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  • Control, threats, disfiguring surgery: My life inside Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘cult’

    Control, threats, disfiguring surgery: My life inside Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘cult’

    Five years after disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody, one of his surviving victims has shared a harrowing, unflinching account of the systematic abuse and psychological manipulation that trapped her in his orbit for years. Speaking exclusively to the BBC on condition of anonymity (identified only as Anya to protect her safety), the survivor laid bare the hidden mechanisms of control that allowed Epstein to exploit dozens of vulnerable women long after his 2008 conviction for abusing a minor.

    Anya, a former Russian model who moved west to pursue opportunities in high fashion, first encountered Epstein through a connected modelling scout in Paris more than a decade ago. What initially seemed like a lucky break turned out to be a carefully coordinated trap: scout Daniel Siad, who is named thousands of times in publicly released Epstein court documents, targeted Anya specifically after noting she was intelligent, ambitious, and far from her support network back home. He lured her with promises of elite fashion industry introductions through his connection to Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-profile relationships with global leaders and celebrities.

    The grooming process unfolded slowly, over the course of nearly a year, designed to erode Anya’s defenses gradually. At their first meeting in Epstein’s luxurious 18-room Paris apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, Epstein built trust by asking detailed questions about her life goals, something few in the superficial modelling industry had ever done, and explicitly denied any sexual interest in her to put her at ease. He pressured her to exercise relentlessly to meet his body standards, demanded nude progress photos, and eventually arranged a short, meaningless meeting with Next Management co-founder Faith Kates, a meeting he had already predetermined would end in rejection. When Anya was dejected after the fake rejection, Epstein lured her to his Palm Beach estate, where he was permitted day release during his 2008 conviction sentence, and sexually assaulted her for the first time.

    Lawyers for Kates and Next Management have denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s trafficking activities, noting that rejecting prospective models is a standard industry practice, and that the agency operated independently of Epstein’s influence.

    After the assault, Epstein maneuvered Anya into moving into a rent-free Manhattan apartment on East 66th Street, part of a network of properties he used to house a rotating group of roughly a dozen women he called “assistants.” Far from the business training he had promised, Anya and the other women were kept on 24/7 call, given trivial menial tasks, and subjected to relentless psychological abuse and sexual violence. Epstein controlled every aspect of their lives: he managed their finances, dictated who they could socialize with, monitored all their communications through company-issued phones, and used isolation and gaslighting to break their sense of self-worth.

    Anya’s account of systemic coercive control aligns closely with testimony another former assistant, Sarah Kellen, gave to the U.S. House Oversight Committee earlier this year. Kellen told lawmakers that Epstein systematically eroded his victims’ ability to make independent decisions, leaving them completely dependent on him for housing, food, healthcare, and even legal status. “He was very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions and have your own autonomy. And it made you more and more dependent on him,” Kellen told the committee.

    Epstein used multiple layered tactics to prevent any woman from escaping or speaking out. When one assistant fled, he hired a private investigator to track her down and presented other assistants with an itemized bill for more than $700,000 that she allegedly owed him, a clear warning that he would hunt down any escapee to demand repayment. He collected compromising material, including nude photos and video of the women, to blackmail them into silence, and forced them to write “gratitude letters” praising him for his generosity, which he used to undermine any future claims of abuse. He also pitted the assistants against one another, spreading gossip and pretending to be each woman’s sole supporter, to prevent them from forming solidarity that could challenge his control.

    The abuse extended beyond psychological and sexual violence: Anya told the BBC that Epstein forced her to undergo unnecessary, disfiguring surgery to remove a small teenage tattoo, cutting the tattooed skin out instead of using slower laser removal because it suited his preference. She still bears prominent scars from the two procedures Epstein insisted she complete.

    The most traumatic part of her experience, Anya said, was that Epstein forced every assistant to recruit at least one new young woman to join the network, making survivors complicit in his trafficking scheme. “It’s one or 10, like, you’re already complicit,” she said, tearing up as she recounted the experience.

    Anya only lost her home with Epstein a week after his 2019 death, when Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, showed up at her apartment door and ordered her to leave. Mark Epstein has denied he had any knowledge of his brother’s criminal activities. While the eviction left Anya homeless, it also freed her from years of abuse, a bittersweet turning point she describes as losing a home but escaping a nightmare.

    Clinical psychologist Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo, who specializes in supporting survivors of coercive control, explained that a common public misconception holds that only minors are vulnerable to this kind of grooming. “You can be groomed as an adult,” she said, noting that Epstein’s slow, deliberate approach was designed to fly under a victim’s radar, “like stealth bombers are designed just to go under the radar.” After his 2008 conviction, Epstein deliberately shifted his targeting to adult women, mostly from eastern Europe, who were far from their home support networks and often had insecure immigration status that made them easier to control—though Anya noted most of the women he recruited still looked physically like teenagers.

    Anya, who has received compensation through the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Fund after providing corroborating evidence of her abuse, said she chose to speak out now to correct the widespread narrative that Epstein only abused underage girls. She wants the public to understand that he built a full “ecosystem of abuse” that exploited vulnerable adult women too, and that his high-profile social connections to world leaders and celebrities helped legitimize his actions and silence victims for decades.

    “When you have people like Bill Gates come to his house for dinner and shake his hand, you think, who am I to question it? Who am I to speak up here? It legitimised the abuse,” she said.

    Now, years after escaping, Anya said she hopes her story will help other survivors of coercive abuse find the courage to leave their own traumatic situations. “I’m not in any way special,” she said. “I just somehow managed to find this strength in me to persevere and to survive. If I can do it, you can do it.”

  • Brad Pitt’s children are dropping their dad’s surname – here’s why I did the same

    Brad Pitt’s children are dropping their dad’s surname – here’s why I did the same

    For many people, a surname is far more than a simple label attached to the front of a birth certificate – it is a core part of personal identity, tied tightly to family bonds and life experiences. A growing number of adults with fractured relationships with their fathers are taking the legal step of changing their surnames to distance themselves from toxic or absent parental figures, aligning their official name with the loved ones who have shaped their lives.

    One of the most recent high-profile examples of this trend comes from the family of Hollywood ex-couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Following Jolie’s 2016 divorce filing after a decade-long relationship, two of the pair’s adopted children have moved forward with plans to drop Pitt’s surname from their legal names. Twenty-four-year-old Maddox and 21-year-old Zahara first filed official name change documents back in April, and completed the mandatory legal step of publishing their intention to change names in a local California newspaper over four weeks between June and July. The pair already use Jolie publicly: Zahara introduced herself with the surname during her 2025 college graduation, while Maddox has credited himself as Jolie on past film projects. They are not the first of Jolie and Pitt’s six children to make this change: their daughter Shiloh removed Pitt’s surname and adopted Jolie back in 2024. The siblings will attend a court hearing in September to receive final judicial approval for their name change.

    A source close to Brad Pitt told BBC that while the actor is heartbroken over the rift with his children and regrets how his relationship with his family has unfolded, he respects the adult children’s autonomous decision to change their names.

    The Jolie-Pitt children’s legal process mirrors a choice made by thousands of ordinary people across the U.S. and UK every year, including 25-year-old Hannah from California. Like Zahara and Maddox, Hannah has had little to no contact with her father since her parents divorced when she was a toddler. She last saw her father seven years ago, and has no idea where he currently resides. For more than a decade, she lived a double life when it came to her name: she used Leonard, her mother’s maiden surname, for social media, sports teams, personal emails and casual bookings, but kept her father’s inherited surname for legal, work and school purposes. After getting married, she finally made the change official last month, legally changing her name to Leonard-Ripley – a combination of her mother’s maiden name and her husband’s surname.

    “I’ve never felt like my last name reflected the love that encompasses my life,” Hannah explained. “And I wanted to make sure that my name reflected that. My mother’s love and also my husband’s love are very abundant and so important to me.” Hannah told reporters that she had wanted to make this change for years, but the high cost of legal name change in California – which ran to hundreds of dollars, including a $400 filing fee and a $130 charge for the mandatory newspaper publication – initially put her off. She described the newspaper requirement as “so outdated and odd”, and the full process took roughly three months to complete.

    Maggie, a woman from Lincolnshire in the UK, shared a similar experience. While she is not fully estranged from her father, her parents separated when she was young, and the pair have never been close. She said she always hated her father’s surname, which included a profanity that led to years of bullying at school. “I didn’t want to be associated with it,” she said. Changing her surname to match her mother’s felt like an enormous weight lifted off her shoulders, and she now says she feels “more like myself”. “I wanted to be part of my mum’s family,” she added. Because UK rules require parental consent for name changes for anyone under 16, Maggie waited until she turned 16 to file for the change, even though she knew she wanted to do it years earlier. “It was so frustrating when I was so sure it was something I wanted to do,” she recalled.

    Academics and mental health experts say that changing a surname in these circumstances is a deeply meaningful act rooted in identity formation. Dr. Harry Parkin, a lecturer at the University of Chester who specializes in the history of naming conventions, explained that surnames are inherently tied to how people see themselves. “When people change theirs, it can be a sign that they want to disconnect and disassociate from [an old identity],” he noted.

    Dr. Becca Bland, a family counselor and coach who specializes in supporting people through family estrangement, frames the choice as a healthy psychological coping mechanism. For people distanced or fully estranged from a parent, changing a surname can “help you separate yourself from something that could be problematic or traumatic”, she explained. It removes the constant reminder of bad memories, and cuts the formal tie to a family branch that the person no longer identifies with.

    Dr. Lucy Blake, a University of the West of England researcher who studies family estrangement, pushed back against common criticism that younger people cut family ties and change names on an impulsive whim. “Research shows that adults who estrange themselves from relatives often do so with a great amount of care and consideration over time,” she said. She added that people who experience estrangement often go through a wide range of complex emotions – from grief and loss to profound freedom – and can feel isolated due to fear of judgement from others for their choice.

    For anyone considering a legal name change, the process and cost vary significantly by location. In England and Wales, the cheapest route is an unenrolled deed poll, which can be completed independently or through a private service for a small fee. An enrolled deed poll, which creates a permanent public record of the change through the High Court, costs £53.05 (around $71). For people born or adopted in Northern Ireland, options include a deed poll or a formal name change recording before a legal representative, which costs £35. In Scotland, applicants submit a request to National Records of Scotland for a £40 fee. Across the UK, anyone under 16 needs consent from all parties with parental responsibility to change a name. Beyond the legal filing, name changers must also update their details with every relevant government agency and private company, from passport offices and driver services to banks, student loan providers and medical practices.

    For people like Hannah and Maggie, and the Jolie children, the hassle and cost are a small price to pay for a name that finally fits who they are.

  • He made history in Congress – then the Supreme Court changed its mind

    He made history in Congress – then the Supreme Court changed its mind

    Deep in rural Alabama’s Black Belt, the small city of Tuskegee bears the layered weight of American history: where Confederate monuments stand blocks from the training grounds of the nation’s first Black Air Force pilots, and where systemic inequality still shapes daily life for its majority-Black population. For 19-year-old Tuskegee University student De’Mari Benham, that inequality hit close to home earlier this year when a shattered glass door sliced open his arm, leaving him bleeding and with limited options for care. With no full-service hospital or 24-hour emergency clinic within city limits, Benham was rushed to the local fire department, where first responders wrapped his wound and urged him to travel to the next town for stitches and prescription medication. He declined the trip — both because the journey was long, and because he could not afford the cost of care.

    Benham’s story is far from unique in Tuskegee, a community of fewer than 9,000 people where more than 80% of residents are Black, nearly one in three live below the poverty line, and basic public infrastructure is chronically underfunded. Fire department captain Dondrell Hopson says his crew responds to calls for emergency medical help that no other local provider will handle, from deep cuts to life-threatening bullet wounds. The fire station itself, the first stop for many injured residents, is structurally unfit to serve as an ad-hoc clinic.

    That started to change two years ago, when Democrat Shomari Figures made history as the first Black representative for Tuskegee in modern U.S. Congress. Within a year of taking office, Figures secured $1 million in federal funding to build a new combined civic center, which will double as a storm fallout shelter and house the city’s updated police and fire departments — the same department that stepped in to treat Benham. He also delivered $500,000 in federal funding for a much-needed MRI machine at Eufaula’s only regional hospital, plus more than $1 million in tax credits to keep the struggling facility open. For the first time in decades, local leaders and residents saw tangible progress on long-ignored community needs.

    But that progress is now at risk, following a seismic 2025 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that weakened a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Alabama’s Republican-led legislature to redraw congressional districts and eliminate the majority-Black district that elected Figures. The new map folds Figures’ current district into a new, white-majority constituency that leans heavily conservative, forcing the first-term Democrat to defend his seat in November’s midterm elections against a Republican opponent endorsed by former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

    The fight over Alabama’s congressional maps stretches back years. Every 10 years, states redraw district lines to reflect population shifts, a process that often leads to partisan gerrymandering, where the ruling party draws lines to favor its own candidates. In 2023, the Supreme Court initially struck down Alabama’s original Republican-drawn map, ruling it illegally diluted Black voting power by splitting southern Alabama’s concentrated Black population across multiple districts. A court-ordered new map created two majority-Black or near-majority-Black districts, clearing the way for Figures’ 2024 election victory.

    But the Supreme Court reversed course in April 2025, issuing a new ruling that makes it far harder to challenge district maps for racial discrimination. Alabama Republicans quickly moved to implement their original preferred map, erasing the second majority-Black district. Figures argues the push for the new map is explicitly racially motivated, pointing to public record of state legislators referring to majority-Black Montgomery as “monkey town” in text messages exchanged during the redistricting process. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall denies racial motivation, framing the map change as a standard partisan power play, noting that Democrats have also redrawn maps in blue states to gain partisan advantage.

    Cedric Coley, chair of Alabama Young Republicans, argues that race-based districting is itself unfair, saying candidates should be elected based on merit rather than racial quota. “I just don’t believe that we should box people in racial quotas based on our history of discrimination,” Coley said. “People should be judged on what they’ve earned, not the color of their skin.”

    But Black residents and civil rights activists across the Black Belt say the map change is nothing less than a direct effort to strip their communities of political representation, rolling back decades of slow progress on voting rights. “It’s a big setback for Black people,” says Joe Reed, a Montgomery-based civil rights lawyer and activist. “In Alabama, with the polarized voting we have, everything is race. Everything.”

    That polarization is visible in the stark inequalities that shape daily life across the newly redrawn district. In Eufaula, a small rural community 62 miles east of Tuskegee, the Black poverty rate sits at nearly 57% — more than four times the poverty rate for white residents. For 71-year-old Mary Porter, a lifelong resident who marched as a child to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court’s ruling evokes the worst era of Jim Crow segregation. “We don’t want those kind of laws to come back,” Porter said. Porter, who relies on friends and faith to travel 50 miles for routine medical care after two strokes, says having a representative who prioritizes the community’s needs has already changed life for the better: the local hospital, which was at risk of closure, is finally getting its first MRI machine thanks to Figures’ federal funding. Hospital CEO Jannet Kinney says losing Figures would put the facility and the care it provides to 60 miles of rural residents at risk. “I’d hate to lose anybody that cares,” Kinney said.

    Even Eufaula’s four-term Republican mayor Jack Tibbs, who is nonpartisan in office, praised Figures’ work and says he fears what will happen if the representative loses his seat. “I’ve seen him four times since he went into office,” Tibbs said. “I can’t say that about the previous guy.”

    As November approaches, Figures is running as an underdog in the newly redrawn district, which added large swathes of majority-white, conservative rural farmland to his constituency. While analysts widely expect the seat to flip to Republican, recent polling shows Figures remains competitive. Outside a historic Black church in Tuskegee that once harbored resistance to discriminatory redistricting in the 1950s, residents say they are gearing up for a fight to keep the representation they won. “They’re trying to remove our voices and our votes, trying to make our votes less powerful,” said 18-year-old Tuskegee University student Deirdre Newcomb. For 73-year-old resident Gale Brown, the ruling is a heartbreaking step backward: “I never thought this would happen in my lifetime.” But for lifelong resident Emmanuel Freeman, the path forward is clear: “We gone fight. That’s all we ever done.”

  • What this desert city can teach the world about tackling heat deaths

    What this desert city can teach the world about tackling heat deaths

    Across vast swathes of the United States and Western Europe, summer 2026 has brought record-shattering, blistering heat that has already claimed hundreds of lives, and climate scientists are clear: this extreme warmth is not an anomaly, but the new normal for communities worldwide.

    The human cost of this year’s heatwaves has already been staggering. France reported more than 2,000 excess deaths during its late-June heat event. In England and Wales, researchers estimate over 2,700 people have died from heat-related causes across a string of extreme heat events starting in May. During the 4 July holiday weekend alone, the U.S. recorded at least 44 confirmed heat-linked deaths.

    Unlike decades past, today’s extreme heat carries a uniquely dangerous twist: overnight temperatures no longer drop enough to let human bodies recover from daytime heat stress, explained Jennifer Marlon, a Yale University climate researcher specializing in extreme heat impacts. “People don’t realise this is not the same heat that we were experiencing 10 years ago, it is actually worse, because in many cases nighttime temperatures are not cooling off,” Marlon told the BBC. With core body temperatures unable to reset during cool nights, even healthy people face elevated risk of heat exhaustion and fatal heat stroke.

    While most newly heat-stricken regions are scrambling to adapt, one U.S. city has been preparing for this future for years: Phoenix, Arizona, located in the always-warm Maricopa County. For decades, local officials have built targeted programs to cut heat deaths, and their efforts have yielded measurable results that experts say could act as a global blueprint for heat resilience.

    As one of the consistently hottest regions in the U.S., Maricopa County has long prioritized heat safety, launching widespread initiatives ranging from expanded cooling center access to free air conditioning support for low-income residents. In a pioneering move in 2021, Phoenix became the first city in the world to appoint a dedicated municipal heat officer, a role focused on coordinating cross-government action on heat risks.

    “We’ve had the relative benefit of knowing that this is going to be a problem every year, but it appears to be more and more of a problem or more of a predictable event in communities across the globe,” said Nicholas Staab, Maricopa County’s chief medical officer.

    The county’s proactive strategy has already driven a notable decline in heat mortality. After peaking at 645 heat-related deaths in 2023, the annual count dropped to 405 in 2025, a reduction many public health experts attribute directly to targeted policy interventions. Much of the county’s work centers on expanding access to cooling for the groups most at risk: low-income households and unhoused residents. Cooling centers have extended operating hours, with many now open 24/7 to pull people off overheated streets, and a dedicated program provides free air conditioning repairs or replacements for eligible low-income residents.

    “The world has a lot to learn from Maricopa County,” Marlon said.

    Despite these successes, the downward trend in mortality is not guaranteed. As of 11 July this year, Maricopa County has already recorded 23 confirmed heat-related deaths, with another 282 cases still under investigation. If all pending cases are confirmed as heat-linked, 2026’s death toll will outpace last year’s count, a reminder of the growing pressure rising temperatures place even on well-prepared communities.

    Ladd Keith, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative at the University of Arizona, noted that the simplest step other regions can replicate is appointing a dedicated heat officer to coordinate cross-department action and cut through bureaucratic gridlock. “It’s incredibly important to make someone responsible for heat because the problem is, if it’s no one’s responsibility, then no one will address it,” he said.

    Marlon added that even regions unaccustomed to extreme heat can quickly stand up coordinated cooling center networks with proper cross-agency communication – but that progress first requires widespread recognition that extreme heat is not a temporary, one-off event.

    Driven by human-caused climate change, the global average temperature has already risen more than 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels, and temperatures will continue to climb for years even if nations implement steep, immediate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Experts emphasize that heat adaptation is no longer optional for communities worldwide, and that heat risks extend far beyond public health: it threatens critical infrastructure and economic stability too, buckling paved roads and causing widespread flight delays during heat peaks.

    Most critically, Keith said, communities must abandon outdated planning based on historical temperature records and prepare for a hotter future. “We have to shift away from planning for the historic heat we’ve experienced and start to plan for the heat we’re going to experience in the next five to 10 years,” he said. “If people think it’s bad now, it’s going to be hotter, and it’s going to be hotter longer. The records are going to be broken, you can almost guarantee, year after year across the world.”

  • Giant sinkhole appears on Sunset Boulevard from burst water pipe

    Giant sinkhole appears on Sunset Boulevard from burst water pipe

    A catastrophic water main break stemming from a 100-year-old pipeline has carved out a massive sinkhole along one of Southern California’s most iconic thoroughfares, Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, bringing localized chaos to the busy corridor and leaving officials scrambling to assess damage and coordinate repairs.

    The rupture, which occurred early [on an unreported date], sent thousands of gallons of water gushing onto adjacent streets, submerging portions of the roadway and creating hazardous conditions for motorists and pedestrians in the area. First responders and local municipal utility crews were dispatched to the scene within minutes to shut off water flow, cordon off the danger zone, and begin initial evaluations of the infrastructure failure.

    In a welcome update, local government representatives confirmed that no injuries or fatalities have been linked to the incident as of the latest assessments. The sinkhole, which formed rapidly after the pipe burst, has closed multiple lanes of traffic along the popular boulevard, a major route that sees heavy daily use from commuters, tourists, and local businesses. Utility officials have not yet released a timeline for full repairs or a cost estimate for the damage, noting that teams will first conduct a full inspection of the surrounding pipe network to rule out additional structural weaknesses before beginning restoration work.

  • Trump spins China meddling intel to justify election takeover bid

    Trump spins China meddling intel to justify election takeover bid

    Four months ahead of the high-stakes November U.S. midterm elections, former President Donald Trump took to primetime television on July 16 to deliver an address that reignited fierce debate over election integrity, repeating long-debunked falsehoods about his 2020 electoral loss and leveling unsubstantiated claims of a large-scale Chinese plot to interfere in American voting. The speech, which aligned with the declassification of purported intelligence documents detailing what Trump called China’s “sinister” election interference scheme, also repeated his call for federal control of U.S. elections — a power currently held by individual U.S. states — and attacked the FBI and intelligence community for allegedly suppressing information about Beijing’s activities.

    In his address, Trump claimed the U.S. voting system has been left open to manipulation and theft by his political opponents, repeating a baseless accusation that China illicitly obtained 220 million American voter files to undermine his candidacy in 2020. He also attacked major broadcast networks for declining to air his speech live and in full, claiming outlets were complicit in a cover-up and calling for the broadcast licenses of NBC and ABC to be revoked. That threat drew immediate condemnation from across the political spectrum, with independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders calling the move “insane” and a clear attack on constitutional press freedoms.

    Critics and independent policy experts have widely rejected Trump’s narrative, arguing he selectively cherry-picked incomplete intelligence findings to advance a self-serving political agenda designed to build support for the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation widely characterized as a voter suppression measure that Trump has aggressively pushed through Congress. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence senior member Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, issued a statement noting that even the declassified documents released by Trump do not support his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “Even his own document release does not support his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It confirms what we’ve long known: Foreign adversaries targeted our democracy, but there is no evidence they changed a single vote or altered the casting or counting of ballots,” Krishnamoorthi said. He added that Trump’s push to place unqualified political loyalists in top intelligence roles weakens the very agencies tasked with protecting U.S. elections from foreign interference, and that the president’s real goal is to lay the groundwork for a unprecedented federal takeover of state-run election systems to suppress turnout and advance his political power, while ignoring pressing economic and social challenges facing American households.

    Trump’s address claimed that unprocessed “raw intelligence” proves China manufactured illegal ballots for his 2020 opponent, former President Joe Biden, and that career bureaucrats deliberately buried the evidence. But a breakdown from The Washington Post notes that raw intelligence is frequently incomplete, inaccurate, or contradictory, requiring rigorous vetting by expert analysts before conclusions can be drawn. A 2021 declassified intelligence report confirmed the longstanding consensus that no foreign power, including China, altered any votes or tampered with vote counting in the 2020 election, and the hundreds of pages of documents released by the White House alongside Trump’s speech do not back up his claims of a cover-up by intelligence officials.

    Advocacy group leaders and pro-democracy organizations have echoed these criticisms, framing the speech as a deliberate distraction from the Trump administration’s widely unpopular policy failures and plummeting public approval ratings. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, argued that Trump is using the election conspiracy talk to draw attention away from ongoing economic struggles for working Americans, a controversial conflict with Iran that has driven up energy prices, tax cuts skewed heavily toward wealthy Americans that have been paid for by cuts to healthcare and food assistance for low-income households, and the expansion of unaccountable paramilitary law enforcement. “Trump’s delusional rantings tonight are a transparent effort to distract from these realities,” Weissman said.

    Pro-democracy group Living United for Change in Arizona went further, warning that Trump’s speech is a deliberate step toward dismantling American democratic norms. “Tonight Donald Trump stood before the nation and attempted to rewrite history, erase the will of the voters, and prepare the country for his next assault on American democracy,” the organization said in a statement. “Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to dismantle our elections, overturn results he does not like, cancel the will of the people, and hold onto power by any means necessary.”

  • Meet Magnolia, the stolen kitten used in an attempted bank robbery

    Meet Magnolia, the stolen kitten used in an attempted bank robbery

    In a bizarre and unexpected incident that has captured public attention, a young black-and-white tuxedo kitten named Magnolia has been pulled to safety after being caught up in a failed attempt to rob a bank. The small feline was stolen from its original surroundings before being exploited by individuals planning the heist, used in an as-yet-undisclosed role as part of the robbery plot. Law enforcement teams responding to the incident quickly intervened to foil the criminal plan, and in the process, they located and rescued the unharmed kitten. Now, following her chaotic brush with crime, Magnolia is in the care of local animal welfare professionals, healthy and ready to find a permanent, loving new home through adoption. The unusual case has drawn curiosity from community members, who have expressed relief that the young cat emerged unharmed from the risky criminal scheme she was forced into.

  • Do declassified files support Trump’s election security claims?

    Do declassified files support Trump’s election security claims?

    In a 26-minute address delivered from the White House East Room — the same venue where former President Barack Obama announced the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011 — former and current President Donald Trump resurrected long-standing, unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud and foreign interference in U.S. electoral processes.

    During the speech, Trump framed the current U.S. election system as dangerously unsecure, claiming that hundreds of newly declassified intelligence documents would expose what he called “shocking vulnerabilities” in the nation’s voting infrastructure. Following the address, the White House published four collections of declassified “election integrity” documents, which were independently analyzed by BBC Verify. While many of the released files were heavily redacted, the review found no explosive new revelations and no concrete evidence that any foreign interference or domestic fraud altered the outcome of any previous U.S. election, including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost to Joe Biden.

    A core narrative of Trump’s speech centered on casting China as the primary malign actor in alleged election meddling, describing Beijing as a nefarious force conducting “sinister election meddling” in U.S. elections. The released documents do confirm that Chinese actors took steps to acquire U.S. voter data — much of which was already publicly available or purchasable on open markets — and explored potential avenues to influence U.S. public opinion. However, these activities fall far short of the large-scale election tampering Trump implied, and are far smaller in scope than the 2016 election interference campaign conducted by Russia, which Trump only mentioned once in his address. This aligns with a 2021 declassified assessment from the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), which concluded with “high confidence” that China did not interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

    In his address, Trump claimed that “over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files,” adding that “tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states” had been “bought, stolen or hacked by China.” A July 13, 2026 statement from the White House’s Government Transparency Force included in the released document batch echoed the claim that voter rolls from at least 18 states and more than 200 million total voter records had been compromised by China, without specifying a timeframe. One heavily redacted declassified document includes a table dated 2016 listing 204,822,241 unspecified U.S. voter records as “likely leaked, compromised data,” but the extensive redactions make it impossible to confirm the full context or veracity of this entry.

    Strengthening U.S. election infrastructure has been a bipartisan policy priority for decades. Following the contested 2000 presidential election and again after confirmed Russian interference in 2016, U.S. policymakers implemented new national security standards to shore up voting systems, and most states now require paper ballots as a verifiable backup to digital voting systems, even as election administration remains under state control. However, analysts note Trump’s revival of these fraud claims carries clear partisan goals: casting ongoing doubt on the legitimacy of his 2020 loss and laying groundwork to question the outcome of future elections he may contest or lose.

    Trump also used his speech to claim that declassified assessments prove U.S. voting machines are “extremely exposed to attack,” quoting an assessment that reads, “we judged that the United States’ adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.” The released documents do include a January 2020 declassified NIC assessment that acknowledged ballot and voting machine preparation faces potential risks from cyberattacks, supply chain compromise, and insider threats, noting that machines without paper backup are particularly vulnerable to cyber manipulation. Crucially, however, the same assessment also concluded that existing security mitigations and the decentralized nature of U.S. voting storage make it extremely difficult for any foreign adversary to coordinate a widespread campaign to manipulate results across an entire state or multiple states. A separate August 2020 declassified NIC report, which Trump appeared to reference, does note that foreign actors could seek to compromise election infrastructure, but does not confirm that any successful large-scale manipulation has ever occurred. It is also worth noting that the Trump administration has moved to cut funding and undermine the independence of federal agencies tasked with monitoring and protecting U.S. election security in recent years.

    Michigan, a key battleground state that Trump won in 2016 and 2024 but lost in 2020, has long been a focal point of Trump’s fraud allegations, and he highlighted the state again in Thursday’s speech. The president claimed there was massive hidden evidence of fraud in Michigan ahead of the 2020 election that had been covered up. The released documents reference an ongoing investigation into fraudulent voter registration applications in Muskegon, Michigan, launched in October 2020, with one document noting between 8,000 and 10,000 suspicious applications. The case was referred to law enforcement, and FBI testing of a sample found 91 out of 107 applications returned no matching results in government database checks. After nearly five years of investigation, the FBI closed the case in September 2025, concluding that “the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation.” Despite this closing, Trump announced he has asked new FBI Director Kash Patel to open a full new investigation into the matter. Local news outlets did originally report on the irregularities identified by Muskegon election officials at the time the investigation opened in 2020.

    One of the most specific claims from Trump’s address centered on non-citizen registration, with the president announcing the White House was releasing “the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security” that “identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” The one-page DHS document released confirms that “over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in just the four U.S. states for which public data files have been reviewed.” However, the document provides no supporting evidence, does not link to the underlying data, does not explain how the figures were collected or verified, and offers no breakdown of methodology, making it impossible to independently confirm the claim’s validity. Multiple independent studies have documented that non-citizen voting is extremely rare in U.S. elections, with only a handful of verified cases across the country in every election cycle. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Democratic candidates rely on votes from millions of undocumented migrants, and has argued that passing his proposed federal election security legislation would allow Republicans to secure permanent control of the U.S. government.

  • Health experts urge caution over mandatory US military testosterone screenings

    Health experts urge caution over mandatory US military testosterone screenings

    The U.S. Department of Defense has launched a controversial new health policy that is dividing military leaders and top medical professionals: earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that all active-duty male troops aged 30 and older will be required to complete routine screening for low testosterone, also clinically known as hypogonadism. Under the new framework, service members who receive a low testosterone diagnosis will be offered access to testosterone replacement therapy, commonly shortened to TRT, if their providers deem it necessary. Hegseth has framed the policy as a critical investment in troop performance, arguing that optimizing hormone levels will preserve the U.S. military’s greatest tactical advantage: the individual war fighter.

    In a public video released Wednesday to promote the initiative, Hegseth stated, “Our most decisive tactical advantage will always be the individual war fighter. We have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage which is why we must constantly look for new ways to optimise your performance.” The policy targets a large group of service members: 2024 military data counts more than 375,000 active-duty men over 30, with an additional 305,500 serving in the National Guard and reserve forces. To date, the Pentagon has released few concrete details about how testing will be rolled out or administered across the force of 1.3 million active-duty troops.

    While the policy aligns with a booming national trend of rising TRT use and mainstream cultural interest in testosterone optimization, leading medical professionals who spoke to the BBC are sounding urgent warnings about the risks of mandatory broad screening, arguing that the policy is fundamentally misguided and likely to cause avoidable harm to healthy troops. Data from a May 2026 study published in JAMA Network estimates that roughly one in 10 adult men in the U.S. meet the clinical criteria for hypogonadism, a rate that climbs steadily with age, reaching up to 38% for men over 45. But experts emphasize that a low blood test result alone does not justify starting TRT.

    Current clinical standards from the American Urological Association require two key criteria to prescribe testosterone therapy: confirmed low blood hormone levels and documented symptomatic health issues linked to hypogonadism, such as persistent low mood, reduced libido, and unexplained loss of muscle mass. For otherwise healthy people with asymptomatic low testosterone, the risks of unnecessary TRT far outweigh any potential benefits, experts say. Common harmful side effects include a dramatic drop in sperm count and permanent or long-term infertility, as well as shrinking of the testicles. In many cases of unnecessary TRT, it can take a year or longer for natural sperm production to return to baseline levels after stopping treatment.

    More severe potential complications include increased risk of irregular heartbeat, blood clots, and abnormal breast tissue growth. Dr. James Anaissie, a Texas-based urologist and co-author of peer-reviewed research on testosterone deficiency, explained to the BBC that aggressive mass screening increases the likelihood of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, noting that symptoms associated with low testosterone can also stem from dozens of unrelated health conditions. “This is the problem with routine screening,” Anaissie said. “People start treating problems they don’t need to treat.”

    Dr. Joseph Alukal, professor of urology and director of men’s health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, went further, calling the Pentagon’s program “misguided.” Alukal explained that starting TRT is a lifelong medical commitment: once the body becomes accustomed to external testosterone, it often loses the ability to produce natural hormone at pre-treatment levels after stopping therapy, leading to worse hypogonadal symptoms than patients started with. “Screening aggressively is going to create that mess for some number of patients,” he said.

    Beyond clinical risks, experts warn that delivering safe TRT at military scale creates significant logistical challenges, particularly for deployed troops. Effective TRT requires regular injections (typically one or two doses per week) and frequent blood monitoring to keep hormone levels within a safe, therapeutic range, as levels can fluctuate dramatically during treatment. Sudden interruptions to treatment, common during combat deployments where consistent medical access is not guaranteed, lead to uncomfortable “crash” symptoms including severe fatigue and low libido, even if they do not cause immediate life-threatening harm.

    The Pentagon’s new policy comes amid a years-long surge in TRT use across the U.S., where the number of people seeking therapy jumped from 7.3 million in 2019 to 11 million in 2024. The growing popularity of testosterone optimization has been fueled in large part by mainstream cultural influence: high-profile public figures including podcaster Joe Rogan have openly discussed their personal TRT use, while a wave of social media influencers associated with the “looksmaxxing” trend have promoted testosterone as a near-miracle drug for boosting energy, muscle growth, sexual function, and bone density. Anaissie noted that it remains unclear whether the rise in TRT use stems from a real increase in clinically diagnosable hypogonadism, or simply more healthy men chasing the purported lifestyle benefits of hormone therapy.

    The push for broader TRT access also aligns with the cultural priorities of the current Trump administration, which has centered “traditional masculinity” as a key cultural theme. Top administration officials have openly embraced testosterone as part of personal health and anti-aging routines: Hegseth, known for publicly projecting a hyper-masculine image through combat training photos and public appearances, spearheaded the new military policy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who made headlines for a viral photo of himself grappling with venomous snakes with his bare hands, has cited testosterone as a core part of his own anti-aging protocol. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration, which Kennedy oversees, announced plans to roll back existing public health warnings on TRT, a move that will make the therapy far more accessible to the general public. In January, Kennedy revealed on a podcast that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services leader Dr. Mehmet Oz had evaluated President Donald Trump’s testosterone levels, and found the 70-plus-year-old president had “the highest testosterone levels that he’s ever seen for an individual over 70.”

  • Timelapse shows World Cup final stadium nearly vanish in smoky haze

    Timelapse shows World Cup final stadium nearly vanish in smoky haze

    Striking time-lapse footage has captured a startling visual shift at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, the chosen venue for the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, as thick haze from hundreds of ongoing Canadian wildfires swept across the region and nearly obscured the massive sports arena from view.

    The haze, which has been an ongoing issue for the Northeastern United States through multiple waves of wildfire activity this year, drifted southward from Canada, where hundreds of uncontrolled blazes have been burning across vast swathes of boreal forest in recent months. Climate researchers have linked the increased frequency and intensity of these wildfires to rising global temperatures and prolonged drought conditions across much of Canada, creating ideal conditions for large, fast-spreading fires that send plumes of smoke hundreds of miles across international borders.

    For residents and visitors in the New York City metropolitan area, where MetLife Stadium is located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, the hazy conditions have not only created dramatic and concerning visuals like the timelapse of the vanishing stadium, but have also sparked ongoing public health concerns over poor air quality. The timelapse, which spread rapidly across social media after being shared, has served as a stark visual reminder of how far-reaching the impacts of climate change and large-scale wildfires have become, even for major population centers far from the actual fire lines.

    Officials have repeatedly issued air quality alerts across the region during periods of heavy haze, urging vulnerable populations to limit outdoor activity. As wildfire seasons continue to lengthen across North America, episodes of cross-border haze like this are expected to become more common in coming years, raising questions about how major public events like the World Cup will need to adapt to changing air quality conditions moving forward.