved" that the "ordeal" had finally ended, "at the same time, we are saddened by how events unfolded today.

"Our hope has always been that the children could be returned in a peaceful and safe way for everyone involved," she said.

"In a country of close-knit communities," said The Guardian, New Zealanders have "struggled to understand" how Phillips could have survived and evaded detection for so long in such harsh terrain. While there is no suggestion that he was helped by family members, there has long been "speculation others in the community may have aided him".