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From ultra-processed foods to hidden chemicals, we ask whether what’s on our plates is making us ill.

Trump has given both sides until June to reach deal, but future of Donbas industrial heartland remains a sticking point.

Heads of state are arriving in Addis Ababa for the 2026 African Union Summit, with a water-focused theme centred on clim

White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler listens as President Barack Obama speaks at an installation ceremony for FBI Director James Comey at FBI Headquarters, in Washington, Oct. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File) 2026-02-13T19:49:26Z NEW YORK (AP) — Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathy Ruemmler has had a storied legal career. As a federal prosecutor, she helped successfully prosecute Enron executives including Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. She was part of President Barack Obama’s administration, working in various roles for much of his two terms in office, including as White House Counsel. She was even briefly considered by President Obama as a candidate for Attorney General. On Thursday, Ruemmler, 54, announced that she plans to resign from the top legal post at Goldman after a trove of emails and correspondence between her and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein showed the two individuals were especially close, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on sex crimes charges, when he became a registered sex offender. Ruemmler previously downplayed her relationship with Epstein. She called him a “monster” and said she regretted ever knowing him. Ruemmler has repeatedly described their relationship as professional, citing her job as a private defense attorney before she ever joined Goldman Sachs. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); But documents released in recent weeks and reviewed by The Associated Press depict a deeper relationship than had previously been characterized by Ruemmler and Goldman Sachs. These included intimate email exchanges, social plans and gifts that went beyond formal legal work. Roughly 8,400 documents involved Ruemmler or referenced her. Some correspondence shows that Ruemmler was aware of the extent of the allegations that Epstein had faced involving underage girls in Florida. In some instances, she advised Epstein on how he might go about trying to repair his image and defend himself publicly against new claims of misconduct. The gifts Epstein gave to Ruemmler have been documented in news reports: the spa treatments, the handbags from Hermes, an Apple Watch, a Fendi coat, among many others. But some of the interactions between Epstein and Ruemmler described throughout their correspondence indicates that Epstein and Ruemmler did not simply have a lawyer-client transactional relationship, as Ruemmler previously attested to. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); “It makes him happy to see you happy,” Epstein’s assistant wrote to Ruemmler in 2016, after Epstein prepaid for a spa treatment for her. In October 2018, Epstein directed one of his assistants to send flowers and chicken soup to Ruemmler because she has “not been feeling well.” It would not be the first time that Epstein would send her a small token of appreciation when she was sick. They talked about dating issues, made jokes about both the wealthy and everyday people, and shared laments about their careers and dating lives. They would message each other about mundane things like their mutual distaste for seeing babies in business class on flights and would repeatedly plan to have dinner or drinks in various places. Epstein even had Ruemmler as a backup executor of his will at one point. Setting aside the immense wealth and privilege and Epstein’s legal troubles, many of the emails between the two would look no different from the banter that many Americans would share to in their own text messages, emails or group chats. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); “Well, I adore him. It’s like having another older brother!” she wrote in an email in 2015. During her time in private practice after she left the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat. The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender. Ruemmler was also involved in Epstein’s legal defense efforts after he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail . “So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein in 2018. She later joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 and became the investment bank’s top lawyer in 2021. The firm’s leadership backed her publicly amid the revelations. But the embarrassing emails raised questions about Ruemmler’s judgment. Historically, Wall Street frowns on gift-giving between clients and bankers or Wall Street lawyers, particularly high-end gifts that could pose a conflict of interest. Goldman Sachs requires its employees to get pre-approval before receiving gifts from or giving them to clients, according to the company’s code of conduct, partly in order to not run afoul of anti-bribery laws. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported that Goldman’s partners, who are the firms most senior and well-regarded members of the firm going back to when the investment bank was privately held, had begun to question why the firm was holding Ruemmler in such high regard when other lawyers were just as qualified to hold the top legal job. In her statement Thursday, Ruemmler said: “Since I joined Goldman Sachs six years ago, it has been my privilege to help oversee the firm’s legal, reputational, and regulatory matters; to enhance our strong risk management processes; and to ensure that we live by our core value of integrity in everything we do. My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’ interests first.” freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Goldman CEO David Solomon he respected Ruemmler’s decision to resign. The firm isn’t rushing Ruemmler out the door, saying in a statement that she would wind down her work at the bank “to ensure a smooth transition,” before her last day on June 30. ___ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents. KEN SWEET Ken is a national writer on banking and consumer issues. twitter mailto

This combo from images provided by the FBI shows surveillance footage at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in Tucson, Ariz. (FBI via AP) 2026-02-13T19:36:07Z The chilling videos of a masked man outside Nancy Guthrie’s home in Arizona before she vanished show just glimpses of the suspect, but for investigators they hold a mountain of clues. And those images — from the suspect’s gloves to his flashlight — could be what’s needed to break the case . “There’s a tremendous amount of information that this guy left,” said former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt. The FBI already has analyzed the videos from Guthrie’s doorbell camera to identify the suspect’s backpack , posting an alert on Thursday with a photo of the brand and model in hopes of narrowing down tips flooding the agency. It has been nearly two weeks since the mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie was believed to have been abducted. Former criminal investigators say it’s almost certain that authorities are building a physical and psychological profile of the suspect, using the footage released publicly on Tuesday that totals less than a minute. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Whether authorities recovered more footage isn’t known, but technology will allow them to see more than meets the eye. “Every single thing that is in the video is being digitally enhanced. Everything from the mask to backpack to the jacket,” said Ed Davis, the former Boston police commissioner during the marathon bombing and manhunt in 2013. Here’s what was captured in the footage and what clues each might yield: The backpack It probably didn’t take long to pinpoint the type of backpack the suspect was wearing, Davis said. Technology available today allows investigators to break down photos and videos to the pixel, he said, giving them images of the stitching and maybe the manufacturer or brand name. The FBI described the backpack as a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack.” The holster The FBI says the man on Nancy Guthrie’s porch was armed. But the video shows he had an unusual holster setup, hanging over the middle of his waist and not on the side. It might be an indication that whoever it was has little experience with firearms. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Davis said. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); The gloves The footage gives a close-up view of the suspect trying to cover Guthrie’s doorbell camera, first with a gloved hand and then with part of a plant ripped from the yard. The black gloves appear to be thicker than most and shimmered in the light. “I spend a lot of time in Home Depot, and I’ve never seen those gloves,” Davis said. “They’re not very common.” The clothes The suspect’s zip-up jacket, pants, shoes and mask don’t immediately stand out. But identifying one or more of those items could be a key. Because once that happens, investigators can start looking at where those items are sold and combing through receipts and store surveillance cameras, starting with stores in the Tucson area closest to Guthrie’s home, said Van Zandt, who spent 25 years with the FBI. Going through mounds of receipts and footage will take time and isn’t something that would be done on most cases, but there’s no shortage of people assigned to this one, he said. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department earlier this week said several hundred detective and agents have been assigned to the case. “If all of the stars line up properly — and they rarely do — I find someone who was in there two weeks prior who bought the jacket, the shoes, the backpack all at the same time,” Van Zandt said. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); The flashlight In one of the videos, the suspect appeared to be holding a small flashlight in his mouth while in front of Guthrie’s door. Figuring out the type of flashlight might be difficult, but there’s something else to look at there, said David Lyons, a former homicide detective and police commander in Lexington, Kentucky. Not many people instinctively hold a flashlight in their mouth, but those who work in the trades might — such as an electrician or a plumber, he said. “That’s a small thing,” he said. “But at the same time, down the road, it could be something.” The movements Every step and movement the suspect made on the porch is worth a close look — from the way he walked, to how he seemed unhurried and how he grabbed the plant from the yard, Lyons said. All of that will likely be used by behavioral analysts to create a profile of the suspect, he said. “That’s what this will come down to,” Lyons said. “Those small aspects added all together.” JOHN SEEWER Seewer covers state and national news for The Associated Press and is based in Toledo, Ohio. twitter mailto

Journalist Don Lemon enters the courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave) 2026-02-13T05:10:38Z ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon and four other people are set to be arraigned on federal civil rights charges Friday, accused in a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. Lemon did not comment to reporters as he entered the courthouse. Also scheduled for arraignment Friday is civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. The prominent local activist was the subject of a doctored photo posted on official White House social media that falsely showed her crying during her arrest. The picture is part of a deluge of AI-altered imagery that has circulated since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Lemon’s attorney, Joe Thompson, did not return calls this week seeking comment. Arraignments in federal court typically include the entering of pleas and scheduling of future proceedings. Lemon has said he plans to plead not guilty . freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Two more defendants accused in the protest at a Southern Baptist church in St. Paul are scheduled for arraignment next week, including another independent journalist, Georgia Fort. Nine people have been charged in the case. Protesters interrupted a service at Cities Church on Jan. 18 by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last month. Lemon has said he is not affiliated with the group and that he was there as a journalist to chronicle the event for his livestream show. “I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now. In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable,” Lemon told reporters after his arrest. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); The church protest drew sharp complaints from conservative religious and political leaders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned in a social media post: “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.” Even clergy who oppose the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics expressed discomfort . All nine are charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act , which prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” Penalties can range up to a year in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. Thompson is one of several former prosecutors who have left the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in recent weeks citing frustration with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown in the state and the Justice Department’s response to the killing of Good and Pretti. One of four lawyers registered to represent Lemon, Thompson had led the sprawling investigation of major public program fraud cases for the prosecutors office until he resigned last month. The Trump administration has cited the fraud cases, in which most defendants have come from the state’s large Somali community, as justification for its immigration crackdown. STEVE KARNOWSKI Karnowski covers politics and government from Minnesota for The Associated Press. He also covers the ongoing fallout from the murder of George Floyd, courts and the environment, among other topics. twitter mailto

"Our freedom is not guaranteed" in an era of big powers, the German chancellor tells Munich's security summit.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s exit comes after files showed he appears to have exchanged hundreds of emails with Epstein.

Vladyslav Heraskevych's helmet depicts fellow athletes who have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion of his country.

Video released this week shows Ukraine launching domestically produced FP-5 "Flamingo" cruise missiles, as Kyiv pushes deeper strikes on Russian military infrastructure nearly four years into the war. Ukraine’s military said the missiles were used in an overnight attack on February 11 to 12 targeting a missile, ammunition and an explosives arsenal near the settlement of Kotluban in Russia’s Volgograd Oblast, describing the facility as belonging to Russia’s Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, known as GRAU, and said it was among the largest ammunition storage hubs used by Russian forces. Ukrainian officials said powerful explosions and secondary detonations were recorded at the site, while the extent of damage was still being assessed. RUSSIAN ATTACK ON KHARKIV WIPES OUT YOUNG FAMILY, LEAVING PREGNANT MOTHER AS SOLE SURVIVOR Russian regional authorities acknowledged an incident at a Defense Ministry facility in the same area. Volgograd Governor Andrey Bocharov said air defenses repelled a missile attack and that falling debris triggered a fire at a military facility near Kotluban. He said an evacuation of nearby residents was ordered during firefighting because of the threat of detonation. Anadolu Agency reported that buses were prepared to move residents to temporary accommodation centers. Russia’s Defense Ministry has also publicly referenced the Flamingo system. In a daily update carried by Russian state media , the ministry said its air defenses shot down five Flamingo long-range cruise missiles over the previous 24 hours. The ministry did not provide evidence in the statement, and Kyiv has not confirmed how many missiles were intercepted. BATTERED IN UKRAINE, RUSSIA RACES TO REARM — BUT QUESTIONS LINGER OVER ITS MILITARY STRENGTH Ukraine has increasingly highlighted indigenous long-range capabilities, including the FP-5. An East-to-West News agency video report previously cited Ukrainian officials describing the missile’s range as 3,000 kilometers, or about 1,864 miles, and said officials claim accuracy within about 14 meters, though battlefield performance is difficult to independently verify. In response to a reporter's question on Friday on the talks between the sides, President Donald Trump put the onus back on President Zelenskyy to make a deal. "Well, Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving. Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving otherwise, he's going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move," he said. A new round of U.S.-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine is expected in Geneva next week, even as fighting persists along the more than 1,200-kilometer front line. Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks across Ukraine continue, saying on Friday that a Russian drone assault on port infrastructure near Odesa killed one person and injured six others, while a separate strike near the eastern front line killed three brothers, including an eight-year-old and wounded their mother and grandmother.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s atrocities against demonstrators opposed to the regime has reportedly resulted in security forces killing at least 19 Iranian Christians , according to Article 18, an organization that promotes religious freedom in Iran. Article 18 reported on Feb. 9 that "The total number of Christians confirmed to have been killed during the protests is at least 19, including members of Iran’s recognized (Armenians and Assyrians) and unrecognized (converts) communities." According to the Article 18 statement, the Islamic Republic’s "brutal response to last month’s mass demonstrations " resulted in the security forces murdering Iranian Christians Nader Mohammadi, 35, and Zahra Arjomandi, 51, who were both shot dead on Jan. 8 in separate protests 1,000 miles apart. INSIDE TRUMP’S IRAN WARNING — AND THE UNEXPECTED PAUSE THAT FOLLOWED Mohammadi was the father of three young children, and was killed in Babol in northern Iran. Arjomandi, who was a mother of two children, died in her son’s arms on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm, in southern Iran, noted Article 18. The Iranian Christian website Mohabat News stated that regime security forces refused to release Arjomandi's body for six days. Mohabat reported that her body was only released for burial under "strict security measures", which included a media blackout and prohibiting a memorial service. Mansour Borji, the executive director for Article 18, told Fox News Digital that, "Today, Christians, like millions of other Iranians, seek the freedom and justice that they have been denied for nearly five decades, and they know well that this comes at a price. Every year many Christians are arrested and imprisoned under torturous conditions for practicing their right to religious freedom, where a simple act like praying together in house-churches seems like an act of civil disobedience." IRAN WILL RETALIATE 'WITH EVERYTHING WE HAVE' IF US ATTACKS, SENIOR DIPLOMAT WARNS He continued, "Our organization considers the Islamic Republic’s massacre of all peaceful protesters a crime against humanity that should not go unpunished. There must be an end to the impunity that, for far too long, has enabled this regime to commit crimes like at home and abroad. Branding peaceful protesters as ‘terrorists,’ and Christians that are persecuted every year as ‘Zionist mercenaries,’ is nothing but scapegoating." He warned that "The Islamic Republic's regime has, since its inception, demonstrated all traits of a totalitarian state. Most Iranians have now come to realize that their fundamental rights have been taken away from them, including the freedom to choose one’s own religion or belief, political self-determination and even their lifestyle choices. Christians were some of the earliest to experience this, when an Anglican priest and convert to Christianity, Rev. Arastoo Sayyah, was killed in his church office less than 200 hours after the 1979 revolution." A comprehensive 2025 report titled , "The Tip of the Iceberg" about the persecution of Iranian Christians was released by Article 18 in collaboration with Open Doors, Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Middle East Concern. According to the "The Tip of the Iceberg" report, Mohammad Nasirpour, the deputy prosecutor of Tehran and head of the 33rd District Prosecutor’s office, stated in his indictment against four Iranian Christians on June 2022: "Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the Protestant denomination , with their evangelical nature and mission to Christianize Iran, are perceived as a security threat to the Islamic Revolution, aimed at undermining the Islamic foundation of the Islamic Republic. It could be said that Persian-speaking evangelical movements are supported by fundamentalist evangelical Christians and Zionists." According to a Feb. 10 report on the website of Christianity Today, Iranian Christians want President Trump to intervene to stop the Ayatollah’s regime from continuing with its massacre of Iranians. RUBIO REVOKES IRANIAN OFFICIALS' US TRAVEL PRIVILEGES OVER DEADLY PROTEST CRACKDOWN KILLING THOUSANDS "That’s probably one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole situation right now," said Shahrokh Afshar, founder of Fellowship of Iranian Christians. "Everyone was hoping he would do something," Afshar told the outlet after the Iranian authorities killed thousands of protesters in January, according to some estimates. Fox News Digital has reported over the decades on the Islamic Republic’s high-intensity persecution of Iranian Christians in the wake of the growing popularity of Christianity in the Muslim-majority country. Iran’s regime targets diverse groups of Christians, including Evangelicals and Catholics. In 2017 , Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested two Christians – a mother and her son – as part of a brutal crackdown on Catholicism in the country’s West Azerbaijan Province. STATE DEPARTMENT DEMANDS IRAN HALT EXECUTION OF 19-YEAR-OLD WRESTLING STAR AS IOC REMAINS SILENT The family’s bibles and literature on Christian theology were also seized during the raid. The United States State Department has designated Iran as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC)" because the Islamic regime has "engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom" with respect to violations of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The Iranian regime -controlled statistical center of Iran claims there are 117,700 Christians of recognized denominations as of the 2016 census, according to the most recent U.S. State Department report on the plight of Iranian Christians. However, the State Department noted that, "The Christian advocacy NGO Article 18 estimates there are 500,000 to 800,000 Christians in the country, while the Christian advocacy NGO Open Doors International estimates the number is 1.24 million. Christian NGOs report many Christians are converts from Islam or other recognized faiths." The population of Iran is roughly 92 million.

Thousands of anti-government protesters violently faced off against riot police outside government buildings in Albania’s capital, Tirana, earlier this week, as people called for the resignation of the government following a massive corruption scandal . The main Albanian opposition party called for people to take to the streets and demand the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku after she was indicted by a special prosecutor who alleged she had been improperly influenced in her decision to favor one company in a tender for the construction of a 3.7-mile tunnel in southern Albania. Albania’s Special Court Against Corruption and Organized Crime suspended Balluku from the government in November, but Prime Minister Edi Rama took the issue to the country’s Constitutional Court, which reinstated Balluku in December. STATE DEPARTMENT STAYS QUIET AS ALBANIA REINSTATES DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION Balluku denied the allegations, calling the accusations against her amounted to "mudslinging, insinuations, half-truths and lies." Rama has refused to dismiss her. The corruption allegations touched off widespread outrage, sparking protests in recent months. "The wave of popular protests in Albania reflects a growing societal backlash against what critics describe as the increasingly autocratic rule of Prime Minister Edi Rama," Agim Nesho, former Albanian ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, told Fox News Digital. "Over more than a decade in power, Rama is accused of centralizing authority and personalizing state institutions, while his government has faced persistent allegations of cooperation with organized crime and the misuse of public funds and public assets for the benefit of politically connected clients," Nesho claimed. The shady circumstances surrounding Rama’s most important ally and the lack of accountability reinforces the sentiment that is pervasive in Albanian society that their government is rife with corruption. With both the incumbent government and opposition figures accused of corruption, public confidence in institutions and the justice system has steadily been eroded. ITALY ROCKED BY ANARCHIST-LED RIOTS AS OVER 100 POLICE INJURED, MELONI CONDEMNS VIOLENCE Albania has a long legacy of government corruption and ranks 91st out of 182 countries in Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index. The protests on Tuesday turned violent when supporters of Berisha’s opposition Democratic Party threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at government offices in Tirana. Security forces responded with water cannons and tear gas. Berisha claims the protests have been peaceful , and people are only voicing their opposition to Rama’s increasing autocratic rule and his attacks of the justice system. At least 16 protesters were treated for injuries and 13 protesters were arrested, according to The Associated Press. Observers of the region believe Berisha, who was prime minister from 2005 to 2013 and faced his own corruption charges, is angling to topple the socialist prime minister and main political rival, Rama, and return to power. The turmoil in Albania comes as the country has long sought European Union membership , which began in 2014 when it became an official candidate for accession. While the 2025 annual European Commission report stated that Albania made significant strides in judicial reforms and combating organized crime, the latest allegations against Rami’s government will complicate its path to EU membership. The United States helped implement Albania’s judicial reform process, including the creation of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Structure (SPAK). The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) invested millions to foster democratic progress in Albania and assisted in combating Albania’s struggles with corruption and strengthening its weak institutions. Nesho warned the U.S. and European Union need to get serious with policy in the Western Balkans and help move Albania closer to European integration. "If Washington and Brussels continue to look the other way — failing to enforce the rule of law , restore real checks and balances, and cut the regime’s ties to organized crime and drug trafficking — Albania risks drifting into the orbit of Eastern-style autocracy," Nesho said.

Floral arrangements crafted from carefully-folded, colorful bank notes, had become a popular symbol of love in Nairobi.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was credited with turning the state-backed DP World into a global logistics powerhouse. He was recently identified in correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.

Bangladesh held the first national elections since a student revolution in the summer of 2024. Standing outside the Dhaka university, the epicenter of the student movement, New York Times correspondent Anupreeta Das explains what the recent elections mean for the country’s future.

The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has taken part in meetings since last fall with lawyers tasked by President Donald Trump to reinvestigate his loss to Joe Biden.  Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District, has had multiple meetings set up with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.  At those meetings was Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who until recently led a group investigating what the president has described as the department’s “weaponization” against him and his allies, according to a source familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.  White House lawyer Kurt Olsen, who has been tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election, also was directed to join at least one of the meetings, according to the source. Both Martin and Olsen worked on behalf of Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, and a federal court sanctioned Olsen for making false claims about the reliability of voting machines in Arizona. The meetings reveal new details about the length of the preparations for, and people involved in, the January FBI raid on Fulton County, which election and legal experts told ProPublica was a significant escalation in Trump’s breaking of democratic norms. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi picked Albus and has granted him special authority to handle election-related cases nationwide, even though his earlier work as a federal prosecutor didn’t involve election law or election-related cases. The meetings with Martin, Olsen and other lawyers for the Justice Department were described by the source as being about “election integrity,” a term the Trump administration has used to describe investigations into its false claims that elections are rigged.  Martin, Olsen, Albus and others declined to answer questions about the meetings and other detailed questions from ProPublica. The White House and the Justice Department also did not respond to questions. The meetings came at a particularly crucial time. Martin’s efforts to obtain election materials from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, had hit a wall. In August, he sent a letter demanding that a Fulton County judge allow him to access tens of thousands of absentee ballots for “an investigation into election integrity here at the Department of Justice,” but he had reportedly received no reply . Martin explained to Steve Bannon on a podcast that aired around the time of the meetings that although the White House had given Olsen the official mandate to reinvestigate the 2020 election, “inside DOJ, myself and a couple of others have been working also on the same topic” — including getting the Fulton County ballots. But Martin described progress as a “challenge.” Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist in his first term, asked why Martin didn’t just “get some U.S. marshals to go down and seize” the ballots. Martin suggested it was easier said than done, but agreed: “Look, we’ve got to get” the ballots.    Ed Martin posted a photo from his meeting with Thomas Albus in Washington, D.C., on social media. Via X Before long, Albus and Olsen were interviewing witnesses for their case. Kevin Moncla, a conservative researcher, told ProPublica that he spoke to Albus and Olsen a couple of times, both together and separately, around the turn of the year. He identified himself as Witness 7 in the affidavit that persuaded a judge to sign off on the raid, and the affidavit mentions a 263-page report he authored that activists believe may have justified the raid, ProPublica has reported . Moncla has a long history of working with Olsen, dating back to an attempt by Kari Lake , a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, to overturn her 2022 loss.  Just a few weeks after those interviews, in late January, Albus was listed as the government attorney on the search warrant that authorized the seizure of roughly 700 boxes of election material in Georgia, far outside of Albus’ usual jurisdiction.   Former U.S. attorneys from both parties said it was rare for a federal prosecutor from one region to take on cases in other states or be granted the nationwide authority Albus has been given.  Under Trump, senior roles across the White House, DOJ and FBI have increasingly been filled by a small, interconnected group of Missouri lawyers with longstanding ties to one another. Another top federal official in the meetings was Jesus Osete, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights . Before joining the Justice Department, Osete worked in the Missouri attorney general’s office, where he represented the state in at least five lawsuits against the Biden administration regarding vaccine mandates, immigration and other policies. Osete did not respond to requests for comment or to a detailed list of questions. When the FBI raided Fulton County’s election center, Andrew Bailey, another lawyer from the same political circles, was in charge . Before joining the FBI as deputy director, he had used his position as Missouri’s attorney general to pursue high-profile cases against prominent Democrats and said he supported all efforts to investigate Biden , his family and his administration. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to answer detailed questions about Bailey. Last year, Roger Keller, a veteran federal prosecutor from Albus’ office, was brought in to help prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud in Virginia after the original career prosecutors on the case were replaced by political appointees. After a judge dismissed the case, two federal grand juries declined to indict James again, and Keller returned to Missouri. Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, previously served as Missouri’s solicitor general under state attorneys general Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. He and Schmitt signed Missouri’s amicus brief supporting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Sauer later represented Trump in his presidential-immunity case, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that Trump was entitled to broad immunity from prosecution. Albus’ connection to the other Missouri lawyers goes back decades. Unlike some of the others, though, he has never held elected office or had a high public profile, nor has he waged culture-war campaigns like Bailey or Martin. Instead, he spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor and as a judge in a Missouri state circuit court. Emails show Albus exchanging brief messages with Martin in 2007, when Albus was an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis and Martin was chief of staff to then-Gov. Matt Blunt. The emails were part of records from the Blunt administration that became public after being released under Missouri’s Sunshine Law.  In the email exchange, Albus put in a good word for a St. Louis lawyer who was a finalist for an appellate court judgeship, and Blunt ultimately selected that candidate.  Albus served as first assistant to Schmitt from early 2019 until Albus was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson to fill a circuit court judge vacancy in early 2020. Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, praised Albus as “one of the finest prosecutors I have ever met” when endorsing his nomination for U.S. attorney in December. Lawyers who appeared in Albus’ court rated him as well prepared, professional and attentive, according to Missouri judicial performance reviews. They said he followed the evidence, applied the law correctly and gave clear reasons for his rulings.  Albus came under more critical scrutiny after Trump named him interim U.S. attorney last summer. Much of that attention centered on a fraud case he inherited when he took office. Prosecutors alleged that developers in St. Louis falsely claimed to be using minority- and women-owned subcontractors to qualify for city tax breaks, conduct the Justice Department has historically treated as wire fraud.  One of the defendants was represented by lawyer Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi. The developers’ lawyers argued that even if the government’s claims were true, they were legally irrelevant because the Trump administration had taken the position that tax breaks based on race or gender were unlawful. Albus accepted those arguments and dropped the case . As part of the resolution, Albus personally hand-delivered to City Hall a check of about $1 million from one of the developers’ companies as restitution. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he intervened “to make it clear” his office wanted to drop charges and hand-delivered the check “to make sure they got it.”  In a letter to Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Congressional Democrats said the dismissal of the St. Louis case and other cases in which the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Brad Bondi’s clients raised “ significant broader ethical concerns .” In the St. Louis case, and in a separate matter involving another Brad Bondi client whose charges were dropped, a Justice Department spokesperson said Pam Bondi’s relationship with her brother had “ no bearing on the outcome .” A spokesperson for the developers said their lawyers communicated only with the U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis about the case and had no direct contact with Pam Bondi. He said the dismissal reflected “a recognition that this case should never have been brought in the first place.” Brad Bondi did not respond to a request for comment. Weeks later, around the time of Albus’ meetings about election integrity, he posed with Martin in Martin’s office, flanked by a framed photo of Trump and a copy of “A Choice, Not an Echo,” the influential conservative manifesto by Phyllis Schlafly arguing that Republican voters were being manipulated by party elites and the media.  Martin posted the photo on X with the caption, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?” The post What Meetings Among Trump Lawyers Reveal About the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia appeared first on ProPublica .

When county clerk Brianna Lennon got an email in November saying a newly expanded federal system had flagged 74 people on the county’s voter roll as potential noncitizens, she was taken aback. Lennon, who’d run elections in Boone County, Missouri, for seven years, had heard the tool might not be accurate. The flagged voters’ registration paperwork confirmed Lennon’s suspicions. The form for the second person on the list bore the initials of a member of her staff, who’d helped the man register — at his naturalization ceremony. It later turned out more than half the Boone County voters identified as noncitizens were actually citizens. The source of the bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections. At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters’ citizenship status using SAVE. Many of the nation’s Republican secretaries of state have eagerly embraced the experiment, agreeing to upload all or part of their rolls. But an examination of SAVE’s rollout by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reveals that DHS rushed the revamped tool into use while it was still adding data and before it could discern voters’ most up-to-date citizenship information. As a result, SAVE has made persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing the status of people born outside the U.S., data gathered from local election administrators, interviews and emails obtained via public records requests show. Some of those people subsequently become U.S. citizens, a step that the system doesn’t always pick up. According to correspondence between state and federal officials , DHS has had to correct information provided to at least five states after SAVE misidentified some voters as noncitizens. Texas and Missouri were among the first states to try the augmented tool. In Missouri, state officials acted on SAVE’s findings before attempting to confirm them, directing county election administrators to make voters flagged as potential noncitizens temporarily unable to vote. But in hundreds of cases, the tool’s determinations were wrong, our review found. Lennon was among dozens of clerks statewide who raised alarms about the system’s errors. “It really does not help my confidence,” she said, “that the information we are trying to use to make really important decisions, like the determination of voter eligibility, is so inaccurate.” In Texas, news reports began emerging about voters being mistakenly flagged as noncitizens soon after state officials announced the results of running the state’s voter roll through SAVE in October. Our reporting showed these errors were more widespread than previously known, involving at least 87 voters across 29 counties. County election administrators suspect there may be more. Confusion took hold when the Texas secretary of state’s office sent counties lists of flagged voters and directed clerks to start demanding proof of citizenship and to remove people from the rolls if they didn’t respond. “I really find no merit in any of this,” said Bobby Gonzalez, the elections administrator in Duval County in South Texas, where SAVE flagged three voters, all of whom turned out to be citizens. Even counting people flagged in error, the first bulk searches using SAVE haven’t validated the president’s claims that voting by noncitizens is widespread. At least seven states with a total of about 35 million registered voters have publicly reported the results of running their voter rolls through the system. Those searches have identified roughly 4,200 people — about 0.01% of registered voters — as noncitizens. This aligns with previous findings that noncitizens rarely register to vote . Brian Broderick leads the verification division of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS branch that oversees SAVE. In an interview this month, he acknowledged the system can’t always find the most current citizenship information for people not born in the U.S. But he defended the tool, saying it was ultimately up to states to decide how to use SAVE data. “So we’re giving a tool to these folks to say, ‘Hey, if we can verify citizenship, great, you’re good. If we can’t, now it’s up to you to determine whether to let this person on your voter rolls,’” Broderick said. In Texas, Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined an interview request. Her spokesperson, Alicia Pierce, said the office hadn’t reviewed SAVE’s citizenship determination before sending lists to counties because it isn’t an investigative agency. In a statement, Pierce added that the use of SAVE was part of the office’s “constitutional and statutory duty to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in Texas elections.” A spokesperson for Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins called SAVE a valuable resource even though some people it flagged might later be confirmed as citizens. “No system is 100% accurate,” Hoskins said in an interview, “but we’re working to get it right.” Asked whether it was problematic that his office directed clerks to temporarily bar voters from casting ballots before verifying SAVE’s findings, Hoskins said that was a “good point.” While 27 states have agreed to use SAVE, others have hesitated, concerned not only about inaccuracies, but also about privacy and the data’s potential to be used in immigration enforcement. Indeed, speaking at a recent conference, Broderick said that when SAVE flags voters as noncitizens, they are also referred to DHS for possible criminal investigation. (It is a crime to falsely claim citizenship when registering to vote.) People who’ve been flagged by SAVE in error say it’s jarring to have to provide naturalization records to stay eligible to vote when they know they’ve done nothing wrong. Sofia Minotti was erroneously flagged as a potential noncitizen voter by a Department of Homeland Security tool. Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Sofia Minotti, who lives north of Dallas in Denton County, was born in Argentina but became a U.S. citizen years ago. Nonetheless, she was one of 84 Denton County voters identified by SAVE as a potential noncitizen. She and 11 others have since provided proof of citizenship, giving the system an error rate in the county of at least 14%. The real rate is probably higher, a county official acknowledged, since some of those sent notices to prove their citizenship might not respond in time to meet the deadline. They’ll have to be reinstated to vote in the midterms later this year. Minotti, though still on the rolls, felt singled out unfairly. “I’m here legally, and everything I’ve done has been per the law,” she said. “I really have no idea why I had to prove it.” Election administrators in many states have long hungered for better access to federal information on citizenship status. States don’t typically require people to provide proof of citizenship when they sign up to vote, only to attest to it under penalty of perjury. Previous efforts to use state data to catch noncitizens on voter rolls have gone poorly. Texas officials had to abandon a 2019 push after it became clear their methodology misidentified thousands of citizens, many of them naturalized, as ineligible voters. Until recently, SAVE hadn’t been much of a resource. State and local election officials needed to have voters’ DHS-assigned immigration ID numbers — information not collected in the registration process — to verify their citizenship status. Plus, officials had to pay to conduct searches one by one, not in bulk. In March, Trump issued an executive order that required DHS to give states free access to federal citizenship data and partner with the Department of Government Efficiency to comb voter rolls. The order triggered a series of meetings at USCIS designed to comply with a 30-day deadline to remake SAVE, a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by ProPublica shows. The system’s main addition was confidential Social Security Administration data, which allowed states to search using full or partial Social Security numbers and incorporated information on millions of Americans who were not previously in Homeland Security databases. David Jennings, Broderick’s deputy at USCIS, had pressed his team to move quickly, he said on a June video call with members of former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, which has spread false claims about noncitizen voting. “We tested it and deployed it to our users in two weeks,” Jennings said on the call, which ProPublica obtained a recording of. “I think that’s remarkable. Kind of proud of it.” Jennings added that to get quick access to the Social Security data, which has been tightly guarded, USCIS partnered with DOGE. (In an unrelated matter, DOGE has since been accused of misusing Social Security data.) Jennings did not respond to questions from ProPublica and the Tribune. Perhaps because of its accelerated timetable, USCIS expanded the system before meeting legal requirements to inform the public about how the data would be collected, stored and used, according to voting rights organizations that sued . (UCSIS did not respond to a request for comment about this.) It also blew past concerns from voter advocacy groups about the accuracy of SSA’s citizenship data, which multiple audits and analyses have shown is often outdated or incomplete. This is particularly true for people not born in the U.S., who often get Social Security numbers well before they become citizens. According to emails obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune, SAVE first checks SSA’s citizenship information. If that shows a voter isn’t a citizen, DHS searches other databases, but it can be difficult to locate and match all the data the systems have on a person. This can lead to errors. Broderick said in the interview that Trump’s executive order dramatically accelerated the timetable for launching SAVE, getting agencies to cooperate and move quickly. But he insisted the work was done responsibly. “Do I think it was reckless? Do I think it wasn’t planned? Do I think it wasn’t tested? Absolutely not,” he said. By September, Texas had uploaded its entire list of more than 18 million registered voters into SAVE. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming put voter data into the system, too. They would soon start to unveil what SAVE had found. One of the first out of the gate was Texas. In late October, with early voting underway in state and local elections, Nelson, the secretary of state, announced SAVE had identified 2,724 potential noncitizens on the rolls. But as Nelson delegated the task of investigating those voters’ statuses to local election officials, confusion took hold. At a meeting, Nelson’s staff told county clerks’ offices to investigate flagged voters and then send notices to those for whom they were unable to confirm citizenship. In a follow-up email, Nelson’s staff told the clerks they should already have heard from someone in the office with more details. That set off a chain of messages on the local officials’ email group Travis County voter registration director Christopher Davis said he hadn’t been contacted and had just learned the county had 97 flagged voters. Marsha Barbee, in Wharton County near Houston, shared that she talked to a Nelson staffer who said she’d been directed not to tell local officials about their lists because they were in the middle of early voting. “They said we have enough on our plates and didn’t want us to worry right now,” Barbee wrote. In the absence of clear state guidance, clerks proceeded inconsistently. Some said they didn’t act on their lists, waiting for more direction. Others, unsure how to investigate flagged voters’ status, said they simply sent notices asking for proof of citizenship, though some opted not to remove nonresponsive voters from the rolls. “I give them many chances; I don’t just expire them right away,” Dee Wilcher, a clerk in East Texas’ Anderson County, said about flagged voters, adding that she wanted to avoid removing citizens from the rolls and looking “stupid.” Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said many clerks expressed frustration with the secretary of state’s lack of guidance and failure to help with investigations. When he shared clerks’ concerns, McGinn said Nelson’s staff didn’t respond, leading him to conclude that checking SAVE’s findings wasn’t an agency priority. He called the state’s use of SAVE “more political and appearance-based” than a practical way to ensure election integrity. One way to check SAVE’s findings would have been to get information from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship if residents register to vote when obtaining a driver’s license. The secretary of state’s office didn’t do this and didn’t direct counties to either. Several county officials said they hadn’t thought to ask DPS for information; those who did often found the agency had documentation showing some of the voters who SAVE identified as noncitizens were in fact citizens. In the Texas Panhandle, Potter County elections officials quickly confirmed through DPS that three of nine voters on their list had proof of citizenship on file. In neighboring Randall County, DPS helped officials verify that one in five had a U.S. passport, according to interviews with the local officials. In December, Travis County learned that 11 of the 97 voters flagged by SAVE had proven their citizenship to DPS. After getting the data, the county’s voter registrar, Celia Israel, said in an interview that she felt even more uncomfortable about moving forward with sending notices to voters, given SAVE’s errors. “It has proven to be inaccurate,” she said. “Why would I rely on it?” To be sure, SAVE also identified some people who weren’t eligible to vote, clerks said. Several came across instances in which voters marked on registration forms that they weren’t citizens, but were registered by election office staffers in error. Clerks also said voters have told them they’d misunderstood questions about eligibility when getting drivers’ licenses. (It’s not clear if any of those registered in error voted; overall, noncitizens rarely vote .)  ProPublica and the Tribune surveyed the 177 Texas counties that had voters flagged by SAVE, receiving data from 97 that had either checked DPS records or sent notices to voters to try to verify SAVE’s citizenship information. Overall, more than 5% of the voters SAVE identified as noncitizens proved to be citizens. In some smaller counties, most of those flagged were eligible to vote. That includes six of 11 in the Panhandle’s Moore County, and two of three in Erath County, near Dallas. But some of those who didn’t respond to notices also might be citizens. In Denton County, where Sofia Minotti lives, checks by elections administrator Frank Phillips’ staff delivered clear answers on the citizenship status of 26 of the 84 voters flagged by SAVE. Twelve, including Minotti, proved they were citizens. Fourteen more had marked on their registration forms that they weren’t and the blame rested with workers for registering them nonetheless. Phillips said he removed anyone who didn’t provide proof by the deadline from the rolls to comply with the secretary of state’s instructions, but he fears some were eligible voters. “What is bugging me is I think our voter rolls may be more accurate than this database,” Phillips said. “My gut feeling is more of these are citizens than not.” At least initially, Missouri took a more targeted approach to SAVE than Texas did. State officials used the system to search for information on a subset of about 6,000 voters they had reason to think might not be citizens, according to emails between federal and state officials . The state had results by October, but in early November, a USCIS official wrote to Missouri and four other states to say some people flagged by SAVE as noncitizens were actually citizens, emails obtained through public records requests show. “We have continued to refine our processes used to obtain and review the citizenship data available to us,” the official wrote, adding that one such improvement revealed the errors. The staffer attached amended search results, but Missouri officials withheld the attachment from its response to a public records request and did not respond to a question about how many corrections were made. Based on the updated data from USCIS, Missouri sent lists of flagged voters to county election administrators in November. ProPublica and the Tribune obtained these lists for seven of 10 most populous counties in the state, which show SAVE initially identified more than 1,200 people as noncitizens just in these areas. The Missouri secretary of state’s office told election administrators it would work to verify SAVE’s citizenship determinations. In the meantime, local officials were instructed to change the status of flagged voters, making them temporarily unable to vote. The lists were met with swift pushback from county election officials, who, like Lennon, soon spotted people they knew to be citizens and questioned the directive’s legality. On a group call in November, they traded examples, saying they recognized neighbors, colleagues and people they’d helped to register at naturalization ceremonies. In St. Louis, the Board of Election Commissioners didn’t alter the eligibility of anyone on its flagged voter list after being advised not to by its attorney. Rachael Dunn, a spokesperson for Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said state law allows officials to change voters’ status during investigations into their eligibility — for example, if there are signs they’ve moved. The laws she cited don’t directly address investigations into citizenship status, however. In early December, some 70 clerks, Republicans and Democrats, wrote a letter to Missouri House Speaker Jonathan Patterson saying there were better ways than SAVE to keep noncitizens off voter rolls. Weeks later, the state’s election integrity director, Nick La Strada, wrote USCIS to ask why a voter that SAVE had identified as a noncitizen in October had showed up in a more recent search as a citizen. A USCIS official replied that between the initial search and the follow-up, DHS had gotten access to passport data, which contains more up-to-date citizenship information on some people not born in the U.S. The USCIS staffer explained that some of the most accurate citizenship information — which is within DHS’ own records — still wasn’t searchable in SAVE because running that kind of search would require the voter’s DHS identifier, which can’t always be located. The staffer said they were working on improvements but those could take until March. “You don’t start with something at that scale until you work the bugs out, and that is not the case here,” Clinton Jenkins, president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, said in an interview. Jenkins is also the clerk for Miller County in the Ozarks. In early January, in what was framed as a “SAVE review update,” the secretary of state’s office sent counties across Missouri revised lists with reduced numbers of voters identified as potential noncitizens. It instructed election administrators to move voters who’d been initially flagged in error by SAVE back to active status, restoring their eligibility to vote. Dunn, Hoskins’ spokesperson, didn’t specify what prompted these adjustments. Even the new lists may not be final, she acknowledged. Once the review is complete, the state has said it plans to send letters to those still on the lists, demanding proof of citizenship and giving recipients 90 days to respond. The addition of new data to SAVE makes it a more valuable resource, she maintained, “while also reinforcing the need for careful, layered review before any action is taken.” After the January revision, St. Louis County’s initial list of 691 potential noncitizens dropped to 133. Zuzana Kocsisova, who lives in St. Louis, was among those incorrectly flagged by SAVE on its first pass. Originally from Slovakia, she became a U.S. citizen in 2019. She showed ProPublica and the Tribune a copy of her naturalization certificate, which she keeps with a letter from Trump congratulating her for “becoming a citizen of this magnificent land.” When a reporter told her that SAVE had initially identified her as a potential noncitizen, she said she wasn’t surprised. She saw it as part of the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants. She was more frustrated than relieved to learn that she wasn’t on the smaller list of flagged voters sent in January. “Overall, it seems like this process has done more to worry people who can vote than to identify actual registered voters who don’t qualify,” she said. “It’s just a waste of resources. I don’t think it makes the elections any more safe.” In Boone County, where Lennon is the clerk, the count of flagged voters fell from 74 to 33 and the naturalized citizen who Lennon’s staff helped register was no longer on the list. Lennon said she and other county clerks would happily accept data that helps them correctly identify noncitizens on their voter rolls. But so far, SAVE hasn’t done that. And until it does, she said, she won’t purge voters purely because SAVE has flagged them. “This is not ready for prime time,” Lennon said. “And I’m not going to risk the security and the constitutional rights of my voters for bad data.” The post “Not Ready for Prime Time.” A Federal Tool to Check Voter Citizenship Keeps Making Mistakes. appeared first on ProPublica .

It’s taken more than 2,000 days of construction, $6.4 billion Canadian dollars and seemingly endless studies and permits to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Stretching 1.5 miles between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, the towering cable-stayed span will offer an alternative to the privately owned Ambassador Bridge at one of the busiest land borders in North America, providing a boost to international traffic and trade. And it wasn’t so long ago that President Donald Trump cheered it on.  Shortly after a meeting in 2017, the man who styled himself as “the builder president” issued a joint statement with Canada’s then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrating their shared focus on infrastructure. “In particular,” they said, “we look forward to the expeditious completion of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will serve as a vital economic link between our two countries.” A list of 50 priority projects for emergency and national security, developed as Trump embarked on his first term in office, included the toll bridge . When the company that owns the Ambassador Bridge aired a commercial aimed at Trump in 2018, in hopes that he’d torpedo the project competing with it for tolls, the president didn’t act. His Canadian ambassador lifted a ceremonial shovel at the groundbreaking. And in 2019, Trump signed the spending bill that allotted the first U.S. funding for the project: $15 million for inspection and screening systems. (Canada paid for the bridge project in full. The tolls will go toward recouping that investment.) But Trump’s second term has busted all sorts of presidential norms — including his own. He now takes a more antagonistic stance toward Canada, and his ambassador in Ottawa has followed his lead . No longer does Trump speak of “the opportunity to build even more bridges” with Canadians. Instead, he used an emergency declaration to hit the country with aggressive tariffs and repeatedly said it should become the “51st state.” This week, without warning, Trump targeted the Gordie Howe bridge that’s named after a Canadian hockey player who is beloved in Detroit. “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post . How the bridge battle ends is unclear, but it once again puts Michigan — a swing state and co-owner of the bridge — at the center of Trump tactics that could hurt the state’s economy.  “Michigan is an automotive state,” said Brent Pilarski, business manager of the Michigan Laborers District Council, which oversees unions representing people who worked on the bridge and who work in auto facilities. Parts cross the border constantly, he said, and they “need to get there on time, or cars can’t be built.” So far, support for Trump by top Republicans has shown no sign of cracking. Asked at a press conference about the bridge, Mike Rogers — the Trump-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate — said, “Obviously, we’d like to see it open.” But, he said, commerce is still happening without it, and “I would like the president to have some leverage to stop thousands and thousands and thousands of Chinese-made cars from pouring over that bridge.” Michigan state Sen. Jim Runestad, who chairs the Michigan Republican Party, said in a statement to ProPublica that “Canada has been playing dirty with our trade relationship for decades.” “They won’t stock US liquor and have made it nearly impossible for our farmers to sell many of their products in Canada, all while they are cozying up to Chinese EVs,” Runestad said. “President Trump is standing for American workers and farmers and this is clearly the start to negotiations which will finally make trade with Canada fair for Americans.” However, the state’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, have pushed back. “We’ve wanted this bridge for years because it will be a boon for our economy,” Sen. Gary Peters said in a statement. “This is another case of the president undermining Michigan businesses and workers.” “Canceling this project will have serious repercussions,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin said in a statement. “Higher costs for Michigan businesses, less secure supply chains, and ultimately, fewer jobs. With this threat, the President is punishing Michiganders for a trade war he started.” Rick Snyder, the Republican former governor who was instrumental in getting the bridge built, was also critical of Trump’s threat. The bridge, he wrote in a column , is “a great deal for America.” If its opening is delayed or stopped, he added, the big winner will be the Ambassador Bridge company and its owner. “Every day, they make much more money at our expense.” In his post, Trump suggested that the bridge is solely owned by Canada, though it’s jointly owned by Canada and the state of Michigan . And he blamed former President Barack Obama for allowing it to be built “with virtually no U.S. content,” though U.S. materials were in fact used. The post echoed claims made in the 2018 ad from the company that owns the Ambassador Bridge, part of a furious decadeslong fight against the competing span . Hours before Trump posted on Feb. 9, according to The New York Times, the billionaire owner, Matthew Moroun, met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick , and Lutnick then spoke with Trump by phone about the matter. Messages sent by ProPublica to emails linked to Moroun didn’t receive a response. The bridge company didn’t provide a comment. Since opening in 1929, the Ambassador Bridge has been a vital link. But limited highway connections force trucks through traffic lights. And, as the 2022 Canadian convoy protest that blockaded the bridge demonstrated, a single corridor for commercial traffic is vulnerable. (The 95-year-old Detroit Windsor Tunnel is too small for today’s trucks.) Besides offering a modern and publicly owned option, the Gordie Howe bridge has direct highway interchanges on both sides of the border. It’s expected to open later this year.  The 2018 ad urged Trump to review the presidential permit, issued more than a decade ago, that allowed the Gordie Howe bridge to go forward. This week, the administration told reporters that Trump may now do so. And, when asked this week how the bridge’s opening could be hindered, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell noted that it needs staffing by the Department of Homeland Security. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, at her confirmation hearing last year, assured Michigan’s senators that she wouldn’t neglect the new bridge. “Our focus is there to make sure that it is staffed appropriately,” Noem said. DHS, the White House and the Commerce Department did not respond to ProPublica’s queries. Following Trump’s threats, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters that Trump asked for U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra to “play a role in smoothing the conversation in and around the bridge.” Hoekstra, a former U.S. representative from Michigan, has mirrored Trump’s hostile second-term approach toward Canada during his diplomatic posting. Publicly, at least, he’s been silent on the bridge. And the embassy in Ottawa declined a request for comment. The post Trump Is Threatening to Block the Michigan-Canada Bridge. He Used to Cheer It. appeared first on ProPublica .

Brazilian prosecutors and police launched an extensive crackdown on a Chinese electronics distribution network accused of laundering more than one billion reais (US$190 million) over seven months through a system allegedly related to one of Latin America’s most powerful crime syndicates. The Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, syndicate allegedly sold imported consumer electronics throughout Brazil via a Chinese e-commerce platform called “Knup Brasil”, including mobile phone chargers,...

⁠The Trump administration sued ⁠Harvard University on Friday, accusing it ⁠of failing to comply with a federal investigation and seeking documents to determine whether the university had illegally considered race in its admissions process. The move comes less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump said ‌his administration was seeking $1 billion from Harvard to settle probes into school policies, after a news report that said Trump had dropped his demand for a payment from the Ivy League...

The US eased sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector on Friday, issuing two general licences that allow global energy companies to operate oil and gas projects in the Opec member and for other companies to negotiate contracts to bring in fresh ‌investments. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general licence allowing Chevron, BP, Eni, Shell and Repsol to operate oil and gas operations in Venezuela. Those companies still have offices in the country and stakes in...

Letter from committee on oversight says it is clear the former ambassador ‘holds critical information’ Peter Mandelson has been asked to testify to the US Congress over his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, and congressman Suhas Subramanyam have written to Mandelson requesting he be questioned as part of the investigation into Epstein. Continue reading...

Congressperson says US president and Marco Rubio are tearing apart transatlantic alliance Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich Security Conference. Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture. Continue reading...

Nikhil Gupta faces up to 40 years over alleged India-backed attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun The Indian man who US prosecutors accused of plotting to kill a prominent US-based activist after being recruited by an agent of the Indian government has pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, according to a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan. Nikhil Gupta faces a maximum 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money-laundering charges in connection to the failed attempt to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US resident who is an advocate for a sovereign Sikh state in northern India. Continue reading...