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  • ‘Emotional rollercoaster’ – Lindsay Clancy jurors speak out on what led to mistrial

    ‘Emotional rollercoaster’ – Lindsay Clancy jurors speak out on what led to mistrial

    In the wake of a high-profile mistrial that left the Lindsay Clancy case hanging in legal limbo, three members of the 12-person jury have stepped forward to share unprecedented details of the tense, emotionally fraught deliberations that ended with no verdict. The three women, one of whom served as the jury’s foreperson, opened up about their experience in an exclusive interview with NBC, speaking publicly for the first time since Judge William Sullivan formally declared a mistrial late last week.

    Clancy, a Massachusetts woman charged with the murder of her three young children, has never denied taking their lives in the basement of the family home. Her defense team has centered its entire case on the argument that she was suffering from severe, untreated postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings, and thus lacked the criminal responsibility to be found guilty. Prosecutors, by contrast, have pushed the narrative that the killings were a premeditated, calculated act, calling more than a dozen expert witnesses including multiple medical professionals to bolster their claim. After nearly 40 hours of deliberations spread across seven days, marked by repeated notifications to the court that the jury was deadlocked, Sullivan officially called a mistrial.

    The three female jurors confirmed what court observers had speculated: the panel was just one vote away from a unanimous verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. The foreperson, a retired fifth-grade grade teacher who acts as the official representative for the jury in U.S. judicial proceedings, described the days of deliberation as an unrelenting emotional roller coaster that left many jurors in tears. “We had lots of crying, lots of tears, and then hugging each other to get through it,” she shared. “I was so sad we couldn’t reach a verdict for Lindsay. It was absolutely heartbreaking. It’s just awful that it ended this way.”

    She detailed a moment of false hope that quickly turned to disappointment: the lone male holdout had already admitted he held reasonable doubt about Clancy’s criminal responsibility, a standard that under Massachusetts law requires a not guilty verdict. As the foreperson began filling out the official verdict forms, excited that the process was wrapping up, the holdout reversed course. He told the panel he still would not vote to acquit on the grounds of insanity, despite acknowledging he could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally culpable. The holdout has not come forward publicly to respond to the jurors’ claims.

    The second juror, an employee at a government defense contractor, explained that the holdout’s objection centered on questions about the medication Clancy was taking at the time of the killings. Even after the panel, which included multiple practicing nurses, walked through the clear toxicology reports that confirmed the exact dosage of Clancy’s medication, the juror refused to accept the evidence, she said. The third juror, a chef at a local senior center, added that she found the prosecution’s approach unnecessarily harsh, noting that prosecutors never called a single witness to testify that Clancy had been an abusive or unfit mother before the killings.

    As the foreperson clarified, the jury never debated whether Clancy had caused the deaths of her children, as she had already admitted that fact. Their task, under Massachusetts law, was only to determine whether she understood right from wrong at the time of the act — a standard for criminal responsibility that puts the burden of proof on the prosecution, not the defendant, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that she was criminally culpable. The three jurors all said they found the prosecution’s argument unconvincing, saying all available evidence pointed to Clancy having snapped from her postpartum psychosis, unable to understand her actions.

    Deliberations grew so contentious that arguments and shouting could be heard through the jury room walls, the jurors confirmed. At one point, the panel notified the court that the holdout was refusing to follow the judge’s instructions on the legal standard of reasonable doubt, leading Clancy’s defense team to request that the juror be removed from the case. That request was immediately denied by the judge, and the stalemate continued until a mistrial was declared.

    All jury members have remained anonymous per court order, which banned any photography or filming of the panel during the trial to protect their privacy. Under U.S. law, however, jurors are free to speak publicly about their deliberations once a case concludes, a common practice in high-profile cases like this one. The BBC, which had a reporter in the courthouse throughout the trial, has confirmed that the three women who spoke to NBC were indeed seated on the Clancy jury.

    The mistrial has left Clancy’s future and the trajectory of the case completely uncertain. Prosecutors are currently weighing whether to empanel a new jury and hold a second trial. Clancy’s lead defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has already stated he hopes to negotiate a plea agreement with prosecutors to avoid a second proceeding. The three jurors who spoke to NBC echoed that hope, saying they oppose a new trial — and if one is ultimately held, all three plan to attend in open court to show their support for Clancy.

  • Watch: Downed trees and flooding as Hurricane Lowell batters western Hawaii

    Watch: Downed trees and flooding as Hurricane Lowell batters western Hawaii

    Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, powerful Hurricane Lowell made its damaging approach to western Hawaii, leaving a trail of disrupted infrastructure and environmental chaos in its wake. The powerful storm system unleashed two full days of severe weather across multiple parts of the Hawaiian island, combining destructive, high-velocity winds with torrential downpours that overwhelmed local drainage systems.

    Emergency management officials have issued repeated urgent warnings in the wake of the storm’s impact, highlighting two major ongoing risks that continue to threaten local communities. First, persistent saturated ground has raised the acute possibility of sudden flash flooding across low-lying and river-adjacent areas, where rising water can quickly cut off access and destroy property. Second, the heavy rainfall has loosened soil on hillsides and steep terrain, triggering widespread fears of dangerous mudslides that can swallow roads and damage residential areas.

    Local footage captured in the aftermath of the storm’s peak shows large trees uprooted by strong winds, blocking major thoroughfares and crushing small outbuildings in residential neighborhoods. Drainage systems have been overwhelmed in many coastal and low-lying communities, leaving streets submerged under several feet of muddy flood water. As of the latest update, emergency response teams are working around the clock to clear blocked routes, evacuate at-risk residents, and assess the full scope of damage caused by the storm.

  • US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol and other goods

    US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol and other goods

    The long-simmering trade dispute between the United States and Canada has entered a dangerous new phase, with Washington moving to implement a full ban on a range of key Canadian imports after Ottawa’s retaliatory tariffs on American goods officially came into force.

    In a set of executive orders signed Tuesday, former US President Donald Trump claimed that Canada has de facto discriminated against American commercial activity, and formalized the import ban set to launch on September 29. The restricted products cover a wide swath of Canadian trade, including alcohol, dairy products and passenger and commercial motor vehicles.

    Just hours before Trump’s announcement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a televised video address acknowledging the harsh reality of his country’s strategic shift to reduce economic dependence on its largest trading partner. “This pivot will come at a cost,” Carney told the Canadian public, as the country prepared to roll out its retaliatory measures.

    The latest escalation follows the collapse of trade negotiations between the two neighbors in late August. While officials from both sides have repeatedly stated that they remain open to reaching a new negotiated agreement, no new diplomatic talks have been scheduled to de-escalate the crisis.

    The conflict first intensified last month, when the White House imposed a steep 50% tariff on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian exports after multiple rounds of talks failed to bridge core differences. In a tit-for-tat response, Canada announced matching dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on iconic American exports including steel, apparel and furniture, which officially went into effect just after midnight on Tuesday.

    What makes this bilateral clash even more unusual is that tensions have spilled far beyond the realm of trade policy. In August, Trump drew widespread international backlash when he issued an order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes shared between the US and Canada, to “Lake America” — a decision that sparked public uproar among both Canadian citizens and many American commentators.

    This is an ongoing developing breaking news story, with additional details expected to be released in the coming hours and days. Readers can access real-time updates via the BBC News mobile application, or follow BBC Breaking News’ official account on X for instant alerts on new developments.

  • Hegseth is shaking up the Pentagon as the US wages war – but at what cost?

    Hegseth is shaking up the Pentagon as the US wages war – but at what cost?

    The United States military currently finds itself entangled in two overlapping, high-stakes conflicts that are raising urgent questions about its operational readiness, global positioning, and long-term institutional stability during Donald Trump’s second presidential term. One front unfolds abroad: a years-long stalemate with Iran over control of the critical Strait of Hormuz, which has forced a massive global redistribution of U.S. military assets that is now rippling through alliance networks from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. The second front is a domestic institutional upheaval, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose aggressive shake-up of Pentagon leadership has triggered bitter partisan and internal recriminations, capped last week by the resignation of the U.S. Army’s top civilian leader, Secretary Dan Driscoll.

    Driscoll, a relatively low-profile figure outside defense policy circles, oversaw a critical modernization push for the U.S. Army before stepping down last Monday. For months, he had clashed repeatedly with Hegseth over the scope and pace of proposed reforms, particularly his push to integrate cheap, mass-produced drones into standard infantry formations, a shift he argued was essential to adapting 21st-century battlefields after lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine. Driscoll warned that the U.S. military’s bloated bureaucracy and glacial, costly procurement processes left it ill-prepared to counter evolving modern threats, according to senior administration sources. Though Hegseth initially backed the broader modernization agenda, he ultimately pushed back against rapid expansion, and Driscoll accused him of blocking the plan by removing senior generals tasked with leading its implementation. Driscoll’s departure is just the latest in a string of high-profile exits of top civilian and uniformed leaders aligned with the modernization effort.

    The growing chaos has prompted sharp criticism from across the political and national security spectrum. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a consistent critic of Trump, has publicly called for Hegseth’s ouster, saying he has never witnessed more incompetent management of U.S. service members. Former first-term Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called Driscoll’s departure troubling for the U.S. Army, noting Driscoll had been pushing a critical modernization agenda to bring the service up to speed against near-peer competitors. Retired Navy Captain Jon Duffy, a former White House defense policy official during the Obama administration, argued that Driscoll’s exit has “hollowed out” senior military leadership at a critical moment, creating crippling uncertainty that disrupts progress on modernization and ripples down through the ranks to impact frontline readiness.

    Hegseth, a former Army National Guardsman and conservative Fox News pundit who campaigned on transforming the Pentagon’s cultural identity, has framed his overhaul as a necessary correction to decades of what he calls ideological overreach and institutional stagnation. He has repeatedly vowed to eliminate what he labels “woke” diversity initiatives, loosen restrictive rules of engagement he claims limit warfighter lethality, and purge the Pentagon of what he calls out-of-touch, complacent senior leaders. To date, he has removed or sidelined the top uniformed leaders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with more than two dozen senior generals, admirals, and civilian defense officials—many of them among the military’s most decorated officers—often without public explanation.

    Critics have drawn unflinching comparisons to large-scale political purges of foreign military establishments. Michael Schiffer, a former senior Pentagon official for East Asia during the Obama administration and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, argued that the mass leadership shake-up amounts to a U.S. military purge that has created serious command gaps and readiness deficiencies that mirror those seen after China’s political purges of its People’s Liberation Army. “The way [Hegseth] is shaking them up… is bringing on board an awful lot of risk without any apparent way to address or ameliorate it,” Schiffer told the BBC.

    But Hegseth retains staunch support from the White House and top Trump administration officials. Vice President JD Vance defended the Pentagon overhaul last week, saying he strongly agreed with the need for cultural change after four decades of what he called lost wars and military misadventures. “What Pete came in wanting to do was revive the warrior spirit in the United States of America,” Vance said. The White House confirmed that Trump retains full confidence in Hegseth, pointing to what it calls a record of success in recent military operations against Iran. Trump has repeatedly stood by Hegseth through prior controversies, including the Signalgate scandal, calling him “one of my best” picks in a recent interview with NBC News. Ezra Cohen, a former Under Secretary of Defense during Trump’s first term, described Hegseth’s reforms as a breath of fresh air, bringing new ideas and a more proactive approach to defense strategy.

    Beyond the domestic upheaval, the ongoing stalemate with Iran in the Gulf is stretching U.S. military capabilities thin and straining long-standing alliances across the globe. After Trump ordered major strikes on Iran last February, the U.S. has drawn down critical weapons stockpiles and troop deployments from both Europe and the Pacific to reinforce the Gulf, replenishing munitions and moving large ground and naval assets to the region. The shift has already created significant strategic blowback in Europe, according to Liana Fix, a Germany-based expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Fix explained that the Trump administration failed to consult NATO and European allies ahead of the Iran strikes, and the subsequent resource drawdown has accelerated a pre-planned shift of U.S. forces out of the continent, a move aligned with Trump’s longstanding criticism that European allies fail to carry their own defense weight. The perceived disunity and weakening of U.S. commitment to European security has created an opening for Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate hybrid attacks, including armed drone strikes and sabotage operations across NATO countries like Germany, Fix said. “What [Putin] is seeing is not a united stance from the United States and the Europeans to further increase pressure on Russia… he sees that they are weakening, that there are windows and openings of vulnerabilities in Europe,” she noted. Recent unusual diplomatic moves reflect the growing tension: CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare high-profile visit to Moscow last month to warn the Kremlin against testing NATO’s resolve, while a top Hegseth aide was in Europe pushing allied governments to increase their own defense spending. The U.S. has already cut 5,000 troops from its 40,000-strong deployment in Germany, and scrapped a Biden-era plan to station a battalion armed with long-range Tomahawk missiles in the country.

    While the drawdown in Europe aligns with the Trump administration’s long-stated goal of refocusing U.S. strategy on great power competition with China in the Pacific, the Iran conflict has actually stretched U.S. capabilities in the Indo-Pacific too. Key naval assets, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and the Japan-based USS George Washington carrier strike groups, were diverted from the Pacific to the Gulf to support operations against Iran, leaving the region understaffed at a critical moment of rising tensions with Beijing. The prolonged deployment has already taken a visible toll: recent photos of the USS Abraham Lincoln docking in Thailand with a rusted hull after nine months straight at sea were seized on by Iranian state media to portray the U.S. as overextended and exhausted. Hegseth has forcefully denied claims of poor conditions aboard the vessel, but the image has become a symbol of the strain of the prolonged conflict.

    Most notably, the Iran conflict has gutted critical U.S. munitions stockpiles, according to analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. The U.S. has fired roughly one-third of its entire national stockpile of 3,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and nearly 1,500 Patriot air defense interceptors—roughly two-thirds of the country’s total stockpile of 2,300—have been expended to counter Iranian drones and missiles. The White House has pushed back against these concerns, with Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly insisting that U.S. military power is stronger than ever, and that the military retains enough stockpiles to meet all of the president’s strategic goals. Pro-administration analysts, including former Trump defense official Ezra Cohen, now at the conservative Hudson Institute, argue that the strikes have severely degraded Iran’s conventional military capabilities and weakened its proxy networks across the Middle East, leaving the U.S. with greater flexibility to target Iranian nuclear facilities if needed.

    Still, the ongoing conflict shows no sign of ending: 82nd Airborne Division troops deployed to the Middle East more than six months ago are now expected to remain in the region through 2027 with no clear exit strategy. For Trump and Hegseth, the dual challenge of overhauling the Pentagon’s culture and leadership while waging a costly, protracted conflict in the Gulf has created an unprecedented test of U.S. military stability, one that could shape the legacy of Trump’s second term and the future of U.S. global power for decades to come.

  • ‘Constantly on my mind’ – 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on

    ‘Constantly on my mind’ – 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on

    Twenty-five years ago, the deadliest act of modern criminal violence on U.S. soil unfolded across New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead and generations of families irrevocably broken. Today, as the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, the long-awaited trial of the plot’s alleged mastermind has still not begun – and grieving relatives are running out of time to see justice served.

    Tom Resta is one of those family members waiting for closure. On September 11, 2001, his brother John, a commodities trader, and John’s seven months pregnant wife Sylvia were at work on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. In the days before the attacks, the young couple had been hard at work painting their unborn child’s nursery with beloved characters from the children’s show *Blue’s Clues*, fulfilling a long-held dream of starting their own family after years of doting on their friends’ and relatives’ kids. Today, all that remains of that dream are memories that still bring Resta to tears a quarter-century later.

    “After all this time, it still chokes me up,” Resta told the BBC in an emotional interview. “9/11 is almost constantly on my mind.”

    Like many victims’ relatives, Resta has made repeated trips to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to observe the glacial pre-trial proceedings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely known as KSM, and his four co-defendants. He describes the ongoing process as nothing short of “laborious and tedious.” Established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as part of the U.S. global “war on terror,” Guantanamo’s military prison has held KSM for 20 years – and in all that time, he has never faced a final trial or been convicted of any crime.

    Access to the high-security Guantanamo courtroom is strictly limited: victims’ relatives must enter a lottery system just to win a spot to observe proceedings, where thick reinforced glass permanently separates observers and press from the defendants. The pre-trial process has dragged on so long that five different military judges have overseen the case to date.

    Last month, ahead of the 25th anniversary, a small flicker of progress emerged: military officials set a firm trial date for KSM of June 2028. Yet even this milestone has done little to ease the fears of grieving families, who have grown accustomed to decades of delays. Resta, for one, is already preparing for further postponements, and says many of his elderly family members doubt they will live long enough to see a verdict.

    “My father will be 98 in November, and I don’t think he’s expecting to see it,” Resta explained. “I have a lot of older family members – aunts, uncles – that all want to see justice done. But especially my parents, I don’t think they expect to live long enough to see this trial conclude. My biggest worry is that the defendants themselves won’t even be alive by the time we get to court.”

    Resta’s anxiety is widely shared among other 9/11 victims’ next of kin. Stephan Gerhardt, who lost his younger brother Ralph in the attacks, has made six separate trips to Guantanamo to follow the case. For Gerhardt, securing convictions for the plotters is non-negotiable, but he longs for the day he can stop devoting his energy to the legal process and focus entirely on preserving his brother’s memory.

    “I want to concentrate on the memories,” Gerhardt said. “I still have Ralph’s car. I’m trying to restore it and get it back in pristine shape… We recently visited my parents and found some of his old things they’d held onto. It’s just old stuff, but it belonged to my little brother, and that makes it mean everything.” Like Resta, Gerhardt’s greatest fear is that KSM and his co-defendants will die of old age before they can be convicted, a outcome he calls an unforgivable injustice.

    KSM has been charged with conspiracy and murder in connection with the attacks, with all 2,976 victims named on the official charge sheet. Prosecutors allege he developed the plan to train hijacker pilots to crash commercial jetliners into major U.S. targets, then presented the plot to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for approval. KSM has previously admitted he planned the “9/11 operation from A to Z.”

    Yet just days after the 2028 trial date was set, the presiding military judge threw out KSM’s key confessions to FBI agents obtained after he was transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA “black site” prisons, where he was held for years in clandestine detention. In his ruling, the judge labeled KSM’s treatment at the hands of the CIA as “extraordinary physical and mental abuse,” finding the confessions were not given voluntarily and cannot be used as evidence against him at trial.

    Legal experts across the globe agree that the history of torture inflicted on KSM and his co-defendants is the single greatest cause of the decades-long delays in the case. “Every single legal issue in this proceeding has circled back to the torture,” explained Kasey McCall-Smith, an international law professor at the University of Edinburgh. She noted the defendants were subjected to “years of abuse,” including waterboarding and prolonged stress position detainment.

    John Ryan, author of *America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanamo Bay*, says last month’s ruling strips prosecutors of what they themselves described as their strongest evidence against KSM, though the full impact on the case remains unclear. Prosecutors do hold other potential evidence, including intercepted communications and covert recordings, but Ryan cautions that defense teams are already expected to file motions to suppress much of this additional evidence as well.

    The history of U.S. interrogation policy in this case dates back to the George W. Bush administration, which publicly acknowledged using what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects, claiming the methods saved lives and never amounted to torture. President Barack Obama banned these techniques on his second day in office, but the legal damage of the earlier practices had already been done.

    For victims’ families, that damage has meant decades of delayed justice, a right they say the torture has effectively blocked. “If we would’ve not tortured them, the legal process would’ve been much, much simpler,” Gerhardt said. “They probably would’ve been sentenced a long time ago. I can’t control what the government did, and we’ve got to live with the consequences.”

    In early 2025, Resta and Gerhardt both traveled to Guantanamo for a planned guilty plea hearing, under a controversial deal struck between defense attorneys and federal prosecutors that would have avoided a death penalty trial entirely. The hearing was halted at the eleventh hour after the U.S. government argued that cutting the deal would cause “irreparable” harm by “depriving the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment.” Legal battles over the validity of the proposed plea deal are still ongoing.

    Victims’ families remain deeply divided over the proposed agreement. Some see it as the only path to secure final convictions after decades of delay, while others condemn it as overly lenient and lacking in transparency. Resta supports the deal, saying his only priority is securing convictions, not capital punishment. “My philosophy is these guys are not the kind of people that should be out walking the streets, but as far as I’m concerned, they can just stay right where they are,” he said. “I just want them convicted.”

    Brett Eagleson, who was just 15 years old when his father Bruce was killed in the attacks, rejects the plea deal and demands a full public trial. “It’s not so much that I’m taking an opinion on life or death for these prisoners, but I believe in the judicial system and I believe that the process works,” he said. “I believe that a full trial, with full disclosure of evidence and a public airing of the facts, is the only way to get the full truth out.”

    Eagleson has chosen not to attend any pre-trial proceedings at Guantanamo, calling the entire situation “a mess.” He says he feels a profound sense of betrayal by the U.S. government, and extreme frustration over how the case has been handled from start to finish. “They’ve botched every single part of this trial,” he said. After 25 years, while 9/11 remains a daily presence in his life, he notes that for most of the American public, it is slowly fading into history. “I think people just assume that we got Bin Laden, we’re out of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan’s over, and they just assume that chapter has ended,” he said.

    When the trial eventually does begin at the Guantanamo military court, experts estimate it will last approximately one year. Professor McCall-Smith explains that the entire point of the decades-long pre-trial process has been to resolve disputes over what evidence can and cannot be admitted in court. “If that is agreed in advance, the trial can proceed much more quickly,” she said.

    As families prepare to mark another anniversary of the attack that took their loved ones, many just long for the day the trial is over, and they can stop traveling to Guantanamo and refocus on their lives and their memories. “It’s a place I don’t want to come back to,” Gerhardt said. “I want to live my life, enjoy my passions and my memories of Ralph.”

  • OpenAI says it cracked 90-year-old maths problem in 88 hours

    OpenAI says it cracked 90-year-old maths problem in 88 hours

    In an announcement that has sent ripples through both the artificial intelligence and global mathematics communities, OpenAI — the creator of the widely used ChatGPT platform — says it has cracked a decades-old unsolved advanced mathematical problem in just 88 hours, leveraging a cutting-edge internal AI model and a decentralized network of 10,000 independent AI agents. The breakthrough centers on the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a long-standing conundrum focused on modeling the behavior of fluid flow that has stumped mathematicians for nearly a century. Since 2000, the problem has been one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems curated by the U.S.-based Clay Mathematics Institute, which offers a $1 million reward to any researcher who produces a publicly verified, accepted proof.

    OpenAI framed the achievement as a major milestone for advancing artificial intelligence, confirming that it began developing the new specialized model in late August. The in-house model, which the company says is far more capable than any of its publicly released AI systems, was quickly identified as particularly strong at mathematical reasoning. The project gained urgency after OpenAI acknowledged it first heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been solved by independent researchers on September 1. Within days, the company deployed its fleet of 10,000 task-oriented AI bots, which work autonomously to test and refine different approaches to the proof.

    By September 5, just 88 hours after launching the large-scale collaborative effort, the AI network arrived at a proposed solution. Over the course of the work, the AI agents exchanged nearly 3 million messages and generated 130 billion output tokens of code and mathematical reasoning — a computational effort that would cost an estimated $10 million at OpenAI’s current public pricing for its most advanced models. The company’s proposed proof addresses two of the four core requirements laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute for the full Millennium Prize solution. In a statement Tuesday, OpenAI clarified that it is not seeking the $1 million prize, and is only releasing its findings to demonstrate the rapid progress of its AI capabilities. The result has not yet undergone independent peer review or received formal acceptance from the Clay Institute.

    Despite OpenAI’s celebratory framing, the claim has already ignited significant controversy within the mathematics field. Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician at OpenAI competitor Anthropic, have been working on their own solution to the same problem for some time, using OpenAI’s own Codex AI coding tool in their research. Buckmaster claims that details of his team’s progress were shared with OpenAI before the company began its own work on Navier-Stokes, and that OpenAI only launched its project after receiving that information. In a public statement released hours before OpenAI published its findings, Buckmaster shared email correspondence to back up his claims, noting that he felt obligated to speak out to correct what he sees as a misleading narrative around the breakthrough. He added that he has not yet reviewed OpenAI’s full proof, but could not stay silent given the timeline of events.

    OpenAI has pushed back against Buckmaster’s allegations, issuing a response that congratulated Buckmaster and Alpöge on their concurrent independent work, calling their progress remarkable. The company denied that it accessed any of the pair’s private work before it was released publicly, and confirmed no user data was improperly used in its Navier-Stokes research. OpenAi did acknowledge that it cannot fully rule out the possibility that de-identified data from the pair’s use of OpenAI’s public products contributed to the training of its models, but emphasized that the two teams’ proofs and core results are significantly different. The clash over the discovery highlights the growing intersection of artificial intelligence and advanced academic research, as well as the new ethical and credit challenges that come with AI-assisted breakthroughs in long-standing scientific problems.

  • Sapporo to move some beer production from Canada to US after tariffs

    Sapporo to move some beer production from Canada to US after tariffs

    Global trade policy shifts are forcing major consumer goods companies to restructure their cross-border supply chains, and leading Japanese brewing giant Sapporo is the latest firm to make significant operational changes in response. After the United States imposed a new 50% tariff on Canadian-sourced beer that went into effect on September 2 this year, the company has confirmed it will relocate production of beer bound for U.S. consumers from its Canadian facilities to domestic sites within the U.S.

    The new levy has drastically inflated operational costs for breweries that ship products across the U.S.-Canada border. In comments to Bloomberg, Sapporo Chief Strategy Officer Rieko Shofu framed trade tariffs as an external, unmanageable factor for the business, noting that the company’s path forward centers on expanding localized production in key target markets. The company did not issue an immediate additional response to requests for comment from the BBC when contacted for further details.

    Per Sapporo’s current timeline, production of its non-alcoholic beer line – which currently serves U.S. customers from Canadian manufacturing sites – will be fully transitioned to U.S. facilities by the first half of 2027. As one of the Japanese brewer’s largest and most strategically critical overseas markets, changes to North American production will directly impact operations at Sleeman Breweries, Sapporo’s Canadian subsidiary.

    To offset the cost increases triggered by the new tariffs and support expanded domestic output for the U.S. market, Sapporo is actively evaluating multiple options to add production capacity along the U.S. West Coast, which is its largest regional market in the country. These potential moves include constructing a new purpose-built brewery, acquiring an existing manufacturing facility, or entering a contract production partnership with an established local brewer.

    Sapporo has spent decades building its footprint in the U.S. market, and today it claims its namesake flagship Sapporo beer is the top-selling Asian beer brand in the country. For years, the company has prioritized aggressive overseas expansion to counteract stagnant domestic alcohol sales in Japan, where a steadily shrinking population has created persistent headwinds for revenue growth. To support this global growth push, Sapporo has earmarked up to ¥400 billion ($2.6 billion) in total investment by 2030, with roughly 30% of that capital allocated to developing overseas markets.

    The company’s expansion strategy is not limited to North America. Earlier this summer in July, it announced a strategic partnership with global brewing conglomerate Carlsberg to grow its market share across Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region with rising demand for international beer brands.

    Sapporo’s production relocation is far from an isolated case. As governments around the world increasingly implement new trade barriers, multinational companies are actively re-evaluating their manufacturing footprints to reduce cost exposure. The July 2025 U.S. tariff announcement that included new levies on dozens of trade partners, Canada included, has already squeezed margins for hundreds of businesses that rely on integrated cross-border North American supply chains. Sapporo’s decision underscores a broader global trend: as trade barriers raise the cost of serving international customers from offshore production sites, more companies are shifting toward localized manufacturing to maintain competitiveness.

  • Mamdani, Jon Stewart reveal new 9/11 documents

    Mamdani, Jon Stewart reveal new 9/11 documents

    Two decades after the devastating September 11 terrorist attacks that reshaped American life, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and longtime 9/11 first responder advocate Jon Stewart have opened the vault on a massive new collection of declassified government records. The batch, totaling 170,000 individual documents, shines a long-awaited new light on internal debates and warnings that city and federal officials privately held about the safety of air quality in and around the Ground Zero site in the immediate aftermath of the Twin Towers’ collapse.

    For years, survivors, first responders, and advocacy groups have pushed for full transparency around post-attack air quality assessments, after thousands of people who worked on the recovery and clean-up at Ground Zero went on to develop chronic respiratory illnesses, rare cancers, and other long-term health conditions linked to toxic dust from the wreckage. The newly released records confirm that long before public health officials made reassuring statements about the safety of returning to lower Manhattan, government insiders had already documented significant concerns about the levels of toxic contaminants, including asbestos, lead, and other carcinogens, circulating in the air close to the attack site.

    The release marks a major milestone in the decades-long fight for accountability from those affected by the attacks. Stewart, who has been a prominent voice lobbying Congress for permanent healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders, joined Adams in the announcement, framing the document release as a critical step toward honoring the sacrifices of first responders and ensuring the full truth about the aftermath of 9/11 is never hidden from the public.

  • Trump shares misleading video of King and fainting worker

    Trump shares misleading video of King and fainting worker

    On the U.S. Labor Day holiday, incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump sparked controversy after posting a three-minute edited video to his social media platform Truth Social that misrepresents the actions of Britain’s King Charles III and casts other high-profile world leaders and former U.S. presidents in a negative light.

    The edited clip that has drawn the most attention purports to show King Charles shrugging and walking away abruptly from a man who collapses during what is framed as a recent royal engagement. In reality, the footage was captured years earlier, in July 2020, when Charles was still serving as the Prince of Wales during a visit to an Asda supermarket distribution center in Bristol, held at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full unedited footage, which was cut from Trump’s post, shows Charles reaching out to steady the fainting worker before staying at his side to wait for medical assistance to arrive. Later photos from the same visit also confirm Charles spoke with the worker after the incident to check on his condition.

    Beyond the misleading clip of King Charles, the video compiles other selectively edited footage to suggest disrespect for U.S. military and protocol from other global and domestic political figures. It opens with footage of a French guardsman collapsing behind French President Emmanuel Macron during an event at the Elysee Palace, includes a clip of former U.S. President Joe Biden appearing to check his wristwatch during a military repatriation ceremony, and shows former President Barack Obama saluting U.S. marines while disembarking Marine One with a paper cup in his hand.

    The latter half of the video pivots to a carefully curated montage of positive moments from Trump’s political career, including footage of him returning a dropped U.S. marine’s cap, saluting during repatriation ceremonies, comforting the grieving families of fallen service members, hugging military veterans, and greeting law enforcement officers. Text overlays throughout the pro-Trump segment claim the montage shows “the side of Trump the media doesn’t show you” and labels him “the people’s president,” with Christina Perri’s popular ballad *A Thousand Years* playing as a backing track for the entire video.

    Notably, Trump has repeatedly spoken publicly about his warm personal relationship with King Charles. At the conclusion of the British monarch’s state visit to the U.S. in April, Trump publicly praised Charles, calling him “the greatest king in my book.”

    As of press time, Buckingham Palace has confirmed it will not issue any formal comment on the misleading video, and the White House has also declined to respond to multiple requests for comment on the incident.

  • Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer hopes for an agreement with the prosecution

    Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer hopes for an agreement with the prosecution

    A high-profile Massachusetts triple murder case against accused Lindsay Clancy, a mother charged with killing her three young children, has ended in a mistrial after the 12-person jury remained deadlocked in deliberations. Now, Clancy’s lead defense attorney has outlined his next steps, pushing for both a presidential pardon and a negotiated resolution with prosecution that could avoid a second high-stakes trial.

    In an exclusive interview with ABC’s *Good Morning America* on Tuesday, defense lawyer Kevin Reddington revealed that the jury’s deadlock stemmed from just one holdout juror who refused to shift from a belief in Clancy’s guilt, despite acknowledging lingering uncertainty about the case. To secure a guilty verdict, the panel was required to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy intentionally killed her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — and that she was not suffering from a severe psychotic break at the time of the killings in 2022.

    Following the mistrial, Reddington issued a public appeal to former President Donald Trump, urging him to grant a pardon to Clancy. “I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she’s been through, and consider a pardon,” Reddington said in the interview.

    Beyond the push for a presidential pardon, Reddington said he remains hopeful that the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office, which is leading the prosecution, will agree to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution to the case rather than proceeding with a new trial. “I hope the district attorney… would be able to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides,” he added.

    The deadlock capped a weeks-long trial that concluded with days of closed-door deliberations. Case judge repeatedly urged the divided jury to work through their disagreements and reach a unified verdict, but their split on Clancy’s liability ultimately proved insurmountable. During deliberations, jurors weighed a full spectrum of possible outcomes, ranging from a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity to manslaughter and first-degree murder.

    As of Tuesday, the BBC has confirmed it has reached out to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office for comment on the mistrial and Reddington’s proposal for a negotiated deal, with no official response released publicly to date.