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A high-stakes corruption probe has ended in the arrest of a recently retired top Central Intelligence Agency official, who authorities say hoarded more than $40 million in stolen government gold bars at his private residence in Virginia. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents confirmed they seized 303 one-kilogram gold bars, roughly $2 million in untraceable U.S. cash, and 35 high-end luxury watches—most manufactured by Rolex—during a May 18 search warrant execution at former official David Rush’s home.

Court filings lay out the timeline of the alleged scheme: Between November 2025 and March 2026, Rush repeatedly submitted formal requests to the U.S. government, claiming the millions of dollars in gold and large amounts of foreign currency were needed to cover confidential work-related expenditures. Once the assets were released to him, internal CIA auditors were unable to track any of the gold or significant portions of the currency, and found no documentation showing how Rush had used the assets for official agency business.

According to reporting from *The New York Times*, Rush held a senior leadership role at the CIA until very recently, and maintained top-secret security clearance with full access to the agency’s most sensitive classified information. Beyond the theft of public funds, the former executive faces additional charges: court documents accuse Rush of falsifying his educational background and military service record during his initial government job application, and of improperly collecting thousands of dollars in pay while fraudulently claiming authorized military leave.

The investigation traces back to an internal ethics probe by the CIA itself. In an official written statement, the FBI confirmed that CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally referred the case to federal law enforcement after the agency’s internal review flagged potential criminal violations. FBI agents moved to arrest Rush on May 19, and he remains in federal detention ahead of his first court hearing scheduled for this week. His legal counsel has declined to provide any statement on the charges to reporters. As of press time, court documents have not offered clarification on what Rush intended to do with the cached assets, and the BBC has confirmed it has not yet received a response to its request for additional comment from the CIA.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election, one of the most turbulent in modern American political history, has yielded new behind-the-scenes revelations from former first lady Jill Biden, who opened up about her panic during Joe Biden’s disastrous first debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump. In a forthcoming interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, set to air this weekend, Jill Biden shared for the first time her immediate visceral reaction to her husband’s faltering performance that upended the entire election cycle.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she told CBS correspondent Rita Braver, as confirmed by the BBC, CBS’s partner for U.S. political coverage. “I don’t know what happened,” she added. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

That June 2024 debate, held just five months before the November general election, was supposed to be a critical moment for incumbent President Joe Biden to make his case for a second term against his predecessor Trump. The two candidates clashed on defining national issues, from immigration policy and post-pandemic economic recovery to abortion rights, but any policy arguments Biden made were quickly overshadowed by his shaky on-stage demeanor. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris later described the performance as a “slow start”; Biden spoke with a raspy, strained voice (his team attributed this to a lingering illness) and at one point lost his train of thought mid-answer, leaving viewers and party leaders stunned.

Long before the debate, voters had already raised widespread concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity — he was 81 years old at the time, the oldest person ever to serve as sitting president — and that poor performance amplified those anxieties exponentially. Within hours, Democratic Party leaders began privately and publicly pressuring Biden to drop out of the race, warning that his candidacy would put not just the presidency but down-ballot congressional and gubernatorial seats at risk. Major U.S. media analysts echoed those concerns, arguing that Biden’s standing against Trump had deteriorated to a point that threatened the party’s chances of holding the White House.

At first, Biden’s campaign pushed back hard against calls for him to exit, insisting the president would remain the Democratic nominee and would participate in a second scheduled debate against Trump. Political analysts also widely noted that replacing an incumbent nominee just months before a general election would require a chaotic, divisive process that could split the party and derail its campaign entirely. But a series of subsequent missteps, including awkward gaffes at a NATO summit in the weeks after the debate and a visibly frail appearance following a COVID-19 diagnosis, convinced Biden that he could not continue. He ultimately announced he would end his re-election bid and endorsed Harris, his vice president, to take his place as the party’s nominee.

Jill Biden, who has been a constant presence alongside her husband through his 50-plus-year political career — from his early days as a U.S. Senator from Delaware to his four years in the White House — was widely recognized as one of Joe Biden’s most trusted and influential advisers during his presidency, and multiple reports have confirmed she was among those who encouraged him to step away from the 2024 race.

Three months before the general election, Harris officially secured the Democratic nomination, but she ultimately failed to overcome the late start and lost the general election to Trump. In the aftermath of her defeat, Harris offered a scathing rebuke of Biden’s decision to run for a second term in her memoir, calling the choice an act of recklessness. “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”

Jill Biden’s new comments offer the most intimate look yet at the moment that changed the trajectory of the 2024 election, laying bare the fear that gripped even Biden’s closest inner circle in the aftermath of the debate.

Amid fragile ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran following months of open conflict, US President Donald Trump has publicly stated that Washington is still unsatisfied with the current terms of a potential peace deal, leaving the prospect of a final agreement uncertain. Speaking during a public cabinet meeting held in Washington DC on Wednesday, Trump outlined his stance on the ongoing negotiations, confirming that while Iranian leadership is eager to reach a negotiated settlement to end the conflict, the two sides have not yet closed the gap on core disagreements.

“Iran is very much intent on getting a deal done. They want this very badly,” Trump told reporters in attendance. “So far, they haven’t gotten there, and we’re not satisfied with what’s on the table. Either we get a deal that works for the United States, or we will have to finish the job,” he added, repeating a longstanding US threat to resume large-scale military strikes if no acceptable agreement is reached. Trump also downplayed Iran’s current negotiating position, claiming the country was “negotiating on fumes” and had no other choice but to reach a deal with Washington.

The comments came hours after Iranian state television published leaked details of what it claimed was a full draft framework agreement between the two delegations. The leaked draft included a number of major proposed terms: Iran would reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping within one month, restoring traffic to pre-conflict levels, with vessel routing and management overseen jointly by Tehran and Muscat. In exchange, the draft claimed the US would lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw all American military forces from the region. The leaked document notably made no mention of Iran abandoning its nuclear enrichment program or surrendering its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, two longstanding core US demands in prior negotiations with Tehran.

Within hours of the report, the White House dismissed the leaked draft as a “complete fabrication”, denying that any such agreement had been put forward. President Trump also directly addressed the proposed terms during Wednesday’s briefing, rejecting the idea that Iran would control access to the Strait of Hormuz. “Nobody controls the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, adding that the waterway must open immediately under any final deal. He also denied two other circulating reports that have drawn domestic political pushback: that he was considering lifting sweeping US sanctions on Iran, and that he would allow Russia and China to remove Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile to meet US non-proliferation requirements.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s general tone Wednesday, confirming that “some progress and some interest” has been made in ongoing talks but declined to share details of remaining sticking points between the two delegations. “We’ll see over the next few hours and days whether that progress can continue and solidify into something we can move forward with,” Rubio said.

The current round of negotiations follows months of escalating conflict that upended stability across the Middle East. The US and Israel launched large-scale, widespread strikes against Iranian targets on February 28, officially launching the open conflict. Iran responded with strikes against Israeli targets and US-allied Gulf nations, and moved to fully close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies. The closure sent global crude prices soaring, triggering widespread economic concerns across global energy markets.

An initial ceasefire agreement was reached on April 8, and has been largely respected by both sides, but formal talks to resolve the underlying conflict stalled for weeks. In recent days, the fragile truce has come under renewed strain: the US launched new strikes targeting Iranian missile sites and coastal boats that US military officials claimed were laying mines in international waters on Monday, followed by additional self-described “self-defense strikes” against targets in southern Iran on Tuesday. Tehran has repeatedly denounced these new strikes as a “gross violation” of the April ceasefire agreement, raising fears that full-scale conflict could resume if talks collapse. BBC News has not independently verified the contents of the purported draft framework leaked by Iranian state media, and no official confirmation of the draft’s terms has been provided by either negotiating delegation.

Weeks after being removed from her position as the United States’ top law enforcement official, former Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, multiple American media outlets have confirmed. The story of Bondi’s health diagnosis was first broken by Axios, which reported that the news of her illness came just a short time after former President Donald Trump removed her from the Department of Justice post.

At 60 years old, Bondi shared with CNN that she is currently undergoing active treatment for the cancer, and is still in the recovery period from a surgical procedure she underwent several weeks prior. Despite the diagnosis, she confirmed she is “doing well” and has no plans to step back from professional work. In a revealing new development, Bondi will join the newly formed White House advisory panel focused on artificial intelligence: the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, commonly known as PCAST.

Katie Miller, a podcast host and former White House advisor, publicly shared her support for Bondi on social media, writing that “Pam has been quietly kicking cancer’s ass the last few weeks” and noting that Bondi “has a heart of gold”.

When Bondi departed the Department of Justice in early April, she stated at the time that she was looking forward to moving into a role in the private sector. Her appointment to PCAST marks the first public confirmation of her ongoing professional work following her exit from the Justice Department.

Vice President JD Vance issued an official statement praising Bondi’s new role, saying: “Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president’s team, and I’m thrilled for her and for all of us that she’s going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces.”

PCAST was established by Trump via executive order in January 2025, with the formal mission to “unite the brightest minds from academia, industry, and government to guide our Nation through this critical moment by charting a path forward for American leadership in science and technology”. The first full slate of council members was not publicly announced until March 2026, and the group includes some of the most prominent leaders in the global science and technology sectors: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are all counted among its members.