News from Multiple Perspectives

If Warner’s board changes course and deems Paramount’s latest offer superior, Netflix will be able to revise its bid.

Generations of refugees in Aden endure poverty, lack identity, and cling to fading memories of Somalia's distant shores.

Ex-UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson was arrested for alleged misconduct tied to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner gives a news conference marking the 250th birthday of the U.S. in 2026, in Paris, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) 2026-02-24T08:26:57Z PARIS (AP) — France’s spat with the U.S. ambassador to Paris took another turn Tuesday with the French foreign minister saying the top U.S. diplomat in France must respond to a summons and won’t have access to French government officials until he complies. French authorities had summoned Ambassador Charles Kushner — the father of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner — for a meeting on Monday evening over comments from the Trump administration that France objected to. French diplomats said Kushner did not show up. Speaking Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot described the failure to attend the meeting as “a surprise” that flew in the face of diplomatic protocol and will dent Charles Kushner’s ability to serve as an ambassador. “It will, naturally, affect his capacity to exercise his mission in our country,” Barrot said, speaking to public broadcaster France Info. 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); }); He said that Kushner “is bringing difficulties on himself. Because for an ambassador to be able to do his job he needs access to members of the government. That’s the basics.” “When these explanations have taken place, then the U.S. ambassador in France will, naturally, regain access to members of the French government,” the minister said. The U.S. Embassy did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment on Monday and a follow-up request on Tuesday morning also got no immediate reply. France’s foreign ministry had summoned Kushner over Trump administration tweets relating to the beating death in France of a far-right activist , Quentin Deranque. The 23-year-old student, described as a fervent nationalist, was beaten by a group of people earlier this month in the city of Lyon, in fighting that erupted between far-left and far-right activists. He later died of brain injuries. In a post last week on X, the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau said “violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety.” The U.S. Embassy in Paris posted the same statement, in French. Barrot said France needs to discuss the comments with Kushner. “We must have an explanation with him,” Barrot said. “We don’t accept that foreign countries can come and interfere, invite themselves, into the national political debate.” 获取更多RSS： https://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, centre, is welcomed by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife Olena Zelenska, left, before a service at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP) 2026-02-24T08:56:11Z KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — More than a dozen senior European officials arrived in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday in a show of support on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine — a grim anniversary in a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and put European leaders on edge about the scale of Moscow’s ambitions on the continent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country has withstood the onslaught by Russia’s bigger and better equipped army, which over the past year of fighting captured just 0.79% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. “Looking back at the beginning of the invasion and reflecting on today, we have every right to say: we have defended our independence, we have not lost our statehood,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “not achieved his goals.” 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); }); “He has not broken Ukrainians; he has not won this war,” Zelenskyy also said. However, as the corrosive war of attrition enters its fifth year, a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II appears no closer to finding compromises that might make a peace deal possible. Negotiations are stuck on what happens to the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland which Russian forces mostly occupy but have failed to seize completely, and the terms of a postwar security arrangement that Kyiv is demanding to deter any future Russian invasion. The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides could reach 2 million by spring, with Russia sustaining the largest number of troop deaths for any major power in any conflict since World War II, a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated. European leaders see their countries’ own security at stake in Ukraine amid concerns about Putin’s wider goals and has demanded its leaders be consulted in the ongoing U.S.-brokered talks. 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); }); German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X that “for four years, every day and every night has been a nightmare for the Ukrainians — and not just for them, but for us all. Because war is back in Europe.” “We will only end it by being strong together, because the fate of Ukraine is our fate,” he added. The war has drawn in countries far beyond Ukraine, giving the conflict a global dimension , and threatened to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries. While NATO countries have come to Ukraine’s aid, Russia has been helped by North Korea, which has sent troops and artillery shells; Iran, which has provided drone technology; and China, which the United States and analysts say has provided machine tools and chips. Among the European officials visiting Kyiv on Tuesday were the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well as seven prime ministers and three foreign ministers. 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); }); With Ukraine unable to sustain its fight against Russia without foreign help, NATO countries are now providing military help, purchasing American weapons after the Trump administration broke with earlier Washington policy and stopped giving arms to Kyiv. The European Union has also sent financial aid, but has sometimes met with reluctance from members Hungary and Slovakia. British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said Russia’s war on Ukraine was “the most defining conflict” in decades. “I don’t think anyone of us would be able to guess (when the war started) the scale and size of what has taken place,” he said. The cost of rebuilding war-battered Ukraine would amount to almost $588 billion over the next decade, according to World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government. That is nearly three times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for last year, they said in a report Monday. ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine ILLIA NOVIKOV Novikov is an Associated Press reporter covering news in Ukraine since 2022. He is based in Kyiv. instagram mailto

The U .S. Capitol is seen after sunset in Washington, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, ahead of President Donald Trump's State of the Union address. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) 2026-02-24T05:03:36Z WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will use Tuesday’s State of the Union to champion his immigration crackdowns , his slashing of the federal government , his push to preserve widespread tariffs that the Supreme Court just struck down and his ability to direct quick-hit military actions around the world, including in Iran and Venezuela . The Republican hopes he can convince increasingly wary Americans that his policies have improved their lives while ensuring that the U.S. economy is stronger than many believe — and that they should vote for more of the same in November . The balancing act of celebrating his whirlwind first year back in the White House while making a convincing case for his party in midterm races where he personally won’t be on the ballot is a tall order for any president. But it could prove especially delicate for Trump, given how happy he is to veer off script and ignore carefully crafted messaging. 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); }); A main theme will be that the country is booming with a rise in domestic manufacturing and new jobs, despite many Americans not feeling that way. “It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” said Trump, who promised a heavy dose of talk about the economy. The president is also expected to decry the Supreme Court ruling against his signature tariff policies and talk about his attempts to maneuver around that decision without depending on Congress or spooking financial markets. He’s also likely to urge lawmakers to increase military funding and tighten voter identification requirements , while defending immigration operations that have drawn bipartisan criticism following the shooting deaths of two American citizens . Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for Democratic President Bill Clinton, said Trump has typically used State of the Union addresses to offer more conventional tones than his usual bombast — but he’s still apt to exaggerate repeatedly. 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); }); “His job, for the sake of his party, is to show the silver lining,” Shesol said. “But if he’s going to insist that the silver lining is gold, no one’s buying it. And it will be a very difficult position on the campaign trail for Republicans to defend.” Michael Waldman, Clinton’s former chief speechwriter, said second-term presidents “have a tough job because what they all want to say is, ‘Hey, look what a great job I’ve been doing — why don’t you love me?’” Affordability questions loom large No matter what his prepared remarks say, Trump relishes deviating into personal grievances, meaning Tuesday will probably feature topics like denying that he lost the 2020 presidential election . His lack of messaging discipline has been on display after concerns about high costs of living helped propel Democratic wins around the country on Election Day last November . The White House subsequently promised that the president would travel the country nearly every week to reassure Americans he was taking affordability seriously. But Trump has spent more time blaming Democrats and scoffing at the notion that kitchen-table issues demand attention. 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); }); Trump instead boasts of having tamed inflation and says he has the economy humming given that the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently exceeded 50,000 points for the first time. Such gains don’t feel tangible to those without stock portfolios, however. There also are persistent fears that tariffs stoked higher prices , which could eventually hurt the economy and job creation. Economic growth slowed the last three months of last year. Waldman, now president of the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for democracy, civil liberties and fair elections, said previous presidents faced similar instances of “economic disquiet.” That created a question of “how much do you sell vs. feeling the pain of the electorate,” he said. Shesol noted that Trump has “always believed — going back to his real estate days — that he can sell anyone on anything.” “He’s still doing that. But the problem is, you can’t tell somebody who has lost their job and can’t get a new one that things are going great,” Shesol said. “He can’t sell people on a reality that for them, and frankly for most Americans, does not exist.” 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 is potentially politically perilous ahead of November elections that could deliver congressional wins to Democrats, just as 2018’s “blue wave” created a strong check to his administration during his first term. Several Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, plan to skip Tuesday’s speech in protest, instead attending a rally known as the “People’s State of the Union” on Washington’s National Mall. 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); }); Foreign policy in focus Trump’s address comes as two U.S. aircraft carriers have been dispatched to the Middle East amid tensions with Iran. The president will recount how U.S. airstrikes last summer pounded Tehran’s nuclear capabilities , and laud the raid that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Nicolás Maduro , as well as his administration’s brokering of a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. But he also strained U.S. military alliances with NATO , thanks to his push to seize Greenland from Denmark and his failure to take a harder line with Russian President Vladimir Putin in seeking an end to its war in Ukraine . Making any foreign policy feel relevant to Americans back home is never easy. Jennifer Anju Grossman, a former speechwriter for Republican President George H.W. Bush and current CEO of the Atlas Society, which promotes the ideas of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, said Trump can make clear that Maduro’s socialist policies wrecked Venezuela’s economy to the point where one of the world’s richest oil countries struggled to meet its own energy needs. Now, oil from that country will help lower American gas prices. Still, when it comes to overseas developments, she said, “I think it’s going to be a bit of a challenge to make clear why this is relevant to the domestic situation.” WILL WEISSERT Weissert covers the White House for The Associated Press. He is based in Washington. twitter mailto

The rebuttal was followed by news the police chief was resigning a year before the end of his term.

Events were held across Ukraine to mark four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Hundreds of people have been displaced and dozens are missing, with rescue operations still ongoing in Juiz de Fora.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin after 17 men who the government said were "lured" to Russian front lines in its war against Ukraine began returning home. In a statement Tuesday, Ramaphosa’s office said the South African government, working closely with Russian authorities, secured the repatriation of the men after receiving distress calls requesting assistance. The group, ranging in age from 20 to 39, was allegedly recruited into "mercenary activities." The circumstances surrounding their recruitment remain under investigation. US SPECIAL ENVOY WITKOFF ANNOUNCES US, UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN DELEGATIONS AGREED TO PRISONER SWAP Ramaphosa expressed gratitude to Putin for responding positively to his request for help during a Feb. 10 phone call between the two leaders. Four of the men have already returned to South Africa , while 11 are expected to arrive soon. Two remain in Russia — one receiving treatment at a hospital in Moscow and another being processed before finalizing travel arrangements. KENYA DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM RUSSIA OVER RECRUITMENT OF CITIZENS TO FIGHT IN UKRAINE WAR South Africa’s embassy in Moscow is continuing to monitor the hospitalized individual until he is cleared to travel, according to Ramaphosa's office. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in November that Kyiv estimates at least 1,436 foreign nationals from 36 African countries have been recruited to fight for Russia, warning the true number may be higher. AMERICANS WARNED OF AL QAEDA-LINKED TERRORIST PRESENCE IN POPULAR VACATION GETAWAY Sybiha said Russia uses a range of tactics to recruit foreigners, including financial incentives, deception and coercion. "Signing a contract is equivalent to signing a death sentence," he wrote on X. "Foreign citizens in the Russian army have a sad fate. Most of them are immediately sent to the so-called ‘meat assaults,’ where they are quickly killed."

The director of the Louvre Museum in Paris has stepped down, months after thieves stole $102 million in crown jewels in a lightning-fast weekend robbery. Laurence des Cars presented French President Emmanuel Macron with her resignation, which Macron accepted, according to a statement from the presidential office. It said Macron praised her decision as "an act of responsibility at a time when the world’s largest museum needs calm and a strong new impetus to carry out major projects involving security upgrades, modernization" and other projects. Macron thanked des Cars for "her work and commitment," and said he wanted to give her a new mission focused on cooperation among major museums, the statement said, without saying if she had accepted. FOUR MORE ARRESTED IN LOUVRE JEWEL HEIST, AUTHORITIES SAY Des Cars has remained under fire in the wake of the heist, which many critics have labeled a stunning embarrassment . Thieves took less than eight minutes in October to steal priceless crown jewels at the world’s most visited museum in broad daylight. WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS MUSEUM SLAMS DOORS TO VISITORS AS EMPLOYEE REVOLT CONTINUES The thieves left behind Eugénie’s emerald-encrusted crown, which is set with over 1,300 diamonds, along their escape route outside the museum. The crown was damaged but deemed recoverable. Authorities have arrested several suspects in that case, but the seven other priceless treasures, including Eugenie’s diamond-studded tiara, necklaces, earrings and brooches, remain missing. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iran's deputy foreign minister insisted Tuesday that his country will do "whatever it takes" to reach a deal with the U.S. over its nuclear program. The vow from Majid Takht-Ravanchi comes as U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to meet with an Iranian delegation in Geneva Thursday, according to Reuters. "We are ready to reach an agreement as soon as possible. We will do whatever it takes to make this happen. We will enter the negotiating room in Geneva with complete honesty and good faith," Takht-Ravanchi reportedly said. "If there is an attack or aggression against Iran, we will respond according to our defense plans. ... A U.S. attack on Iran is a real gamble." LEAVITT SAYS TRUMP CHOOSES DIPLOMACY FIRST FOR IRAN, BUT REMAINS ‘WILLING TO USE’ LETHAL FORCE IF NECESSARY Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday morning that President Donald Trump’s first option for Iran is "always diplomacy" but that he is "willing to use the lethal force of the United States military if necessary." Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday that "it will be a very bad day" for Iran if the country can’t strike a deal over its nuclear program. WITKOFF WARNS IRAN IS ‘A WEEK AWAY’ FROM ‘BOMB-MAKING MATERIAL’ AS TRUMP WEIGHS ACTION In a series of posts on X, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tuesday, "Pillared on the understandings forged in the previous round, Iran will resume talks with the U.S. in Geneva with a determination to achieve a fair and equitable deal — in the shortest possible time. "Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people. "We have a historic opportunity to strike an unprecedented agreement that addresses mutual concerns and achieves mutual interests. A deal is within reach, but only if diplomacy is given priority," he added. "We have proven that we will stop at nothing to guard our sovereignty with courage. We bring the same courage to the negotiating table, where we will pursue a peaceful resolution to any differences."

Other criminal groups in Mexico may try to take advantage of the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho, who ran the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Russia has lost as many as 325,000 troops, according to some estimates, with more than 200,000 deaths verified by researchers.

Laurence des Cars’s departure is the latest setback for the world’s largest museum. Her tenure was marred by labor strikes, water leaks and security lapses that led to the heist in October.

Should a person be deported because once, a decade and a half ago, they left their toddlers home alone for a half hour to buy them pajamas at Walmart? That’s what the Trump administration is arguing in a little-noticed federal appeals court case being decided in California, with sweeping implications for both the immigration and child welfare systems. A ruling is expected in the coming months. In 2010, Sotero Mendoza-Rivera, an undocumented farmworker who’d immigrated from Mexico 10 years earlier, made a fateful decision. He drove with his girlfriend, Angelica Ortega-Vasquez, to their local Walmart in McMinnville, Oregon, according to a police report. The store was seven minutes from their apartment. In addition to the pajamas, they purchased motor oil and brake fluid for their car. When they got back to the apartment, their 2-year-old son, who’d been in bed asleep when they’d left, had woken up and somehow gotten out the door. A bystander found him by the street outside the complex, baby bottle in hand, and called the police. The responding officer issued Mendoza-Rivera and Ortega-Vasquez a misdemeanor citation, which they resolved with a guilty plea, a fine and probation. The officer stated in his report that the little boy and his 3-year-old sister were healthy and clean, that the apartment was well-kept and stocked with food, and that a neighbor said that the mother was usually home with the kids. The Obama administration then opened deportation proceedings against Mendoza-Rivera, but did not keep him in detention. He appealed, and the case wound its way slowly through the legal system before hitting a backlog at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where some immigration matters from nearly a decade ago are still being decided. But in August, amid the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Mendoza-Rivera and locked him up in another state. And the Department of Justice is now arguing that what he did in 2010 (the current case is against him only) is a crime deserving of immediate removal from the country. A DOJ lawyer argued before a panel of the 9th Circuit in Pasadena, California, last month that it doesn’t matter if no harm to children occurred, saying an immigrant parent should still get deported if their parenting decision involved a “substantial” deviation from a “normal” standard of care for kids. Child welfare officials and experts told ProPublica they are deeply concerned by the case, as well as several others like it that have been making their way through the courts and are now reaching a decisive point. “Imagine what a weapon it would be in ICE’s hands if child welfare is added to all the other areas where a conviction for the most minor offense means deportation,” said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, an advocacy group. Indeed, if Attorney General Pam Bondi’s team wins this case, thousands of immigrant moms and dads could be exposed to deportation for minor involvement in the juvenile court system, a new realm for President Donald Trump’s deportation regime. There aren’t exact numbers as to how many immigrants are accused of low-level parental negligence in juvenile courts. But as ProPublica has previously reported, millions of parents are accused of child neglect every year in this country, in many instances for reasons stemming from poverty like a lack of child care or food in the fridge, rather than physical or sexual abuse. Immigrant parents are no more likely than U.S.-born parents to abuse children. But undocumented parents may be more likely to be accused of certain low-level forms of neglect, according to legal aid attorneys. For one thing, due to their lack of legal status, they sometimes avoid interactions with officials at schools and hospitals, leading to potential allegations against them for neglecting their kids’ health or education. They also disproportionately work long and unpredictable hours, sometimes having their older children look after their younger ones, which in the U.S. can be deemed inadequate supervision. Differing cultural norms regarding how much hands-on supervision is necessary also play a role. There is no evidence yet that ICE has been actively looking for cases like these to identify parents to deport, according to interviews with over a dozen federal and state child welfare officials. But data on specific child welfare cases is reported from states to the federal government annually, via the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. (The data contain identifiers for children but not their names, though state agencies have those.) “The million or so reports in NCANDS would be a gold mine for Noem and Miller,” said Andy Barclay, a longtime child welfare statistician, referring to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and top Trump adviser Stephen Miller. The first Trump administration did not seek to use such data for deportations, according to Jerry Milner, who was appointed to oversee the U.S. child welfare system as head of the federal Children’s Bureau from 2017 to 2021. “I never had any of those discussions around the data,” Milner told ProPublica. “I can’t guarantee that others did not, but they never made it to me.” But, he said, “things are different now.” “I would have strong concerns if any of the data are used for purposes other than what they were intended for,” Milner said. Medicaid data, for instance, is now reportedly being shared with the Department of Homeland Security, and those files can have more identifying information than NCANDS does on families with child welfare cases. DHS has also accessed Office of Refugee Resettlement data on migrant children, which can be used to identify young people’s locations and the (sometimes undocumented) adults taking care of them. Indeed, DHS and FBI agents have visited migrant kids at the homes of their caretakers, ostensibly to perform “welfare checks.” The White House declined to answer questions for this article. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesperson in an email accused the Biden administration of letting Mendoza-Rivera’s case languish and said that “as part of this Administration’s commitment to making America safe again, the Attorney General will continue to defend efforts to remove criminal illegal aliens, especially those convicted of offenses which place children in situations likely to endanger their health or welfare.” The Trump administration’s view, according to the Justice Department’s filings in Mendoza-Rivera’s case, is that undocumented parents convicted of even the most minor forms of parental negligence should be ineligible for a type of legal relief called “cancellation of removal.” (Mendoza-Rivera sought this relief during his initial deportation proceedings, which is part of what spurred the current appeals case.) It’s an off-ramp from deportation that until now has been available to such moms and dads if they’ve been in the U.S. for 10 or more years, they have “good moral character,” and their deportation would cause extreme hardship to their U.S. citizen children. This would apply to Mendoza-Rivera and Ortega-Vasquez’s kids, who are American citizens. One of the main federal laws that the Trump administration has been relying on in its effort to deport millions of people comes from the Bill Clinton era. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act overhauled immigration enforcement in part by stating that noncitizens, even lawful permanent residents, must be expeditiously deported if they’ve been convicted of certain offenses, including aggravated felonies, crimes of “moral turpitude,” drug crimes or domestic violence, or a “crime of child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment.” The motivation for including this sort of language, at the time, was clear. Amid the violent crime wave of the ’90s, the law’s co-author, Bob Dole, said on the Senate floor that the crimes he wanted to make deportable included “vicious acts of stalking, child abuse and sexual abuse.” Yet over the three decades since, societal norms around what constitutes bad — and even criminal — parenting have come to include all sorts of nonviolent and even harmless behavior. A range of parenting practices that were considered normal for most of the 20th century are now investigated and prosecuted as child maltreatment in many states; letting your kids play at the park and walk home alone could be “neglect ,” especially if you’re poor and a person of color . So could leaving them in their car seats briefly with the windows cracked and the car alarm on while you run into a store to buy diapers, or failing to properly secure their bedroom windows at night. Some rulings by other courts have blocked deportations for people with these sorts of alleged parenting lapses, while the federal Board of Immigration Appeals has offered changing guidance on the issue. Immigration advocates fear that the current appeals court proceeding, which groups together several similar cases including Mendoza-Rivera’s, could become hugely influential across the legal system — and with much higher stakes now given the present administration’s enforcement focus. Although the Obama and Biden administrations took similar positions to the Trump administration on this point, in general they didn’t pursue deportations as aggressively. “There was some discretion being exercised,” said David Zimmer, Mendoza-Rivera’s appellate attorney. “So it was at least possible, in a given case, that they might have decided not to pursue removal if the parent hadn’t done anything meaningfully wrong.” That’s no longer the case in a regime that is seeking any reason to expel an immigrant, Zimmer said. This case could be heard by the full 9th Circuit next and then head to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the justices choose to take it up. Much of the debate rests on the question of whether it matters if immigrant parents meant to harm their children, given that intention is part of the definition of most crimes. If the parent both didn’t harm and wasn’t aware they might harm their child, advocates argue, it shouldn’t qualify as a “crime” worthy of deportation. The Oregon misdemeanor negligence statute under which Mendoza-Rivera was convicted doesn’t require proving any intent to harm a child, any actual harm to a child or even exposure of a child to any harm, acknowledged Justice Department lawyer Imran Zaidi at a 9th Circuit hearing in January. But negligence is still a “culpable mental state” deserving of deportation, he said, because it is “incompatible with a proper regard for consequences.” Jed Rakoff, a New York federal district judge serving as a visiting member of the 9th Circuit panel, responded that he’s been hearing this argument since “my first year of torts class.” Negligence, he said, is by definition unconscious; otherwise it would be “recklessness,” which is a different, more serious act involving consciously disregarding potential harm. In the context of these family court cases, it is often just conduct that’s a small deviation from some middle-class “reasonable person’s” — a neighbor’s, a caseworker’s — subjective opinion of what “good” parenting looks like. “I’m talking about the term ‘crime’: What did Congress mean by that single word?” Rakoff said, referring to the 1996 law’s description of a “crime” of “child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment.” Lawmakers clearly meant something more serious than briefly leaving kids unattended, Rakoff continued. After all, the consequence they were prescribing — deportation — was so much more severe than any other possible consequence for any similar misdemeanor. Zaidi, the Justice Department lawyer, responded that if many state laws say that something is a crime of child neglect, then it is a crime of child neglect, and Congress said that a crime of child neglect is deportable. The two judges other than Rakoff seemed more open to this argument. The fundamental question that the appeals court is considering, then, is whether these essentially harmless parental “crimes” alleged by increasingly hands-on local child welfare authorities are the same category of crime that the U.S. Congress was talking about when it passed a law on immigrants committing violent crime, domestic violence and terrorism. Josh Gupta-Kagan, founder and director of the Columbia Law School Family Defense Clinic, said that it appears Mendoza-Rivera and Ortega-Vasquez “were not a safety threat to their children, let alone to anyone else,” even if they showed bad judgment by leaving toddlers alone for a half hour. So it is “fair to question,” he said, how pursuing either of their deportations serves the Trump administration’s “stated interest in public safety.” McMinnville, Oregon, where Mendoza-Rivera and Ortega-Vasquez bought those pajamas at Walmart, is where they’ve lived for nearly a quarter century and where they had their two children, who are now teenagers. It’s also where Mendoza-Rivera spent all those years picking and packaging produce. But he has now been locked up for months in a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and his family has in turn lost much of its income. His kids are without him. And if the Trump administration gets to use a law against him that was intended to protect children, they will lose their dad to a foreign country for good. The post Trump’s Latest Deportation Tactic: Targeting Immigrants With Minor Family Court Cases appeared first on ProPublica .

Following a ProPublica article revealing that the U.S. Forest Service had for years issued clothing to wildland firefighters that it knew contained potentially dangerous “forever chemicals,” the agency has stopped distributing those garments. It also says that it will instruct its equipment manufacturers to avoid using PFAS in the future. This month, ProPublica reported that until at least 2023 one of the Forest Service’s suppliers, TenCate, used finishing products made with a PFAS compound on a Kevlar-blend pant fabric. According to emails from the supplier, the finishes were used to repel gasoline and water. Despite knowing about the use of PFAS, officials with the Forest Service had not previously informed wildland firefighters about it. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have long been used in protective gear to repel substances like fuels. But many municipal fire departments have moved away from the chemicals as researchers revealed more about health risks associated with them. Firefighters in multiple states have filed class-action lawsuits against manufacturers alleging they were harmed by PFAS in the gear they wore. Research specific to wildland firefighters has lagged, and wildland firefighting agencies have been slower to publicly address the issue. On Feb. 11, one day after ProPublica published its article, a Forest Service cache manager — an official who oversees a gear repository — wrote in an email that he asked colleagues to distribute widely, “I received notice from the Washington Office Cache Management staff late last night that we are to place a hold on issuing” the pants. But the agency didn’t immediately clarify further. A wildland firefighter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their employment said last week that incident management teams had been asking the agency for advice about the pants. “As of right now, our logistics folks haven’t gotten any guidance at all from higher-ups,” the firefighter said. On Friday, the Forest Service issued a statement to ProPublica: “PFAS in protective gear is a complex, industry-wide issue and any suggestion that the agency has sought to obscure information does not reflect the extensive work to expand testing and improve long-term occupational health protections for firefighters. Firefighter pants manufactured with PFAS water repellent fabric treatments have been removed from available stock in the National Interagency Support Caches.” TenCate has not responded to repeated inquiries, but in an email reviewed by ProPublica, it told the Forest Service that a PFAS-free finish was available in January 2023. On Friday, the Forest Service sent an email to its staff saying that its supplier had switched to a PFAS-free finish that year. In the same email, the Forest Service wrote that anyone with the older pants “should discontinue use and replace” them. The agency also said that it was updating its requirements “to specify that fabric treatments and fabrics will not contain PFAS.” Read More Firefighters Wore Gear Containing “Forever Chemicals.” The Forest Service Knew and Stayed Silent for Years. Fire departments typically adhere to safety standards set by the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit that gathers input from expert committees including firefighters and representatives from companies that supply them with equipment. While the association is not a certifying body, its standards are used by government agencies including the Forest Service. Last year, an NFPA technical committee updated its standards for municipal firefighters to restrict levels of certain PFAS chemicals in protective gear. But the organization has not yet made a parallel update to its standard for wildland firefighters.  Rick Swan, an NFPA committee member, said the lag reflects a long and deliberative process for developing standards, but he added that a restriction on PFAS chemicals in wildland gear is all but inevitable. “I think it’s a no-brainer,” Swan said. In an email, a spokesperson for the NFPA wrote that the committee overseeing the wildland firefighting standard “will likely consider this issue again.” Experts can’t say for certain what risks PFAS in gear pose to the health of wildland firefighters and agree more research is needed. Jeff Burgess, a professor and researcher at the University of Arizona who is leading a series of long-term studies of firefighter health, said smoke inhalation and the accumulation of soot on gear are primary ways wildland firefighters encounter carcinogens. Understanding of wildland firefighters’ exposures to PFAS has lagged behind understanding of exposure in municipal fire departments. Historically, researchers have had less access to wildland crews, and in recent years they have focused on studying risks related to smoke. The post U.S. Forest Service Stops Issuing Firefighter Pants That Contain PFAS, Following ProPublica’s Reporting appeared first on ProPublica .

Lisa Rae Moss — serving a life sentence for her involvement in the 1990 murder of her husband, Mike Moss — sat in the witness box in a courtroom in Seminole, Oklahoma, on a frigid January morning in 2025, her hands knotted in her lap. Moss, who is 60, was asked to recount what she endured in her 20s, during her marriage to a volatile man a dozen years her senior. Her long silver hair and prison-issued glasses accentuated the years between her and the younger self she was describing. “Did Mike ever use a gun on you in the bedroom?” her lawyer, Colleen McCarty, asked. “He had a gun that usually lay on top of the chest of drawers at night,” Moss said quietly. She explained that her husband would place it there before they went to bed. “There were a number of occasions where he took the gun — and I wasn’t in the mood to have sex and I didn’t want to have sex — and he would move the gun up and down my inner thigh and then lay it on the pillow next to the bed.” She stopped to correct herself: “Next to my head, I’m sorry.” Under her lawyer’s questioning, Moss described a pattern of abuse that began six months after their wedding, when her husband grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the fireplace. She recalled how, during an argument, he tried to shove a tennis ball into her mouth. How she was knocked unconscious when he once slammed her head against their refrigerator so hard that it left a dent. How he repeatedly punched her in the stomach when she was pregnant with their son. How he raped her multiple times, once with a curling iron — an assault that caused lasting injuries. “I bled every day for five years until I finally had a hysterectomy,” she said. When her 4-year-old daughter from a previous marriage complained that Mike had done something to make her bottom hurt, Moss feared he was sexually abusing her little girl, too. “Were you afraid for your life?” McCarty said. Moss nodded. “Absolutely.” Her testimony put her at the center of an extraordinary legal experiment unfolding in Oklahoma, where a new state law, the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, passed in 2024, offers prisoners like her a chance at freedom. Under the law, a domestic-violence victim who is serving time can petition for a reduced sentence, which the law mandates if a judge decides that the abuse she endured was a “substantial contributing factor” to her crime. Moss was the first to get her day in court and test whether the law could deliver on its promise. Unlike most other defendants in cases the statute was intended to remedy, Moss did not carry out the violence herself. She was not present when her older brother, Richard Wright, shot her husband. But at her 1990 trial, prosecutors argued that she had solicited and helped orchestrate the killing, introducing testimony that she once asked an acquaintance to “get rid of” her husband in exchange for an initial payment of $500. She was convicted of first-degree murder and lesser charges and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. (Her brother is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.) Lisa Wright, formerly Lisa Moss, was released from prison last year under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act. She had been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times The question before the court that morning in Seminole was not one of guilt or innocence; it was whether Moss’ punishment failed to account for the role that years of physical and sexual abuse played in her crime. McCarty called Margaret Black, a licensed counselor specializing in domestic violence, to the stand. Black, who had evaluated Moss, explained that each time Moss tried to leave her husband, the violence escalated. Black described a lethality assessment she had conducted to measure the risk Moss faced of being killed or seriously injured. “Eighteen and above is what’s called extreme danger,” Black said. In Moss’ case, her review of the evidence led her to assign a score of 24. “This was a very, very dangerous situation for Lisa and her children.” That afternoon, District Judge C. Steven Kessinger announced that he had reached a decision. “The court finds that the defendant has provided clear and convincing evidence that she was a survivor of domestic violence, having endured physical, sexual and psychological abuse,” he told the crowded courtroom. “The court further finds that such violence and abuse was a substantial contributing factor in causing the defendant to commit the offenses for which she is presently incarcerated.” Under the statute, this finding made her eligible for a sentence of 30 years or fewer — and because she had already served more than that, the judge ordered her to be freed that day. The exultation that broke out inside the courtroom as Moss embraced her grown daughter, who was 5 when Moss was incarcerated, soon reached Mabel Bassett Correctional Center. The prison, a low sprawl of concrete and razor wire that sits on the outskirts of the small town McLoud, was where Moss had spent virtually all her adult life. One of Moss’ oldest friends there, April Wilkens, was bent over the tablet that connected her with the outside world when she received a text message with the news of the judge’s ruling. She leaped off her bunk and ran out of her cell, shouting, “Lisa’s going home!” The prison’s day room erupted at the news of Moss’ release. The outpouring of joy was about more than one woman’s walking free. Moss’ lawyer, McCarty, had identified dozens of other prisoners at Mabel Bassett, including Wilkens, who she believed would qualify for relief under the new law, and the hearing suggested they had reason to hope. “The feeling was electric — pure elation,” Wilkens told me. “Our survivor exodus had begun.” When Wilkens returned to her tablet, she saw a text from McCarty: “You’re next!” Wilkens first met McCarty when the lawyer came to visit her at Mabel Bassett, Oklahoma’s largest women’s prison, in the summer of 2022. Wilkens was serving a life sentence for shooting and killing her ex-fiancé after years of abuse and stalking and indifference from the police. She had already spent 24 years behind bars. McCarty had just founded the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, and in Wilkens’ case, she saw an opportunity to compel the justice system to do what it rarely did: revisit harsh punishments that the criminal-justice system had long treated as final. For years, only a handful of states had tried to grapple with cases like Moss’ and Wilkens’, and even then, survivors faced steep barriers to having their sentences reconsidered. That began to change in 2019, when New York passed a law empowering judges to reduce sentences when they found that abuse had been a “significant contributing factor” to a defendant’s crime. Accompanying McCarty that day was Leslie Briggs, another lawyer who would later become the center’s legal director. Briggs had learned of Wilkens’ case from Wilkens’ niece, who had collected boxes and boxes of records related to her aunt’s conviction. The two lawyers had reviewed the transcripts of the long-forgotten case and saw Wilkens’ prosecution as a stark example of a justice system that often fails to stop abusers but proves swift to punish those who fight back. The case had particular resonance for McCarty. One of her earliest memories was of her teenage sister sitting at the kitchen table one morning with a bruised eye and split lip, having been thrown down a flight of stairs by a boyfriend. McCarty’s mother had escaped an abusive relationship only to be victimized again by a different partner before McCarty graduated from high school. The lawyers wanted to pass legislation modeled on New York’s law, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. They thought that calling attention to Wilkens’ case, in which the abuse was both extensive and thoroughly documented, might be the way to do it. But first McCarty needed a sense of how many women were imprisoned at Mabel Bassett for crimes tied to their own abuse — a phenomenon that sentencing-reform advocates call criminalized survivorship. Though there was no system to identify these women within the prison, Wilkens came up with a solution: She wrote an informal questionnaire aimed at survivors of domestic violence. A friend of hers inside the penitentiary managed to type up and print hundreds of copies, and that September, Wilkens and her contacts in other parts of the prison began circulating them. (“It certainly helps to have friends in low places,” Wilkens told me.) The questionnaire asked each respondent to provide the length of her sentence, the county of her conviction and an account of her crime, and to mail the responses to Appleseed’s office in Tulsa. One hundred and fifty-six questionnaires arrived over the course of several weeks in the fall of 2022. Each envelope held a harrowing narrative, some in polite, looping script, some in block letters. The respondents were Black and white, Native American and Hispanic, young and old, from big cities and small towns. “I kept begging for a divorce, and he’d threaten to kill my children.” “His wife before me had her nose broken twice.” “Whenever I didn’t want to have sex with him, he would twist my wrists as far as he could until I gave in to him.” Another woman recounted the feeling of liberation she felt behind bars, where her partner could no longer hurt her: “I was in a very abusive, sick relationship,” she wrote. “I am FREE now.” A few were vague about their crimes. Others were blunt: “One night just snapped, shot & killed husband.” Oklahoma consistently ranks among the states with the highest rates of domestic violence; it also has one of the highest rates of female imprisonment. McCarty believed the two were connected, and the surveys seemed to bear that out. Some respondents claimed to have participated in robberies or other crimes under the threat of violence from their abusers. More had been convicted under Oklahoma’s “failure to protect” law, punished for not doing enough to shield their children from the brutality of their partners, often while enduring that violence themselves. But the women serving the longest sentences were typically those who had struck back at their abusers. McCarty began talking to lawmakers about these findings, and in 2023, an early version of a domestic violence survivors’ bill was introduced. The lawyer Colleen McCarty advocated for the passage of the Survivors’ Act. She saw it as a corrective to a justice system that punishes domestic-violence survivors who fight back. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times Nothing might seem to have longer odds in deep-red Oklahoma than an effort to lessen punishments for violent crimes, but overcrowded prisons and rising costs were already forcing a rethinking of harsh, decades-old sentencing laws. In 2016, voters approved a landmark ballot initiative reducing penalties for certain low-level drug and property crimes; three years later, lawmakers made those changes retroactive, leading to one of the largest single-day prisoner releases in American history. McCarty hoped to build on that momentum. Wilkens advocated for the bill from prison, writing an opinion piece in The Oklahoman and telling her story on a local TV-news program, and she became the focus of a social media campaign, #FreeAprilWilkens. Not everyone in Oklahoma supported the proposed law for domestic-abuse survivors. Prosecutors warned that the statute encouraged exaggerated or bad-faith claims that would be difficult to disprove years after the fact. The law, they argued, opened a Pandora’s box — one in which potentially anyone who had suffered violence could seek a lesser punishment. Arguing that the bill took too broad a view of who should be eligible for resentencing, the Tulsa County district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, wrote in a 2024 email to a lawmaker that the legislation “presents a risk to public safety.” He went on to cite an infamous case, which he had prosecuted, to make his point: “The Bever brothers, who slaughtered their family in Broken Arrow, would be eligible for sentence modification under this bill in its present form.” The case, from 2015, fell well outside the law’s scope. Robert and Michael Bever had killed their parents, who a surviving sister testified were not physically abusive, and three younger siblings. The proposed legislation required that any claims of abuse be corroborated with some kind of documentary evidence — evidence that case did not have. Kunzweiler had given voice to a broader concern among prosecutors: that undeserving and dangerous defendants could exploit the law to seek reduced sentences. Pushback from elected district attorneys led to changes in the bill; cases involving death sentences were excluded. It would take two legislative sessions and a sustained effort by a bipartisan coalition to pass a version lawmakers could agree on. The Oklahoma Survivors’ Act was signed into law in May 2024. But its passage did not quiet criticism from the state’s district attorneys. They would play a central role in how the law was applied, because they had the authority to oppose any applications they believed were unfounded. Prosecutors could challenge a survivor’s account of abuse or argue that it played no meaningful role in the crime. A judge would make the final determination, but the law’s promise of sentence reduction would depend, in part, on the discretion of prosecutors. New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act offered a glimpse of the challenges that lay ahead in Oklahoma. The act had produced sharply different results from county to county. In a 2025 article for The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Alexandra Harrington, a law professor at the University at Buffalo, found that whether a defendant had her sentence reduced or not largely depended on the local district attorney. When prosecutors supported an application for resentencing, judges frequently granted relief. When prosecutors opposed an application, only a fraction succeeded. Opposition from district attorneys was most common when the crime was seen as too egregious; or when the defendant had a criminal history or a substance abuse problem, or was perceived as aggressive or otherwise viewed as unsympathetic; or when the applicant had previously received a plea deal in the case. “In some jurisdictions, the D.A.’s office has served almost entirely to obstruct the path to relief,” Harrington wrote. Tulsa County’s district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, opposed Wilkens’ application for resentencing. He and other Oklahoma prosecutors have expressed concern that bad-faith applicants can exploit the Survivors’ Act. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times McCarty was clear-eyed when we first spoke last spring about the challenges ahead. Many of the resentencing cases she was working on — including Wilkens’ — were in Tulsa, where Kunzweiler was the top prosecutor, and they had very different visions of what justice looked like. McCarty, animated and intense, with large brown eyes that widened as she talked, spoke passionately about the possibility of second chances for those the system had failed. Kunzweiler, a phlegmatic, gray-haired career prosecutor a generation older, prized the finality of a jury verdict — and the punishment that went with it. Signaling just how seriously he took Wilkens’ request for resentencing, he had chosen to represent the state along with one of his best prosecutors, and he had repeatedly asked for more time to prepare. After numerous delays, there was still no hearing set, and McCarty was growing impatient. “We wrote this law with April in mind,” she said. Wilkens had filed her application for resentencing on Aug. 29, 2024 — the day the law took effect — and she had expected to lead the way. But Moss was the first to receive a hearing, and in the wake of her release, four other women at Mabel Bassett were given court dates, the first of which was in July 2025. Wilkens would have to wait. Wilkens grew up in the 1970s and early ’80s in Kellyville, a no-stoplight town, where her father’s moodiness and brute discipline dominated the household. Wilkens says he whipped her with a belt or switch for minor infractions and once punched her square in the mouth. Wilkens cultivated a sunny, high-energy persona: cheerleader, honor student, the kind of girl untouched by turmoil. She propelled herself out of Kellyville by excelling academically, graduating from high school two years early. She attended Oklahoma State University and completed a graduate program in prosthetics at Northwestern University’s medical school in Chicago. An early marriage to her college sweetheart produced a little boy, Hunter, but ended after four years. In 1995, when she was 25, she was newly divorced, running her own prosthetics business in Tulsa and ready for a new chapter. She began dating again. Tall and willowy, with long chestnut hair and a bright smile, she drew attention. That fall, she met Terry Carlton, who was 12 years older and the son of a prominent auto dealer. Handsome and magnetic, with an impulsive streak, he flew them first class to Dallas and hired a chauffeured limousine for their first date. He proposed two months later, on Christmas Eve, when he slipped a $25,000 engagement ring onto her finger. She did not yet know that he had both a drug problem and a history of violence with women. Two of his previous romantic partners had gone to the police to report abuse; one of them, citing repeated chokings and “severe emotional trauma,” secured a protective order against him. Four months into Wilkens’ engagement to Carlton, he grabbed her by the throat during an argument. Afterward, he swore to her that he would never hurt her again. But over the next two years, during their on-again-off-again relationship, Wilkens called 911 at least 10 times to plead for help. She was granted three emergency protective orders and sought medical attention for injuries sustained during a rape and multiple beatings. Police reports, medical records and trial testimony document what Wilkens endured — sometimes in full view of witnesses. A neighbor once watched as Carlton chased her down the driveway, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her, screaming, back toward her house. The same neighbor also saw him, on another occasion, pounding on Wilkens’ back door with what looked like a metal pipe. A doctor who lived across the street from Carlton discovered Wilkens in her car, bleeding, after Carlton smashed her driver-side window and grabbed her keys so she couldn’t leave. Yet Carlton — whose family wielded influence in Tulsa — seemed untouchable. “When the police were called, his timing was impeccable,” a neighbor, Glenda McCarley, testified at Wilkens’ 1999 trial. “He could be in his car and gone just as they rounded the corner.” Officers responded but rarely intervened. Their attitude toward Wilkens was typified by one officer whom McCarley remembered as “put out, impatient, in a hurry.” Carlton, whose sports car was often seen idling outside Wilkens’ house at odd hours of the night, was arrested only once, after the police found him at her home in February 1998, with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol and a stun gun. He faced no meaningful consequences: Rather than pursue assault or stalking charges — both felonies — the authorities cited him for a misdemeanor weapons violation. When he skipped his court date, a warrant was issued for his arrest, but the Tulsa police never enforced it. His relentless harassment left Wilkens in a fragile state of mind; twice that spring, she was involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals. Her unraveling was further accelerated by a growing dependence on drugs. She would later testify that Carlton had introduced her first to cocaine, then to meth, taken intravenously. As his erratic behavior intensified, so did her drug abuse. By the time she appeared on his doorstep at around 3 a.m. on April 28 — on the day that she killed him — she was a shadow of the vibrant young woman she was when they first met. April Wilkens’ case was the impetus for the passage of the Survivors’ Act. Tulsa prosecutors have advocated to keep her in prison. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times In less than three years, she had lost everything: her business, which went under as her focus drifted; her family and friends, from whom Carlton kept her isolated; and her son, now in her ex-husband’s sole custody. She would later testify that she went to Carlton’s house in the middle of the night with a singular, desperate purpose: to beg him to leave her alone for good. Facing him directly, she would later say, seemed like the only way she could reclaim some measure of control. But the encounter quickly turned violent. She said that after she refused to have sex with him, he raped her and threatened to kill her. Eventually, she managed to grab his .22 handgun, and when he came toward her, enraged, she fired. She kept firing — eight shots in all. After undergoing questioning and a sexual-assault exam that documented vaginal tearing, Wilkens was jailed and charged with first-degree murder. “When in trouble, cry rape,” District Attorney Tim Harris said in closing arguments at her 1999 trial, in which prosecutors cast her as a manipulative, mentally unstable, meth-crazed fabulist who went to Carlton’s home looking for drugs and revenge. Though Wilkens’ attorney argued that she acted in self-defense because she feared for her life, Harris suggested that she and Carlton had a mutually destructive relationship, in which Wilkens — who weighed 107 pounds at the time of the murder — met Carlton’s abuse with her own aggression. “There is no doubt he physically abused her,” Harris told the jury. “But is there not some doubt that she also abused him? He abused her, she abused him, I file a protective order, I cry rape, now I’m back, let’s get high, I hate you, I love you, you owe me money. Man, what a dysfunctional life.” Harris blamed her for resorting to violence: “If April Wilkens had really been serious about her fear of Terry Carlton, she could have allowed the system to come to her aid.” Wilkens was found guilty and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Wilkens being brought to the Tulsa Police Department in 1998, for questioning in the killing of her former fiancé Mike Simons/Tulsa World Harris was succeeded 16 years later, in 2015, by Kunzweiler, who had been one of his top lieutenants. As district attorney, Kunzweiler took the same hard line on Wilkens’ case, repeatedly opposing her bids for parole. In 2022, the district attorney’s office stated in a letter to the parole board that her sentence reflected the gravity of her crime and that she should remain in prison. “She presents a risk to the safety of the public,” the letter read. Wilkens was denied parole once again. McCarty emphasized this to lawmakers when she fought for passage of the Survivors’ Act; without a new law, Wilkens faced the prospect of remaining locked up for the rest of her life. In June, after nearly a year of delays, a Tulsa judge scheduled Wilkens’ resentencing hearing for September. She, and the three other women who would have their hearings first, were part of the loose-knit group at Mabel Bassett that Wilkens called the “survivor sisterhood.” Erica Harrison, the unofficial den mother to the young women in her housing unit, was serving a 20-year sentence for having shot and killed a family friend after he raped her in 2013. Norma Jane Lumpkin, whose long hair hung past her waist, was four decades into a life sentence for her role in the 1981 bludgeoning death of her husband. Tyesha Long, who is 27 — the youngest of the group and a former rodeo competitor in barrel racing — had a 27-year sentence for shooting her abusive on-again-off-again boyfriend to death in 2020. “Jane and I have both been locked up longer than Tyesha has been alive,” Wilkens told me. Aside from minor driving infractions, none of the women had been in trouble with the law before their arrests, and Wilkens saw their crimes, like hers, as aberrations, acts she believed were inseparable from the abuse each woman had endured. Before they were led out of Mabel Bassett in handcuffs and leg irons, to face their resentencing hearings in the county courts where they were convicted, Wilkens tried to prepare them. She quoted her favorite passage from Ecclesiastes, reminding them that there is power in numbers. She urged them to listen carefully to each question when they were on the stand and to take a breath before responding. And she advised them on how to prepare for their processing photos. Don’t grimace, she told them. Your mug shot is going to be all over the local news. Moss, the only woman who had been freed under the Survivors’ Act, attended the hearings that summer. She deliberately positioned herself where she could be seen by whichever woman from Mabel Bassett was sitting at the defense table, and she met the defendant’s gaze, offering reassurance that she was there and that she remembered exactly what this moment felt like. She made a point of looking her best, knowing that she embodied the promise of the freedom that might lie ahead. Wearing bright colors and simple but elegant jewelry, she looked polished, with her hair blown out, her nails lacquered, her lipstick fresh. After 35 years behind bars, she was not going to keep her head down. “Freedom looks good on her,” Wilkens later told me. But it soon became clear that not everyone’s resentencing hearing would unfold the way Moss’ did in Seminole, under a different district attorney. Harrison, the first in the sisterhood to go before a judge that summer, testified in a Tulsa court in July. “I was going through a terrible divorce,” Harrison said, recalling a period when she was on her own with three children and a totaled car. “I had just left the domestic-violence shelter and moved into a little, small, no-name apartment.” Harrison had a drink with a family friend, Calvin Anderson, and passed out. She woke to find him on top of her, and after he sodomized her, she managed to fight him off. In the hours that followed, he loitered around her apartment complex, and when her eventual calls to 911 did not bring a timely response, she shot him in the parking lot. Prosecutors challenged her account, emphasizing that elements of her story had changed since she was first questioned by the police in 2013; they capitalized on the fact that she did not call 911 right after the assault, suggesting the danger she claimed to feel afterward was invented. “At what point did he magically become a threat?” Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hilborn asked. The judge in Harrison’s case said she would hand down a ruling later that summer. The oldest of the group, Lumpkin, appeared in court the following week. Her crime — committed with a neighbor who was also charged in connection with the killing — had been particularly gruesome. Her husband was beaten to death, his body later found in the trunk of her car. Yet it did not seem inconceivable that she might be granted some measure of leniency, because she was 75 and had been incarcerated for the past 44 years. But as Lumpkin sat at the defense table, the victim’s family delivered searing statements that undercut her long-standing claims of abuse, portraying her instead as a calculating, coldblooded killer. Lumpkin’s daughter, Alisha Keeney, who was 12 when her father was bludgeoned to death, told the court her mother had not served enough time for the brutal slaying. “That’s the only resentencing she deserves, is jail forever,” Keeney said. Norma Jane Lumpkin is serving a life sentence in connection with the murder of her husband, who she says abused her. She has been behind bars since 1981. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times Again, no immediate ruling came down from the bench. Eleven days later, Tyesha Long settled into the witness box in an Oklahoma City courtroom and recounted how a local businessman named Ray Brown began pursuing her when she was 17. Brown, who was in his early 50s, had been the subject of protective orders obtained by multiple women. The first time he was violent with her, she testified, he sucker-punched her in the mouth. He went on to stalk her, choke her, threaten her life and push her down a flight of stairs, causing her to have a miscarriage, she said. After he chased her in his car and rammed her vehicle, she received a protective order against him. But their relationship never completely ended. During one heated argument, she said, he reached for her throat — and Long, who said Brown had strangled her before, thought she was going to die. “I pulled out my gun and I shot him,” she testified. The problem Long faced at her trial, when she argued that she acted in self-defense, was that she shot Brown in the back. This was at odds with how she remembered it, with Brown advancing toward her. Experts on domestic violence say that cases in which survivors kill their abusers often look different from typical self-defense cases, which hinge on an obvious, imminent danger, like a drawn weapon. For a survivor who has been repeatedly and continuously terrorized, the perception of being in mortal danger does not come into focus in a single, dramatic moment. She may be moved to fight back not when being attacked but in the lull between violent episodes, when the abuser is momentarily disengaged. To a jury, it may be hard to see the imminent threat in such a scenario — as when Brown turned and walked away from Long. That gap, between how the law traditionally understands self-defense and how domestic-violence victims experience danger, is one the Survivors’ Act sought to address. Violence within intimate relationships is understood to be part of what researchers call “coercive control”: a sustained pattern of domination enforced through intimidation, threats, surveillance and social isolation. Research has shown that living under such conditions can alter threat perception and decision-making, narrowing a survivor’s perceived options when danger feels imminent. To a victim who has learned that such a moment of calm could be the prelude to the next round of violence, it may feel like her last opportunity to act before she is assaulted again. Long had another challenge, which was that her descriptions of Brown’s abuse had varied over her police interview, her trial and now the hearing. Trauma “impacts the way our brain stores memory,” the defense’s expert witness Angela Beatty, a social worker and vice president at YWCA Oklahoma City whose work focuses on survivors of domestic violence, explained at the hearing. Such experiences, Beatty said, can fracture memory, leaving recollections fragmented rather than organized and chronological. Tyesha Long is serving a 27-year sentence for killing a man she had a protective order against. The Oklahoma County district attorney’s office opposed her application for resentencing. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times But Assistant District Attorney Madeline Coffey seized on those inconsistencies to argue that Long wasn’t credible. Long seemed to fold in on herself, her shoulders drawn tight and her voice barely audible, as Coffey dissected each claim: How many times, exactly, was Long strangled to the point of unconsciousness? Wasn’t the sex sometimes consensual? What was the precise number of punches Brown dealt her? “Is that testimony at trial — that he only punched you one time — different than your testimony today, that he punched you probably two times?” Coffey pressed. Again, there was no ruling from the bench, but the mood among Long’s supporters was grim. She had remained on the stand for nearly five hours. Word of the grueling cross-examinations quickly got back to Wilkens, who was busy preparing for her upcoming hearing. Prosecutors had warned that these hearings could retraumatize victims’ families, but she could see that the hearings had also traumatized the defendants themselves. Testifying at her own trial had been an excruciating exercise, Wilkens told me, not only because describing the abuse meant reliving it. Her cross-examination — with its rapid-fire accusations, caustic tone and presumption of dishonesty — had felt eerily familiar after years of verbal abuse. It had also proved to be an impossible test. “I would challenge anyone to sit on the stand and just be berated and asked the same question 20 different times in 20 different ways,” she said. “On top of that, you’ve got an audience. It’s very public. Your whole life is laid bare for everyone to see.” Every seat in the courtroom was taken when Wilkens’ resentencing hearing got underway in Tulsa one morning in September. Members of her family sat shoulder to shoulder with women Wilkens once served time with. Next to a group of law students who had come to observe the proceedings was Wilkens’ niece, Amanda Ross, who years earlier had first brought her aunt’s case to McCarty’s attention. Ross, who was 7 when Wilkens was arrested, had corresponded with her aunt since elementary school. Growing up, she knew only the vague outlines of Wilkens’ case; the crime had never squared with the woman she knew. After college, Ross became a librarian and put her skills to work, trying to understand, as she traced her aunt’s odyssey through the courts, how Wilkens ended up with a life sentence. By the time of the hearing, Ross had spent nearly a decade trying to chase down every relevant document and public record. Having long since run out of space to store her growing archive, she stashed boxes of legal papers in the trunk of her Toyota Corolla. Wilkens sat at the defense table, taking in the room; she wore no makeup, and her hair, streaked with gray, hung loose past her shoulders. She had been warned by a sheriff’s deputy not to speak to anyone, but when she spotted Lisa Rae Moss sitting in the gallery, she caught Moss’ eye and smiled. Kunzweiler was representing the state that day alongside Meghan Hilborn, the assistant district attorney who had conducted the bruising cross-examination of Erica Harrison in July. The judge in that case announced five days earlier that she was denying Harrison relief. Though Lumpkin and Long were still awaiting rulings, there was little reason to believe they would fare differently. Amanda Ross was 7 when her aunt April Wilkens was arrested. Her research helped bring attention to Wilkens’ case. Carolyn Drake/Magnum, for The New York Times In Kunzweiler’s brief opening statement, he made clear that he saw no reason for a renewed debate over Wilkens’ punishment. “Twelve men and women sat in a courtroom very much like this,” Kunzweiler said. “They saw all the evidence.” It was a pointed reminder that a jury had already weighed much of what the court was now being asked to reconsider. Invoking her “extreme methamphetamine use,” he emphasized that Wilkens sought out Terry Carlton on the morning she shot him, arriving at his house unannounced. Kunzweiler gestured toward the defense table, where Wilkens sat in a striped orange jail jumpsuit, her handcuffs padlocked to a heavy chain at her waist, her ankles shackled together in leg irons. “She sits here as a convicted murderer,” Kunzweiler said. Despite Kunzweiler’s initial comments to the court, there was a piece of evidence that jurors at her 1999 trial had not been given to consider — a tape recording Wilkens made of a phone call between her and Carlton, in which he angrily admitted to raping, beating and choking her, while blaming her for provoking him. Now, at the hearing, it was entered into the record when the defense called a federal judge, Judge Claire Eagan of the Northern District of Oklahoma, to the stand. Eagan had an unexpected personal connection to the case; as a lawyer in private practice in 1996, she helped Wilkens obtain an emergency protective order. She testified that when Wilkens came to her office, she had injuries that included black eyes and bruises on her face and arms. A few days later, Wilkens brought the tape recording with her and played it for Eagan. Wilkens later failed to come to court to extend the protective order, too frightened to see Carlton in person. Because she did not appear, the order was dismissed — a moment Eagan said she still remembered. “Mr. Carlton was there with his attorney,” she said. “He looked at me when it was dismissed and smiled.” The recording was given to the court — along with police reports, protective orders and medical records — to show that Wilkens was abused by the man she killed. Wilkens, however, would not be taking the stand. After the summer’s punishing cross-examinations of the other women, Wilkens’ lawyers — Colleen McCarty and a veteran of the public defender’s office, Abby Gore — had made the difficult decision, along with Wilkens, that she should not testify. Their appraisal underscored the challenges the Survivors’ Act was encountering in the courtroom. Its most visible and articulate champion in Mabel Bassett would go unheard. The strategic calculation was made to ensure that an aggressive cross-examination did not overshadow the well-documented evidence of abuse at the heart of Wilkens’ case. The remaining question was whether Carlton’s abuse was a substantial contributing factor, under the statute, when Wilkens killed him — a point the defense sought to establish through Angela Beatty, the social worker who previously testified at Tyesha Long’s hearing. Beatty, who had interviewed Wilkens and reviewed her medical records, said that the “coercive control” exerted by abusers like Carlton can impair survivors’ ability to weigh options and make reasoned decisions, narrowing their focus to survival. “Ms. Wilkens shared that Mr. Carlton did threaten her life that night,” Beatty said, adding that Wilkens believed she was going to die. “He told her he would kill her.” On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Hilborn pressed Beatty. “Can you ever tell if you’re being deceived by a victim?” she asked. “Would you agree that April Wilkens has a good reason to say certain things to you for a sentence modification?” Having cast doubt on Beatty’s objectivity, Hilborn then made the case that Wilkens’ fear may have stemmed from something other than abuse. She returned again and again to Wilkens’ substance use, emphasizing that Wilkens had used meth intravenously. “When you’re talking about her being paranoid that somebody is stalking her, are you able to tell the court that is definitively from domestic violence?” Hilborn asked. “Or can it also be caused by methamphetamine use?” On the second day of the hearing, the state called its own witness, Jarrod Steffan, a forensic psychologist it had hired. Steffan had evaluated Wilkens and found her to be psychologically well adjusted. But her decades-old medical records, he testified, showed “she was experiencing severe mental-health issues, such as hallucinations and delusions, leading up to Mr. Carlton’s death.” He played down the impact that ongoing physical and sexual abuse may have had on her mental state: “Her actions in Mr. Carlton’s death were not due to domestic violence,” he said. “It was her mental illness and heavy meth use that led to Mr. Carlton’s death.” A rebuttal witness called by Wilkens’ lawyers, Dr. Reagan Gill, a forensic psychiatrist, questioned Steffan’s methodology, saying that his characterization of Wilkens’ past behavior — which Steffan described in a written report as “nefarious” and “irrational” — had no place in a clinical assessment. “These are not words we use,” Gill said. Judge David Guten did not wait to hand down a ruling. “There was more than sufficient evidence that there was violence in this relationship,” he said from the bench that afternoon. But he concluded that the defense had failed to meet the second requirement of the Oklahoma Survivor’s Act: to show, “by clear and convincing evidence,” that the abuse substantially contributed to the crime itself. Guten singled out the defense’s witness, Beatty, as too biased to render an impartial assessment, characterizing the social worker’s testimony as advocacy, not an expert opinion. “I could not give her testimony any weight,” he said. Moments later, Guten pronounced the proceedings over: “I am going to deny the request for a sentence modification.” The morning after the hearing, I met Lisa Rae Moss in a downtown Tulsa coffee shop. Eight months had passed since she walked out of the Seminole County Courthouse. In that time, she had met her grandchildren and relearned how to drive. She had found joy in walking barefoot, and picking out produce at the grocery store, and sitting alone in silence. She had legally changed her name back to her maiden name, Wright. She was living with Vicki Thorp, a lay pastor who visited her throughout her years in prison, and Thorp’s husband in their spacious home outside Oklahoma City, which afforded her the kind of privacy she never had at Mabel Bassett. Most mornings, she listened to the birds outside her bedroom window, sometimes studying them through a pair of binoculars. Evenings, she went out to the Thorps’ deck to stare up at the stars. Now Moss looked tired and uncertain. Those small freedoms were shadowed by what had happened to Wilkens. “I feel such, such — guilt,” she said, almost choking on the word. “How can I be sitting here and April has to go back to prison?” More losses followed. In October, Lumpkin and Long were each denied relief, and in early December, a judge declined to reduce the life sentence of another woman at Mabel Bassett, Kimberley Perigo, who shot and killed her ex-husband in 2001. Perigo, who had taken the stand to recount years of physical and sexual abuse and stalking, was the fifth applicant to be denied since Moss’ release. The string of denials gave rise to questions inside Mabel Bassett: Had Moss been the only one to walk free in Oklahoma because she wasn’t at the scene of the crime? Was it because her case originated in a county where the district attorney did not try to discredit her accounts of abuse? Or was it simply the luck of having the first hearing at a time when the law was animated by rare bipartisan support? Among advocates for domestic-violence victims, much of their anger was directed at the district attorney’s office, which had spent more than $16,000 on expert witness testimony in Wilkens’ case alone. Kunzweiler, who is up for reelection this year, made clear to me that he believed he had a duty to rigorously probe applicants’ claims, including through cross-examination. “Aren’t we all trying to get to the truth?” he said. “That’s our obligation: to find the truth and then seek justice.” When I asked what he thought justice looked like in Wilkens’ case, he said that the system had worked as it should; she had been afforded a trial and the opportunity to challenge her conviction through her appeals. The jury’s verdict had been upheld each time, Kunzweiler noted, and when Guten later considered her request for resentencing, he saw no reason to modify her punishment. “She has the right to appeal the finding of this judge,” Kunzweiler said. “But the process is here for a reason.” McCarty asked Guten to reconsider his decision in the Wilkens case on the grounds that he misinterpreted the Survivors’ Act by relying so heavily on expert testimony. The facts of the case alone should guide him, she argued, and those facts — which included police reports, medical records, protective orders and witness testimony — pointed to only one conclusion. In late November, Guten denied the motion to reconsider. Wilkens and her lawyers, he stated in a written order, “are requesting this court to accept evidence of abuse while completely discarding all other factors surrounding the homicide.” Guten continued, “This court declines to view the evidence with tunnel vision.” He lauded the jury in Wilkens’ trial, which “appropriately weighed evidence of substance abuse and mental health.” He dismissed the claim “with prejudice,” foreclosing any further reconsideration of it in his court. McCarty believed institutional resistance had stacked the deck against Wilkens. As evidence, she pointed to text messages of Kunzweiler’s she obtained through a public records request, including one he sent to several state employees after Wilkens’ hearing. “Sorry about just now getting back with you,” it read. “I was busy keeping April Wilkens in prison.” More text messages McCarty uncovered showed that Guten texted the district attorney in September asking if he had seen a letter The Tulsa World had just published, written by one of the jurors at Wilkens’ 1990 trial; the juror claimed Wilkens’ sentence had been fair and her claims of self-defense were “a fabrication.” To McCarty, the texts reflected just how determined the system’s gatekeepers were to preserve the status quo, despite the new law. On Jan. 29, she announced that she would be running for district attorney, challenging Kunzweiler in the Republican primary. Wilkens is appealing her case to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, where the court’s review of Guten’s ruling will help determine how judges will apply the Survivors’ Act moving forward. As more states — most recently Georgia — enact survivor-justice laws, it remains to be seen if the criminal-justice system is capable of perceiving someone like Wilkens not just as a perpetrator who must be punished but also as a victim deserving of mercy. The Oklahoma Court of Appeals will wrestle with what the Survivors’ Act means when it asks judges to evaluate whether domestic abuse was a substantial contributing factor in a crime. That appeal will be led not by McCarty but by a lawyer whom she asked to take the case: Garrard Beeney, at the white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who won the first appellate court ruling under New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in 2021. Appellate courts move slowly, however, and it may be years before the court hands down a ruling. All Wilkens can do in the meantime is wait. After I visited her at Mabel Bassett last summer, she wrote to me about a tree that she planted when she first arrived there. “It was just a scrawny little thing back then, barely waist-high,” Wilkens said. It now towers over her, its branches reaching toward the sky. The post The Victims Who Fought Back appeared first on ProPublica .

The Louvre Museum’s director resigned on Tuesday, ending months of questions in France’s cultural world over why no top official had stepped down after the October crown jewels theft. Laurence des Cars’ departure closed a bruising chapter for the world’s biggest museum. It came as the Louvre faces a widening narrative of an institution spiralling out of control. In the last year alone, the museum has endured the high-profile jewel theft from the Apollo Gallery, water leaks that damaged priceless...

The European Union’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic has railed against the bloc’s glacial trade defences, warning that years-long probes and rigid rules will not protect the bloc from China’s increasingly fierce export machine. Speaking in the European Parliament on Tuesday, Sefcovic lashed out at Beijing’s “unsustainable” trade surplus and called for an urgent overhaul of world trading rules to account for “overcapacities”, “unfair trade policies” and “state subsidies”. He confirmed, meanwhile,...

Russia ⁠accused Ukraine on Tuesday of trying ⁠to obtain a nuclear weapon with help from Britain and France, an allegation Kyiv called an absurd lie. A French foreign ministry spokesman said the allegation was “blatant disinformation”. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “There’s no truth ‌to this.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously criticised Kyiv’s decision to give up its former Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1990s without obtaining proper, binding...

PM back at The Lodge after evacuation for security check; report says 40% of universities have spent past five years in deficit. Follow updates live Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Australia’s universities are operating on increasingly thin margins, a new report from Universities Australia reveals. The report, titled Critical challenges in Australia’s university sector: securing a sustainable future, found over 40% of universities have spent most of the past five years in deficit. Our universities are not just economic engines – they are places where people build their futures, where talent is nurtured and where opportunity is expanded for the next generation. There’s a myth that universities are awash with money. The numbers tell a very different story. You can’t ask universities to educate more students, deliver more research and drive productivity while steadily reducing funding per student. At some point, the maths catches up. Continue reading...

National security committee warns until tougher safeguards are in place, UK elections dangerously exposed to covert foreign money Political donations in cryptocurrency should be subject to an urgent temporary ban to stop foreign interference in British elections, the chair of the national security committee has said. Matt Western, who leads the committee of MPs and peers, said a moratorium was needed until the risks of donations in cryptocurrency have been dealt with – including adequate checks on the source of the money. Continue reading...

Richard Tice echoes Donald Trump with pledge of ‘great repeal act’ and ‘tight quotas and significant tariffs’ Unions and renters’ groups have criticised Reform UK after the party’s business spokesperson, Richard Tice, pledged to introduce a “great repeal act” that would abolish Labour legislation on workers’ rights and protection for tenants. In his first speech since being appointed by Nigel Farage to a portfolio covering business, trade and energy, Tice promised a bonfire of regulations, including an end to net zero targets and a new push for home-produced shale gas using fracking. Continue reading...