News from Multiple Perspectives

Warning comes as 400 million barrels of oil are being released from global reserves during waterway's closure.

Admiral Brad Cooper says artificial intelligence is helping process data, but humans are making final decisions.

Drones struck oil storage facilities in Oman’s ⁠Salalah port, as local authorities say they're responding to a big fire.

2026-03-11T14:48:33Z CAIRO (AP) — An explosive-laden drone blamed on Sudanese paramilitaries struck a secondary school and a health care center in southern Sudan Wednesday, killing at least 17 people, mostly schoolgirls, a hospital official and a medical group said. At least 10 people were wounded in the strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province, according to Dr. Musa al-Majeri, director of the Douiem Hospital, the nearest major medical facility to the village. Al-Majeri told The Associated Press three girls suffered serious injuries; two of them underwent surgeries at the hospital while the third was evacuated to the capital, Khartoum. The war-tracking Sudan Doctors Network reported the strike first, saying those killed included two teachers and a health care worker. The group said there was no military presence in the village. Both the medical group and al-Majeri blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for the strike. The RSF didn’t respond to a request for comment. 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); }); “This horrific crime represents a continuation of the violations committed by the RSF in the White Nile,” said Dr. Razan Al-Mahdi, a spokeswoman for the medical group, adding that the paramilitaries attacked several civilian facilities in the past two days, including a student dormitory and a power station. The strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province was the latest deadly attack in Sudan’s nearly three-year war. Sudan slid into chaos in April 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country. The devastating war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher. The fighting has centered in the sprawling Kordofan region, where deadly attacks, mostly by drones, were reported daily. 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 war has been marked by atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes and other crimes, investigated by the International Criminal Court as potential war crimes and crimes against humanity. The most recent atrocities happened in October when the RSF and its Janjweed allies overran the Darfur city of el-Fasher . The RSF attack there bore “ hallmarks of genocide ,” according to United Nations-commissioned experts. At least 6,000 people were killed in three days in October in el-Fasher, the U.N.’s Human Rights Office said. SAMY MAGDY Magdy is a Middle East reporter for The Associated Press, based in Cairo. He focuses on conflict, migration and human rights abuses. twitter facebook mailto

First lady Jill Biden speaks during the first day of Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) 2026-03-11T13:02:07Z WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden is breaking her silence about Joe Biden’s decision to abruptly end his 2024 presidential reelection bid under pressure from Democrats concerned about his age, health and viability against Republican Donald Trump in a rematch of their 2020 campaign. A political spouse for nearly 50 years, Jill Biden said she has never publicly discussed her feelings about the three-week stretch when her husband ended his political career, instead saving her thoughts for the pages of her soon-to-be-released memoir. Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, on Wednesday announced that her book, “View from the East Wing: A Memoir,” is scheduled to be published June 2. Jill Biden told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview that the book is a “reflection of my four years as first lady” and that writing it was somewhat healing. 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 was kind of cathartic for me to write it, and I wrote about all the, you know, sometimes painful — but other times, most of it really beautiful moments that Joe and I shared during his presidency,” she said. Jill Biden declined on Tuesday to discuss any of those moments, good or bad — including watching her husband work his way to the decision to end his five-decade-long political career by dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. In an announcement video shared on Instagram, she said she wants to “set the record straight.” The last chapter of her husband’s political career In April 2023, then-President Joe Biden was 80 and the oldest president in U.S. history when he announced he was running for a second term . His age and fitness to serve another four years — which would take him to age 86 — became a source of concern for the public. Some fellow Democrats began to pressure him to step aside after he turned in a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June 2024 in which he struggled, in a raspy voice, to land his debating points and often appeared to lose his train of thought. Aides blamed the poor performance on a cold. Joe Biden at first insisted that he would stay in the race, but after a few weeks he withdrew from the campaign and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris , his vice president. Harris became the party’s presidential nominee but lost to Trump in the November 2024 election. Jill Biden said that, with the book, “I have put things in perspective,” presenting what she describes as a “more balanced view” of her husband’s time as president. The memoir is also a tribute of the sorts to women who, like herself, juggle multiple roles. 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’s also a story about my being able to balance life, you know, as a working woman and as a mother, a grandmother, a first lady,” she said. During her four years in the role, Jill Biden, 74, made history as the first first lady to continue the career she had before entering the White House. She had taught English and writing for decades at the community college level, and she continued teaching twice a week at a Northern Virginia school while serving as first lady. 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); }); Joe Biden ‘doing well’ after his cancer diagnosis The former president’s office announced in May 2025 that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bones. He’s receiving treatment. Jill Biden said it was “quite a shock getting the diagnosis” for her husband, who’s now 83. “The fact that it is in his bones means that he will have cancer, you know, all his lifetime,” Jill Biden said. She said the doctors say he will “live out his natural life.” “Like most retired couples, he’ll probably drive me crazy till the end of it,” she joked. She said he visits Washington at least once a week for meetings or to give speeches. A unique period in American history The former first lady also writes in the book about serving during a unique period in U.S. history, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the publisher. Her husband was sworn into office on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2021, just two weeks after a mob of Trump supporters , spurred by his false claims that the Republican lost because of election fraud, stormed the building in a violent attempt to keep lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. 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); }); Joe Biden’s first year in office was dominated by the federal response to the pandemic and, while he mostly stayed at the White House, Jill Biden wore face mask and traveled around the country to encourage people to get their vaccinations. She also continued her advocacy on behalf of military families , education and community colleges, cancer prevention and women’s health initiatives. Before she became first lady, Jill Biden was second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, when her husband was Barack Obama’s vice president. She currently chairs the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network. Jill Biden is also the author of “Where the Light Enters,” published in 2019, in which she writes about meeting Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, and marrying and building a life with him. She also has written three children’s books . ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of Jill Biden at https://apnews.com/hub/jill-biden . DARLENE SUPERVILLE Superville covers the White House for The Associated Press, with a special emphasis on first ladies and first families.

Washington Metropolitan Police Department officers block the streets around the White House as members of the U.S. Secret Service investigate a suspicious vehicle, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) 2026-03-11T14:10:04Z WASHINGTON (AP) — A man was taken into custody on Wednesday after driving his van into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said. The Secret Service said the man crashed into the temporary security barrier just before 6:30 a.m. He was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said. The man, whose identity was not immediately released, was being interviewed by investigators. Criminal charges were pending, the Secret Service said. A police bomb squad was called to the scene, checked the vehicle and determined it to be safe.

Witnesses say drone strikes hit a residential building frequently occupied by expatriates and aid workers in Goma.

The G7 group of nations welcomes the idea of releasing oil in response to the surge in prices since the US-Israel war with Iran began

Six Palestinians have been killed during attacks by settlers in the West Bank since the start of Israel's war, the UN says.

Over the weekend, two Toronto synagogues were attacked by gunfire. Several days earlier, another synagogue was hit by around twenty gunshots on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Though the three attacks caused no injuries, many in the Jewish community are demanding concrete action from Prime Minister Mark Carney — not just words of comfort that have typically followed such antisemitic incidents. Carney took to X saying that the "antisemitic and criminal attacks violate the right of Canadian Jewish men and women to live and pray in complete safety" and "represent a serious assault on the way of life of all Canadians." ISRAELI MINISTER WARNS CANADA IS 'MARCHING TOWARD THE ABYSS' AFTER JEWISH MAN ATTACKED IN FRONT OF CHILDREN In the aftermath of the first synagogue attack, Israel's National Security Council warned Israelis overseas to "maintain vigilance and adhere to safety precautions." Among their suggestions were for Israelis to "conceal Jewish and Israeli identifiers while in public spaces," to be aware of surroundings "in areas associated with Israel or Judaism," and to "avoid visiting sites identified as Jewish or Israeli." On X, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that "all eyes are on Canada: it’s time to halt the unprecedented wave of Jew-hatred that has erupted since October 7th." Like many Western countries, Canada has seen a marked rise in annual antisemitic incidents since the Hamas terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The League for Human Rights B’nai Brith Canada found that there were 6,219 incidents of antisemitism in Canada in 2024. This constituted an average of 17 incidents per day, more than double the eight incidents per day calculated in 2022. CANADA’S ANTISEMITISM ENVOY RESIGNS, CITING EXHAUSTION AMID HATE SURGE While figures for 2025 have yet to be released, Public Safety Canada noted that from April to June 2025, "Among hate crimes targeting religion… the majority were directed at the Jewish community (69%)." Conservative MP Roman Baber, said the behavior of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and other liberal Canadian politicians have been "adding fuel to the fire of Jew hatred in Canada." Baber aimed further criticism at Carney, saying, "When the Prime Minister on the campaign trail says he knows there is genocide in Gaza, he engages in Jew hatred." Baber was referring to an event in April 2025 during which a heckler yelled over a bustling crowd that "there is a genocide happening in Gaza." Carney responded, "I’m aware, that’s why we have an arms embargo." SKYROCKETING ANTISEMITISM IN CANADA SPARKS CONCERN FOR COUNTRY'S JEWS AHEAD OF ELECTION Carney later said that he did not hear the heckler use the term "genocide." Baber noted that "when the Prime Minister recognized the Palestinian state, he rewarded the brutality of Hamas, and he did so on the eve of Rosh Hashanah." In his announcement, released the day prior to the Jewish holiday, Carney claimed that recognizing "the State of Palestine, led by the Palestinian Authority, empowers those who seek peaceful coexistence and the end of Hamas ," and "in no way legitimizes terrorism, nor is it any reward for it." He also claimed recognition "in no way compromises Canada’s steadfast support for the State of Israel, its people, and their security." Watchdog organization StopAntisemitism told Fox News Digital that "every day we are seeing painful reminders that antisemitism remains a real and dangerous threat. Acts of violence meant to intimidate or silence our community will not succeed. Loud and proud Jews will not allow hatred or fear to deter our Jewish way of life or our presence in the world. Not in Canada , in the United States, in Europe, and certainly not in Israel." StopAntisemitism called for the perpetrators to "be punished to the fullest extent of the law so that justice is served and deterrence is clear."

A suspected retaliatory drone attack by pro-Iranian militias struck a major U.S. diplomatic facility in Baghdad on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper said the strike hit the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, and no injuries were immediately reported. Six drones were launched toward the compound, five of which were shot down. The Post, citing a security official and a State Department alert, reported one drone struck near a guard tower and people at the facility were instructed to "duck and cover." GULF STATES INTERCEPT HUNDREDS OF IRANIAN MISSILES AND DRONES, ISSUE JOINT CONDEMNATION WITH US "Accountability is ongoing," the alert said. Iraq’s ministry of defense condemned the drone and missile attacks targeting the Martyr Muhammad Alaa Air Base and the Martyr Ali Fallah Air Base in a post on X but did not mention the hit on the U.S. facility or Iran directly. "In response to these sinful aggressions, the Ministry wishes to clarify and confirm the following facts: These air bases are fully sovereign and Iraqi, subject entirely to the authority of the state and the law, and there is no representation of any foreign forces in them under any designation," the government account wrote. The security official told The Washington Post the attack was likely conducted by militias affiliated with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose umbrella group of Iran-aligned Shiite armed factions that have claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces in the region. US EMBASSY STRUCK BY DRONES IN SAUDI ARABIA AS AMERICANS INSTRUCTED TO SHELTER IN PLACE At the start of Operation Epic Fury, the State Department had urged Americans to depart immediately from more than a dozen countries across the Middle East, warning of "serious safety risks" as the Iran war intensified. Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said on March 2 that U.S. citizens should leave Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia , Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The department said Americans who need help arranging departure via commercial means can contact the State Department 24/7 at +1-202-501-4444 from abroad or +1-888-407-4747 from the U.S. and Canada. IRAN PROXIES WAGE WAR ON ISRAEL, THREATEN US INTERESTS AS IRAQ SLAMMED FOR NOT DISARMING THEM Officials warned conditions in the region remain volatile, and security situations could change quickly as fighting tied to the conflict continues. At least nine U.S. missions, including Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and Israel, issued repeated shelter-in-place directives or advisories at the outset of Iran’s retaliatory attacks against U.S. forces and Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a "state sponsor of wrongful detention," accusing the Taliban of "unjustly" detaining Americans and other foreign nationals. In his announcement on Monday, Rubio said the Taliban continues to use "terrorist tactics" that he insisted "need to end." "I am designating Afghanistan as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention," Rubio said in a statement. "The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end." The secretary also called on the terror group to free a pair of Americans who are "unjustly detained" in Afghanistan. IRAN REGIME CITED AS TRUMP ADMIN SET TO DESIGNATE SUDAN'S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERROR GROUP "It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals," he said. "The Taliban needs to release Dennis Coyle, Mahmoud Habibi, and all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan now and commit to cease the practice of hostage diplomacy forever." Coyle, 64, was detained more than a year ago without charges by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to his family, noting that he still has not been charged. His family said he was legally working to support Afghan language communities as an academic researcher. Habibi, a 38-year-old American citizen who was born in Afghanistan, was taken along with his driver from their vehicle in the capital of Kabul in August 2022 by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to the State Department. The FBI said Habibi was previously Afghanistan’s director of civil aviation and worked for the Kabul-based telecommunications company Asia Consultancy Group. The FBI said the Taliban detained 29 other employees of the company but has released most of them. Habibi has not been heard from since his arrest, and the Taliban has not disclosed his whereabouts or condition, according to the State Department and FBI. The Taliban has previously denied it detained Habibi. The U.S. is also calling for the return of the remains of Paul Overby, an author who was last seen close to Afghanistan's border with Pakistan in 2014, according to Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the situation. The State Department could restrict the use of U.S. passports for travel to Afghanistan if the Taliban does not meet the U.S. government's demands, the sources told the outlet. A passport restriction of this kind is currently only in place for North Korea. The Taliban called the decision by Rubio to designate Afghanistan a "state sponsor of wrongful detention" regrettable, adding that it wanted to resolve the matter through dialogue. STATE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS 'PROACTIVE' EVACUATION EFFORTS AGAINST DEMS' CLAIMS OF DIPLOMATIC CHAOS The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country that ended the 20-year war in the region. Rubio gave the "state sponsor of wrongful detention" designation to Iran late last month, just one day before the U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country. He warned that the U.S. could restrict travel to Iran over its detention of U.S. citizens, but there have not been any restrictions yet. "The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions," Rubio said at the time. Reuters contributed to this report.

Accounts from Israeli officials and footage verified by The New York Times show that Iran has targeted Israel with the weapons. Experts say this has exposed civilians to indiscriminate attacks.

British officials told Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Peter Mandelson’s close ties to Jeffrey Epstein before Mr. Mandelson was appointed U.S. ambassador.

Revered cultural icons that have withstood the upheavals of history are being hit hard in the war being waged by Israel and the United States.

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement arm is requesting unfettered access to what is considered to be the most comprehensive government database of people in the United States and their most private information, including sensitive details about individual children, according to six current and former federal officials. It is called the Federal Parent Locator Service, and it’s meant for finding people who owe child support. Granting access to the Department of Homeland Security, the officials said, would violate a federal law that explicitly limits its use to determining and collecting child support payments and a handful of other narrow purposes. But DHS’ ask is being seriously considered within the Department of Health and Human Services, which maintains the database. The database contains the name, address, Social Security number, employer, and salary or wages of every employed person in the country, as well as the equivalent details for anyone listed in state unemployment systems. It exists so that if someone owes child support, the government can pursue them for it even if they’ve changed jobs or moved to another state.  The repository includes these personal details and employment records, updated throughout the year, for all types of people — even those who don’t have any children. Only some who work exclusively in the gig or cash economy, or who are entirely self-employed, might not be listed. The database also names every child in the U.S. who is the subject of a state child support case, including each child’s sex, birthday and Social Security number, as well as family members’ names and relationships. And it identifies when single mothers and kids who receive child support are domestic violence victims — alongside their address.  “This is the most powerful people-finder system that the U.S. government has, and possibly that exists,” said Bethanne Barnes, who from 2019 through October of last year was a data director for the Administration for Children and Families, the subdivision of HHS that oversees the database. Turning the child support data over to Homeland Security “would be disastrous for child support enforcement” and “would ruin the foundation of the child support program,” said Vicki Turetsky, who was commissioner of HHS’ office of child support enforcement from 2009 to 2016. Turetsky said that if this were to happen, many employers, fearful of ICE arrests of their employees or workplace raids, would consider no longer reporting new hires to the government. This in turn would degrade the ability of the system to find parents who owe payments to their kids, she said. State child support agency leaders have been nervously messaging one another about this prospect recently, said Kate Cooper Richardson, the longtime head of Oregon’s child support program who retired in January. State officials have spent decades building trust with employers, Cooper Richardson said, reminding them that submitting their new-hire data to child support authorities is required and that sensitive information about their workers will be used only for child support enforcement and otherwise kept confidential. Some business leaders have already reached out to state administrators, she said, concerned about rumors of President Donald Trump’s administration seeking to use this data for immigration enforcement. “And if we’re not learning from employers when a parent who owes child support gets a new job, who loses in that situation?” Cooper Richardson said. “The 1 in 5 U.S. children who rely on consistent and regular child support.” A White House spokesperson said in a statement that “the entire Trump administration is working to lawfully implement the President’s agenda to put Americans first. Any sensitive information required to do so will be obtained and handled properly.” A DHS representative requested additional time to respond to detailed questions sent by email, which ProPublica agreed to, but DHS did not provide any responses. Last year, Department of Government Efficiency appointees sought and for a brief period gained access to the National Directory of New Hires, the part of the child support database that contains people’s employment information. It is unclear what, if anything, the DOGE team did with this data; the federal courts temporarily blocked it from continuing to access Social Security, IRS and other sensitive records, and then DOGE disbanded last summer before final rulings on the legality of its efforts had been made.  Over the past month, though, three officials said, DHS has separately and expressly requested both the new-hire data and also the Federal Case Registry, the other half of the database where the catalog of all child support cases is housed. This has the much more sensitive specifics on families and children, including information on paternity, domestic violence and more. It is unclear why DHS would want this, given that locating undocumented immigrants at their places of work or targeting those businesses for raids would be possible using just the employment data, without all of the case registry’s additional personal details. Whatever DHS’ intentions might be, multiple officials and privacy experts interviewed for this story expressed concern that abusers in the ranks of law enforcement would soon be able to see their victims’ case information and addresses, and that a manifest of vulnerable children would become widely available in the government. Read More The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security The Department of Health and Human Services general counsel’s office, which is run by a Trump political official, must now decide whether it believes federal law allows the agency to provide DHS with the full child support database. Child support staff strongly oppose doing this, but the request is now with the lawyers, people familiar with the situation said. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may also have to approve the data sharing. If it’s approved, the department is likely to be sued by legal advocacy groups almost immediately, lawyers and experts said. HHS did not respond to a request for comment. Internal emails show that HHS’ Administration for Children and Families last year was also directed to cross-check all of its other datasets — on families who interact with child care, foster care , Head Start and other systems — against DHS immigration records. The Trump administration has expanded a DHS tool called SAVE to allow federal and state agencies to check the citizenship of millions of people at once, including those who rely on public assistance programs like these. (Also using this tool, the administration has consistently inaccurately flagged citizens as noncitizens on state voter rolls, ProPublica has reported.) In DHS’ efforts to gather data from other agencies, the department has argued that several U.S. statutes allow federal law enforcement to obtain information without a warrant from any government agency pertaining to the identity and location of people living in the country illegally, especially if national security is at stake. In DHS’ view, these statutes should overrule all others, even a law that would seem to bar the department from obtaining an entire database of sensitive information about children unrelated to immigration. Congress has previously permitted a handful of exceptions that allow certain agencies to access parts of the child support data archive. That includes using it in limited ways to help manage custody and visitation cases, to pursue people who have federal student loan debt and to check the incomes of those who apply for means-tested government programs, like housing assistance.  Maya Bernstein has overseen federal data privacy policies for over three decades, starting during the first Bush administration. In the 1990s, she helped lead the work on the creation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the medical records privacy law, before serving 20 years as the senior adviser for privacy policy at HHS. “I know a lot about a lot of different databases,” she said, and the child support database is “the one that I’m most worried about.” “It is very unusual for them to want the Federal Case Registry,” Bernstein added, referring to the part of the database with children’s case information. “In my career, no one has asked for access to that. Most people have never even heard of it.” The post DHS Seeks Access to Massive Employment, Salary and Family Database Legally Restricted to Use in Child Support Cases appeared first on ProPublica .

Images from the missile strike in southern Iran were more horrifying than any of the case studies Air Force combat veteran Wes J. Bryant had pored over in his mission to overhaul how the U.S. military safeguards civilian life. Parents wept over their children’s bodies. Crushed desks and blood-stained backpacks poked through the rubble. The death toll from the attack on an elementary school in Minab climbed past 165, most of them under age 12, with nearly 100 others wounded, according to Iranian health officials. Photos of small coffins and rows of fresh graves went viral, a devastating emblem of Day 1 in the open-ended U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Bryant, a former special operations targeting specialist, said he couldn’t help but think of what-ifs as he monitored fallout from the Feb. 28 attack. Just over a year ago, he had been a senior adviser in an ambitious new Defense Department program aimed at reducing civilian harm during operations. Finally, Bryant said, the military was getting serious about reforms. He worked out of a newly opened Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, where his supervisor was a veteran strike-team targeter who had served as a United Nations war crimes investigator. Today, that momentum is gone. Bryant was forced out of government in cuts last spring. The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades. Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability. Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Bryant said. “There’s zero accountability.” Citing open-source intelligence and government officials, several news outlets have concluded that the strike in Minab most likely was carried out by the United States. President Donald Trump, without providing evidence, told reporters March 7 that it was “done by Iran.” Hegseth, standing next to the president aboard Air Force One, said the matter was under investigation. The next day, the open-source research outfit Bellingcat said it had authenticated a video showing a Tomahawk missile strike next to the school in Minab. Iranian state media later showed fragments of a U.S.-made Tomahawk, as identified by Bellingcat and others, at the site. The United States is the only party to the conflict known to possess Tomahawks. U.N. human rights experts have called for an investigation into whether the attack violated international law. The Department of Defense and White House did not respond to requests for comment. Since the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, successive U.S. administrations have faced controversies over civilian deaths . Defense officials eager to shed the legacy of the “forever wars” have periodically called for better protections for civilians, but there was no standardized framework until 2022, when Biden-era leaders adopted a strategy rooted in work that had begun under the first Trump presidency. Formalized in a 2022 action plan and in a Defense Department instruction , the initiatives are known collectively as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, a clunky name often shortened to CHMR and pronounced “chimmer.” Around 200 personnel were assigned to the mission, including roughly 30 at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a coordination hub near the Pentagon. The CHMR strategy calls for more in-depth planning before an attack, such as real-time mapping of the civilian presence in an area and in-depth analysis of the risks. After an operation, reports of harm to noncombatants would prompt an assessment or investigation to figure out what went wrong and then incorporate those lessons into training. By the time Trump returned to power, harm-mitigation teams were embedded with regional commands and special operations leadership. During Senate confirmation hearings, several Trump nominees for top defense posts voiced support for the mission. Once in office, however, they stood by as the program was gutted, current and former national security officials said. Around 90% of the CHMR mission is gone, former personnel said, with no more than a single adviser now at most commands. At Central Command, where a 10-person team was cut to one, “a handful” of the eliminated positions were backfilled to help with the Iran campaign. Defense officials can’t formally close the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence without congressional approval, but Bryant and others say it now exists mostly on paper. “It has no mission or mandate or budget,” Bryant said. Spike in Strikes Global conflict monitors have since recorded a dramatic increase in deadly U.S. military operations. Even before the Iran campaign, the number of strikes worldwide since Trump returned to office had surpassed the total from all four years of Joe Biden’s presidency. Had the Defense Department’s harm-reduction mission continued apace, current and former officials say, the policies almost certainly would’ve reduced the number of noncombatants harmed over the past year. Beyond the moral considerations, they added, civilian casualties fuel militant recruiting and hinder intelligence-gathering. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, explains the risk in an equation he calls “ insurgent math ”: For every innocent killed, at least 10 new enemies are created. U.S.-Israeli strikes have already killed more than 1,200 civilians in Iran, including nearly 200 children, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency , a U.S.-based group that verifies casualties through a network in Iran. The group says hundreds more deaths are under review, a difficult process given Iran’s internet blackout and dangerous conditions. A mourner holds a portrait of students during a funeral held after a school in Iran’s Hormozgan province was bombed. Thousands attended the ceremony. Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images Defense analysts say the civilian toll of the Iran campaign, on top of dozens of recent noncombatant casualties in Yemen and Somalia, reopens dark chapters from the “war on terror” that had prompted reforms in the first place. “It’s a recipe for disaster,” a senior counterterrorism official who left the government a few months ago said of the Trump administration’s yearlong bombing spree. “It’s ‘Groundhog Day’ — every day we’re just killing people and making more enemies.” In 2015, two dozen patients and 14 staff members were killed when a heavily armed U.S. gunship fired for over an hour on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Afghanistan, a disaster that has become a cautionary tale for military planners. “Our patients burned in their beds, our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building,” the international aid group said in a report about the destruction of its trauma center in Kunduz. A U.S. military investigation found that multiple human and systems errors had resulted in the strike team mistaking the building for a Taliban target. The Obama administration apologized and offered payouts of $6,000 to families of the dead. Human rights advocates had hoped the Kunduz debacle would force the U.S. military into taking concrete steps to protect civilians during U.S. combat operations. Within a couple years, however, the issue came roaring back with high civilian casualties in U.S.-led efforts to dislodge Islamic State extremists from strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The aftermath of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 42 people. Najim Rahim/AP Images In a single week in March 2017, U.S. operations resulted in three incidents of mass civilian casualties: A drone attack on a mosque in Syria killed around 50; a strike in another part of Syria killed 40 in a school filled with displaced families; and bombing in the Iraqi city of Mosul led to a building collapse that killed more than 100 people taking shelter inside. In heavy U.S. fighting to break Islamic State control over the Syrian city of Raqqa, “military leaders too often lacked a complete picture of conditions on the ground; too often waved off reports of civilian casualties; and too rarely learned any lessons from strikes gone wrong,” according to an analysis by the Pentagon-adjacent Rand Corp. think tank. “Do It Right Now” Under pressure from lawmakers, Trump’s then-Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered a review of civilian casualty protocols . Released in 2019, the review Mattis launched was seen by some advocacy groups as narrow in scope but still a step in the right direction. Yet the issue soon dropped from national discourse, overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and landmark racial justice protests. During the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, a missile strike in Kabul killed an aid worker and nine of his relatives, including seven children. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized and said the department would “endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.” That incident, along with a New York Times investigative series into deaths from U.S. airstrikes, spurred the adoption of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response action plan in 2022. When they established the new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence the next year, defense officials tapped Michael McNerney — the lead author of the blunt RAND report — to be its director. “The strike against the aid worker and his family in Kabul pushed Austin to say, ‘Do it right now,’” Bryant said. The first harm-mitigation teams were assigned to leaders in charge of some of the military’s most sensitive counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations: Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida; the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. A former CHMR adviser who joined in 2024 after a career in international conflict work said he was reassured to find a serious campaign with a $7 million budget and deep expertise. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Only a few years before, he recalled, he’d had to plead with the Pentagon to pay attention. “It was like a back-of-the-envelope thing — the cost of a Hellfire missile and the cost of hiring people to work on this.” Bryant became the de facto liaison between the harm-mitigation team and special operations commanders. In December, he described the experience in detail in a private briefing for aides of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who had sought information on civilian casualty protocols involving boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea. Bryant’s notes from the briefing, reviewed by ProPublica, describe an embrace of the CHMR mission by Adm. Frank Bradley, who at the time was head of the Joint Special Operations Command. In October, Bradley was promoted to lead Special Operations Command. At the end of 2024 and into early 2025, Bryant worked closely with the commander’s staff. The notes describe Bradley as “incredibly supportive” of the three-person CHMR team embedded in his command. Bradley, Bryant wrote, directed “comprehensive lookbacks” on civilian casualties in errant strikes and used the findings to mandate changes. He also introduced training on how to integrate harm prevention and international law into operations against high-value targets. “We viewed Bradley as a model,” Bryant said. Still, the military remained slow to offer compensation to victims and some of the new policies were difficult to independently monitor, according to a report by the Stimson Center , a foreign policy think tank. The CHMR program also faced opposition from critics who say civilian protections are already baked into laws of war and targeting protocols; the argument is that extra oversight “could have a chilling effect” on commanders’ abilities to quickly tailor operations. To keep reforms on track, Bryant said, CHMR advisers would have to break through a culture of denial among leaders who pride themselves on precision and moral authority. “The initial gut response of all commands,” Bryant said, “is: ‘No, we didn’t kill civilians.’” Reforms Unraveled As the Trump administration returned to the White House pledging deep cuts across the federal government, military and political leaders scrambled to preserve the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response framework. At first, CHMR advisers were heartened by Senate confirmation hearings where Trump’s nominees for senior defense posts affirmed support for civilian protections. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote during his confirmation that commanders “see positive impacts from the program.” Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, wrote that it’s in the national interest to “seek to reduce civilian harm to the degree possible.” When questioned about cuts to the CHMR mission at a hearing last summer, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, said he was committed to integrating the ideas as “part of our culture.” Despite the top-level support , current and former officials say, the CHMR mission didn’t stand a chance under Hegseth’s signature lethality doctrine. The former Fox News personality, who served as an Army National Guard infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, disdains rules of engagement and other guardrails as constraining to the “warrior ethos.” He has defended U.S. troops accused of war crimes , including a Navy SEAL charged with stabbing an imprisoned teenage militant to death and then posing for a photo with the corpse. A month after taking charge, Hegseth fired the military’s top judge advocate generals, known as JAGs, who provide guidance to keep operations in line with U.S. or international law. Hegseth has described the attorneys as “roadblocks” and used the term “jagoff.” At the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, the staff tried in vain to save the program. At one point, Bryant said, he even floated the idea of renaming it the “Center for Precision Warfare” to put the mission in terms Hegseth wouldn’t consider “woke.” By late February 2025, the CHMR mission was imploding, say current and former defense personnel. Shortly before his job was eliminated, Bryant openly spoke out against the cuts in The Washington Post and Boston Globe , which he said landed him in deep trouble at the Pentagon. He was placed on leave in March, his security clearance at risk of revocation. Bryant formally resigned in September and has since become a vocal critic of the administration’s defense policies. In columns and on TV, he warns that Hegseth’s cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and civilian protections is corroding military professionalism. Bryant said it was hard to watch Bradley, the special operations commander and enthusiastic adopter of CHMR, defending a controversial “double-tap” on an alleged drug boat in which survivors of a first strike were killed in a follow-up hit. Legal experts have said such strikes could violate laws of warfare. Bradley did not respond to a request for comment. “Everything else starts slipping when you have this culture of higher tolerance for civilian casualties,” Bryant said. Concerns were renewed in early 2025 with the Trump administration’s revived counterterrorism campaign against Islamist militants regrouping in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Last April, a U.S. air strike hit a migrant detention center in northwestern Yemen, killing at least 61 African migrants and injuring dozens of others in what Amnesty International says “qualifies as an indiscriminate attack and should be investigated as a war crime.” Operations in Somalia also have become more lethal. In 2024, Biden’s last year in office, conflict monitors recorded 21 strikes in Somalia, with a combined death toll of 189. In year one of Trump’s second term, the U.S. carried out at least 125 strikes, with reported fatalities as high as 359, according to the New America think tank , which monitors counterterrorism operations. “It is a strategy focused primarily on killing people,” said Alexander Palmer, a terrorism researcher at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Last September, the U.S. military announced an attack in northeastern Somalia targeting a weapons dealer for the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. On the ground, however, villagers said the missile strike incinerated Omar Abdullahi, a respected elder nicknamed “Omar Peacemaker” for his role as a clan mediator. After the death, the U.S. military released no details, citing operational security. “The U.S. killed an innocent man without proof or remorse,” Abdullahi’s brother, Ali, told Somali news outlets. “He preached peace, not war. Now his blood stains our soil.” In Iran, former personnel say, the CHMR mission could have made a difference. Under the scrapped harm-prevention framework, they said, plans for civilian protection would’ve begun months ago, when orders to draw up a potential Iran campaign likely came down from the White House and Pentagon. CHMR personnel across commands would immediately begin a detailed mapping of what planners call “the civilian environment,” in this case a picture of the infrastructure and movements of ordinary Iranians. They would also check and update the “no-strike list,” which names civilian targets such as schools and hospitals that are strictly off-limits. One key question is whether the school was on the no-strike list. It sits a few yards from a naval base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The building was formerly part of the base, though it has been marked on maps as a school since at least 2013, according to visual forensics investigations. “Whoever ‘hits the button’ on a Tomahawk — they’re part of a system,” the former adviser said. “What you want is for that person to feel really confident that when they hit that button, they’re not going to hit schoolchildren.” If the guardrails failed and the Defense Department faced a disaster like the school strike, Bryant said, CHMR advisers would’ve jumped in to help with transparent public statements and an immediate inquiry. Instead, he called the Trump administration’s response to the attack “shameful.” “It’s back to where we were years ago,” Bryant said. If confirmed, “this will go down as one of the most egregious failures in targeting and civilian harm-mitigation in modern U.S. history.” The post The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. appeared first on ProPublica .

Rebecca Sheppard specializes in untangling other people’s financial messes. But for nearly a year, the Colorado accountant has been unable to fix a glaring error on her own credit report.  Her credit score plunged roughly 85 points because of a $240,000 student loan debt she does not owe. She repeatedly asked the nation’s big three credit reporting companies to correct the mistake, submitting documentation showing the debt belonged to her ex-husband. Even the loan’s account manager confirmed she wasn’t responsible. Still, the credit bureaus refused to remove it, jeopardizing her plans to move with her disabled father into a more accessible home. “There’s no way in the world I could qualify for the purchase,” she said. Sheppard should have been able to count on the federal government to pressure the credit bureaus to take her dispute seriously. For years, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wielded the threat of fines and lawsuits to make companies fix errors and engage with consumers. Under the Biden administration, a rigorous supporter of the agency, consumers’ rates of relief for such complaints rose to about 10 times as high as in 2020. But Sheppard needed help under the Trump administration, which has drastically curtailed the CFPB’s mission, including its policing of credit bureaus. With the agency weakened, two of the three major credit bureaus, TransUnion and Experian, have sharply reduced the share of consumer complaints they resolved in customers’ favor, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal complaint data. TransUnion’s relief rate, which had remained relatively steady for several years, began plunging in the summer of 2025. By October it was providing relief roughly half as often. Note: Credit reporting agencies can close complaints in customers’ favor by providing financial or nonmonetary relief, such as changing information on a credit report. Otherwise, complaints are generally closed with an explanation. Complaints are shown in the month the CFPB received the complaint. Companies have up to 60 days to provide a final response. Data as of Feb. 23, 2026. Source: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Joel Jacobs/ProPublica Experian’s drop was even more dramatic. The company resolved nearly 20% of complaints in consumers’ favor in 2024. Last year, that figure fell to less than 1%. Joel Jacobs/ProPublica The third major bureau, Equifax, did not show a similar decline. Just days before President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the company entered into a consent order with the CFPB over deficient dispute and investigation practices. Under the agreement, the company committed to reforms and ongoing oversight. Equifax’s consumer relief mostly kept up with complaints. Joel Jacobs/ProPublica The timing of the drops at TransUnion and Experian coincides with the Trump administration’s dismantling of the CFPB. In February 2025, Russell Vought, a White House official who oversaw sweeping cuts across federal agencies , took control of the CFPB as acting director. He quickly ordered a stop to  nearly all agency work. Under his leadership, the CFPB has attempted to fire most of its staff, frozen investigations and dropped enforcement actions, including against TransUnion. One of the CFPB’s new lawyers leading the pullback on enforcement represented Experian for years before joining the administration. The credit bureaus “want to do as little as possible,” said Chi Chi Wu, director of consumer reporting at the National Consumer Law Center, which is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that has so far blocked some of the administration’s dismantling efforts. “The thing that is making them do any kind of effort is a lawsuit or a regulator, and now we don’t have the regulator,” Wu said.  In statements to ProPublica, the credit bureaus said that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. Experian said in a statement that some of those companies “mislead consumers into believing they can remove accurate information,” adding that it investigates “all legitimate” complaints. The company did not respond to specific questions about its decline in relief. Third parties are allowed to submit complaints on behalf of consumers if they disclose their involvement and get permission. Federal regulators have acknowledged that bad actors exist, but the CFPB and a House subcommittee found that the credit bureaus’ systems for identifying third-party involvement were overly broad and dismissed legitimate concerns. Asked about the decline in relief, TransUnion said it recently changed its processes to handle third-party complaints and now redirects those with insufficient documentation to “a more appropriate” internal channel for review. For years, the CFPB’s complaint system has served as a public middleman: forwarding consumer issues to the bureaus, requiring responses and publishing data showing how companies handled them.  But the companies have successfully lobbied the Trump administration to start steering some consumers away from the transparent process and toward their internal systems.  A CFPB spokesperson said the complaint system was inundated with submissions from bots and third-party credit repair firms, and the agency was working to address that so legitimate consumers can more effectively get help. The agency did not respond to written questions about the decline in relief or enforcement. How many consumers get help — or don’t — when using the credit bureaus’ internal systems is not public. But CFPB data shows that since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, more than 2.7 million credit reporting complaints submitted to the CFPB have gone without relief, leaving some people at risk of being denied loans, housing or employment and subject to higher rates from insurers and lenders.  One anonymized complaint came from a Texan who said a fraudulent account remained on their credit report despite their disputes. “I have an important deal that I need to complete that is important for the safety and survival of my family,” the person wrote. CFPB records show that Equifax provided relief, while TransUnion and Experian did not. Also among those who complained was an Air Force veteran and elections organizer in Arkansas who said the bureaus refused to restore his erroneously deleted mortgage history. ProPublica interviewed the man, Kwami Abdul-Bey, who said the error left him unable to refinance his home or car even after going to multiple lenders. “Each time they tell me that I do not have enough years of credit. I was paying on that mortgage for a decade before that trade line disappeared,” he said.  After ProPublica contacted his mortgage servicer, Wells Fargo, the company reached out to Abdul-Bey to apologize for his situation and said it would investigate. Equifax and Experian did not reply to questions about individual consumers who filed complaints. TransUnion declined to comment on individual situations but said in a statement that the company “has multiple resources available to consumers to help with every step of the dispute process.” Everyday Americans cannot opt out of having their financial data collected and sold by credit bureaus. Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act in 1970, giving consumers the right to flag errors. But more recently, the credit bureaus have employed a limited number of workers — often overseas — to handle enormous volumes of investigations.  TransUnion, for example, had 171 workers responding to consumer disputes covering 38 million line items in 2021. A TransUnion spokesperson said in an email that the company has since added staffing but would not provide a number. “These ‘investigators,’ they have a stack of disputes like a mile high that they have to go through every day,” said Liam Hayden, a Chicago attorney who has represented consumers in credit reporting cases. “A real, authentic investigation costs money.”  After the 2008 financial crisis, Congress created the CFPB to protect Americans from unfair and abusive practices. By 2015, the big three credit bureaus had become the most complained about firms in the agency’s complaint system. Credit Reporting Complaints About the Three Major Credit Bureaus Have Surged in Recent Years Complaints about Equifax, TransUnion and Experian vastly outnumber all other complaints, for matters such as credit cards, loans or debt collection. Source: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Joel Jacobs/ProPublica In 2022, identifying a lack of responsiveness by the credit bureaus to consumer issues, the CFPB released a critical report , alongside guidance on how the companies should address “shoddy investigation practices.” Over the next few years, relief rates rose as the companies provided more individualized responses to complaints filed through the agency. Announcements on the CFPB’s website show the agency has brought a dozen enforcement actions against consumer reporting companies since 2015. Just days before Trump took office, the CFPB announced an enforcement action against Equifax. The company settled , agreeing to pay $15 million and operate under a legally binding consent order designed to fix its dispute process.  Among the reforms, the company agreed to improve its web interface for submitting disputes, avoid relying on faulty information from creditors and not automatically dismiss repeated concerns from the same consumer. The agreement did not specifically mention the company’s handling of CFPB complaints. Equifax was given about a year to put many of the changes in place and has to remain compliant for five years after. ProPublica found that the agency had approved a similar action against TransUnion in July 2024, but it was never brought. Settlement talks ended shortly after the change in administration.  “Given recent changes in CFPB leadership, our engagement with the agency on this matter has paused,” TransUnion wrote in a February 2025 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. “We cannot provide an estimate of when, or if, such engagement will resume.” That month, the CFPB dropped a lawsuit against TransUnion and a former company executive over alleged deceptive practices. TransUnion denied the allegations, calling them “meritless.” The CFPB later ended an agreement meant to fix the company’s failure to promptly place and remove credit freezes. The CFPB sued Experian shortly before the administration changed, alleging failures in its dispute handling processes. Experian has denied the allegations in court, called the suit “completely without merit” and said the company investigates “every consumer dispute thoroughly.” The Experian case remains active. A CFPB spokesperson said that Victoria Dorfman, the new senior legal adviser who previously represented Experian, has recused herself from the case.  In a July public comment letter, Experian argued it should not be required to respond to individual CFPB complaints and that the vast majority of those filed recently are illegitimate. The industry’s lobbying arm, the Consumer Data Industry Association, has urged the CFPB to route more consumers away from the complaint system and make the remaining complaints private.  This year, just a week after receiving a letter from the lobbying group, the CFPB added three notices for consumers to click through before filing a public complaint, warning them that their requests might be ignored if they have not already disputed issues directly with credit bureaus — a standard the agency previously said companies cannot reliably verify. In a statement to ProPublica, the CDIA highlighted that a notice instructing consumers to first dispute directly had been present in the CFPB complaint portal briefly around 2012. The new changes are “necessary to address the widespread misuse of the portal” that divert resources away from legitimate concerns, the group said. Sheppard Theo Stroomer for ProPublica But consumer advocates contend that the industry-friendly changes present even more obstacles for consumers like Sheppard who are trying to get their issues resolved. She twice disputed the student loan error directly with the bureaus. Then in June, she turned to the CFPB. All three responded that they had verified that the debt was hers without addressing documentation she provided to the contrary. In December, she sent another dispute by certified mail, but TransUnion replied with a postcard stating it believed the submission had not come from her. In response to Sheppard’s fourth attempt to get TransUnion to fix an error on her credit report, the company sent her a postcard saying that it did not believe the request came from her. Rebecca Sheppard “They didn’t even try,” Sheppard said. “The fact that they sent that little postcard was just ridiculous.” TransUnion did not provide a response regarding Sheppard’s situation but said in a statement that it “cannot change information furnished to us absent sufficient documentation and clear instruction from the consumer.” In her mailed dispute, Sheppard included a letter she received from the loan account manager stating that she was not responsible for the debt.  With no other options, Sheppard sued the three credit bureaus in January. The companies have not yet responded in court. Without a functioning CFPB, enforcement may fall to state attorneys general and private lawsuits. The Federal Trade Commission can bring cases but lacks the authority to conduct routine supervision. A future without a CFPB will leave consumers increasingly trapped, said Hayden, the Chicago attorney. “In five years, the resolution of consumer disputes is going to be worse, credit reports are going to be worse and it’s going to be harder for folks to fix them, guaranteed.” The post Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers’ Reports Under Trump’s CFPB appeared first on ProPublica .

Iran cannot take part in the 2026 World Cup after co-host the United States launched air strikes against the country alongside Israel, killing its leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sports minister Ahmad Donyamali said on Wednesday. The US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran almost two weeks ago, killing the Islamic Republic’s ‌supreme leader, leading to a region-wide conflict in the Gulf. “Considering that this corrupt regime has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we...

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Amid fears the conflict will strengthen Russia, Ursula von der Leyen’s embrace of US-backed regime change already looks like a doomed strategy • Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The message from Ursula von der Leyen was blunt. “Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”. In a major foreign policy speech this week, the European Commission president said the EU would always “defend and uphold the rules-based system” but in a precarious and chaotic world, that could no longer be relied upon. On the day she spoke, missiles were raining down on Tehran and southern Iran as the war entered its 10th day, proving her point. Reverberating around Europe, the Middle East conflict has triggered a range of responses. France is sending a dozen naval vessels to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. EU officials convened an ad-hoc summit with Middle Eastern leaders in a show of solidarity with the region. EU humanitarian aid for Lebanon is being dispatched to help 130,000 people, after at least half a million were displaced by Israeli bombs and evacuation orders . Continue reading...

Judges uphold decision to dismiss case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh for allegedly displaying Hezbollah flag at gig The Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh will not face a terrorism charge over allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a gig after the high court in London upheld a decision to throw out the case. Ó hAnnaidh, 28, who performs under the name Mo Chara, had been charged with the offence for allegedly displaying the flag of the proscribed group during a performance at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north London, in November 2024. Continue reading...

Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under president Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts. By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law. Continue reading...